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/
and their susidiary State organizations!
Okay, I just wanted to let you know we are not air-headed ditzes.
In my classroom I do sometimes use cooperative learning. Although I teach a 3rd grade class. The receive below grade level, at grade level, and above grade level on their grade cards. I do cooperative groups when we are doing scientific experients (what impact does friction have on a moving object). In my classroom they do not receive a group grade. They did the experiment together and had to analyze the data on their own.
As for math, I do not use everyday math. My student are just now learning their multiplication facts. (no 9x9 estimation) We have NO calculators. The students work every problem out and I hand papers back if they do not show their work. I want them to know how to get the correct answer.
In English, we use Shurley English. My 3rd graders know noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition and object of the preposition. I also do not accept answers that are not in complete sentences. The students will be handed back their paper and write it again.
Furthermore, on every spelling test the students have two of the States names. I also show them where the state is on the map and a few facts about the state. Anything we are learning and if they mention a place, I will show it to them on a map or globe.
This saying of course, I have very conservative values. For the article, believe the education system today is failing because of where education starts... in the home. Teachers have all of these standards to follow... parents have none. If parents would care about their children at home, it would help the education system out greatly. The students who succeed greatly in my class have very involved parents. Those who don’t, I usually stay with after school or before school to help them get caught up.
I teach high school. I tell my friends that the students would be better off staying home smoking weed and watching mtv than going to school. Yes, smoking weed and mtv are bad, but not as bad as school. The only thing that is taught in school is bad habits. One thing schools are great at teaching is how to hate learning and how to be dependent on someone else.
I could guess, but as it says in the article, "Geometric statements and reasons must lead to absolute conclusions."
Obviously, this stuff is way over our heads.
Trajectory is where the rocket will go.
Projectory is where you'd, like man, like the rocket to go.
Projectory is far more important because the object of firing the rocket is to make children happy.
You will never figure it out if you think that the unions alone are to blame. They are only one component of the Public School Establishment. The schools are run by bureaucrats who are devotees of the progressive ideology. The “Unions” are their partners, and by unions I mean the leadership of the unions and the union bureaucracies. And you have besides the teachers’ unions, the custodian unions But the bureacrats are in charge: they control the money. Start from the DofE, then the state d’s of E. then the central office in the school districts. And the education colleges, which crank out teachers was are drilled in the regnant philsophy. Then then are the textbook companies who provide the schools with hundreds of millions of very bad textbooks and other schoool supplies every year. Then there is the sporting goods industry, the sports industry in general. Then there are the construction companies etc. We dodn’t have to deal with higher education—of which the teacher colleges are only a loosely connected part. Upwards of a trillion dollars a year goes into public education, so much of it pure waste.
That's why I said that the 9x9 example is a very poor choice for teaching estimation. A much better example would have included several more numbers and other operations along with the multiplication. The answer would then be calculated and compared to the estimate.
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.
That process isn't available for kids who haven't memorized their multiplication tables. You and I don't really multiply 9 times 9. We know that the answer is 81 because we once memorized it.
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.
I don't disagree with that thought at all.
Two possibilities that I see are: 1) As you say, the teacher really doesn't understand what she's teaching. or 2) This was the introduction of the topic to her class and she used too simple a problem for the example.
Towing the leftist/NEA line is far more important.
Truth-in-labeling laws should require the NEA to rename itself the National Teachers' Union.
Go to any community where the average household income is above $200,000 (or a similar number) and look at the property taxes, quality of the schools, how many kids graduate, and what colleges they go to.
More like parent lack of control. Who else is on the school boards and PTA's. Unions have a lot of control, but parents have the ultimate control.
Parents are too busy to be involved in their child's school, thus giving away control to those activist they complain about.
Everyone complains about the state of public education, as they should, but few are proactive enough to force a change. It is easier to sit back and use teachers as a whipping post then to actually fight for change.
In my state there are very few small towns that actually do teach, but many that are not far from what this writer describes, and it is really sad. All schools could use a whole lot more teachers like you.
Projectary? Does he mean Trajectory? Must be a product of public education.
I just might have to disagree with you on one part there. I’ve seen many kids try to do simple math, like adding or multiplying in their heads, or making change when they’re cashiers, and it’s truly astounding how helpless they can be.
When I shop I always carry small change so I can get quarters back and when the cashier give me the total. I give the cashier enough dimes, nickels, and pennies to get some quarters in change. The only cashiers who don’t look at me like I have two heads are generally anyone who looks like they’re over 40.
When my kids were younger while we were homeschooling, I wouldn’t let them use calculators until they were in at least 7th grade and beginning Algebra and the equations were too burdensome to bother with long calculations, and they could demonstrate to me that they could add and multiply up through 12 in their head. When I knew they understood the math, then they could use them.
Why is Public Education Failing? By Tom DeWeese
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The Monopoly of Teacher Labor has ruined our education Vouchers will solve that Log Jam..
The Monopoly of Teacher Labor has ruined our education Vouchers will solve that Log Jam..
Sorry, but no. Vouchers will merely raise the tuition in line with the vouchers, i.e. tuition of $10,000 today will rise to $15,000 when a $5,000 voucher comes the norm.
In Georgia, people constantly complain that we are at or near the bottom of the nation in SAT scores. However, if we look at what is really happening, 65% of Georgia's high school students generally take the SAT. We are then compared to some states with as little as 17% who take it. So essentially, most of our students are being compared to the top students in those states. The more students who take the test, the lower the average scores are going to be. It's kind of like comparing the skills of every baseball player in Georgia at every level to just the New York Yankees and saying that New York has better baseball players than Georgia.
Public education isn't without problems, but there are numerous success stories. The majority of the nation's students attend public schools. I think if folks would lose the "gotcha" mentality and look for real solutions that will improve education all around, then we will see steady improvement across the board.
“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’.)”
Wow, this is a new definition. The estimate is in the calculation? I constantly used estimates in business over many years, but the estimates were estimated results CALCULATED EXACTLY. Never heard of estimated calculations.
And I’m confident the estimated calculations are total nonsense, of little or no value in the real world of business, science, or any other field.
Sounds like just another made up method to give a passing grade to students who can’t pass when exact answers must, be, er, exact, as in real world math applications.
But any time time you want me to make change for you, I’ll be happy to do it using estimations.
The primary reason for the failure of the public school system: God has judged it, rather than bless it. The nation is reaping what it has sown!
That is so sad. I hope it does not come down to that in the school I teach. I do teach in a small town in Kansas. I truly hope it does not come down to that! I am lucky to have an amazing superintendent and principal. Hopefully the NEA wakes up and realizes what is happening is not working. Next, I fear, these small towns will be hit, and our flexibility will be stripped away from us.
We have to follow and meet all the standards the state has set, but luckily the principal allows us to do it in any way we like. Furthermore, we can teach other material as well, as long as our students know the standards that they will be tested over on the state tests.
Not allowing teacher creativity and no parent support will tear the education system apart.
Also, thank you for the comment. I greatly appreciate it!
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.
The fault lies with us, The People. And parents can turn it around, if their kids' minds are being turned into touchy-feely mush. They know what needs to be done.
It also wouldn't have hurt the guy to remind people that the DoEd is a product of the Carter administration.
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