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I graduated in 1965. Teachers were very respected then. Perhaps teachers need to ask themselfs what has changed since then.IMO ;its the toll taken when you have poorer results and enter into politics to the degree they have.
I graduated in 1965. Teachers were very respected then. Perhaps teachers need to ask themselfs what has changed since then.IMO ;its the toll taken when you have poorer results and enter into politics to the degree they have.
Parenting, teacher colleges, math paradigms, reading paradigms, educational laws, special education, lawsuits, entertainment, technology, access to information and politics have all changed since 1965. (the list goes on)
I've asked myself that question but I don't think it really helped me. Change is going to happen in spite of one persons desire. The only thing I can do, as a teacher, is change my approach/ reaction to what happens in the school I choose to work at.
Here are some of the problems that I see with the US educational system:
- Many kids who go through 12 years of schooling, can barely speak, read or write proper English. This is the biggest problem as the quality of education, mostly in public schools is terrible. Until that changes, the teachers will not get the respect they fully deserve.
- Responsibility for childs education, shouldn't be placed on the teachers, the school, the township or the government. THE PARENTS should be responsible for their childs education. Chances are, if the parents dont value propeer education, their children wont either. Somehow, this responsibility has been shifted over the years and decades and needs to be addressed.
- Kids given medication so they can behave in class, as a poster earlier mentioned, is certainly something that needs to be looked at. However, this is simply a mirror image of the larger society we live in. Everything is a disease and sickness, and can be easily solved with these new pills. It makes me absolutely sick to see so many people popping pills at first chance given. Many of our doctors should be executed for treason, for stuffing idiots with chemicals. The saddest thing is that kids have no control over it, even though they are left with consequences later on in life.
- lastly, there needs to be an open dialogue on these issues, and no one should turn their nose up and feel like they are being attacked or disrespected, when they are part of a problem and not a part of a solution. Lets face it, our education system is aweful and needs major changes. Our kids deserve better.
Teachers are NOT responsible for putting kids on these ADHD drugs. Parents and doctors make this decision. I used to be a teacher. We were not allowed to make any suggestions to the parents like "I think Johnny might have..." or "maybe Johnny needs medication". It was up to the parents to confer with a medical professional and/or psychologist. My husband is a teacher and every year, a large percentage of his class is on some kind of behavior medication. Parents sometimes use this as an excuse as to why Johnny can't be held accountable, etc. Often, the child's home life is in a shambles and he lacks a strong role model.
Second, Finland's population is more like the size of metro Atlanta: ATL is estimated to be 5.4 million in January 2012. NYC is up to 19 million now!
In Florida, we are pushing harder than ever for massive amounts of standardized testing in the K-5 grades. In 5th grade, for example, our April FCAT test takes 6 days to administer. 2 days of 70 minute reading test on each day; 2 days of 70 minute math tests, and 2 days of 70 minute science tests. I don't have to tell you that the testing company, Pearson, is making a KILLING on creating, scoring, and updating these tests.
Our new law calls for a multiple choice test in every subject, at every grade level, by 2014. Yep, this means multiple choice test for 2nd grade art, and PE. We have to make sure those slacker art teachers are accountable, by golly!
The sad thing is we are testing our kids to death. It's ALL about the FCAT. Rushing through a year's worth of curriculum by the April test date; plowing through 1 inch thick "test prep" workbooks, and on and on. Drill and kill.
My husband has parents who complain that he is "doing too much math." Aaarrgghhh.....
I taught 1st grade 6 years ago. That curriculum is now kindergarten (my son started K this year).
Meanwhile, in our district of 41,000 students, almost 60% are on free or reduced lunch and 2,300 are flat out homeless!
Wait, if teachers are so highly valued, then why do they pay them so little? Who would want to study so hard to be in the top 10% of their class just to accept a position where they're played so little?
Also, the fact that there's such a small difference between the weak and the strong students indicates to me that the bottom of the class is brought up at the expense of the top students. Either that, or they weed out the lower students to the vocational schools, meaning that the scores being compared to those in the US are from completely different demographics.
One of the main problems with the US education system is that it tries to make the bottom students learn the same material in the same fashion as the top students, and it fails miserably. The corollary to that, though, is that those toward the top of their class truly are among the best and most sought out talent in the world.
Wait, if teachers are so highly valued, then why do they pay them so little? Who would want to study so hard to be in the top 10% of their class just to accept a position where they're played so little?
Also, the fact that there's such a small difference between the weak and the strong students indicates to me that the bottom of the class is brought up at the expense of the top students. Either that, or they weed out the lower students to the vocational schools, meaning that the scores being compared to those in the US are from completely different demographics.
One of the main problems with the US education system is that it tries to make the bottom students learn the same material in the same fashion as the top students, and it fails miserably. The corollary to that, though, is that those toward the top of their class truly are among the best and most sought out talent in the world.
Teacher salaries are not low in comparison to other professions in Finland (starting salaries are, but teachers on average make reasonable salaries) Also, the hours of work for teachers are less than the average teacher work load here and the work is more satisfying because of the respect factor.
The international tests on which Finns are highly ranked take place before the children are funneled into vocational schools so the bottom and top get the same education and do well on the international tests at 15.
Quote:
According to the survey, the strength of the Finnish school system is that it guarantees equal learning opportunities, regardless of social background. Instead of comparison between pupils, the focus is on supporting and guiding pupils with special needs. Very few children need to be made to repeat a year.
The teaching staff in Finnish schools is highly educated. Qualifications for all school levels require a Master of Arts degree including extensive pedagogical study and qualifications in special subjects.
Small children's feelings of safety and motivation are increased by the fact that they are taught by a single teacher. Also, although students receive progress evaluations, scaled grading is not introduced until the fifth year. Finnish schools aim for natural, warm relations between teachers and pupils.
Finland's repeated success in the PISA study has focused widespread international attention on the country's school system and its support for lifelong learning.
Remember when Russia was at the top of the pack in education? Not any longer.
Quote:
Bottom of the league
The survey found that countries where students repeated years more often tended to have worse results overall, with the widest gaps between children from poor and better-off families.
Making students repeat years was most common in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Portugal and Spain.
Other than Finland, seven European countries performed significantly better in literacy than the OECD average: Belgium, Estonia, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Switzerland.
Among those performing significantly worse than average were Italy, Spain, Austria and Greece.
The worst-performing European state was Azerbaijan, coming second-last to Kyrgyzstan, while Russia lay in 43rd place, two places behind Turkey but ahead of Serbia.
Oh, so true. But I think by the time your child hits about ninth grade, you know whether or not he/she is college material. The problem is that colleges are HUGE profit centers and if we eliminated 4-year colleges as an option for 1/3-1/2 of the kids, that would mean a lot of the money would dry up and the administrations would freak out at the loss of tuition $.
Furthermore, since there are far fewer manufacturing jobs, and other jobs that pay decently for non-college grads to do, what job prospects would they have if they did not go to college? When I graduated from high school in the late 80's, people who did not go to college got jobs on the manufacturing lines or (mostly girls) went and worked as bank tellers or secretaries. Most of those jobs are gone. The only job creation has been McJobs from the expansion of mass-market retailers selling goods made overseas.
So VocEd for almost half the population is a good idea...but unfortunately there are far fewer jobs to track these people into.
There are fewer jobs for college grads too. There are just fewer jobs. The only field growing seems to be medical and that will be short lived. We'll have a bubble as the baby boomers age but once they start dying, that market will collapse as well.
I'm afraid our future looks alot like France's present. High unemployment for the under 30 crowd educated or not. We no longer have a manufacturing base. It's all been outsourced to Mexico and China (Our own fault as we demanded the cheapest product instead of the one that protects our interests). I agree on McJobs but what can we do now? The right wing won't let us do something radical like start mining shale oil so we can supply our own oil and, perhaps, even export oil. The world won't stand for us using food (the one thing we do have to export) to shore up our GNP. I'm afraid things look bleak.
If I were a teenager who didn't want to go to college, I'd try to get into either auto repair (people will be forced to keep cars longer by the economy and they will need to repair them) or infrastructure construction. We have a nation of crumbling bridges and roads that will have to be repaired sooner or later. Medical should be good for the next couple of decades so if you get in it now, you'll likely have seniority enough to keep your job when the bubble collapses.
... and the work is more satisfying because of the respect factor.
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This I can testify to. Of all the things I miss about being an engineer, I miss the respect the most. It's funny, income didn't matter then because I held my head high. Now I'm thinking, if you're going to diss me, at least pay me.
I formerly held several corporate positions. There was NO sense of 'walking on eggshells' like I felt when I was a teacher. In corporate, you are only going to get fired if you mess up in a royal fashion. (I was in HR and we only fired people for things like stealing or not doing their jobs (ie running their own company when they were supposed to be making outbound sales calls!)
With teaching, if you don't have tenure (and we never will in FL), you are micromanaged and treated like a temp worker. The HR dept here tells us "Annual contract teachers have no expectation of re-employment." So you are a contract worker, as we used to call them in the corp. HR world. Nobody wants to sign on for a corp job that ends in June. In the "real world", your job is presumed to continue unless you mess up (or the company has a layoff these days). So many administrators now are overworked and stessed out - they take it out on teachers. You are chewed out for not doing "X" so the next time, when you make sure to do "X", they yell at you for doing it! Crazy...
I just want a job where I have at least a chance of a raise. Teacher salaries here in FL are either frozen for years, or flat out going backwards (Manatee County just approved a teacher salary CUT).
The solution for the U.S. is to create another industrial revolution by becoming the world's foremost producer of alternative energy products, and by exporting those goods to other energy markets. It solves all of our problems in one fell swoop. Jobs, at the high end (engineers, scientists) and the low end (production line). Reliance on fossil fuel products. Pollution and environmental concerns.
But the right wing is dead set against this common sense solution and have brainwashed a significant portion of our population to believe that alternative energy is bad and domestic drilling is good. We have a world market for oil so it's not like we keep what we drill anyway. Most people don't know that. Well, most people don't know much of anything.
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and have brainwashed a significant portion of our population to believe that alternative energy is bad and domestic drilling is good. We have a world market for oil so it's not like we keep what we drill anyway. Most people don't know that. Well, most people don't know much of anything.
