Well said, wintertime. I hope that your church ministers will focus some efforts to deal with this important problem.
Here’s my suggestion for arousing awareness among the parents of the students being so callously betrayed by our “education” bureaucracy. It’ll cost a bit of money, though. Form a civic committee and send letters to the parents of every 9th grade student in the district, offering to pay them 100 dollars in cash for every child of theirs who can successfully solve three problems of algebra and geometry that should have been taught at that grade level. When their children fail, send an apologetic follow-up letter and inform them that, because of the complete disregard of the public school bureaucracy for the proper education of their children, this is the sort of lost opportunity that their kids should expect for the rest of their lives.
See what the reaction is.
Well said, wintertime. I hope that your church ministers will focus some efforts to deal with this important problem.
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I think your $100 bill idea is a good idea.
I had a personal interview with one of the regional leaders of our church. It turns out that he had been a school board member for 8 years. Essentially, he blew me off. It was the usual:
1) The parents don’t care. ( These parents **DO** care a **LOT**! The proof is that they bring them to tutoring every week. )
2) The kids can’t speak English. ( These kids speak perfect English and have since their Head Start days.)
3) Broken homes. ( These all come from two parent homes with dedicated parents.)
4) Behavior problems. ( These kids are extremely well behaved and very polite and nice children.)
In other words he blamed the kids and parents.
One of the problems with the government schools in counties like mine is that there is an entrenched education-industrial complex. Our school district is the single largest employer in the county. It’s payroll is by far the largest in the county. No other business in the county comes close. Therefore....When it comes to either eliminating, reducing, or in away reforming the government schools there is tremendous resistance to this. Too many people are feeding at the government school pig trough.