Posted on 08/23/2007 10:49:01 AM PDT by neverdem
You sound like a great, well-educated teacher. It sounds, though, like you agree with my point about a pervasive motivation crisis across the entire school system. I don’t see this changing unless and until we jetisson self-esteem in favor of mastering certain thresholds at each level. Miss a threshold, and you fail, not pass.
Isn’t this amazing. This country raised some pretty good kids in the past. When the school systems decided to change the way they taught, things went to hell in hand basket. Look at the 40’ & 50’s.........go back to that method of teaching and you will see a big change in the kids. Get rid of the trouble makers also.
Ping
My 9yo barely knows how to use a calculator. She calculates change in her head, and sometimes on her fingers (she is only 9.)
There is ignorance that is the result of lack of opportunity, and ignorance that is the result of laziness and the luxury to do without knowledge. They're not the same. The former can be cured by providing more opportunity, but the latter can't.
Actually, most public school parents are homeschooling their kids without realizing it. I went to school in the 50's and 60's. We hardly had homework until high school. Today, first graders come home with an hour or two of homework every night. Yet, I got a better education than kids are getting today. Hmmmm. Something is wrong here.
What I think has happened is that the schools have put the easy stuff (indoctrination, self-esteem) during the day and send the actual learning home in the form of homework. Parents end up homeschooling without even knowing it because the teachers aren't doing their jobs. Parents don't realize that they need to teach the basics because they aren't being taught at school and so their expectations of their role in homework is off. Result, a lot of parents do a bad job doing the job the teachers ought to be doing.
In addition, many teachers are ignorant (I use that word precisely) of their subjects. We had an exchange student this year who I had to help with homework. Some of the "facts" and "guidance" from his teachers would have been screamers, were they not so pathetic. Did you know, for example, that the Spanish-American war was an example of American paranoia of communism? That from an 11th grade History teacher. My last history course was more than 30 years ago and I was a techie, not a history major. Yet, I know more about American History than that history teacher. I could give you equally ridiculous examples from other subjects--high school English teachers who don't know what a triple run-on sentence is etc. Something is wrong and it's not the parents.
Another thing, have you noticed that a very high percentage of pre-teens today are vegetarians? Are they getting that from their parents? Probably not. I'm almost sure it's bambi-style indoctrination from the schools. Something is wrong and it's not the parents.
Frankly, public school teachers are not getting anywhere near my son. That's why we homeschool. My wife and I do better in our spare time than trained "professionals" do with more than 6 hours a day.
As to your comment about salary, recent studies have shown that, adjusted for the fact that they get the summer off, teachers are right in the middle of the pack, salary-wise.
The education establishment's (teachers included) only solution to the problem is "we want more money." Well, we are spending more than twice per pupil in real dollars on K-12 in America than we did in 1970. Has it gotten us anything? Well, yes. A crappy education system. When the school systems can show they are ready to spend my money wisely and not toss it down a PC rathole, then I would consider providing more money and not until then.
The principal way in which parents are to blame for the education mess is that they have not pulled their children out of government schools. They tolerate an utterly unacceptable level of service from the administrations and the teachers and delude themselves that more money will fix the problem. So they vote for the tax increase and wonder why their children still can't spell.
Thank you for the kind compliment. I agree with you 100%, but the touchy-feely feel good about themselves bunch claim that retention does much more damage to the student than promoting them.
I fail to see how promoting them until they drop out is helping, but then again, I am not in touchy-feely bunch. My kids are told you don’t do the work, you fail. You fail, you don’t graduate. Period.
They still don’t get it, but you don’t learn what hot means until you burn yourself.
“As another school year is set to get under way, it’s worth pondering where this epidemic of ignorance came from.”
It came from the reality that educated, thinking individuals are not likely to vote to give up their freedoms in favor of higher taxes and a nanny state Government. Something HAD to be done.
I agree, however, some of that responsibility must also fall on the parents, particularly in the lower grades.
I'm one of the lucky ones, our daughter is bright and loves school, however there is still the nightly battle over homework, particularly math and spelling. "But I know this, why do I have to do it again?" is a very frequent lament at the dining room table, which is where she does her homework.
We’ve got some McGuffey Readers and a mid-1900’s copy of the American Citizen’s Handbook (by the N.E.A.). That America exists no longer in our public schools, N.E.A. or government. The hard decline began in the later 1950’s. Discipline exerted by Godly American men is, IMO, the only hope.
This bears repeating:
“The principal way in which parents are to blame for the education mess is that they have not pulled their children out of government schools. They tolerate an utterly unacceptable level of service from the administrations and the teachers and delude themselves that more money will fix the problem. So they vote for the tax increase and wonder why their children still can’t spell.”
That says it all.
Since you are such a bright and capable teacher, let’s not try to reduce a national problem down to the personal level...okay?
There are, most certainly, good teachers in the public education system. As a former public school teacher, I’ve known many good teachers.
However, I’ve also known teachers who bragged about having taught for three decades without ever updating their original lesson plans. I’ve listened to teachers encourage middle school students to be “open-minded” about sex, regardless what their parents tell them. I’ve also known tenured teachers who would have nearly as hard a time making change for a dollar as the kids VDH describes in this editorial.
The point is that while there are good teachers in the public school system, there are also a number of truly horrible teachers. And, the system works to protect the bad teachers just the same as it does to protect the good ones. If you’re an NEA member the union you pay dues to works to keep you on the same pay level as the most incompetent tenured teacher at your school.
While parents certainly are a significant part of the problem with our failing public education system, the “system” is no less at fault.
I would suggest that any teacher who truly cares about the best interest of children would work to change those factors which are within his/her power to affect. Show us that the teachers care enough about the kids to toss their union, abolish tenure, and start advocating for teacher testing that truly measures capability.
Once teachers have cleaned their own house Americans will be much more open to their complaints about parents.
“...required new teachers to have real academic majors before getting a teaching credential.......”
Bingo. I would apply this to Journalism majors also. They’re frought with the same shortcomings that teachers are. I’ve increasingly come to the conclusion that journalism is a worthless major. It’s increasingly painfully obvious that most journalists are extremely ignorant about the things they write about. If you teach a subject, you should have to major in that subject. If you write about geo-politics, science, economics and finance, etc. THOSE should be the msjors.....not journalism. Journalism, at best, should be a minor.
And I agree with VDH (always do), that we need to cut the touchy-feely hogwash out of the school curriculum.
Parents...
I don't disagree that there are many problem parents, who don't encourage reading and math as worthy goals.
On the other hand, the education system sabotages parents efforts by using programs like Whole Language ("at school we're supposed to look at the words and the pictures to see what the words mean") and Math Investigations ("show three ways to get the answer to this math problem, your answer cannot be numerical"). Many schools don't provide books to take home for the homework, just "dittos" with problems that are incomprehensible to anyone who knows how to do basic math. Too many homework assignments are not designed to practice skills learned in class, but to promote other agendas ("ask your grandparents if they've ever been discriminated against"). Schools no longer consider it appropriate to contact the parent if the child isn't doing well in school (or misbehaving) - all work goes into the Portfolio, which is saved at school and provided to the new teacher next year. How can we expect parents to help their children be successful that way? My kids, and my nephews, had all these 'modern teaching' programs. I actually had some myself back in elementary school in the 60's, where we got New Math. I distinctly recall second grade, where we had math problems like " o + * = ? " - what I got out of that was nothing. They said it was teaching "algebra readiness", but 2nd graders don't need to learn abstract equations, they need to learn sums! I still count on my fingers, I still use bizarre estimating methods on basic multiplication, because I never had to learn basic math in school, and my parents were told not to confuse me by teaching it. New Math died when enough of us got to High School and couldn't do algebra because we couldn't do basic math - being able to do proofs does not provide a numerical answer on the SAT's. I was very disheartened to hear they've brought New Math back with a vengeance in our school district.
No, parents are far from the only problem.
I went rounds on this argument with the school district "administrators" when my daughter was in 2nd grade (she starts 4th in 2 weeks.) I was told the bright kids need to stay with the rest of the class in order to help the less bright students. My husband's reaction was "So where is her paycheck?"
I got no where with the bureaucrats and so I took my issue to the school board and reminded them that No Child Left Behind means NO CHILD, including the bright ones.......I also go no where.
One of the bureaucrats actually whined to my daughters teacher asking how she could get "this bored housewife off my back." That poor bureaucrat (with a gazillion letters behind her name) didn't stand a chance, she didn't realize that not only was the teacher on my side, so was the principal, and they were the ones that sicced me on her!!!!
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