[LarryLied]

80 and 100 years ago when we had massive waves of immigration, schools faced the same problems they do today. parents didn't speak English, parents were working like dogs to survive, kids were on their own, disease was rampart, poverty was the norm...yet our public schools worked. Better than today.Teachers whine about parents and kids now. Imagine what it was like in 1912.

I don't know what government teachers think. We pay them to do a job and all we hear is bitching. If they don't like the pay, if they don't like the kids, if they don't like the parents, they should go do something else. A member of any other occupation who blamed the customer for their failure would be out of business in a week.

[AUgrad]

80 and 100 years ago when we had massive waves of immigration, schools faced the same problems they do today. parents didn't speak English, parents were working like dogs to survive, kids were on their own, disease was rampart, poverty was the norm...yet our public schools worked. Better than today.Teachers whine about parents and kids now. Imagine what it was like in 1912.

Schools back then taught the "three R s" and not much else. If we measure schools today by those standards then it looks as if they do a pretty good job.

[Jim Noble]

>>Imagine what it was like in 1912<<

My grandmother started her 50-year career in NYC Public School teaching in 1912. It was very interesting and informative to hear her talk about what it was like, and how it changed (of course, 1962 looks like paradise compared to now, but the adverse trends which have brought us this low were well-developed by then).

Grandma always thought that what she was doing in the Lower East Side public schools of 1912-1940 was making Americans.

A few more teachers like her would do us a world of good.

Fanny Dorothea Butt, nee Wolff, 1894-1991 R.I.P.