Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

There Are Two Americas...And One Of Them Can't Read
right side news ^ | 3/5/11 | Bruce Price

Posted on 03/06/2011 11:45:45 AM PST by Nachum

click here to read article


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081-96 next last
To: Secret Agent Man

I don’t know the stats, but more teachers quit than you would think. Both of my parents were teachers and it isn’t the cake job many people make it out to be. There’s a reason I never considered it for myself and it has nothing to do with money.


61 posted on 03/06/2011 3:50:50 PM PST by conservativebuckeye
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 52 | View Replies]

To: wally_bert

I was fortunate that I had really good teachers for kindergarten and 1st grade. They had a good balance between not discouraging me and not leaving the rest of the class behind.


62 posted on 03/06/2011 4:34:12 PM PST by conservativebuckeye
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 36 | View Replies]

To: Nachum

One quibble. Lots of people can’t learn to read using the phonics method. My wife learned to read by sight. My younger soon also. He doesn’t pick up information by ear. Why he can’t sing a lick. So he was in the 7th grade before he found a teacher who would LET him learn. He and my wife are good at “Wheel of Fortune”puzzles, because the whole word is in their heads.


63 posted on 03/06/2011 4:58:02 PM PST by RobbyS (Pray with the suffering souls.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Publius6961

Part of the problem is that putting every teacher on the same salary scale does not go according to the law of supply and demand. English teachers are not as hard to find as math and science teachers. Yet one of the cuts proposed here in Texas is to stop giving bonuses to math and science teachers.


64 posted on 03/06/2011 5:03:45 PM PST by RobbyS (Pray with the suffering souls.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 56 | View Replies]

To: Publius6961

A lot of the illiterate kids had a TV in the house but no books. The only reading matter was cereal boxes.


65 posted on 03/06/2011 5:07:06 PM PST by RobbyS (Pray with the suffering souls.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 60 | View Replies]

To: BobL
The only reason 50,000,000 people cannot read is because we have people that simply don’t want them to read.

Crap. They have to want to learn to read to begin with.

66 posted on 03/06/2011 5:07:46 PM PST by Sarajevo (You're jealous because the voices only talk to me.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: BobL

“Hole language” is the biggest cause of the holes in people’s language skills.


67 posted on 03/06/2011 5:14:24 PM PST by MortMan (What disease did cured ham used to have?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: BobL

You need to sit in on some classrooms, and it might change your mind. When teachers spend half or more of their time engaged in behavior control, there is a problem that originates someplace besides the schools.


68 posted on 03/06/2011 5:30:26 PM PST by pallis
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 41 | View Replies]

To: BobL

“It is fast, easy, and practically free.”

Before public school in America, kids were mostly taught at home.

The literacy rate was way higher back then than it is today.


69 posted on 03/06/2011 5:37:49 PM PST by webstersII
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: conservativebuckeye

I never said it WAS a cake job. As I said, everyone has issues with parts of their job. I could not teach in a public school - I could, but I would probably be fired the first day. If I could teach with the same ability my teachers had, it’d be different. I probably could teach in private schools without much problem.

What I am saying is that teachers make a choice to go into teaching. If it’s really not tolerable, like any job, you need to leave and get a different job. I had plenty of friends at school who went into teaching because it was one of the easiest schools to get a degree in (they always were shocked at what I was taking in engineering).


70 posted on 03/06/2011 5:46:40 PM PST by Secret Agent Man (I'd like to tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 61 | View Replies]

To: pallis

My daughter teaches in a public elementary in a nice suburb here in Indiana.

42% of the students in her grade come from intact families.
(def: birth parents living together in the family home)
Remember this is one of the GOOD locales.

What % of kids in inner city schools even KNOW who both parents are?

The Great Society destroyed the black family structure.
It’s difficult to believe any education system can fix this.


71 posted on 03/06/2011 5:52:29 PM PST by nascarnation
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 68 | View Replies]

To: Secret Agent Man

I agree with everything you say. I actually think I would’ve bombed education courses in college because I would’ve found them tedious. Granted I would’ve bombed engineering too because my mind isn’t geared that way. I can’t think of a major that does a worse job at preparing someone for their career than education. Other than student teaching, there is nothing learned that helps with the actual job.


72 posted on 03/06/2011 5:57:12 PM PST by conservativebuckeye
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 70 | View Replies]

To: MARTIAL MONK

Oops, ...over her son’s inability...
Better?


73 posted on 03/06/2011 7:16:42 PM PST by steve8714 (Firing Federal Bureaucrats would have a 100,000x beneficial effect on the deficit, maybe more.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 54 | View Replies]

To: steve8714
Too late.

That made mah haid hurt.

I took up drinkin' to ease the angst.

Now I'm consigned to a lifetime of dissolution and livin' under bridges.

See what you done?

74 posted on 03/06/2011 7:25:56 PM PST by MARTIAL MONK (I'm waiting for the POP!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 73 | View Replies]

To: Sarajevo

“Crap. They have to want to learn to read to begin with. “

Sorry, that theory has been PROVEN WRONG time after time in the inner cities and elsewhere...in fact anywhere where the kids are taught right.


75 posted on 03/06/2011 11:41:34 PM PST by BobL (PLEASE READ: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2657811/posts)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 66 | View Replies]

To: pallis

“You need to sit in on some classrooms, and it might change your mind. When teachers spend half or more of their time engaged in behavior control, there is a problem that originates someplace besides the schools.”

Do you REALLY expect kids to behave when they purposely are not being taught jack?


76 posted on 03/06/2011 11:48:03 PM PST by BobL (PLEASE READ: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2657811/posts)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 68 | View Replies]

To: Windflier

“If they really want to fight back, they need to leave the group, and join with those outside the cess pool. You take your life in your hands, trying to fight this from within. “

I agree...and most of the good ones do leave...which is why we have the beasts that are left. It’s a real bummer for the kids.


77 posted on 03/06/2011 11:59:15 PM PST by BobL (PLEASE READ: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2657811/posts)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 44 | View Replies]

To: Publius6961

“Not all, but the overwhelming majority.”

Thanks, but the majority’s probably not as overwhelming as you think. And our conversation centers on semantics and weasel-words, many will say, but such phrasing is, so often, the difference between a racist and a cynical realist.


78 posted on 03/07/2011 5:52:08 AM PST by flowerplough (Thomas Sowell: Those who look only at Obama's deeds tend to become Obama's critics.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 59 | View Replies]

To: flowerplough; umgud

And my above, to Publius, is also to umgud in reply to his post 22, of course.


79 posted on 03/07/2011 5:59:58 AM PST by flowerplough (Thomas Sowell: Those who look only at Obama's deeds tend to become Obama's critics.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 78 | View Replies]

To: BobL
...most of the good ones do leave...which is why we have the beasts that are left. It’s a real bummer for the kids.

There have been teachers in my family going back for at least three generations. Sadly, my aunt was the last one of our clan to enter the field, and she was driven out in the early 70s.

Even that far back, the leftists were driving the good teachers out, with their "new and improved" methods and thuggishness. I don't know if a good teacher stands a chance in the public school systems today.

80 posted on 03/07/2011 8:54:35 AM PST by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 77 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081-96 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson