Posted on 12/02/2011 5:15:24 AM PST by 1010RD
What I was referring to was of a much more spiritual nature. It wasn’t purely about the school system per se....but about our entire cultural milieu.
Art is familiar with the history of American forced education. Trust me on that. You and I are knowledgeable on such things and hence we home school. The average American doesn’t know and doesn’t get it.
My goal is seeing Art elected. He’s solid, very solid. He’s also big on home schooling: http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com/
Yep, teachers will grasp any straw if it isn’t their money. The utter myth that tech = improvement is disproved by PBS and Sesame Street.
One step at a time. Liberalism is a disease that starts at the Federal level. Think about the average American. They’re conservative at a core level, but liberals have been able to contravene them through national funding and control.
He gets it completely. I presume you’re familiar with this book?: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/
Yes, I have read quite a few books on the history of American education, including Gatto’s.
Epecially when you consider there is zero in the U.S. Constitution that education is a federal function.
And these two along thoe lines:
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
“Much of the money never reaches the students or the teachers.”
Here in NJ much of the money reaches the teachers; they are very well-paid, and their retirement benefits liabilities are drowning many municipalities. What pensioners did to GM in Detroit public employees (most teachers) are doing to NJ; the tax burden on any individual, business, or property makes it a terrible place to be.
Great timing, could ya’ll also take a look over here at the issue of Standards Based Grading creeping into middle schools and high schools?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2814935/posts
I think the assertion that homeschooling wasn’t necessary in the 1950s due to the public school system is off base; while the public schools were better then than today, the fact is that there were a lot more PRIVATE education opportunities than today.
When my father was in elementary school it was required for Catholic parents to send their children to Catholic schools; imagine the size of a Catholic education system that could mandate that. Today it is a shell of its former self, and the state of education today reflects that.
What is worse is having millions of teachers each trying to ‘innovate’ at the kids’ expense. Attempts to innovate are by definition going to include many failures. The material to be learned in K-12 doesn’t change every year and it doesn’t change from one locale to another. There is no need to constantly reinvent the wheel. Today’s technology lends itself to sharing the best teachers amongst every classroom on that subject. The “Teacher” should be an interactive video game that includes lectures, textbook, video material all presented as needed and in response to the student’s input to frequent pop-up quizzes. Each student could learn at their own pace and explore in more depth than any live body could support with individual attention. The adults physically present in the classroom should be relegated to Aid or Tutor, and not trying to create their own curriculum while setting a pace that is limited by the slowest student in the class.
Also, it should be impossible to “teach to the test” and impossible to cheat on a test. Each student’s test should be created separately so the questions are in a random order and although the entire class has the same 50 questions, those 50 questions were randomly selected at the last minute from a database of thousands of possible questions on that topic. (If somebody can memorize the answers to thousands of questions on that week’s topic, then their effort to cheat will result in them learning something despite themselves.) This way the “teacher” has no idea exactly what questions will be on the test, and the students can’t crib off each other because their neighbor’s test problems are in a different order. This will force the teachers to teach the actual subject matter rather than “teach to the test” and students to learn the subject matter rather than counting on cribbing off somebody else.
He doesn’t say so, and it would probably be election suicide for him to say so, but I think public colleges and universities need to be audited thoroughly to determine why costs keep going up. I expect that professors are spending less time per class/student and so more teaching staff is used than necessary. Likewise, the administrative staffs are hugely bloated.
They suffer the same problem that any government bureaucracy does — larger staffs justify higher pay for supervisors, so there is a disincentive to improve productivity.
Basically, they spend more money because they CAN, because students are so desperate and student loans are so easy to get, that universities raise their fees and tuition and the students keep paying. Students complain, but keep coming and paying. The government should stop guaranteeing student loans. Public universities should not be using price to try to decrease demand, they should be using merit to fill their spaces and then either expand the school or reject the extras. Charging people up the wazoo and then just blowing the cash on lighter workloads for professors and bloating admin is bad policy. Especially when every extra $1 the student pays is matched by $3 the taxpayer must pay.
The unavailability of student loans and leaner operating costs at public universities will lead to lower fees at both public and private schools as they must compete with the public schools.
I would bet that professor and administrator salaries go up every year, even though the economy has been terrible.
Tax funding for Oregon schools is now, on average, about $10,000 per student year. Suppose that one of our thousands of great teachers were to be given 30 students, a check for $300,000, and asked to teach those students for nine months. Do you think the teacher would have sufficient resources? (Some schools receive less than the average of $10,000, but even $200,000 would suffice for this example.) The teacher could rent the best room in town, hire an assistant, raise her own salary, buy everything the students need, fully fund all extracurricular activities, and have money left over. The teacher could, of course, do this more efficiently in a school with other teachers. This single teacher example illustrates, however, that education resources are sufficient -- if the resources go directly to the classroom.
Yes, and their hours actually teaching go down.
conservative teacher here, FL. . .its tough. I could easily spend my entire day, every day, all year trying to UN-do the crap some of these liberal teachers fill your kids head with. You have no idea.
Furthermore, what we are NOT teaching anymore is far more detrimental to our society. History classes are watered down to PC love-fests. Like our history was made by holding hands and singing kum-bay-yah??? ridiculous.
Money$$ I spend on average, 2,000-2,800 on necessary supplies for my classroom and students every year. If you think your kids benefit in any way from your tax payer dollars you are highly mistaken. High-paid babysitting my friends. Not at all, the schools we grew up in before unions ruled the world. I say, cut the head off and let it bleed.
I am a graduate of the South Carolina public school system, class of 1960. I live about fifty five miles from the school I attended. We have a university here and I have spoken to recent graduates of that university who majored in history. I was amazed to learn that they don’t know the history that I was required to learn in the first seven years. I am not exaggerating at all. If a university graduate cannot pass the test he would have had to pass to ENTER HIGH SCHOOL in my era and I am referring to a test on his MAJOR subject then he does not even have an eighth grade education in reality. What are they doing in class?
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