The combined cabal of woke and the teachers’ unions have struck again.  This time, the target was New Jersey.  Effective Thursday morning, public school teachers in New Jersey no longer must pass even the most basic educational skills test.  The test was not for complicated subjects such as calculus.  This now abandoned test verified the teacher’s ability to read, write, and calculate simple math problems.

Jersey governor Phil Murphy approved eliminating even these most basic requirements for teaching applicants in those three essential areas.  Democrat state senator Jim Beach sponsored the bill, further dumbing down the state’s educational system.  Beach said, “We need more teachers!”  Who would’ve ever thought it was okay to have teachers who can’t demonstrate that they can read and write at least acceptably and do simple math problems?

Not to demean the locals there, but Beach represents a southern portion of the Garden State, often called “Slower Lower New Jersey.”  How an elected representative who majored in education in college believes that the students of New Jersey can be effectively taught by teachers who might not have the math skills to make change for 7-Eleven customers was never explained. 

One might think that basic reading, writing, and math skills would be a natural requirement for teachers averaging more than $81,000 annually, but it’s New Jersey.  Like in many blue states, there are a whole lot of things that do not make sense there.

New Jersey did not invent the idea alone.  The Garden State is simply following the example of the Empire State.  Seven years ago, New York scrapped basic literary requirements for teachers in the name of the holy grail of “diversity.”

This dumbing down of the educational system is very popular in blue states.  Massachusetts, Arizona, and California now allow teachers to be less functionally educated than some of the more competent students they teach.

As one example of the failure of the system, only about half of New York elementary school students in grades three through eight tested as proficient in English and math last year.  Since the teachers are not required to be skilled in those subjects, how can anyone expect the students to get a valid education in these critically needed subjects?  It’s not a problem caused by lack of funding.  Thanks to the stranglehold imposed on school boards by the teachers’ union, New York spends almost twice the national average on education.  New York teachers are some of the highest-paid in the country.

Always remember, we’re not talking about dumb kids here.  Many of the students who couldn’t pass those elementary school proficiency tests may well have been taught by teachers who couldn’t pass them, either.

It’s easy to dismiss this as a combination of Democrat politics, wokeness, diversity, and stupidity.  (I recognize that I just repeated myself four times.)  But it is much worse than that.  Of course, taxpayers are victims of this.  However, the students failed by the system suffered much more lasting damage.  How can we expect a child not to become an adult dependent on welfare if we don’t give him even the most fundamental keys to success in life?

This isn’t just denying children an opportunity for life at the upper end of the socioeconomic system.  A truck driver needs to be able to read road signs.  When the foreman tells a ditch-digger to make a hole 12 feet long, that uneducated New York or New Jersey alumnus needs to understand what the boss means.  If this seems like stretching the digger’s pre-decided doom too far, with about 50% of New York students not having elementary school English or math skills, in reality, the situation is probably worse than that.

We are told that Musk’s and Ramaswamy’s DOGE may try to save $238 billion by simply eliminating the 4,400 employees in the United States Department of Education.  That may be a problem in New Jersey.  Self-service gas stations are illegal there.  Stations in the Garden State must pay a “pump jockey” to dispense gasoline into customers’ cars.

Perhaps DOGE might want to leave a few Department of Education employees in New Jersey.  They could try to ensure that high school graduates there will at least know when to turn off the pump when the driver says, “$20 of High Test, please.”

Image: jarmoluk via Pixabay, Pixabay License.