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If we want our kids to perform to high standards we need to hold THEM to high standards. We need to quit blaming everyone else when they don't do what THEY should do to learn. It is their JOB to learn. IMO, the biggest problem with our education system is our kids know that it's everyone elses job to make them learn but not their job to learn.
We need to bring back summer school, start Saturday school for failing students and stop passing kids who failed!! Kids who are failing need to go into remediation as soon as possible and we need to quit trying to make it painless for them.
I think you are on to something here.
When our son was in the 4th grade or so, I asked him why he was putting so little effort into his projects and he told that it made no difference to the teacher what he turned in. She said, "Good job," no matter what you slapped together.
He also said that if they ran soccer like they ran school, nobody would want to play.
When our son was in the 4th grade or so, I asked him why he was putting so little effort into his projects and he told that it made no difference to the teacher what he turned in. She said, "Good job," no matter what you slapped together.
He also said that if they ran soccer like they ran school, nobody would want to play.
We are so worried about protecting children's egos that we're failing to educate them. In life, everyone does not get a trophy and the ones who work harder are often the winners AND it's YOUR fault if you don't work hard enough.
You're right, and your son is smart, if sports were run like school (mostly due to parental pressure), there'd be no reason to play. No one could win. It would be an unorganized disaster.
Why is it ok to expect team members to perform in sports but not in school? It's taboo for teachers to complain that children don't work up to their ability or take school seriously. These complaints are met with YOU (the teacher) didn't make it interesting enough. I have students who do everything but their work in class and they keep asking me what "I" am going to do about the fact these students are failing.
I have one girl I've moved to several locations in the class, she won't pick up a pencil, she won't turn in an assignment, all she wants to do is talk and disrupt the class and I had to fill out a form the other day detailing what "I" am going to do to correct this situation...(sending her to the office gets my hand slapped because I should know how to handle this in class....it's chronic...calls home have not helped, moving her seat has not helped, giving her failing grades has not helped....I got accused of embarrassing her when I tried standing right over her and asking her questions in class... I'm open to suggestions here...)
especially the quote about how the kids being bused to the suburban schools are not doing any better then before....suburban schools that consistently rank as some of the best high schools in the nation--when you look at real standards like graduation rates, scores on AP/ACT/SAT tests, etc. (not just how many take an AP test...). Make you wonder what the missing denominator is--maybe the STUDENT??
Read the article and how the legislature was pulling funding for the Minneapolis and Duluth programs.
Duluth used the desegregation money to create magnet schools. One, the music magnet school, is incredible. It is in a suburban location with a new building and an awesome staff. Their test scores are right up there but if you don't live in the neighborhood, your child has to be a minority student to enter the admission lottery. Ours never made the cut.
One of our kids attended the Science & Math magnet in the downtown area. It was ridiculous and we pulled her out before long. Though they did some interesting things -- wading pool of crawfish in the classroom that they tracked like scientists -- for the most part her time was spent teaching other students how to behave. I would ask what she and her "lab partner" did that day and she would say, "I helped "D" learn to take turns," or some other appropriate social behavior that had nothing to do with science or math at all. Also, she said repeatedly that she was bored.
Too bad. She has always been interested in science and now has a degree in biology and is going back to graduate school this fall.
For a time, another one of our kids attended a charter school that was supposed to be an academically rigorous middle school. It too was a joke. The majority of students had behavior problems. Their parents had transferred them hoping they'd get in less trouble than they had in the regular public school. Fights in the hallway and in the classroom.
Our daughter invited several girls over a for a slumber party. One girl claimed she had fallen out of a bunk bed (though everyone slept in their sleeping bags on the floor, they put their backpacks on the bunk bed) and her parents sued. Our insurance company settled, saying this was would protect us from further litigation, and advised us not to have this girl in our home again because her family had numerous such lawsuits going on. Anyway, then she started threatening to beat our daughter up after school for being too "stuck up" to invite her over to the house again. We finally had to call in the police to make the school put an end to this. How anyone learned in this bedlam was beyond me.
On another CD thread, a parent asked for options with her middle school son who had been expelled for participating in "Slap A** Friday," and putting girls in headlocks, pushing them up against the wall and feeling them up. She stated that he had never had any behavior problems at school before and that, in any case, this behavior was similar to the "roughhousing" that went on at home.
What the heck? No wonder he is having trouble figuring out how to behave in public.
I was in a high school hallway where the principal and two teachers observed one girl jump another girl, knock her to the floor and jerk her hair. Both girls were sent back to their classroom with a stern warning.
Good grief. I would have called the cops as this was clearly an assault. At the very least, sent the attacker to detention. But apparently, this is a common occurrence.
Yikes!
It's no wonder that busing urban kids to suburban neighborhoods has such a poor track record. It may spread out the low test scores, but does little educationally as far I've seen or test scores have demonstrated.
We are so worried about protecting children's egos that we're failing to educate them. In life, everyone does not get a trophy and the ones who work harder are often the winners AND it's YOUR fault if you don't work hard enough.
You're right, and your son is smart, if sports were run like school (mostly due to parental pressure), there'd be no reason to play. No one could win. It would be an unorganized disaster.
Why is it ok to expect team members to perform in sports but not in school? It's taboo for teachers to complain that children don't work up to their ability or take school seriously. These complaints are met with YOU (the teacher) didn't make it interesting enough. I have students who do everything but their work in class and they keep asking me what "I" am going to do about the fact these students are failing.
I have one girl I've moved to several locations in the class, she won't pick up a pencil, she won't turn in an assignment, all she wants to do is talk and disrupt the class and I had to fill out a form the other day detailing what "I" am going to do to correct this situation...(sending her to the office gets my hand slapped because I should know how to handle this in class....it's chronic...calls home have not helped, moving her seat has not helped, giving her failing grades has not helped....I got accused of embarrassing her when I tried standing right over her and asking her questions in class... I'm open to suggestions here...)
I don't know how you do it. From what I recall, every classroom my kids were in until high school had at least five students, if not more, with significant emotional/behavioral and/or cognitive difficulties. They disrupted the class constantly and required a great deal of the teacher's attention.
When I was in school, these students would likely have been in a SpEd, self contained classroom where teachers could devote their time to helping them learn to deal with whatever they were dealing with. Torey Hayden wrote a wonderful series of books on her her experiences as a SpEd teachers. My understanding is that she quit teaching when immersion became the new approach. She maintained that some students need a time of focused attention to help them learn to deal with their difficulties before they are reading to participate in main stream classrooms.
From what I call tell, immersion may help the district save money and help parents pretend that their child is the same as other children, but it does not serve the children well.
One little girl who grew up with my daughter was diagnosed as autistic. Her mother insisted she be in a regular classroom even though clearly she was getting little out of it. Anyway, she is an adult now and on disability benefits. She has a part-time job cleaning up at a dog kennel. She is capable of so much more. She was just never in a setting to help her learn how to develop her gifts and talents.
The United States was founded, formed and grew to international prominence with virtually no government involvement in schooling. Before the advent of government-controlled schools, literacy was high (91-97% in the North, 81% in the South), private and community schools proliferated. For the first 150 years of America's settlement and the first 50 to 75 years of the nation's existence, government schooling as it is known today did not exist. Early America was arguably the freest civil society that has ever existed.
This freedom extended to education, which meant that parents were responsible for, and had complete control of, their children's schooling. There were no accrediting agencies, no regulatory boards, and no teacher certification requirements. Parents could choose whatever kind of school or education they wanted for their children.
In Pennsylvania since 2000, enrollment has declined by 26,960 while schools have hired 32,937 more staff members. Most of these new employees pay dues to the PSEA labor union, which runs one of the largest political action committees in the state and heavily funds political campaigns.
Pennsylvania's education spending increased from $4 billion in 1980 to over $25 billion in 2009 - a 133% increase in per-pupil spending, from $6,171 to $14,420 (in 2010 dollars).
If you choose to control your own child’s education (like the first Americans) and incorporate God into education you forfeit nearly $15,000 every year (Approx $180,000 per child over 12 years before compounding interest).
Can government schools teach why abortion is wrong? Is it any wander we have a population who does not understand?
Can it get worse?
In Ontario’s Roman Catholic schools are no longer allowed to teach that abortion is wrong. For the whole story see: http://patriactionary.wordpress.com/...tion-is-wrong/
Is true school Choice the answer? Why can’t parents take their $15,000 per year to the school they choose? Can education compete like it did in the beginning? Education benefits all of society particularly when morality is allowed to be part of it. The schools can accept all comers if they want government $ (otherwise they can do without government $). This may be the single most important issue underlying all of society’s problems. Only the rich can afford education that they choose. Is our society losing it’s roots?
The United States was founded, formed and grew to international prominence with virtually no government involvement in schooling. Before the advent of government-controlled schools, literacy was high (91-97% in the North, 81% in the South), private and community schools proliferated. For the first 150 years of America's settlement and the first 50 to 75 years of the nation's existence, government schooling as it is known today did not exist. Early America was arguably the freest civil society that has ever existed.
This freedom extended to education, which meant that parents were responsible for, and had complete control of, their children's schooling. There were no accrediting agencies, no regulatory boards, and no teacher certification requirements. Parents could choose whatever kind of school or education they wanted for their children.
In Pennsylvania since 2000, enrollment has declined by 26,960 while schools have hired 32,937 more staff members. Most of these new employees pay dues to the PSEA labor union, which runs one of the largest political action committees in the state and heavily funds political campaigns.
Pennsylvania's education spending increased from $4 billion in 1980 to over $25 billion in 2009 - a 133% increase in per-pupil spending, from $6,171 to $14,420 (in 2010 dollars).
If you choose to control your own child’s education (like the first Americans) and incorporate God into education you forfeit nearly $15,000 every year (Approx $180,000 per child over 12 years before compounding interest).
Can government schools teach why abortion is wrong? Is it any wander we have a population who does not understand?
Can it get worse?
In Ontario’s Roman Catholic schools are no longer allowed to teach that abortion is wrong. For the whole story see: Ontario’s Roman Catholic schools no longer allowed to teach that abortion is wrong « Patriactionary
Is true school Choice the answer? Why can’t parents take their $15,000 per year to the school they choose? Can education compete like it did in the beginning? Education benefits all of society particularly when morality is allowed to be part of it. The schools can accept all comers if they want government $ (otherwise they can do without government $). This may be the single most important issue underlying all of society’s problems. Only the rich can afford education that they choose. Is our society losing it’s roots?
Please provide some links. The constitution of every state guarantees a free public education.
** (1640) The literacy rate in colonial New England at this time has been estimated at about 60 percent for adult males, with a figure of about half that for women. It was somewhat less in the southern colonies—50 percent for males and 25 percent for females—given the more agrarian (and, in some places, Catholic) nature of the South, where the education system tended, apart from the segment that catered to the elite, to be less well developed.
**In 1674 the first public school system, supported by taxes, passed in Massachusetts. It required towns with 50 or more families to provide elementary schools, and towns with 100 or more families to provide grammar schools. . . . . Secondary schools were normally found in major cities, such as Boston, Charleston, Philadelphia or New York.
ETA: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/literacy-rates
**At the signing of the U.S. Constitution in 1787, nearly 60 percent of about 3 million American adults could read1 but in the following 19th and 20th centuries, literacy rates in America grew rapidly. In 1870, almost 80 percent of 38.5 million Americans were literate and by 1940, almost 95 percent of 131 million citizens could read. Now, nearly 294 million Americans of about 300 million are literate and most children can read by the time they’re six or seven.
Last edited by Katarina Witt; 11-13-2012 at 05:46 PM..
Reason: Add link, italics
The United States was founded, formed and grew to international prominence with virtually no government involvement in schooling. Before the advent of government-controlled schools, literacy was high (91-97% in the North, 81% in the South), private and community schools proliferated.
20% of the colonial population was black. Assuming that half the population of white colonists were female, that makes only 40% of the colonists the white males represented in your statistic. In other words, the high literacy rate you quote applied only to a minority fraction of the population as a whole.
Moreover, the eeeeebbil gub'mint you're talking about made it legally possible for black people and women to be granted an equal (and not "separate but equal") education, one that the blissful days of governmental noninterference you're imagining -- a sunny Federalist kitchen where adorable moppets gather around to listen to and discuss the newly-issued copy of Common Sense, I'm guessing? -- outright denied or did not guarantee to as much as sixty percent of the actual people who lived there.
There are lots of reasons why families don't do the legwork to get a child enrolled in a magnet school. Ultimately, the reason doesn't matter--the child by default remains in a failing neighborhood school, or worse, the neighborhood school is closed and the child is bused off to another school that doesn't even have the benefit of having ties to his community. The children who want better for themselves have no options if they have a dysfunctional family. Usually, the child can't navigate the process without a parent or legal guardian, especially young children. So when the neighborhood school is left to languish, or worse, to implode through neglect, those children are abandoned, and not through any fault of their own, unless it was the original sin of picking the wrong parents.
I like (and largely agree with) your post.
I'd just like to add that this is a really difficult issue even if parents are education-centric and well-informed. I live in a medium-to-large city where the schools are, on the whole, probably a good bit better than the average neighborhood school in DC, but there are still some schools with really atrocious scores and whatnot. And there are lots of magnet schools here. It's probably easier to get into a magnet school here than many other places, and the school system does bus to magnets (not the case everywhere). The school system here is going through a lot of difficulties due to drastic state funding cuts; the schools seem to be doing the best they can, but they've had to make some very deep cuts in their offerings and lay off a lot of staff.
I look at some of the families I know with several kids -- I'm thinking of two families in particular here, each of which has three kids in three different magnet schools, in three entirely different parts of town. Both of these families take education quite seriously; in one family, both parents have Ph.D.s, in the other, the parents met at a nerdy SLAC and they do really interesting work. And having to deal with that many schools is a tremendous source of stress for them. The people I know who are having the best experiences in the city school systems are there volunteering a lot to keep an eye on things. But when both parents are working and the kids are in different places across town, it's just not workable. Even with the flexibility of white-collar jobs and with the benefit of a lot of education themselves (so they're capable of helping their kids with their homework and mentoring them about college choices and hooking them up with enriching opportunities outside of school), these families are having a hard time making sure their kids are getting what they need. It's been eye-opening for me to see as a parent of an only. How on Earth are parents who are less educated and/or more constrained in terms of time -- maybe they can't make it to parent-teacher conferences because they work multiple jobs, or they can't answer their kids' questions about something they didn't understand in algebra class -- supposed to do it?
Location: An Island off the coast of North America
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I'm a high school student from Long Island. I support school choice..kind of. I do not think that parents should just pick whatever school they want for their children because it's "better". They need to have a reason (bullying, certain course offerings, etc).
I also think that all school districts should have more than one school per grade level (that means more than one HS, too). that does not mean billions of dollars should be spent building new schools. One word: CONSOLIDATION
In districts where there is only one high school, students that are being bullied severely are trapped and students that are very smart but their high school doesn't have AP classes can't reach their full potential.
How on Earth are parents who are less educated and/or more constrained in terms of time -- maybe they can't make it to parent-teacher conferences because they work multiple jobs, or they can't answer their kids' questions about something they didn't understand in algebra class -- supposed to do it?
This is a question that is literally guiding my entire life as well as my professional work.
No one has ever been able to provide a decent answer to it yet. In a thread of a few weeks ago, people pretty much concluded that it is OK for students with stay-at-home, volunteerista-type moms (always upper-middle class, largely privileged) to receive certain "perks", such as mother's choice of teachers, the principle's "ear" (whatever that "ear" means), etc. All this because they "work" there so they deserve something back. Never mind that "working" does not equal "volunteering", never mind that having time to volunteer (supposedly for the good of community as opposed to personal advantages) - is a luxury in and of itself!
When you continue to probe, they just throw the ol', pathetic rhetoric that "people make choices".
I found the whole tone of that thread to be really sickening, I stated it as such, and then I apparently stepped on toes and ruffled feathers - so they censored the living lights out of my posts.
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(sending her to the office gets my hand slapped because I should know how to handle this in class....it's chronic...calls home have not helped, moving her seat has not helped, giving her failing grades has not helped....I got accused of embarrassing her when I tried standing right over her and asking her questions in class... I'm open to suggestions here...)
How education started
