Our school district has tried three times to pass a tax levy and will try for number four in February. The first thing the school board did was close down the libraries in the elementary schools and eliminate teacher aides. Many people have come forward to volunteer in the libraries and help out in the classrooms. The school board refused these volunteers. When I asked a current teacher why the school board so adamantly refuses volunteer help, her reply was, "If we fill those jobs with volunteers, the paying positions will never come back. Those people really should get paid for those jobs." Un-freakin'-believable!! NEA-speak, if I ever heard it! And since the last defeat, the school board is going away with busing (of course -- the thing that will hurt the most). In the meantime, my real estate taxes have doubled in the last ten years. Get a clue school board -- we just can't afford higher taxes for a lesser product!
Is this article from the Onion?
More trash on janitor Dave here:
http://cache.zoominfo.com/cachedpage/?archive_id=0&page_id=561077525&page_url=%2f%2fwww.owl.org%2fapplication%3forigin%3dmax.jsp%26event%3dbea.portal.framework.internal.portlet.maximize%26pageid%3dHome%26portletid%3dHomeESP%26wfevent%3dnull%26contentId%3dxml%2fPublicContent%2fGC5667.htm&page_last_updated=7%2f8%2f2004+4%3a34%3a58+AM&firstName=Dave&lastName=Arnold
The Quiet Leader
Meet the Man Behind the ESP Poems and Editorials
When not hunting critters with his homemade 18th century musket, Dave Arnold uses a bow and arrow. He uses his homemade canoe to catch fish in a local river. The school custodian writes editorials for NEA, publishes poetry, and was named Illinois Education Association's ESP of the Year.
Dave Arnold may be the most famous custodian in the United States who most people have never heard of.
(snip)
I am a public school teacher and allow me to say: Bullschmidt. Homeschool. If there is a particular area in which you are weak, supplement with tutors or something. Even if, at 18, they were doing worse academically then public school kids, they are undoubtedly better off psychologically. They can take a few remedial classes at community college to buff up wherever a parent may have not caught up and be ready for college soon enough. And best of all, they will have spent their formative years being molded by YOU instead of liberals and all the little neighborhood brats.
Oh wow. It's difficult to know where to start a response to this article.
First, in an ideal world, a professionally trained, dedicated teacher would probably do a decent job teaching the topic such as history, math, grammar, literature. The problem is, we don't live in an ideal world. Some teachers are teachers, not because they are dedicated to the education of children or youth, but because they saw it as an flexible profession which has union-protected benefits and lots of days off. Then there are the teachers who are required to teach out of their majors--the math teacher is assigned to tackle science problem. Now add into the mix the fact that most teachers, dedicated or not, spend a huge part of their instruction time just trying to keep order in their classrooms or doing district paperwork and tests. Include the problem of dumbing down the textbooks and curriculum to be "inclusive" and the education fad of putting all types of kids together regardless of their levels of achievement. Then factor in the social pressure among teachers not to make each other look bad by being seens as a much better teacher than the average teacher. You then have a situation in public education where it is nearly impossible for that professional to teach to his or her full ability.
The argument on socialization also falls flat. What public education teaches is not socialization so much as socialism. It teaches group think, often punishes individual initiative, and saddles motivated students with the onerous task of carrying unmotivated team members on their backs or suffering the consequences of a lower group grade. That type of socialization does not create Nobel Prize winners, entrepreneurs or statesmen. It does produce willing union members, more teachers and other types who want to have someone else give them the orders and will guarantee payment of their wages regardless of their contribution to the overall health of their employer.
The writer discounts the power of knowledge in the public hands nowadays. What politically-correct textbook can stand up to the internet in terms of current information and availability of contrary opinions with which to educate thinking? What kid doesn't learn better with hands-on experience and immediate one-to-one teaching during that experience, compared to a group project where the kids are to "teach each other"? A motivated home school teacher can find almost anything needed to teach a child more effectively than public school experiments which pass for teaching today.
I don't denigrate anyone's choice of public, private, homeschooling or a mixture of each, but every choice requires diligence by the parent, whether finding the best homeschooling opportunities, or monitoring the abuses of public education, or ensuring that private schools toe the mark. It's a big job for the parents to be involved in their childrens' education whatever way they choose to go and if some want the job to be fulltime at home, go for it. My kids had public education, then charter school education which combined homeschooling with distance and on-site learning.
This custodian is merely spouting the union line and showing his ignorance in the process.
How about let's say the correct word Brainiac, masonry.
Cementing??????
If home schooling is so bad, why do the vast majority of students shine? Huh?
I might be more inclined to agree if the union that represents said ostensibly trained professionals had caught that punctuation error before it made it onto a live web page.
In the early eighties we had many teachers in Birmingham, who had bought teaching degrees without attending classes and were tenured. There were so many that the school board could not fire them without shutting down the system for years. Nothing was ever done except close down the college that sold those degrees. I would have said "worthless degrees", except the felon teachers continued to be paid to teach, and most have retired with fat retirements. My sons had some of these criminals for teachers. The people could not speak English very well and were terrible excuses for teachers. There were at lot of parents who were better educated than these clowns, and would have been able to home school at a much higher level.
Yeah, well meaning amatures who for 100 dollars per student per year do a better job than a whole staff of government paid professionals and 10,000 dollars per student per year.
Why home school a child when you can send him to a government school for social indoctrination and self-esteem building?
That is great, but what about the other 90% of schools.
Does this mean he couldn't get a better job? I remember about ten years back my husband applied for a maintenance job at a public school. One look at his application (even with a limited college education) he was immediately offered a teacher's aide position in a Special Ed. class.
BTW, he has also repaired his own vehicles and our house. The only thing that really stops him from that now is time.
He leaves the homeschooling up to me.
Exactly! And that is why we have to break the NEA monopoly!
Exactly! And that is why we have to break the NEA monopoly!
I wouldn't know where to start with this: it reads like an informal position paper full of talking points meant to be "mimeographed" and sent to circulate among "the faculty". Even the points he makes about some of the drawbacks of homeschooling, he doesn't even make in quite the right way: he cannot be objective about the possible strengths and weaknesses of both public school ed and homeschooling, because he is only talking about a representative and defender of one of them, public school ed. Socialization is indeed a problem, but not in the way he discusses it: while public school might expose a kid to a long relationship between him and autocratic, impersonal teachers, AND at the same time, bullying, impossible-to-deal-with peers and the social structures of inclusion/exclusion, and hence, get you ready for "real life", the homeschooling environment might tend to foster too sloppy a relationship with the teaching parents, and relationships with parents are fraught with enough complication already. If only Public School teachers had lived up to "in loco parentis"! As another poster put it, "give me HALF of what it costs taxpayers (13K/yr.) to keep a kid in public school, and I will run rings around them". Of course things will never get that far, but indeed, think of what a parent interested in homeschooling could do with that kind of subsidy....first, though, the battle has to be fought for school choice and vouchers,etc.
And of course, one of the reasons homeschooling has not evolved as quickly or as dramatically as it might have is because the parents are doing it on their own, with no outside help from "the taxpayers" (i.e., THEMSELVES, who are already paying for OTHER people's kids in public schools. Nothing will change without revolt---large numbers across the country putting pressure on "lawmakers" to expand the structures of American education, or face the consequences of tax revolt. Who could organize something like this?
Most teaching is done by parents anyway.
I had to teach my children to read,
I taught my children about atomic elements,
and last night they didnt know battles of the Revolutionary War, so they we taught about that.
This article needs direct and total refutation.
Many kids are miseducated by the system. Homeschooling corrects that. Sure there are some homeschoolers who could do better, but who better than the parents themselves to figure that out? No parent will go through the bother of teaching if it could be done better elsewhere.
"I’m certainly not opposed to religious schools, or to anyone standing up for what they believe in. I admire anyone who has the strength to stand up against the majority. But in this case, pulling children out of a school is not the best way to fight the laws that govern our education system. No battle has ever been won by retreating!"
Kids aren't in a 'battle', they are supposed to learn.
The reality is that with information avaialable, it is easier to teach children than ever. A parent has more resources for teaching than ever before.
"head custodian at Brownstown Elementary School" - janitor?!?