Quote:
Originally Posted by goodtype
Why is everyone blaming the schools for societies issues?
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Schools aren't being blamed for society's issues, but a lot of people are blaming schools for failing to adequately educate our country's children.
A major indicator of schools as the problem is the fact that U.S. students' performance on international comparisons declines the longer they are in school. Our 4th graders are average, internationally, but our high school students are at or near the bottom.
A lot of people interpret this as parents sending their kids to school adequately prepared to learn, but the schools are dropping the ball on adequately educating them beyond the early elementary years.
There are several books about the decline in our public schools and what some of the causes are.
Here's just a few:
The War Against Excellence: The Rising Tide of Mediocrity
("Yecke is a former U.S. Department of Education Commissioner for Minnesota. Her volume is the latest in a stream of books by a multitude of authors in recent years exposing unpleasant truths about government schools.
This stream is fighting a broader current. School districts and employee unions invest mightily in public relations to keep parents, taxpayers and politicians convinced that "public education" is doing wonderfully, but just needs more money. "The War Against Excellence" pulls back the curtain to reveal that over the last 20 years or so, middle schools — usually sixth grade to eighth grade — have been infested with an alarmingly anti-academic mindset.")
The War Against Excellence [Michigan Education Report]
Angry Parents, Failing Schools
("Synopsis: Something's happening in our nation's schools. Test scores are down. Some students can't read, write, or do math. Angry parents are forming activist groups. Administrators are stonewalling. How did we get in this mess?")
Amazon.com: Angry Parents, Failing Schools: Books: Elaine K. Mcewan
Class Warfare: Besieged Schools, Bewildered Parents, Betrayed Kids and the Attack on Excellence
("...offers a first-hand account of the Great American Education War being waged from coast to coast, including the reading wars, math wars, testing wars, and other schoolyard scuffles reported almost daily by the nation’s media. Martin Rochester takes the reader on a field trip that begins with his own upper-middle class suburban school district in St. Louis and then moves on to inner-city locales and some of the best private schools, in showing how “pack pedagogy” has steamrolled parent resistance in promoting disasters such as whole-language, fuzzy math, multiple intelligences theory, teacher-as-coach, the therapeutic classroom, and all the other latest fads found in today’s schools.
A college professor, Rochester became deeply involved in public education as a result of his children’s misadventures in the classroom. After several years of trying to improve the status quo as a dogged volunteer, he graduated from involved parent to informed critic of a system in which “progressive” educators continue to assault the techniques of traditional schooling (ability-grouping, grades, homework, etc), allow nonacademic diversions to crowd out academic study, and subordinate a commitment to excellence to an obsession with “equity.” As a result of his experiences, Rochester concludes that all children are being victimized, not only the most gifted, but especially “average” students and those lower achieving kids whose needs are now supposedly driving the entire curriculum.
Martin Rochester began as a concerned parent and wound up creating a fever chart of what is wrong in our nation’s classrooms.")
Amazon.com: Class Warfare: Besieged Schools, Bewildered Parents, Betrayed Kids and the Attack on Excellence: Books: J. Martin Rochester
Ed School Follies: The Miseducation of America's Teachers
("In seeking reasons for the dismal state of contemporary education in the United States, Kramer focuses on teacher training. During the 1988-89 school year, she visited 14 schools of education in New York, Tennessee, Michigan, Southern California, Washington, and Texas, observing classes and interviewing students and professors. In this account, she concludes that most students are idealistic and eager, but are being misguided. She found students woefully ignorant of subject matter, while sometimes lacking in communication skills. Kramer maintains that new students are forced to abandon the instruction of information and knowledge in favor of theories in developing pupil self-esteem, indiscriminate passing, and reforming society. This will certainly be a controversial book. It presents a critical viewpoint and should be required reading for all school administrators, professors of education, prospective teachers, and concerned parents.")
Amazon.com: Ed School Follies: The Miseducation of America's Teachers: Books: Rita Kramer
Parents who are actively involved and paying attention to what is going on in their children's education are becoming increasingly fed up with the status quo.
'Helicopter parents' or not, they're quickly reaching the tipping point. More parents than ever do not want their children forced to be the dumbed-down, captive recipients of what started out to be well-meaning social engineering but with the advent of the global economy (
The World is Flat, anyone?) has turned into a lower standard of living threat as we continue to stand by and watch other countries do a much better job of educating their students.
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