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If you have never taught in a public school (and I strongly suspect that is the case), then you cannot possibly have the slightest accurate concept of what it's like. As I said in a previous post, it ain't like when you were in school. "Sitting at a desk playing with your Ipod while telling the kids just to read the material" is not what occurs in a classroom. You have to monitor your studernts and make sure they're on task.

Kids in today's classrooms have absolutely no respect for authority, their parents, anyone. They have no problem cursing out their teachers, threatening to assault them, actually assaulting them, skipping class, etc. because they know that the libs in charge will offer them night school, summer school, weekend school, online school--anything--to nudge them over the line into the "pass" column, whether they know a darn thing about the subject or not. They don't have to do very much work at all. In NYC, they can even take "credit recovery" classes which only repeat the parts of the class that they failed. In other words, they get a mishmash quilt of this component and that component instead of having to repeat the whole class so that they get a cohesive idea of what the subject is actually about. And that passes for a class that they passed in their record.

So unless YOU have taught in public schools, you have absolutely no business asserting that teachers don't know how to teach. You say that based on what you think, not what you know from personal experience.

No, I teach the product of public schools. After they socially promote the poor kid who they manage to mess up to the point that they can't read a street sign out of the "school". Then they land in my class. And it is so odd, but inside of a year they can read. Not all, some truly have a learning problem and I have to pass them along to another class but most learn without much problem once proper methods are applied.

"Sitting at a desk playing with your Ipod while telling the kids just to read the material" is not what occurs in a classroom

Yes, it is. I know because I have been asked by parents to evaluate classes and that was exactly what the "teacher" did. In fact that was the most benign thing I have seen a bad teacher do.

So I do know what I am talking about and while there are good teachers out there they are hamstrung by teaching methods that are, at best, questionable. At worse they are criminal.

“You say that based on what you think, not what you know from personal experience.”

Not that I have personally witnessed it, but my daughter says her 10th grade math teacher hands out the worksheets and then goes back to doing something on her computer. NO instructions given beforehand. They are allowed to work in groups to figure it out, and are allowed to ask her questions. But often they are met with a large sigh and after either telling them to work on it more, or in some cases berating them that “it is pretty much the same as yesterday’s worksheet”. And sometimes she will answer the person’s question.

I mentioned this to the principal, and she said “Yes - she has a different style of teaching. We are well aware of it.”

Other teachers are okay, and a rare few really have gotten my kids really exited and interested about a subject. Even in subjects that my kids didn’t think they would like. “I wanted to do computer science, and I got stuck with a stupid art class” turns into “Hey - look at my painting!!!”