[SoldierDad]

I’ve worked 16+ years in public schools. I agree that there is a lot wrong with public schools. However, the broad brush some want to paint public education with is tainted with severe, and oft unfounded, bias. Most educators are not to blame for the problems in public education. In fact, I’ve had more than a few conversations with teachers, most of them liberal (I am very conservative), who agree with me that the reason many students do not do well in public school is because of the people who work in cubicles in some antiseptic building that make the decisions regarding the curriculum and how students will be taught. These people have hardly, if ever, stepped onto a school campus, let alone into a classroom. Teachers and other school staff (I’m a School Psychologist) are not permitted to provide their input into the decisions that politicians and retired bureaucrats make regarding education. When I was in Elementary School, I wasn’t introduced to the concept of Algebra until 6th or 7th grade. Today, introductory Algebra concepts are being taught in Kindergarten. The pressures we are placing children under from a purely academic expectation is ridicules.

[Eska]

The wifey has taught spec ed close to 25 years and I have my secondary cert but honestly I just can't take all the politics in education today. Schools do as much as they can possibly accomplish with the resources they have; but you know, it all starts in the home and we do have massive problems with the family in America. I have seen quite a few kids in my wife's socially/emotionally disturbed class make it over the years, others not. Usually the ones that fail, end up in group homes or worse once the grandparents can't handle the kids anymore; but we have to make a place for these kids in society. We can't just build more prisons and the problems we are facing seem to be getting worse.

I had asperger kids over the years myself in school; that's one group of kids that usually can function if we make a place for them. Freepers should realize the vast majority of these kids are not dangerous and any one of us could have a child with aspergers too.

[exhaustguy]

We put them under those pressures because many of our main economic competitors are also putting their kids under the same pressure. To get any sort of merit money for college you have to walk on water. In addition once you get into college you better believe that the other kids, many 1st generation Americans, have pounded the books since they were little. You can’t fake your way in a Calculus or a Physics class. I am not having my daughter look at exclusive private colleges because the pressure/payback is just too great. I also rearranged her schedule so she would take online college classes instead of high school classes (she had four finals in one day in high school both semesters - in her hardest four academic subjects). The stress was awful. With online college classes she can set the time in which she takes her tests so the material may be comparable, but the preparation and stress level are optimized.