Posted on 09/07/2011 9:00:11 AM PDT by AT7Saluki
... We are educated professionals who work with kids every day and often see your child in a different light than you do. If we give you advice, don't fight it. Take it, and digest it in the same way you would consider advice from a doctor or lawyer. I have become used to some parents who just don't want to hear anything negative about their child, but sometimes if you're willing to take early warning advice to heart, it can help you head off an issue that could become much greater in the future.
Trust us. At times when I tell parents that their child has been a behavior problem, I can almost see the hairs rise on their backs. They are ready to fight and defend their child, and it is exhausting...
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
How is teaching children to think godlessly, not evil?
How is teaching children to be comfortable and entitled to another’s labor to fund a service their parent's want for tuition-free not evil?
How is teaching children to submit to the will of the voting mob ( misnamed “school board”) over the very thoughts they think and hold in their hearts, not evil .
If the above is not evil it should be **easy** for you to explain why.
To which the administrator of a good private school will reply, "the same thing a few hundred other parents are paying for."
"Unless you like to buy us a new auditorium, perhaps this school is not a proper fit for your child."
I'll never for get the day my (then 7 yr old) daughter came home in tears after being humiliated in class by the teacher for "stealing" a pen from her desk. OR the phone call that came later that night apologizing for the accusation.
Had my wife not known the principle, I doubt the phone call would have ever come.
After six to seven hours in school, and one to two hours waiting for the school bus and getting to and from school, WHY, would any **child** be up to even more work in the home?
If adults don't want to do homework why why why do we expect **children** to work like they were high powered excutives? There is a name for this: Emtional Child Abuse!
Finally...Homework is the polite way of say parents and kids are fully responsible for AFTERschooing in material that the teacher had plenty of time to teach in 6 to 7 hours but didn't.
( By the way,...homeschoolers consistently tell me that they rarely spend more than 2 hours in formal homeschooling a day.)
I can agree that many, MANY parents defend their kids no matter what the situation. I have been on PTA boards, I have been on School Board Commissions and I have volunteered at schools and simply stated - if their kid just got out of juvenille delinquency detention for the last two years, all the problems that their kid is having is because of “this school” or “this teacher.” I have heard it hundreds of times!
The answer is NOT as simple as “listen up and take our advice” though. That is a BS way out for the schools and teachers! Because their “advice” is NOT based on what is best for student! Often it is based on what is good for the school and the teacher! And in the end any advice should be what is best for the STUDENT - PERIOD!
All of my daughters were in the TAG programs while in school. Our local school did not have enough TAG students, so they shut down those courses. My daughter became a “problem child” although she had NEVER been one before. During our parent/teacher converence, they suggested that we put her on a mood altering drug because she was talkative! I suggested that they provide her a “make-work” packet because she is BORED! I even volunteered to put the packet together, but they said that it was not their jobs to keep my daughter busy! After that, we home schooled her!
So, providing additional knowledge and learning to my daughter is NOT their job, but now they want to offer her/us MEDICAL ADVICE!?! No, “take our advice” is NOT the answer!
But what do you think happens to a teacher who keeps driving away paying customers because they have behavior problem children?
If the school is highly sought after in a high demand area then yes - they can effortlessly tell bad parents of bad children to take their money and go.
If the school is moderately sought after in a moderate demand area - and where you are offering a product that the government is giving away for ‘free’ - the economic reality is not so forgiving.
I have seen several “auditorium” parents - and it seems they WOULD rather buy a new auditorium for the school than to admit that their child is less than perfect and might need additional parenting and possibly even (gasp!) discipline.
The liberals who have controlled the educational system for at least 100 years instilled in the students who are today’s parents the attitudes, beliefs, and values that are the alleged problem.
The real problem is, and has been, the government school system.
And, by the way, the typical teacher today is neither educated nor a professional.
Might I recommend that you read John Taylor Gatto's Underground History of American Education. (two separate links there) Here's the first paragraph from the first review at Amazon:
John Taylor Gatto is a former New York public schoolteacher who taught for thirty years and won multiple awards for his teaching. However, constant harassment by unhelpful administrations plus his own frustrations with what he came to realize were the inherent systemic deficiencies of our `public' schools led him to resign; he now is a school-choice activist who writes and speaks against our compulsory, government-run school system.I do recommend buying the book, but it is available for free at Gatto's site. Here is a link to Chapter Three from the Underground History.
I certainly wouldn't deny that I had some good teachers when I went to school, or that my kids had some good teachers when they went through school. We're sort of brainwashed to believe that.
Benjamin Franklin had NO teachers because he didn't go to school. He knew more and had read more by the time he was 16 years old than almost every college graduate does now by the time each receives his degree. He was hardly unique as you will find out if you read Underground History. A century ago most kids who didn't graduate from high school were well grounded in Latin and Greek. Something is very wrong.
In my own case I now realize that I taught myself most of the stuff I was interested in (math and science) long before they ever got to it in school. These classes mostly bored me because I knew the stuff already. And I learned not to like literature, history, and foreign language because all these things were forced upon me before I was ready to learn them. I still have trouble with foreign languages, but I'm exposed to it all the time and I wish I knew more. I'm still catching up on literature. As for history, I've probably read more and know more about it than 95% of the people who have history degrees. School was largely a waste of time for me; and not a small amount of time either.
ML/NJ
I think the author makes a serious error by painting with too wide a brush.
Surely he is not talking about every parent.
Surely he is intelligent enough to use the simple modifier "some", as in What teachers really want to tell some parents.
Failing to do so categorizes "all" parents in the "failure to accept constructive criticism group".
I would bet that he and, all other teachers, would not appreciate reading an article with a headline that read "What parents really want to tell teachers", and then went on to list the failures of teachers, without specifying that the issue didn't apply to all teachers.
Hey teacher they aren’t YOUR kids and the parents are paying your salary.
Somebody needs to teach you to think, or at least to be intellectually honest.
The premise of your post is that public schools and their teachers teach children to “think godlessly,” which is absurd.
You call elected local school boards “voting mobs,” which is not only irrational but unAmerican.
It is sadly apparent that you speak in ignorance and rail against that which you do not know. You need to get out more.
I am the parent of three highly-successful, conservative, devout Christan young adults who are all products of public schools. They had, as would be expected, some terrible teachers and some wonderful teachers. They will have terrible bosses and wonderful bosses, terrible co-workers and wonderful co-workers. That’s how life is.
My job was to be the parent who held them responsible, who taught them proper behavior and respect for authority, who instilled in them the character traits that made them successful both in the classroom, in adult life, and in standing eventually before their Lord.
I am truly thankful for the teachers and other good parents who walked hand-in-hand with me and my spouse as the kids grew up.
Reading your irate and uninformed opinions would lead me to believe that you would not have been one of them, but rather would have been the negative influence that impairs education today.
In a few decades, Americans will be posting, “If it weren't for Obamacare there would be chaos out there”.
Really? If all government schools in this nation were to magically disappear tomorrow do you honestly believe there would be chaos? Well?...Maybe for about 2 weeks.
In two weeks the Baptists, Catholics, main-line Christian churches, synagogues, Evangelicals and the rest would have schools open and staffed with volunteers. Day care center would soon add grades to their services, Teachers would open one room schools in their homes.
Mormons, though, would have schools open and run by volunteers by this Friday.
Oh just sit back and let the leftwing teachers stuff their perverted agenda down your kids throat, or is it up their rear these days?
“....I don’t see any point in bashing people.”
Yet that is all you do.
An addendum that I should have included: Most parents with children in private schools today are the financially successful subset of those in their generation who went to public school.
One additional problem is that these parents almost inevitably push private schools in the direction of public school practices because they implicitly assume that what public schools do is generally normative (e.g. you frequently see this in the selection of textbooks). The reason they pursue private education is mainly to escape public school demographics.
This is generally not true of serious Christian schools, but those are relatively rare.
90% of children from high active evangelical homes do NOT remain in their faith 2 years after graduating from high school. Those are the facts and the odds.
In contrast 95% of homeschoolers are active in their faith 2 years after graduation.
And...ALL government schools are godless in their worldview. Simply to get along the classroom and complete assignments, they **must** think and reason godlessly. Good teachers don't cooperate with that.
Author lost me at “summer reading list.”
The deal is, you get three months off from the pressure cooker.
If I had a job where an employer expected me to read e-mails and take phone calls on vacation, I’d quit.
And the same applies to homework. Your doctor will never advise you to take work home; why is it okay for kids? The fact that teachers don’t see something so obvious as homework robbing a lot of joy from family life, turning parents into cops, is another reason people don’t (”trust us!”).
“Unless you like to buy us a new auditorium, perhaps this school is not a proper fit for your child.”
Harvard and similar schools do have a special, but informal, admissions policy that works about like that :-)
(I’m not kidding, though)
By October I had **memorized** by textbooks. ( Literally!) And...We were punished if we were caught surreptitiously reading a book hidden under the lip of the desk.
My memories of school is like looking out on a vast,and unending plain of unmitigated boredom.
I deeply resented the waste of life that I spend marinating in the depths of stupefaction and ignorance in my elementary and most of high schools.
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