Posted on 04/16/2015 12:21:43 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Traditional education has taken a real beating the last 75 years. The entire Education Establishment lined up to demonize everything that teachers and schools had done for many thousands of years. The result is the vastly dumbed down classrooms we have now in K-12 education.
But how, at this point, can we resurrect a vanishing paradigm? As we will see, there is one example left, as if preserved in a time capsule.
Apparently, giving children lots of knowledge is what our socialist professors hate about traditional education. So these ideologues came up with a parade of insults, all designed to stop schools from fulfilling their essential function.
[snip]
....Fortunately, there is one area where traditional education survives. If you want to know how to fix our schools, just look at this one area, and copy all of its salient features.
That area is the study of foreign languages.....
..In all traditional education, you start at the smallest, simplest spot, and you steadily build outward and upward.
Imagine the French class in operation. The teacher presides – teaching, teaching, teaching. The students listen respectfully – learning, learning, learning. Everything the teacher is asking the kids to do is reasonable – not like Reform Math, where each step seems to be devised by insane psychiatrists.
Imagine how history or biology, or English literature, would be taught if it were taught exactly as French is taught. French class preserves for us the naturalness and logic of traditional education. You see it as the perfectly normal, perfectly self-evident world that it is.
It's only progressive education and Common Core education that are twisted. Things are done in illogical, unnatural ways. Everybody has to stand on his head and count backwards. Here is the essence of progressive education: doing nothing at all, or doing something that's intellectually perverted....
[snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Parents have to understand the teachers union are a power with little interest in education.
Then parents need to get involved and demand accountability.
In France children go to school on Mon/Tue/Thurs/Fri they have Wednesday off. They also work in 5week units with 2 weeks off between units. That is far fewer days in school which means they have tofocus on academic content rather than PC crap.
That might be a good place to start as well
Abandon the in-school lecture in favor of in-home online audio-visual (but not talking head) lectures.
Make each lecture short - and proceed to working short, few, examples.
Rinse, repeat.
Work longer problems which use old AND new information.
Privatize all education.
change where a teacher gets paid from.
if a teacher is answerable to parents and the school they are in because the ultimately understand that is where they get paid from, things will change dramatically and quickly. it will be about student progression (not progressive), student mental stimulation and building confidence and it will start to focus on what a student needs for life.
will it kill off the arts, no, but it will ensure that people who want to do the arts pay for it and are driven by an interest in it rather than just getting people who want degrees because someone else is paying.
a teacher who realises their pay and pay rises is directly related to the success of their students will become a driver of change but not change for changes sake but for improvements.
of course the fear is that our little johnny may not be allowed to become a nuclear scientist the parents want him to be. here is the thing every kid on this planet has a natural skill, that skill maybe nuclear physics or maybe dancing or plumbing. it will also force parents to set targets with a level ore realism. if you believe the teacher is wrong, goto another school, if enough parents think the teacher is wrong, fire the teacher and get another. this is not rocket surgery....
FIFTY PERCENT!
And that's just the state's contribution.
Big Education - it's a giant LIBERAL money laundering machine, socialist policy generating factory and indoctrination center.
Walker Plan to Tie Tuition to the CPI Has Already Failed ".............And just more than 10 years ago, Republican lawmakers in Congress were pushing a plan – spearheaded by former Rep. Buck McKeon of California – that would punish colleges for big tuition increases. Under the proposal, if a school – public or private – increased its tuition and other costs of attendance by more than twice the CPI for two years in a row, it would be banned from participating in federal student aid programs. McKeon later abandoned the proposal, but Republicans pushed similar provisions to publicly identify institutions with large tuition increases in their attempt to reauthorize the Higher Education Act.
When Congress was considering McKeon's first proposal, Alexander Astin – founding director of the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA – wrote a review claiming it could actually result in making college less affordable for needy students, because many colleges, especially private ones, use a portion of their tuition revenue for financial aid.
"If inflation creates a potential budget shortfall for a private institution, and if the 'affordability' legislation makes it impossible for that institution to match the shortfall through a tuition increase, how is it to make up the difference?" Astin wrote. "Obviously, the temptation to cut back on financial aid will be great, a choice that will force the institution either to favor its well-to-do applicants over its poor applicants in the admissions process, or to offer less aid to the latter."...............
June 27, 2011: Walker Revokes In-state Tuition For Undocumented Students Attending Univ And Colleges In Wisconsin "- On Sunday, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) signed his two-year 2011-2013 budget, which included ending in-state tuition for undocumented students attending public universities and colleges. In-state tuition for undocumented students was approved two years ago by former Governor Jim Doyle (D) after the Hispanic community struggled for 10 years to pass it."...
4 years of protests, recall elections and John Doe investigations
Jan 23, 2015: Scott Walker proposes way for 'real life experience' to qualify for teaching license "Anyone with “real-life experience” and a bachelor’s degree would be able to get a teaching license in any subject as long as they pass a test proving they are knowledgeable, under a budget provision Gov. Scott Walker announced Thursday...The proposal would expand the non-traditional routes available to become licensed without an education degree. "....
The public education industry is little more than a jobs program for those who have useless college degrees.
Teachers are also the pool from which they find their Democratic Party convention delegates.
To bring back real education, you’d have to find teachers who know what they are talking about. That is, math teachers that actually know math, chemistry teachers who actually know chemistry. Some would say this is a radical concept.
In college too, the emphasis is on picking esoteric courses of interest, even within one’s major, rather than an emphasis on survey courses that would teach a lot of meaningful knowledge and facts. I love reading books on history and philosophy and such, so I just don’t understand the anti-fact educational philosophies that have become regnant. Also, I don’t think rote learning to some extent for younger pupils is such a bad thing. One will then have the knowledge to hand, and as one grows older, it will be useful to be able to recollect that knowledge and understand it as it is applied.
>> Here is the essence of progressive education:
>>doing nothing at all, or doing something
>>that’s intellectually perverted...
2+2=5
3*4=11
N.E.A.=L.I.F.E.R.
Learn another language by age 5, and even if you forget, you can learn many, many others.
If that is the structure in French schools, then it is quite different than the 1970s, when I spent a year in France as an exchange student.
School was full-time on Mon/Tues/Thurs/Fri, and half a day on Wed and Sat. (Being American, with an aversion to attending school on Sat, I managed to schedule my classes so that I had Sat off.)
I also do not recall any long breaks. Christmas and Easter, maybe, but otherwise, there was at most a day or so off at a time. The school year was longer, too.
As far as academics, the French schools put American schools to shame. I was a good student--I had to be, to be accepted into the highly competitive exchange program--but when I went into French schools, they were so far ahead of me academically that I felt dumb. I could keep up in English class... but otherwise, no. The material they covered in math was stuff that I didn't see until university here in the States.
I only wish I could have had the benefit of a full French education when I was a kid. Still, I managed to go on to a PhD, so I didn't do too badly.
Bring back traditional America and you bring back traditional education
I’m for separation of School and State as well.
Two plus dos am fo.
-PJ
The joy of learning has been squeezed out of education.
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