>>On point #5: I think that teachers should be able to kick more kids OUT of schools. Those that are threatening or disrupting the other students in the school should be given a choice: Shape up, or get out. If students could be kicked out, then fewer parents would treat schools as some sort of taxpayer-funded daycare service and they’d start to be on the same side of discipline issues with the teachers.
I have had principals tell me to pass a kid because if I didn’t, he might feel bad and drop out, and that would look bad on the principal’s record. I told the principal to sit and spin. I passed a girl recently who had taken my class three times and failed the other two. She’s almost 20, and again, the principal kept her in school because that girl is 1% of her graduation rating. That principal was forced into teaching again, so maybe she’ll feel my pain.
What the saddest fact is the kids that attend school because they see their opportunity in SPORTS and not EDUCATION. Parents will attend their kid’s sports games, but never show up on parent teacher night even though their kid is failing. I actually would go to football games to talk to the parents.
If parents knew that they were PAYING for their kids education, they would EXPECT QUALITY. Most parents, however, think it’s all for free. That’s why public schooling gets a bad reputation, even though I think that the school that I teach at has a VERY GOOD program (lots of AP, ZERO bad teachers, and even the bad kids shut up and learn), and I teach in South Carolina.
I just wanted to say though, I had a kid who flunked my class with a 32% last year retake my class and completely tell me every aspect of “The Scarlet Letter” and the symbolic implications of certain things in the novel. Yeah, he is a “thug” and wears his pants low. But that ass of his will be carrying the meaning of “The Scarlet Letter” and several other novels around with him for the rest of his life. That is education.
“Parents will attend their kid’s sports games, but never show up on parent teacher night even though their kid is failing. I actually would go to football games to talk to the parents.”
I’m one of those parents. The misses would go, but I didn’t have the stomach to listen to someone that I had contempt for tell me about my kid. I knew all that I needed to know about my kids without their help. And I’m talking Christian schools. Had it been public schools, I would have been even worse.
Now, having said that, I’m certainly not pointing a finger at you...since you’re on this site, you obviously have a much better set of values than most teachers.
“I have had principals tell me to pass a kid because if I didn’t, he might feel bad and drop out, and that would look bad on the principal’s record.”
Social promotion in my opinion is one of the most pernicious and widespread evils in education today. When students fail, 9/10 of the time it is because they didn’t try to pass. And why should they, if someone is willing to send them on regardless? It makes holding students to any sort of standard, let alone a high one, difficult or impossible. And of course, it would be the teacher’s fault (SARC).
Hence the rise of the community college and their ‘developmental’ curriculum. A high school diploma is supposed to represent twelve-years of study. How can someone be granted a high school diploma without being able to read at a high-school level, write a paragraph, or do long division? I know why, but I don’t like to think about it. And remember, colleges are businesses too. Community colleges make money from these students and their families and their respective state governments. It doesn’t take too much tin foil to get me thinking there are other reasons for ‘social promotion’.