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Posted on 01/13/2008 6:57:00 PM PST by K-oneTexas
Why is Public Education Failing? By Tom DeWeese
Children are coming out of school dumb because they aren't taught academics. They have, instead, become experiments in behavior modification.
It's a fact. Most of today's school children can barely read or write. They can't perform math problems without a calculator. They barely know who the Founding Fathers were and know even less of their achievements. Most can't tell you the name of the President of the United States. It's pure and simple; today's children aren't coming out of school with an academic education.
Colleges know it. They have to set up remedial courses for incoming freshmen just to prepare them for classes. Parents know it. Their children grow dumber everyday.
The politicians say they know it. They hold hearings to grill education "experts," and they hold high-powered education "summits" to debate and discuss the "problem." And they keep coming up with more federal programs and dictate more standards and spend more taxpayer dollars to fix the problem. But the problem continues to explode. Why?
Frankly, any parent can find the answer simply by looking through their child's textbooks or taking a close look at the classroom structures that their children are forced to endure.
That's just what I'm going to do for you and when I'm through, see if you still wonder why there is an education crisis. And ask yourselves why all the politicians, with huge staffs to do their bidding, can't seem to find the problem.
Restructuring the Classroom
It comes under many names; block scheduling, group learning, cooperative learning. It's all part of a radical change in the way children are handled in the classroom.
Children are paired with others for group grades. Individual achievement is de-emphasized. Under block scheduling a number of subjects are tied together in one long class. For example, math, science, health and physical education have been combined in one school. Children are supposed to learn these skills by working on class projects, such as launching an imaginary rocket to the Moon.
Presumably when faced with various problems in building their rocket, students will seek out the necessary information. They'll need math to calculate the projectory, science to find where the Moon is and health to know what to feed the astronauts. Obviously health is for astronaut training. Children are not instructed on how to do the math calculations or how to find the information they need. They are to find it for themselves. And children who can't keep up are to be helped along by other children in their group. It's called "kids helping kids." That's why teachers are now called "facilitators."
"Cooperative learning" is nothing more than a classroom-management technique that provides a convenient hiding place for bad teachers and under-achieving students. The student who doesn't care to learn, or has failed to grasp a concept, allows the rest of the group to do the work and yet gets the same grade.
What students coming out of such classes cannot do is perform math problems, recite multiplication tables, conjugate a verb or structure a sentence. Random facts picked up in the rush to complete a project do not supply the proper base or structure to understand a subject.
Math
Perhaps the most bizarre of all of the school restructuring programs is mathematics. Math is an exact science, loaded with absolutes. There can be no way to question that certain numbers add up to specific totals. Geometric statements and reasons must lead to absolute conclusions. Instead, today we get "fuzzy" Math. Of course they don't call it that.
As ED Watch explains, "Fuzzy" math's names are Everyday Math, Connected Math, Integrated Math, Math Expressions, Constructive Math, NCTM Math, Standards-based Math, Chicago Math, and Investigations, to name a few. Fuzzy Math means students won't master math: addition, subtraction, multiplications and division.
Instead, Fuzzy Math teaches students to "appreciate" math, but they can't solve the problems. Instead, they are to come up with their own ideas about how to compute.
Here's how nuts it can get. A parent wrote the following letter to explain the everyday horrors of "Everyday Math."
Everyday Math was being used in our school district. My son brought home a multiplication worksheet on estimating. He had 'estimated' that 9×9=81, and the teacher marked it wrong. I met with her and defended my child's answer. The teacher opened her book and read to me that the purpose of the exercise was not to get the right answer, but was to teach the kids to estimate. The correct answer was 100: kids were to round each 9 up to a 10. (The teacher did not seem to know that 81 was the product, as her answer book did not state the same.)
Children are not taught to memorize multiplication tables. Those who promote this concept believe that memorization is bad. Instead, children, they say, should be taught to "discover" multiplication. Students, they say, learn to multiply over several years by "thinking about math."
Social, political, multicultural and especially environmental issues are rampant in the new math programs and textbooks. One such math text is blatant. Dispersed throughout the eighth grade textbooks are short, half-page blocks of text under the heading "SAVE PLANET EARTH." One of the sections describes the benefits of recycling aluminum cans and tells students, "how you can help."
In many of these textbooks there is literally no math. Instead there are lessons asking children to list "threats to animals," including destruction of habitat, poisons and hunting. The book contains short lessons in multiculturalism under the recurring heading "Cultural Kaleidoscope." These things are simply political propaganda and are there for one purpose – behavior modification. It's not Math. Parents are now paying outside tutors to teach their children real Math – after they have been forced to sit in classrooms for eight hours a day being force-fed someone's political agenda.
English, Reading and Literature
Conjugate a verb? Diagram a sentence? Learn to spell? This is language class. We have more relevant things to learn.
In a seventh grade language arts class in Prince William County, Virginia, children are given a test entitled, "What makes you good friendship material." Children are to circle "yes," "no" or "maybe" to questions like, "Am I someone who is trusting of others; likes to have close personal friends; is able to influence others; enjoys sharing with others; can keep a secret? If you answered yes to most of these then you are really good friendship material. If not, you need to work on yourself."
One book being used in classes is called The Book of Questions. Designed around situation ethics, the authors openly admit that "this book is designed to challenge attitudes, values and beliefs." Again behavior modification – not academics — is the root of this exercise.
Here are a couple of sample questions from the book of Questions:
(1) On an airplane you are talking pleasantly to a stranger of average appearance. Unexpectedly, the person offers you $10,000 for one night of sex. Knowing that there is no danger and that payment is certain, would you accept the offer?
(2) A cave-in occurs while you and a stranger are in a concrete room deep in a mineshaft. Before the phone goes dead, you learn that the entire mine is sealed off and the air hole being drilled will not reach you for 30 hours. If you both take sleeping pills from the medicine chest, the oxygen will last for only 20 hours. Both of you can't survive; alone one of you might. After you both realize this, the stranger takes several sleeping pills and says it's in God's hands and falls asleep. You have a pistol; what do you do?
And so it goes, in Geography where, instead of looking for Colorado on a map, children are instructed to make a "Me" map to psychologically profile the children. In Civics, instead of learning how the government runs and of the great checks and balances that the Founding Fathers installed to protect our liberties, children are taught how to be "global citizens" under the UN's Declaration on Human Rights." In Health classes children are taught about Mother Earth — Gaia — with lessons on the Sierra Club as heroes.
Children are coming out of school dumb because they aren't taught academics. They have, instead, become experiments in behavior modification to prepare them to be citizens of a global village. The fault lies with the U.S. Congress, which now dictates curriculum and perpetuates the Department of Education, from which all of these evils flow.
Tom DeWeese is publisher and editor of The DeWeese Report and president of the American Policy Center, a grassroots, activist think tank headquartered in Warrenton, VA. ampolicycenter@hotmail.com http://www.americanpolicy.org/
Not to mention, less parents are working with their children at home. Everything is put on the teachers and the teachers are blamed for it all as well. Strong family life is declining, kids are becoming lazy and not being pushed at home. I see many who play video games all day and night, come to class exhausted (from being up playing the games) and did not do their homework that was due.
The socialist left is using schools to dumb down the nations youth to make them ignorant of their past, national history and the fundamental skills needed to function independently. Eliminating a person’s independence requires them to be increasingly dependent on the select few who manage the government. Concentrating such power will aid socialists in accomplishing their goal of negating the Constitution’s intent of disbursing power to the people and thereby replacing our Democratic Republic with Socialism.
I can categorically say that much of the information in this article is just plain false. Example:
It's a fact. Most of today's school children can barely read or write. They can't perform math problems without a calculator. They barely know who the Founding Fathers were and know even less of their achievements. Most can't tell you the name of the President of the United States. It's pure and simple; today's children aren't coming out of school with an academic education.
Now, I'm the first to admit that there are problems in public education. That's part of the reason I joined the profession. But things aren't helped... on either side of the debate... by spouting empty rhetoric. It simply makes this writer look like a fool.
If we raised the salary by a factor of 4, on condition the teachers voted out the union, and it would change everything. Teaching would become a profession that would attract the best and brightest. And the cost would be worth it.
Oh, and reduce overhead for "management" to nearly nothing too. Really good teachers don't need much managing or help anyway.
Everyday Math was being used in our school district. My son brought home a multiplication worksheet on estimating. He had 'estimated' that 9×9=81, and the teacher marked it wrong. I met with her and defended my child's answer. The teacher opened her book and read to me that the purpose of the exercise was not to get the right answer, but was to teach the kids to estimate. The correct answer was 100: kids were to round each 9 up to a 10. (The teacher did not seem to know that 81 was the product, as her answer book did not state the same.)I have to defend the teaching of estimation. It's a useful tool to quickly check the reasonableness of calculated answers. Marking 9x9=81 as wrong for an estimate is the correct thing to do. (It is, though, a poor example to use for teaching estimation. The kid should have already been taught that by memorizing the 'times table'.)
Short version of the article: Public schools don’t teach skills and reasoning, they indoctrinate leftcr@p.
Why? The NEA has a stranglehold on our schools, and the NEA is dominated by a bunch of soft brained leftcr@p liberals aka marxist administrators and unionists.
What will turn the tide? Nothing short of a true catastrophe brought on by the soft brained thinking that permeates the left. Sadly, that is coming (courtesy of islamofacism), and we will all pay the price. However, there will be a reckoning, and not a soft one. I will have no pity for the leftscum when it happens. Schaedenfraud (sp?) would be a more apt term.
Sorry to sound apocalyptic, but I just see history repeating itself. Then again, I am probably breaking the Iron Fist Rule (yahoo it) by posting right now. Doesn’t mean I don’t believe it, just means my nominal PC filter, such as it is, is nonfunctional right now, as is my spelling.
Response: Egalitarianism.
They'll also need English to know that the word isn't projectory. It's trajectory. A simple spell check would reject projectory.
Maybe they were estimating the term using EE (everyday English)
A no fault society? Not true. It is all GW’s, conservatives’, and Christians’ fault. Just ask any democrap, liberal, DUmmy, or KOSack (redundant in most cases)...
PS posting from my phone, so apologize for any typos.
“Why? The NEA has a stranglehold on our schools, and the NEA is dominated by a bunch of soft brained leftcr@p liberals aka marxist administrators and unionists.”
That’s true, but how did they manage to gain that control? For them to have amassed it, someone else had to have given it up. Again, the elephant in the room.
Most are not air-headed ditzes as you say. To teach all of the required standards and do so in a way to keep children interested (who have a 5 minute attention span) and have your class score high on the state assessments is not easy air-head work. If it was easy, you would not have a shortage of teachers in most places.
I was an honor student in high school and graduated with a 3.93 and graduated from a private college with a 3.91. I worked my butt off to get this job. I am challenged every day. I try to find new ways for every child in my classroom to succeed. I stay after school to work with kids whose parents are too “busy” or would rather do something else. I am there every day to help students who come in early who are having problems.
Go try teaching for a year and you tell me if its an easy job. Try 3rd grade. Have a classroom full of 20 nine year olds who come from poor families, parents who dont have time to work with them (or just don’t work with them at home), and can barely read. And you take them from that and getting them to pass state standards and bring them up to a 4th grade level at the end of the year. Then after you do that, tell me if it was easy or if you had to put a whole hell of a lot of work into it! Then at the end of the year take home a not so generous pay check.
I do this job because I love the kids and I love the challenge. I did not go into education because I thought it would be easy. It is quite the opposite. You are faced with many difficulties in just one day! During the day you never have time to just sit and relax. Finally when you get home your brain never shuts off. You want to be better and you want the children in your class to be better. So you constantly think of new ways to present lessons in order to have the best students possible. You are continuously working and trying to do everything you can to make sure your students feel safe and that they are learning!! You would be amazed at what each day throws you and what new challenges you face.
Public Schools fail because they are run by a bunch of Godless socialists, with the intent on indoctrinating our youth in a philosophy of secular humanism, where there is no moral value system, no consequences for personal behavior, and the only evils in the world are mankind, capitalism, religion, and America.
This is how conservatives are losing the fight, we lost a whole generation to liberalisim through education.
Our fight was never going to be won in an election cycle, we win on Ideas if the public is educated. It was the leftist corruption of the educational fabric of this country that is going to take us down. Now as we sit here we are soon, if not this election maybe the next, we go pink/red and we are done for.
I have been hoping that Rush or Anne Coulter would write a book or bring enough attention to it to bring it into the national debate.
FredT brings me some hope with his NEA comments but it may be too late, the leftists have the momentum, the media and the schools.
What I really want to know is whatever happened to NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND? I never hear anybody on FR talking about it nowadays.
“Why is Public Education Failing?”
Because its not about education anymore?
What cr@p. The goal of estimation, as used in business and engineering, is to estimate as closely as possible to the correct answer with the least effort. If the actual correct answer is available with the least effort, THAT IS THE BEST ESTIMATE. The teacher in this case simply does not understand the concept. Estimation is about using the simplest process to arrive at the estimate. Multiplying 9 x 9 is the simplest process and therefore the best estimate. Scaling 9 to 10 and multiplying 10 x 10 takes more steps and is therefore a poor estimate.
In other words, the teacher is not intelligent enough to understand what he/she is supposed to be teaching. Unfortunately, understanding the subject matter is no longer the most important requirement in the primary education profession. Towing the leftist/NEA line is far more important.
Taxing the crap out of the illiterate and the semi-literate is like taking candy from a stupid baby.
"Wha? Whaddaya mean I'm working till September fer the guvmint? Hunh?"
You think what he says is an exaggeration? Not by much. I graduated high school in 2000 in the best public school in the area by far. In my 8th Grade HONORS ELPSA class in 1995 (which is basically civics), our teacher use to ask for extra credit who is (your congressman, senator, president, vice president)? We had 3 out of 30 miss the president question. Only 4 people (counting me) knew who 1 of our 2 senators and only 1 other person besides me knew both our senators. Half the class did not get the Vice President (which was Al Gore at the time). I deal with a lot of younger folks and my age group(16-30) with my job now in middle retail corporate management and let me tell you--most of them know absolutely nothing about government and US history and very, very few of them can do any math without a calculator and even then, they really, really struggle.
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