Posted on 09/02/2006 4:08:54 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
From what I've heard, there are pockets of very active parents involved in some of the public schools in NYC. The Sex and the City woman leads one of them.
Some of the schools are the specialized high schools and some are just "normal" schools where the parents scream like banshees on meth if standards aren't kept up.
Well, in very small rural communities like the one I live in, it would help if people who actually had balls would become active in the local school boards. Perhaps thay way, employment would become merit based, and not political, and if the dead wood needed to be swept out, which it does, someone would do it. Therefore, instruction would improve.
I thought I was getting big money at $2.50/hr.
"Because it's their freaking civic and parental duty, that's what "end."
I respectfully disagree. I don't see that sitting in a school board meeting is an effective way of fulfilling a civic duty. Even if you have the good fortune of a responsive school board, you'll find that they're hamstrung by state and Federal directives on the one hand, and the teachers unions on the other. It's time that would be better spent reading to your kids or going over their lessons.
The old saying is correct when it comes to your child's education: if you want a job done right, you may well have to do it yourself.
"Well, in very small rural communities like the one I live in, it would help if people who actually had balls would become active in the local school boards."
It might, it might not. In my view, the people most responsible as well as most qualified for teaching children are the parents (in most instances).
It is strange that they would hire some high paid tutor. In our school, the upper classman or smarter kids in our class would volunteer to assist the students who needed it if needed. I did have a tutor for Trig my senior year and it happened to be a kid in my class who was taking calculous. He is now a doctor but he did help me though trig. What a job that poor guy had. lol. It was run through the school and we did not chose who would be the tutors the school did. I thought it was effective and cheap especially since our parents were already shelling out a thousand dollars for our Catholic school education a year (in 1987).
I would argue that parents would better spend their limited time simply going over lessons with their kids at the kitchen table.
There does seriously come a time when the material is too difficult for the parents. I hardly think I would be of great help to my child in calculous and physics especially since I did not take it. I could most likely help them in Algebra, statistics and bio. I can see why parents need tutors at a certain point.
"There does seriously come a time when the material is too difficult for the parents."
Agreed. But keep in mind that by the time a child is ready to start learning advanced math and science, they're already reading and able to do research on their own. And homeschool curricula is available in these subjects. Truth be told, I had to teach myself trigonometry and basic calculus because my university only offered it in "self taught" mode (read: they weren't willing to pay to teach it).
There's nothing wrong with supplementing a homeschool curriculum with tutors for those subjects that the parents don't believe they're qualified to teach. What homeschoolers frequently do instead, though, is simply trade around the services of homeschool parents who have expertise in a specific subject matter. So biology may be taught by someone who is actually a biologist, physics by a physicist, etc. Homeschool support groups are very big these days. And then there is always the community college route when the child is ready for it.
When/if I'm blessed with kids, we'll be homeschooling. I like the flexibility and the ability to set a higher educational standard than either the government schools or private schools. And if something isn't working, you're able to switch gears quickly. Oh, and I *will* be able to leave out the parts of the government school curriculum that don't reflect my values such as socialism 101, alternative sexuality awareness 200, and blasphemy 202.
My father has grad degrees in Chem & Business, IIRC. My mom has (barely) a high school education. They always had books, spent a small fortune on encyclopedias etc on us. It helped 3/4 of us boys (one isn't into reading- but is a brilliant man in fields of home repair, car repair etc - he taught himself). I am 42, wnet to a great suburban school district. They were allowed to spank kids, kick them out etc. We were expected to go to college, but if we had entered some kind of trade, they would have just as proud of us.
There are too many kids in college. Some could make more money, and prob be happier working with their hands - or getting married and staying at home with babies. I blame much of the problems on the ACLU & the teachers' unions. Last time I checked, there were more kids in my 1st grade class (1969-70) nationally, then there are now. Somehow, there are many more teachers, administrators & assorted other "educators" with less to show for it. I know a couple of teachers make $100,000+ in Pittsburgh... Complete waste of money. They are dumber than posts.
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