Posted on 09/16/2008 5:15:53 AM PDT by raybbr
Link only - AP
If a student can’t read and write effectively by college, it isn’t the high schools fault, it’s the elementary schools fault.
Social promotion in elementary school is a part of the monster, but the major part is the teaching methodology and theories about education that are taken as absolutes today.
Want a child to write well? Then they need to be able to read well. Want a child to read well? Then a child must want to read.
Teachers are not instilling the desire to learn and stretch. No Socratic teaching. No competition. No individualism allowed.
All of those methods are genuine winners when it comes to teaching kids, and yet elementary schools are so focused on group learning, non-competitive advancement, and sticking straight to the book.
Boring, listless, cardboard lessons that make school a drudgery. Plus, the boys are all tightly controlled, there is very little recess, and even at recess the kids can’t have free time, it’s organized activities.
Any wonder why once high school is reached, most kids just want to get away from school altogether?
WRONG. It is the parents' and the student's fault. The student is responsible for their education.
At the core, you are correct. If each student had parents who made sure their child was learning what he needed to know, there wouldn’t be that problem.
But most parents aren’t that aware. They see the report cards and see A’s and B’s and think that little Johnny and Suzie are doing just fine.
Johnny and Suzie don’t feel they are falling behind because they are doing as well as everyone else.
So how is an average parent, who sees A’s and B’s and whose kids don’t think they are falling behind, supposed to realize what a failure their child’s education is?
Public school kids now sit in groups and "discover" what Pythagorus proved, with the "facilitator" babysitting. (the facilitator is the adult in the classroom with an education degree).
Parents need to realize that schools nowadays teach to the lowest common denominator. And now with Internet and the vast wealth of resources out there, there is no excuse for kids not to be well ahead of where the class is. Parents need to review the work their kids are doing in class, and not merely rely on grades to gauge their progress. It's not rocket science.
Parents may need to realize, but they don’t. And who is going to clue them in?
Teachers used to be the ones that would call the parent in and let them know why Johnny needs more help. But if you have a parent who just isn’t aware of what is happening in public education, how do they magically get informed today?
In defense of at least SOME teachers.... and as a former teacher myself (resigned in June of this year):
I know several teachers and former teachers (myself included) who have taken a great deal of heat for “giving” too many “F” grades. Also, there have been threats by administrators if you don’t have enough of your “top” students getting “A’s”.
I know that I got called to the carpet more than once when one of those “top” students didn’t get an A when they had straight A’s all the way through school.
Well... if they don’t do the work and achieve the grade, I wasn’t about to “GIVE” an A - I put in the grade they earned. But if ordered specifically to give that higher grade - then how can you justify giving lower grades to those who “earn” the same lower grade the other student did?
And it snowballs.
O good friend of my father recently retired from teaching Science in public high school. He had his fill. He was called to the Principal and Superintendent’s office many times because he too many students were failing his class.
But what was he to do? He had even gone to putting test answers on the board before handing out the tests - and still over half the class would fail. The students were just too lazy to even look at the answers and write them down on their test.
Add to all this the NEA and other feel-gooders (including attorneys who look for “injustice” in the schools) and we have an environment where - if a student doesn’t get a good grade, it MUST be the teacher’s fault - so good grades are handed out like candy....
And schools actually get rewarded for closing the achievement gap. Guess which 'end' of the gap is easier to change? Don't teach the top group, and the gap is narrowed.
“I still have my old sliderule.”
LOL!
When I got my first super-duper, 2 bit, Diesel powered Texas Instruments calculator, I threw my slide rule so damn far I’ll bet the thing is still in orbit.
The only two things I could use my sliderule for were to draw a straight line with the edge and prove to girls what 8 inches was.
Let's call those “A”s what there are: LYING!!! Her government teachers are LIARS!!
Government teachers and principals lie to students all the time, every day, and it is rampant throughout the country.
Every time a child is promoted from grade to grade without having proficiency then the teachers and principals are lying. Every time a child is told he is a 9th grader but can only read on the second grade level those teachers and principals are LYING!
Government teachers would like us to think that they are sooooo selfless that they should sit on the right hand of Mother Teresa,...but...the truth is too many of them are liars, and nearly all cooperate with lying.
Think LIAR the next time you meet a government teacher.
One more thing, I don't think big hairy kids who can ‘t read, do arithmetic, or write should be warehoused with the little kids. There should be special classes and schools for them.
It’s not automatically bad that they have to retake a class in college that they took in high school. The simple fact of the matter is, unless you took AP or CLEP courses in high school, you have had no exposure to the difficulty of college courses. This is nothing new.
These remedial courses did not exist at state universities when I attended in the mid 70s and early 80s. It was sink or swim and many entering freshmen sank. 30% of the students on my dorm floor did not come back after Christmas my freshman year. These students learned an important truth at a fraction of the cost of underperforming their way through a four year program. So, you are correct that unprepared students are nothing new.
What is new is the erosion of standards for what used to be a college prep high school diploma. This has been accompanied by an increased view of educational egalitarianism- that all should go to college, not just those who through a combination of aptitude and hard work were well prepared.
I don't think this move has been altogether altruistic - look at the explosion in the number of colleges, the market for student loans, and for textbooks. This is big business. Others in the thread have correctly noted is that the colleges are not really footing the bill for these remedial classes - these costs are passed on to the student. Colleges and lenders are quite happy to let a student fund these courses with loans. The 'dirty little secret' is that these courses and costs do not count toward the degree. The student acquires debt for what they should have learned in high school.
This also means that the taxpayers (like us) who typically paid for that high school education have been defrauded as well - the student was given a diploma without possessing/retaining the expected skills.
I bet your kid was attending a “good school” too.
Can’t imagine how one can think of a higher level about math without the rote memorization of the basics. But I guess it’s the same philosophy that promotes “whole word” reading over phonics.
More than 30 posts and nobody is questioning WHY these kids are in college.
A college degree is becoming like home ownership yet not all people are smart enough to be in college or disciplined enough to have a mortgage.
“The only two things I could use my sliderule for were to draw a straight line with the edge and prove to girls what 8 inches was.”
LOL..I never was too good with mine either.
But I did have several professors who could beat me and my TI calculator with their slide rules.
Excellent point.
Reading comprehension — test scores are very low on those in most areas and it is not just English is a secondary language students getting low scores. These scores are from students brought up in this Country going to large city schools.
My son is an adjunct professor at a Chicago College while getting his PhD at another and he teaches three remedial English classes out of 53 before they added some more.
An example of two items taught by Chicago schools:
Every sentence must contain ten words. It is a sentence even if there is no subject/predicate as long as it has those ten words.
All paragraphs have to be five sentences even if the five sentences talk about different things.
He checked it out after hearing student after student say they were taught the same thing. It was true. About 75% of the kids in his class want to learn to write. He threw out the textbook and is going with basic English. Sad commentary of Chicago schools that don’t believe in failing students and looks like they don’t believe in educating them either.
Obama was in charge of millions from the Annenberg Foundation to help Chicago schools — where did the money go? Notice that his children go to private schools.
We have a fundamental problem in our city schools — teachers who don’t understand what they teach. NEA was the worst thing to happen to public schools. Day after day, students are being short changed by union teachers who cannot be fired. Would like to give Chicago English teachers a test on basic English and see how well most of them do.
Good public schools usually have a small number of union teachers as others have opted to join organizations in their states like the Oklahoma Education Association here in Oklahoma.
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