I could go on and on here... Where did education start going wrong? * Discipline such as paddling removed from schools. When I was in grade school, I lifted up a girls dress during recess, and the gym teacher "adjusted" my behavior with a paddle. I never did that again! Ever! * Prayer removed from schools. It's now ok to say sh*t or fu*k in public schools, but if you bring a Bible to school, it has to stay in the Principal's office until the end of the day. * Liberal, nonsense, lazy teachers who basically babysit. * A cop I know works overtime at a local alternative school that is meant for kids who are thrown out of their regular schools for whatever reasons. He told me recently, "the alternative school now has a no suspension policy." What does this mean? If the kid beats the hell out of the teacher, he gets to come back the next day. If the kid lights up a crack pipe in class, he gets to come back the next day. If the kid brings in a machete, and chases other kids around, yes, he gets to come back to school the next day... Sure, the police will file charges, but where I live the juvenile "justice system" is a total joke! The cop I know said he's going to quit that overtime gig as it's stressing him out working in what is basically a zoo. A zoo without ANY consequences... I have three Sons in a public High School, and the things they tell me make my hair stand straight up! The ONLY reason we keep them there is because none of the private schools here offer Football, and they're into football big time. I'll note that not all of the teachers out there today are bad actors. I guess the bad ones really overshadow the good ones. I was walking out of the High School several months ago, and 4-5 teachers were walking out at the same time. One had a nose ring, three were dressed VERY provocatively, and the other was talking about getting drunk later. I was stunned!:eek:
LOL did you go to school in Nevada? You didn't even comprehend half of what you just read. He did not say to allow students to have gym ALL DAY he said to give disruptive students gym in the first period. Thereby kids with excessive disruptive behavior might be able to get it out of their system and calm down and learn by burning off extra energy. You missed the point regarding pampering kids in a touchy feel-ly system of education where all kids are passed regardless of what they have accomplished academically. He didn't say to not give kids a compliment on a job well done. You confused that by thinking he meant we should not compliment kids for their success. He did not say that at all. He meant that the school system should not coddle kids, pass kids that are undeserving, etc. The fact that Spanish may be a prevalent language and account for roughly 50% or more of the populations first language is irrelevant. You completely missed the point of teaching kids a second language and learning a second language by confusing the fact that we have a growing spanish speaking population. Can you comprehend where you went wrong here?. If you need me or anyone else to explain it further for you just ask. Also the saying is, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste" but that is irrelevant to your lack of reading comprehension skills,,,,it points more directly to your inability to remember what you hear instead.
============= Agree with Bill Gates Foundation.......''teachers.......''; & parents are the primary teachers- private/public school teachers are ====================================important also.
It's all about getting good teachers in the classroom. Just observe a class in session when you have a kick-ass teacher who knows how to inspire and how to discipline, vs your average teacher. Teaching is very, very tough, but when done right it makes all the difference. Find the kick-ass teachers, and have them train others to do what they do.
Oversimplified to say the least. There is a good reason why some of the very best teachers wind up in private schools...You know why? because the kids in the classroom all had to pass an entrance exam and/or actually gain acceptance into an advanced/honors curriculum. Given an able and willing classroom full of bright students, a good teacher can get thru the material without the need to either spend half his time teaching the remedial kids things they should have learned years earlier OR having to stop class to discipline the kids with behavioral problems. It's truly a two way street, but just like everything else in this country, there are areas that are no longer open to public discourse and debate. It's completely "non-PC" to state the obvious that some kids just don't have a sufficient capacity to learn certain material; nor are they willing to..in turn, those would be great teachers that enter the wrong school system become frustrated and leave. (actually, I'm certain some of them figure they make so much more in a dysfunctional crap school system than a better private school, they stay and put up with it...) In any event, the morale of the story is that throwing unlimited amounts of money at the problem (which is always the "solution"), will not work, period. The only solution that I can foresee working is to constantly separate students at an early age into tiers according to both their test scores and/or their capacity and enthusiasm for learning. There is no reason to hold back the gifted students just so that the less able can catch up, year after year. In the end, you turn the gifted students into mediocre students as they are forced to sit thru constant remedial lessons and work. If you want a look at what I'm talking about, you might even watch an episode of a show called "Teach" with Tony Danza. Sure, it's a bit of staged drama, but it's a good insight into how putting together a room full of disparate students with no common intelligence traits is a massive problem.
I think you're wrong. I taught in a private school and my students ranged from gifted to incredibly remedial, with a few hardly speaking English. When I was growing up going through public school is where they had us separated into classes by ability. I agree with you here
IMO this is a very astute comment. The problems in mainstream U.S. education are very well covered in this thread, but the underlying causes are little mentioned. My personal list of problems would include: 1) Many good, or potentially good and dedicated teachers wanting to exit their jobs and not come back; 2) Disrespectful and non-attentive students; 3) To few capable and bright young people wanting to go into education at the primary and secondary levels, especially the secondary level; 4) Too few qualified teachers in some areas; 5) Blaming of schools and teachers for poor student performance; 6) Grade inflation; 7) Social promotion; 8) Inefficient districts with too high a ratio of administrators to teachers; 9) A misguided believe that we could regulate and test our way out of our educational problems; 10) Etc.. But these are all symptoms of underlying causes. Unless the causes are understood, attempted remedies will very likely prove wrong and ineffective. To find the root causes one has to look back in time to the more effective education system existing prior to Johnson's Great Society and draw conclusions accordingly. (By the way, what I am referring to has nothing to do with integration of the schools --a long overdue recognition during the Kennedy-Johnson era that relegating a segment of the population to inferior, segregated schools was morally reprehensible, and an indefensible stain on humanity. Nor does it have anything to do with the amazing technological advances between that former time and now.) In a nutshell, the main underlying causes of the above symptoms of failure are attributable to well-intended but mistaken "thinking" that was part and parcel of the "Great Society". Most damaging is the popular, politically correct, but wrong, notion that one can be anything they aspire to so long as they put their mind to it! This is obviously not true, so why do we continue to parrot this ridiculous and absurd mantra. Nothing could be more harmful and unproductive then planting a nonsensical idea in the marvelously receptive mind of a third grader. Years later that child will be in the office of their freshman physics professor explaining that their failure is impossible because they are an "A student", by which they mean to imply that any performance defects on their part must surely be a fault of the Professor's. In pre-Great Society America, teachers helped students discover what they were good at and then encourage them in that direction. College students in that prior era, although they would have been reluctant to approach their Professor (not necessarily a good thing), would have at least been more capable of recognizing their own shortcomings. Ever since the Great Society and Johnson's prosaic notion that a Great Nation is one with two cars in every driveway, a television set in every home, and everyone's a college graduate, we have been on the wrong track, trying as it were to pound square pegs into round holes. To be fair, Johnson's idea wasn't that every child should go to college, but that every child should have the opportunity to go. But even this latter inspirational idea could not be realized in a pre-Great Society America. It was not lack of means, but reality that thwarted these dreamers for a more perfect nation. Although the notion that every child should have the opportunity to go to college could be accommodated, even welcomed, by pre-Great Society colleges, the understandable expectation of the post-Great Society students that somehow going to college would lead to a college degree ran squarely up against reality. Though the colleges did their part by expanding their admissions, they found that the new students often struggled with traditional liberal arts courses. What to do? The only thing that could happen did happen: colleges and universities changed to accommodate the aspirations of a post-Great Society America. Besides the influx of students who previously would have fallen outside the 38% of high school graduates going on to college. And here it is critical to recognize that previously those going on to college did so not just because they had the desire to go, but because they had been in the college prep track in junior high and high school, and too they scored well enough on the SAT or ACT. The other 62% of students were mostly either not in the college prep track or scored too low on the admissions exam, but for some sub set of these students cost would have been an issue preventing them from going on to college. The mistaken premises of the Great Society led to the end of tracking in junior high and high schools, a watering down of curricula, and grade inflation. The same effects were seen in colleges and universities but were perhaps less insidious there. And too, the increased use of blind-eyed funding formulas by college boards was another factor that contributed to grade inflation and larger class sizes in higher education. As time went on few seemed to notice that about 38% of the students in the expanded post-Great Society classrooms of colleges were performing on approximately the same level as students from pre-Great Society days. The other 62% were poor to mediocre performers in English literature and composition, history, mathematics, and science. But what was very noticeable was that college grads could no longer be counted on to be able to write a simple sentence without grammatical or spelling errors, to do basic algebra in their heads, let alone on paper. The reputation of colleges sank with the quality of their graduates. The colleges blamed the high schools. The high schools blamed the grade schools. People were outraged and began to blame the teachers. Teacher unions became more attractive to teachers who felt they were under attack. Taxpayers revolted. Budgets were curtailed, class sizes ballooned. Students complained, discipline deteriorated. The worse things got, the more blame was shifted onto teachers and schools. While this was going on, the trades suffered as well. It seemed to be harder to find craftsmen who took pride in their work. Should we return to what worked much better? I think we should at least consider going back to what seemed to work in the past, making the appropriate changes to accommodate today's reality of a highly technological world with global markets. At the minimum, we should go back to tracking, while greatly beefing up the curricula for educational paths that do not lead to liberal arts degrees but do lead to useful and rewarding careers. We should stop trying to put square pegs in round holes. We should stop wasting time and money on remedial classes in college and instead shift these same resources into the early grade school years, where small class size is essential. And too, we need first rate preschool programs. We need to stop ignoring what educational research has shown over and over to be true. And that is simply that language, music, art and abstract math need to be emphasized in the early years. Science and history can wait if need be. For example, there is no reason why the standard grade school curriculum should not include six years of a second language. As educators have long known, that's where it belongs. And we need to bring back physical education! Finally, we need to put responsibility squarely on the student's shoulders and stop the unproductive blaming of our schools and teachers for poor performance. This has to occur gradually starting about the fourth grade. We absolutely should stop tolerating student disrespect for teachers. There must be in every school district an alternative educational path for students who are not suited for the regular classroom because of their demeanor. They must not be expelled and not put on the streets. It also seems to me that nowadays all students desperately need a first grade course in manners!
Hmm, that seems to be in the exact reverse of how I experienced the school system. In my experience, the better private schools will have an honors track (just as the better public schools have as well) and the best teachers are usually going to be teaching these classes. Many public schools, especially in the formative years K-8, really cannot or will not separate students based on ability and aptitude. This is where the problems begin in earnest, IMO. If you take a gifted math student and revisit the same concepts over and over again, soon enough he will tune out and become bored. After awhile, this might become a pattern and he could carry this thru high school, etc, etc... There has to be a way to keep these kids moving along without weighing them down in the mediocrity of the lowest common denominator amongst his/her classmates.
It might be interesting to know how many K-12 students are on psy medication. This is how we manage behavioral issues since discipline is non existent. We probably have a sizable student body on meds, and those that need meds. Which brings me to the era of zero medication. How did we ever manage educating chlldren without medication. Discipline? I suppose the kids too difficult to educate thorugh discipline quit or dropped out in the old days. But some may have benefitted from harsh discipline. (corporal punishment by todays standards). Who benefits by "managing" children and young adults with psychiatric meds?
thanks for your post. you were only one who commented on his misreadings. chartmans' comments were based upon my post.unfortunately besides his inability to read he personalizes his responses instead of discussing the facts. furthermore some of his facts are true but are presented in away as to mislead. larry summers was recently quoted on the subject of education first you achieve than you praise. it is not the other way around as in the american system. students can be praised even after achieving small steps of progress.