Pharmacists

Two of my roommates at Butler University were pharmacy majors.  These guys spent five years (the length of the program at that time; it is now six years) studying their butts off.  Seriously, it was unreal the amount of time they spent in labs and outside study.  I jokingly asked Bob once why so much study time was needed to simply pour a number of tablets in a bottle and, by the way, how do they get that bottle in the typewriter?  His verbal response cannot be written here.  Butler remains as “The Place” to study to be a pharmacist.  A few years back, a pharmacist named Robert Courtney (not a Butler grad) made $19,000,000.  That’s a lot of money.  The problem is that Mr. Courtney didn’t make this legally. He diluted 98,000chemotherapy doses and sold them outside of his company’s knowledge. He watered down medicine.  Sadly, 4200 cancer patients died because their chemotherapy cocktails were not strong enough.  What a scum dog.  Courtney was sentenced to 30 years in prison; hopefully not near the medical section. Ironically, when I initially jotted a few notes on this subject to turn into a post a few months ago, a diagnosis of leukemia was not in my plans…glad that Mr. Courtney is not on my team.

As teachers, we need to ensure that what we are giving to kids is strong enough.  We need to teach kids to critically read, critically write, and critically think.  Those things do not come naturally.  Our kids need to read more complicated texts.  They need to prove answers with evidence.  We cannot dilute the curriculum because it is easier.  Nope. At our school, during core class period, we need to teach at grade level.  A natural tendency would be to “water down” the curriculum so that all goes well.  Fight that tendency.  Use RtI and resource periods as the time to reach down to meet the kids where they are and then continually work to spiral them back up.  If we truly want to make our students critical thinkers then we have to expose them to higher levels of understanding.  If you are a Bloom’s fan (I have the t-shirt), then spend a great deal of time requiring your student toanalyze, to synthesize, and to evaluate.  The new standards dictate that students are educated as critical thinkers no matter what the subject area. So, make certain that your students get a strong enough daily dosage from you with a higher concentration of critical thinking.  Make your students strong enough.