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I agree. It has to do with parents thinking their child is a special snowflake and NEVER to blame for anything and NOT RESPONSIBLE for their own learning.
How did we get here? When I was a kid, I knew that school was my job. Lord help me if a teahcher called home. I wouldn't have been able to sit down for a month. I wouldn't have dreamed of talking back to a teacher or, blatently, not paying attention (texting, twittering, facebooking or playing temple run during class like kids do today). If a teacher caught me, unintentionally, daydreaming, I prayed she didn't call home. It was YES MA'AM the rest of the day in hopes I could get on her good side.
I wasn't the greatest student but I wouldn't have pulled 1/10th of what kids pull today and get away with. As a teacher, all I can do is take a phone away but they get it back at the end of the hour so the punishment is they have to do what they were supposed to in the first place which is not use their phone during the day. No wonder they whip them out. If they get away with it, they get to play. If they don't, they just end up doing what they were supposed to in the first place so there's no real punishment here. Seriously, they need to take the phone or ipod until the following Monday.
It was 1956 and I had Mr. Schumann and we boys soon learned we didn't mess around in his class. While we might chew gum or throw a spitball in other classes we knew Mr. Schumann would never tolerate such a thing because he had eyes in the back of his head. He had a special knack of grabbing an errant boy by the back of his neck applying pressure in just the right way it induced temporary paralysis. He also had the Board of Education and I can tell you when he applied it it really smarted.
Imagine a teacher doing that today. Yeah, lawyers galore.
But after learning the rules during the first week or two the board never had to be used again, it was all "Yes, sir" and "No, sir" and we learned.
Fast forward to 1969 to when Mr. Schumann retired the newspaper wrote an article about him and it was then we learned he was among the very first wave of soldiers storming Omaha Beach in Normandy on D-Day ending the war in Germany on the Elbe River. Having gone through all that, just watch the first 10 minutes of "Saving Private Ryan" and you'll understand Mr. Schumann wasn't about to take a bunch of disrespect from some punk fourth grader or his parents.
But, of course, Mr. Schumann called home that evening to tell about my meeting with the board whereupon I got to enjoy another meeting with the board.
People discuss if private or public schools are better and it isn't the school it is the students. In private school they'd just kick you out and off you would go to public school.
It was 1956 and I had Mr. Schumann and we boys soon learned we didn't mess around in his class. While we might chew gum or throw a spitball in other classes we knew Mr. Schumann would never tolerate such a thing because he had eyes in the back of his head. He had a special knack of grabbing an errant boy by the back of his neck applying pressure in just the right way it induced temporary paralysis. He also had the Board of Education and I can tell you when he applied it it really smarted.
Imagine a teacher doing that today. Yeah, lawyers galore.
But after learning the rules during the first week or two the board never had to be used again, it was all "Yes, sir" and "No, sir" and we learned.
Fast forward to 1969 to when Mr. Schumann retired the newspaper wrote an article about him and it was then we learned he was among the very first wave of soldiers storming Omaha Beach in Normandy on D-Day ending the war in Germany on the Elbe River. Having gone through all that, just watch the first 10 minutes of "Saving Private Ryan" and you'll understand Mr. Schumann wasn't about to take a bunch of disrespect from some punk fourth grader or his parents.
But, of course, Mr. Schumann called home that evening to tell about my meeting with the board whereupon I got to enjoy another meeting with the board.
People discuss if private or public schools are better and it isn't the school it is the students. In private school they'd just kick you out and off you would go to public school.
What's wrong with education today is the students. They don't come to learn. They know their parents will side with them against the teacher and the parents know the admins will side with them against the teacher so the teacher's hands are tied. And then we're told we just don't know how to manage our classrooms.
I agree. It has to do with parents thinking their child is a special snowflake and NEVER to blame for anything and NOT RESPONSIBLE for their own learning.
How did we get here? When I was a kid, I knew that school was my job. Lord help me if a teahcher called home. I wouldn't have been able to sit down for a month. I wouldn't have dreamed of talking back to a teacher or, blatently, not paying attention (texting, twittering, facebooking or playing temple run during class like kids do today). If a teacher caught me, unintentionally, daydreaming, I prayed she didn't call home. It was YES MA'AM the rest of the day in hopes I could get on her good side.
I wasn't the greatest student but I wouldn't have pulled 1/10th of what kids pull today and get away with. As a teacher, all I can do is take a phone away but they get it back at the end of the hour so the punishment is they have to do what they were supposed to in the first place which is not use their phone during the day. No wonder they whip them out. If they get away with it, they get to play. If they don't, they just end up doing what they were supposed to in the first place so there's no real punishment here. Seriously, they need to take the phone or ipod until the following Monday.
But not all parents were like that. My own parents were shockingly uninvolved in my education, except for my father the doctor threatening to disown me if I brought home a C. Anything less than perfect was unacceptable. I nearly failed eighth grade just trying to see if anyone would intervene. Only moving to another state broke my downward spiral.
Other kids had different varieties of dysfunction in their lives, often known only to those close to the family. One boy's father went up to the school after a teacher called, called the teacher a racial slur, and beat his son bloody in front of the principal. There were a good solid core of families that had appropriate values, but that was not universal by any means.
The students at the private school where I finished eighth grade was full of dopers and dummies whose parents were paying a ton of money to a school that was pretty much guaranteed to keep them until graduation and grant them a diploma without kicking them out. It was all about the money, and the parents had plenty of that.
The fifties and sixties did offer a more stable life for most students, where very few children were born out of wedlock or had parents who divorced. That began changing drastically in the seventies and eighties. These days, there are more babies born to unwed women under 30 than to those with husbands.
I can assure you that most of my students are from a demographic that most decidedly DON'T consider their childre to be special snowflakes at all. Many of them are being raised by their grandmothers because their mothers consider themselves too special to spend their time with the children they created. If anyone is a special snowflake here, it is the "mothers".
Pretty well sums up the frustrations of many teachers.
The Finland example is a perfect case. All the virtues of the Finnish educational system are touted while ignoring the demographic and social welfare programs that make the educational goals and objectives possible. Finland also has a strong vocational component which is intergral to the success of their students. The current administration is unwilling to recognize vocational needs and instead focuses on a singular path to college for all. This is evident in terms of the testing and standards used to measure progress.
I think a lot can be learned from Finland and other societies, but I think we need to be careful about just copying their model just because it works. We need to understand why it works first, and we need to understand why education in general seems to work better in some societies.
I think the real problem is that people in this society are not working together to solve educational problems. There are too many political agendas that are finding their way into the school system, and I think sources of blame can be found on both sides of the political spectrum.
My first culprit would be those god-awful locally-controlled, corrupt, manipulative school boards who are often staffed/occupied by people with very narrow religious and world-view political agendas, and want to use the school board as a venue to brainwash children so that they all conform to their worldview. You know, the ones who go around saying "We need more prayer in school. We need God in school." They're the biggest problem we have. Because they won't leave education alone. It's not enough to trust the education system to teach their children essential knowledge that has been established by the scientific method or classical methods of experimentation; they have to make sure it doesn't teach little Johnny anything that conflicts with their religious and political views. I would start with them first. Don't even worry about teachers unions or anything else until you get these filfthy rodents out of the education system. Only then can you begin to worry about other parts of the education system.
But yes, once you take care of that problem, by all means, let's take a look at everything from whether teachers are doing their jobs to whether administration knows how to run a school. The problem here is that parents, school boards, teachers, and administration are not working together as a team. I think it really starts with school board members and parental activists who use the school system to push a political agenda. If there's going to be a political agenda in our schools, it should be similar to that of the developing countries of the world, who see the school system as a way to germinate the seeds of home-grown talent and seek to use that talent to compete with the rest of the world in a war of intellect. It shouldn't use to cast doubt on scientific findings that show that humans did in fact evolve from a common ancestor and that these same humans are causing the earth to warm and depleting our resources faster than they can be replenished. We can debate such nonsense if we want, but other countries will proceed to leave our children in the dust and laugh at us later.
What's wrong with education today is the students. They don't come to learn. They know their parents will side with them against the teacher and the parents know the admins will side with them against the teacher so the teacher's hands are tied. And then we're told we just don't know how to manage our classrooms.
I agree. You have to want to learn to actually learn.
Another nations education system might look good, but we have to account for cultural and societal differences.
You're hated because you: don't know anything about teaching, have a pension that you don't contribute to, only work 7.5 hours a day, have 4 months a year off, have the audacity to take jobs away from normal people during those 4 months, don't pay for your health care, are turning the kids into robots, can't be fired, belong to a powerful union that makes school board members piddle in their drawers.
Did I miss anything?
I'm being sarcastic folks and just repeating things I've seen on this forum.
I would like to add to all of this two other things. Where I am on Monday the school day starts an hour later that Tues - Fri, because the teachers need to take that time away from the students in order to do their job. And on top of the federal holidays off with pay they occasionally get what I call a "friggin teacher day" also. I think teachers have it very well and because I have had children in the public school system I can honestly say most of them are over praised just for being teachers and aren't all that great.
Blamed for something well beyond your control. You are blamed for being a peepee poor parent when you are not the parent. Of course you are not the parent, you're the teacher, but an increasing number of people seem to want assign teachers with parental responsibilities.
Another way to put it is you are being blamed for the peepee poor level of parenting practiced by an increasing number of "parents" during the most important years which is the first four or five.
Johnny doesn't know colors, can't count to 100, has never seen the inside of a library and whose parents never sat down with him to read a book. To keep Johnny entertained they plopped him down in front of the boob tube tuned to Square Bob Sponge Pants for hours and hours on end.
If Johnny is a little hyperactive and hard to handle let's calm him down by feeding him drugs. Drugs are good for control but when it dumbs him down let's blame the teachers.
And it has nothing to do with left or right wing.
The idea of giving my son drugs came from teachers, not me. More than once I have had a teacher recommend such a thing and it was me to say no. Children are hyperactive, short attention spanned and still learning. I is my job at home so see that homework is done and that they are paying attention. A teachers job at school to make sure they stay at their desk, don't disrupt the class and pay attention. If you can't hold their attention the problem may be you.
They avoid thinking like it was an ordeal in the dentist's chair.
They take their cues from slak-jawed hate radio jocks who tell them who to hate.
These are the people who hated school when they were kids and struggled in everything past 6th grade. They already hate schools and teachers. Now, a major political party is trying to cash in on the hate.
If you can't hold their attention the problem may be you.
I have to disagree. I can't make EVERY single lesson interactive and fun just because johnny can't disconnect from face book and his ipod and wants to watch movies all day. It all starts at home so if i can't keep the child's attention, then as parents what are YOU doing to make sure they are successful in my class? I have only a few students that act that way in my class but they are few and i have sat down with them and asked them if they needed help, offered to stay after school for them and even spoke to their parents. At this point, there is only so much a teacher can do and it starts being a home issue. Trust me, i know.
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No wonder they whip them out. If they get away with it, they get to play. If they don't, they just end up doing what they were supposed to in the first place so there's no real punishment here. Seriously, they need to take the phone or ipod until the following Monday.
What's wrong with education today is the students. They don't come to learn. They know their parents will side with them against the teacher and the parents know the admins will side with them against the teacher so the teacher's hands are tied. And then we're told we just don't know how to manage our classrooms. 
NEWS--I am a teacher, why am I hated?
