Posted on 04/18/2006 5:23:39 AM PDT by 13Sisters76
I'm wondering how many have been in a public school lately, to see the awful mess they have become. Or to see, first hand, what kind of children we have coming up who will be running things one day. I teach at a public high school in a large south-central metro area. I started here this year. Before this, I had been teaching in the military system, which I now realize is very different from the regular public schools. The difference being that where parents actually have something to lose, they WILL control their children. I want you to know something of what it is like. Our "children" are beasts. They are rude, disrespectful, full of themselves, pretentious, out of control, sex obsessed and stupid. They know they don't have to behave because there isn't a thing on God's earth we can do to them. The teachers cannot control the classrooms and we can't MAKE them learn anything. These little savages breeze through the system learning as little as possible. It isn't a stretch to realize that if a few of them can write their name, play ball or recite the words to the latest rap song, that is enough to graduate them. I WISH everyone could see an example of their reading, comprehension and writing "skills". I can promise you, you would be outraged. What's even worse, they DON'T care. They don't want to hear about the future. They don't want to hear about excellence. They are stupid and proud. We spend a fortune on Special Education- would you like to know how most of that money is being spent? The resources of special education are being spent on kids who are too disruptive for a regular classroom. These kids aren't "differently-abled" for the most part. I had one little darling tell me that he was there because he didn't want to do the work. That's all. I would love to bring you all in for an afternoon with an "honors class". I MUST wonder what, exactly, are the standards for "honors". There are a precious few kids in these classes who actually ARE brighter than the rest and, for them, I feel a great deal of sympathy. The atmosphere in these classes, as well, is not the least bit conducive to learning. One cannot teach when one cannot control the classrom. One cannot control the classroom when one if faced with parents who view discipline for their children as a lawsuit better than winning the lottery. One cannot teach or control the classroom when one is faced with parents as stupid and worthless as their kids. I will be leaving the public school system at the end of this year. The very people who have allowed this state of affairs to continue will remain in place until the people of this country learn to stand up to the left wing education establishment who have helped to create this abysmal "black hole" and until parents are forced to take responsibility for their horrible kids. Until then, I urge the parents of young kids to get them OUT of it- private school, home school. There are other,FAR better, choices. I'm heading for some OTHER type of job. I wanted to teach; I wanted to make a difference. Now, I am just bitter and angry. And more conservative than ever.
Respect is a major problem. I hear the kids in the neighborhood arguing about "spect" all da time. Kids today are obsessed with gaining respect.
Of course the kids don't want to show any respect. They just want everyone to respect them without ever earning it.
I don't know.....spelling was good, grammar was good and the spaces were just right.
"there are more security people in the schools, all totalled, than there are working the road"
I'll say it again.
If you look at how administrators spend their time today you'll see that education is third or fourth. Security is first and second is examining new teaching methods.
"New Teaching Methods" = rearanging deck chairs on the Titanic.
RAP is a symptom of America demise, the demise of RAP(if that ever happens) is a symptom of Americas recovery..
If school is important at home, school will be important in school.
One thing that annoys me is the lack of care some parents take when speaking of teachers (and the school generally) in front of their children. Never undermine the teacher's authority in front of the child by careless speech. If the teacher is a bonehead, work outside the classroom and away from the child.
You can better gauge whether little Johnny is truly in trouble or a victim of incompetence if you have a working relationship with the teacher at the start of the year rather than after its hit the fan.
Amen. Respect has become the same as tolerance, something all civilized people extend to one another. Respect used to be something earned. Now, as you have pointed out, people believe they are entitled to respect. And at my local high school, that is one of the "pillars" of student behavior, that they respect one another. I tolerate some people but definitely don't respect them, and I am sure they feel the same about me.
You say kids are obsessed about gaining respect. I suspect they are really afraid of disrespect which is what they consider any type of disapproval of them or their choices. Our self-esteem programs have created little insecure babes afraid of challenging themselves to a higher level of accomplishment on the chance they might fail and feel bad about themselves or have to live with the memory of failure.
It is truly sad. And truly bad for our future accomplishments as a civilization. Another poster has mentioned it might take a civil war to turn things around. Civil wars are fought by people who believe they have something worth fighting for and are willing to risk themselves to accomplish it. Want to guess how a lot of our upcoming generation might react to a call to fight? A few years ago one of my daughters was given an assignment in high school American history to write a paper on whether the teacher should teach a rosy picture of American history or (her phrase) the real picture. I helped my daughter frame her response as one of knowing the strengths of this nation and believing in the nation before one can be expected to fight to correct its problems. Otherwise it's a hopeless effort. The paper was well done but politically incorrect. The teacher ripped it, not on technique but with several of her own comments like "I wish I could be as optimistic about this country" written on the paper. There was no question as to which direction this teacher would take in her class. I pulled my daughter out.
We need people who value things more than their own convenience, or even lives, as our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are proving. I'm fearful of our future with kids as enervated as they are right now. And the education system isn't helping.
First they said Swing was bad. Then they said Rock n' Roll was ruining the country. Then it was heavy metal.
But you're right RAP is demonic. I am especially fearful when I see young girls listening to it. These girls are desensitizing themselves. The message is women are only "Ho's" and men only want sex -- very, very sad.
The slippery slope is slick.. and pointed down..
On the other hand RAP is not music at all..
Its tribal propaganda and emotional bloviation..
Masking prose and poetry, like Maya Angelou..
I remember reading a study a number of years ago that the students who were behavior problems scored the highest on the "Self-esteem" level.
Most parents today believe that there is something valuable about "Self-esteem" and it is good to have.
I wonder how high Bill Gates' self-esteem was in HS?
Stating a fact. I rather enjoy my public high school.
U.N. Influence in U.S. Schools
By Henry Lamb
Since its beginning, the United Nations Education, Science and Cultural Organization has been trying to impose an international curriculum to prepare students for world government. More than 500 U.S. schools are now using the International Baccalaureate program, and the Department of Education has just awarded a $1.2 million grant to expand the program in middle schools in Arizona, Massachusetts, and New York.
In one of its first efforts in 1949, the UNESCO textbook, titled Toward World Understanding, used to teach teachers what to teach, said: “As long as the child breathes the poisoned air of nationalism, education in world-mindedness can produce only rather precarious results. As we have pointed out, it is frequently the family that infects the child with extreme nationalism.”
In the 1960s, Dr. Robert Muller, U.N. deputy secretary-general, prepared a “World Core Curriculum.” Its first goal: “Assisting the child in becoming an integrated individual, who can deal with personal experience while seeing himself as a part of ”the greater whole.“ In other words, promote growth of the group idea, so that group good, group understanding, group interrelations, and group goodwill replace all limited, self-centered objectives, leading to group consciousness.”
The U.N.'s global education program took a major step in 1968, when UNESCO provided the funding to create the International Baccalaureate Organization, a non-government organization, in Geneva, Switzerland. The IBO is now providing the curriculum for 33,000 teachers in nearly 1,500 schools around the world, 55 of which are middle schools in the Washington D.C. area.
UNESCO says the IB curriculum promotes human rights, social justice, sustainable development, population, health, environmental, and immigration concerns.
“We're living on a planet that is becoming exhausted,” says George Walker, IB's director-general in Geneva. “The program remains committed to changing children's values so they think globally, rather than in parochial national terms from their own country's viewpoint.”
Jeanne Geiger, an outspoken critic of the program in Reston, Virginia, wrote to a local newspaper: “Administrators do not tell you that the current IB program for ages 3 through grade 12 promotes socialism, disarmament, radical environmentalism, and moral relativism, while attempting to undermine Christian religious values and national sovereignty.”
The IB program was dropped at Woodson High School in Fairfax, Virginia, when critical parents told local school officials that the best universities in Virginia did not give full credit for the IB program.
The goals and methods of the IB program reach much further than the 502 U.S. schools now officially enrolled. The Center for Civic Education, which, by law, writes the curriculum for civics education in the United States, says: “In the past century, the civic mission of schools was education for democracy in a sovereign state. In this century, by contrast, education will become everywhere more global. And we ought to improve our curricular frameworks and standards for a world transformed by globally accepted and internationally transcendent principles.”
This global influence can be clearly seen in the new mission for the National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies: “The United States and its democracy are constantly evolving and in continuous need of citizens who can adapt to meet the changing circumstances. Meeting that need is the mission of social studies. Students should be helped to construct a pluralist perspective based on diversity [and] should be helped to construct a global perspective.”
A critical review of We the People; the Citizen and the Constitution, a civics textbook written by the Center for Civics Education, reveals that the teaching of historical facts is replaced with teaching attitudes and values about multi-culturalism and world-mindedness. A review of science, and even math texts, reveals that sustainable development, environmental protection, and social justice dominate the material children are taught.
No longer are American children learning about the structure of a federal republic compared to a parliamentary democracy. No longer are children learning the difference between capitalism and socialism. No longer are children being taught why the United States became the most powerful economic engine the world has ever known.
Instead, they are being taught that with less than 5 percent of the world's population, the U.S. uses 25 percent of the world's resources and produces 25 percent of the world's pollution. They are being taught that the U.S. is the No. 1 terrorist nation. They are being taught that the rest of the world is mired in poverty because of the greedy capitalists in the United States.
The effectiveness of generations of this U.N. globalist curriculum is evidenced by many of the talking heads interviewed on the nightly news, and even by some of the presidential hopefuls.
Originally published at
Well, I'm married to a geek. His self-esteem is fine but he did take a mental beating in his school years and hated it. Mostly he hated being pressured to be a jock, or to read Shakespeare or to spell properly.
Today he's successful, very secure, and still hates schooling. Just after we were married he could have continued his university education for free but he couldn't leave school quickly enough. He hated English and literature and other subjects he considered unrelated to the direction he already knew he wanted to go. He followed the "rules" just long enough to get his degree and light out.
He now takes an interest in history and politics because we discuss it all the time. He still hates English as a totally illogical language but has taught himself to be fluent in four other languages (German, Russian, Polish, Dutch). He can build any piece of equipment he wants from raw metal and does instrumentation design in Silicon Valley. On the side he does super-detailing on model trains.
So school didn't work for him but, thank goodness, it didn't destroy him either.
Interesting here that you say destroy him.
Today we are destroying kids because we will have warehoused them for 12 years and they will have learned nothing. We have built their self-esteem but they can't read or think. In the past you learned something but you suggest that the process "destroyed" some of the kids.
In basic training they say that they break you down then build you into a new "soldier". Maybe the breakdown is useful?
Check in your area for a homeschooling group that has a co-op learning center. You'll find kids who WANT to learn, but their parents may not feel qualified to teach a particular subject, so they let someone else do the teaching. Contact your state's Homeschooler's Association (a Google search should bring one up) to see if there is a message board on which you can post a question about the learning centers.
Are you my twin?????? Seriously, I've been saying the same thing for years.
As parents the education of our children remains OUR responsibility - regardless of where they are in school.
hahahaha.. 'All ahead full... to the bottom'
I have to be the contrarian here,Miss Pie,regarding your implying that black kids are the terror of the community and white kids the innocent victims.
I went to school in a suburban district in the Sixties and it was other WHITE kids who made my life hell.Their cruelty was barbarous and inexcusable,psychological as well as physical.
I currently sub part time in"the ghetto"and,yes,there are plenty of black,Mexican and Asian thugs who have some very negative attitudes.Not so much about WHITE people but toward EACH OTHER.I can count on one hand the number of times I have been called"white boy",etc but have had to endure numerous fights and near fights when someone wanted to"kick that n------ black ass".
Not to dispute your experiences.I live in California and we have a unique ethnic chemistry out here that is still in a state of flux.I just resent portraying one group as the victims and one group as the victimizers.
Yeah, right,,,heaven forbid you have to work hard.
Like it or not, FR is not a judged "writing" contest. If it's a strain on your little brain to read something not in paragraphs, then I'd say you have a problem, and probably a victim of PS's:) especially given the fact that you seem to only feel better about yourself running someone else down.
Becky
Try a rural school for a change. You won't make as much money and may have to do without the "extras" but you'll find all in all the students "more Human" and the expectations higher than in a big city.
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