Naturally the only touches on the biggest problem in the rest of his diatribe....
Parents...
They’re the ones with the influence to make children believe in education....
They’re the ones who can ensure the kids do homework...
They’re the ones who feel entitled to world class education in a system that pays its teachers abysmal salaries.....
They’re the ones who scream bloody murder if their “baby” gets a B.....
Parents...
Worse than that, his solutions (and I'm generally a VDH fan) all smack of spending more on schools, paying teachers more, etc. If we got rid of the teachers' unions, required new teachers to have real academic majors before getting a teaching credential, and gave teachers/principals the ability to expel (or at least warehouse somewhere else) students who are unruly or won't do the work, the education the kids get would improve dramatically without spending a whole lot more.
No human being can MAKE any other human being believe in anything they do not want to.
The only way a parent can ENSURE that home work gets done is to do it for them.
Teach pay is what the market will bear for a job that only works 66% of the year.
And about the B ... ok you have a point there.
The UGLY truth is that providing and education is one thing... it deals with opportunity. GETTING an education is something else and requires the student be motivated. There are many things a parent can do to encourage student motivation and facilitate the opportunity to learn. But parents can't MAKE a child learn. And the system needs to be prepared to allow such students to FAIL.
Yes, PARENTS, who are forced to have both spouses work to afford a modest home. PARENTS, who have to live far from work to afford a place safe for their children. PARENTS who are getting squeezed from all sides thanks to the huge increase in energy prices and real estate.
Maybe if our workforce was more PROTECTED, then PARENTS could afford to have a single income family and spend more time with their CHILDREN.
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.
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.
Parents’re also the ones who have to put up with asinine liberal administrators, teachers who can’t spell as well as a 3rd grader, curriculum that is anything but academic, and oftentimes homework and projects that do nothing to advance academic education. Let’s not even start on the lack of gifted education in elementary schools, or the unwillingness of administrators to skip kids ahead to take advantage of their gifts.
Let’s recognize the problems on all sides and realize that there ARE a lot of parents out there who push their kids to do well academically. If the school isn’t there to support it, there’s little you can do after a full school day and an hour or two of homework. The kids are exhausted and so are you.
And please - abysmal salaries for teachers ? That canard has been debunked so many times I’m surprised it’s still around in circles other than union strongholds. Read this: http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3438676.html
The only real answer is school choice: homeschool or a carefully selected private school without having to simultaneously support the local government indoctrination center.