What a Brooksian choice of adjective
Steven Brill’s essay, “The Rubber Room,” in The New Yorker generated a lot of discussion. It’s about the room where New York City schoolteachers who have been dismissed for incompetence sit for years on end and continue to collect their six-figure salaries for doing nothing. The word Dickensian doesn’t fully describe the madness of a system that cannot get rid of bad teachers.
Unless there was a huge number of teachers in a small, poorly heated ‘rubber room’, then the word Dickensian doesn’t even partly describe what he’s talking about. Or am I missing something?
January 22nd, 2010 12:58
I think I’ve missed something here too. But more importantly, I’m still reeling from the “six-figure salaries” bit. Seriously? For teaching? To hell with this for a game of cards, let’s ALL become incompetent New York teachers.