All the rhetoric of late regarding rewarding good teachers and penalizing poor ones, of shipping good teachers to underachieving schools and less able educators to schools with higher standards simplistically works to remediate symptoms and in my view does nothing to address the problem.

In my wife's three decades in the classroom, she has dealt with apathy, truancy, hunger, lack of sleep, behavioural issues, language and cultural barriers, limitations of ability, as well as emotional, physical and sexual abuse. These were often present in the same classroom in the same school year.

Whether she was 10 times more competent or only 1/10th as able, little she did or could have done to change things over which she had no control. Reducing the human equation in education to standardized numbers holds no weight of logic.

Washing a car will not fix a faulty motor any more than blowing one's nose will cure a cold. The problem lies in the hands of society in general parents in particular and efforts to download apathy onto the shoulders of educators, whether by reward or punishment, are ludicrous and irresponsible.