Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Teachers = substitute parents. If there was no public schools everything would be private schoolings. Even private schools receives some government funding. If it was not for public schools or even Financial aide ( especially before Obama ) I would have been one stupid duckling. Maybe I would have taught myself something else to get by.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sunbiz1
Retail storefronts.
Industrial psychology majors working in retail storefronts.... how is that a business and how are multiple variants?
We know but refuse to acknowledge the world is divided into into two kinds of people, recognizable by the time they start school. The curious, who will gather and reassemble ideas on their own, and those who will sort through a sparse inventory of ideas in a crisis, Our education system is designed to dispirit them both. Neither is useful to the captains of industry; who desire a society of obedient producers and consumers, amorphous and mindless. That is not education, it is social engineering.
Has it failed? No, it has worked wonderfully to achieve its desired purpose. Which has not always been the same. At first it was to impart sums, grammar, and patriotic obedience to kids until they were old enough to do mindless labor. Then, as labor became less mindlesss, it was to prepare them for trades. Then into the current paradigm, of indoctrinating with political correctness.
But it was never intended to sort out the varying intellectual resources and maximize their individual potentials.
As an educator and coach of 15 years now we as adults have created a numbers game where we spend more time trying to figure out how to successfully play "the game" and less time actually educating. We have created positions in public education that didn't exist 30 years ago that are nothing more than attempts to provide people with a reason for being and to justify large budgets in some districts. Politicians bowed down to voters who demanded schools be held accountable just not their school nor their child. Education from a professional perspective has been watered down to nothing than presenting some ideas and information, filling out some forms, recording attendance, filling out another form, attending a meeting, filling out a form to describe what you learned at the meeting, then having a meeting about the meeting, then well you get the idea. We have an endless checklist of things to complete that gets recycled daily, weekly, monthly, annually until you forget exactly what you were here to do in the first place. Admins give you target goals to fulfill much like regional sales managers give target for sales to salesman. When its all said and done the 18 year old receives a piece of paper that will be eliminated by automation and AI someday (and by that I mean TODAY).
We will have a better education system in this country only when and if the parents of school age children demand a better system. That,of course,would also require that said parents become active participants in their child’s education, rather than viewing school as taxpayer funded day care.
Thank you for stepping into the sunshine/line of fire and posting that set of comments.
IMO public education hamstrings itself via:
1). Belligerent equality over merit thinking seen clearly through seniority mattering far more than performance among teachers.
2). The reflexive fight response from teacher's groups every-single-time accountability measures are brought up. The hysteria over minimum standard - standardized tests being exhibit 1.
3). Same with any notion of competition.
4). Among the college educated we allow legions of people who are bottom 20% types to become teachers.
5). A general acceptance of low expectations.
_________________
And external/near-external things like:
1). Utterly clueless/disengaged parents.
2). Expecting schools to warehouse/educate kids who are more or less non-educatable.
3). School boards and PTA groups lacking proper focus.
But you can say these things every day and twice on Sunday and you will either be ignored or belittled by the 'everyone is capable of anything' and 'all cultures are equal' crowd of delusional pollyannas that choose to look everywhere but at ugly reality for answers.
Perhaps we should also address the question "What do we as a nation expect public education to achieve vis-á-vis the students, the parents, the economy, and society in general.
Then maybe we'll know where it 'fails' or 'succeeds', and then we can address solutions.
In some ways it's not so bad as most kids graduate, get a job, marry, raise a family and stay out of jail.
In some ways it sucks utterly for a large minority, who remain marginalized, unfulfilled, low-status and angry.
What exactly IS the goal of education today?
And is this worthy of a new thread?
Real-world skills like learning the basics of finance, learning the basics of establishing credit and the expense of servicing debt, learning the consequences of student loan debt, the need to pursue a marketable skill-set after high school that the job market demands, learning basic marketable skill-sets while in high school, more trade training in high school, more computer programming in high school, learning more about nutrition and health, also learning about life consequences since parents aren't doing their job (consequences like having children too early, not maintaining health, incurring debt, not attaining a marketable skill-set), etc.
There is so much well-intentioned but naive hope in these platitudinous prescriptions I don't know where to begin.
But begin I will:
1. learning the basics of finance:
Really? Like compounding interest which embodies understanding the exponential function? or the inverse relationship of bond yields to price, which require understanding what an inverse relationship IS? Or were you simply referring to how to write a check?
3. learning basic marketable skill-sets while in high school
Considering that there is no longer any such thing as a BASIC marketable skill set nowadays, and that any non-minimum wage job, much less a career, requires a very SPECIALIZED set of skills, this is delusional.
(Unless you meant reading, writing, and arithmetic, in which case mea culpa.)
4. more computer programming in high school
I taught myself assembler (machine) language right out of college for IBM over 35 years ago.
The knowledge of boolean algebra, as well as other abstract concepts, required to program useful systems is far beyond the capabilities of 90% of the population. And half of those %10 that 'get it' perform it poorly.
And please explain why one should learn computer programming if they are not going to be a computer programmer?
5. learning more about nutrition and health
Like eggs are bad for you? Or eggs are good for you?
Or fats are bad for you? And carbs are bad for you? And sugar is VERY bad for you?
Of course I exaggerate, but we can all agree that drugs and alcohol are bad for you, right?
So we're gonna attack the drug problem - like we haven't been trying - while we're at it? Right on!
6. and last, but not least..learning about life consequences since parents aren't doing their job
You know how we ALL learn about life consequences?
WHEN WE SEE THEM HAPPEN FOR REAL!
P.S. I agree that we could use much more expansive and specific trade schooling for students who are interested, coupled with a certificate of proficiency after passing the course requirements and a licensing exam.
Last edited by PamelaIamela; 04-02-2019 at 09:53 PM..
Here is the main problem with America's public education system:
YOU ALL SUCK AS PARENTS.
They send unhouse-broken brats to school and expect the teachers to socialize and civilize them, before they can begin teaching. Just the opposite of the way we were, when my generation went to school.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
