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Remedial Suzy and her peers might not have been born 40 years ago or lived a very short life. New medical technology have made premature children survive, prolonged the lives of children with all sorts of diseases that would have ended their lives before childhood was over. Some of these children ended up with various learning disabilities that are addressed by special education, but also result in life-time limitations.
If you are going to blame John Dewey, might as well blame Jerry Lewis too.
The original post and the posts hog-piling on top of it are simply working from a demonstrably incorrect presumption.
First, the idea that education is "worse" now holds no water. Overall test scores and other educational quality indicators have stayed the same over the last 40 years, BUT that's despite much higher enrollment levels, and lower dropout levels, especially higher enrollment and graduation rates among historically lower-performing Black and Hispanic groups. Indeed, the fact that the achievement gap has narrowed substantially explains how this is mathematically possible.
Better yet, current 4th and 8th graders appear on track to post overall gains beyond this already fairly impressive performance.
We have fallen behind internationally, but that's solely due to class issues. There is no other OECD nation that has a similar concentration of poverty in individual schools that we do. Put another way, performance among students in no-poverty districts ranks at the very top (i.e. Finnish levels of performance). Students coming from very high poverty districts, which we have a lot of, score near the bottom of the OECD. But that's not an indictment of our educational system (see the achievement gap narrowing noted above), but of our acceptance of basic inequality.
The decline in public education in America began after World War I, and has continued ever since by design.
Progressives like John Dewey placed less emphasis on facts, knowledge, and scholarship, and believed that any child knowing more than another produces low self esteem in the less knowledgeable.
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Today's effort in the "dumbing down of America" is "Common Core;" a ruse that would have us believe that the goal is better education, but it is the same old philosophy of making sure that no child knows more than another, and that none know much of anything. Thus, they can be molded into perfect societal harmony, and easily controlled.
"The Progressives (aka Socialists) said they wanted to transform the society. What was their method? Working through education, they would socially engineer children to be simpler and more cooperative. Remarkably, they ended up keeping the poor in their place. Ignorance was the tool of choice.
My brother dropped out engineering school to become a body man and has made a good living for many years. Unlike me with my college degrees, he doesn't take his work home with him. His time off is time off and he didn't go $25K into debt to get his education. It's not a bad career choice especially with so many with degrees who are out of work.
Folks now think that college degree has to be had to do anything in the world. It does help but now days so many have one who sit and do nothing employers don't really care anymore. I was very happy the boy got that job as it is something he can lean back on if need be...........or just do it for a living. Being happy IMO is more important than some college degree and a fancy office job. What I tell mine all the time. Hell I'm not happy.............lol. I should look into working on cars maybe?? lol
Yes they get educated..........but the smart children have to sit back and watch the ones who crawl around and can't count so they catch up. That is the BS that is destroying our education system. Let the smart kids fly.............let the dummis crawl. Pretty simple stuff unless your a liberal who think everything needs to be fair.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) ensures that all children with disabilities are entitled to a free appropriate public education to meet their unique needs and prepare them for further education, employment, and independent living. Prior to IDEA, over 4 million children with disabilities were denied appropriate access to public education. Many children were denied entry into public school altogether, while others were placed in segregated classrooms, or in regular classrooms without adequate support for their special needs (Katsiyannis, Yell, Bradley, 2001; Martin, Martin, Terman, 1996; U.S. Department of Education, 2010).
Teaching is a much harder job today partly because of the mainstreaming of students with disabilities but I've found that schools do a very good job of helping all students succeed. In the public schools I know about, students with special needs have 1:1 aids and they're pulled out for small group lessons. Moreover, the other students learn that just because someone learns differently or looks different doesn't mean they are less of a person. Teachers are trained to teach all learners, and that means the bright ones too, whether they have a physical disability or not. Think of Stephen Hawking, one of the smartest people in the world.
I'm not someone that thinks all is rosy in education. Who does? But it's a complicated problem with issues of funding, parenting (or lack of it), unfunded mandates, charter schools taking away public school funding, mandates like common core that are not vetted fully, etc, etc. I think there are numerous people and groups to blame for getting us into this situation. I'm not sure how we're going to fix it.
Teaching is a much harder job today partly because of the mainstreaming of students with disabilities but I've found that schools do a very good job of helping all students succeed. In the public schools I know about, students with special needs have 1:1 aids and they're pulled out for small group lessons. Moreover, the other students learn that just because someone learns differently or looks different doesn't mean they are less of a person. Teachers are trained to teach all learners, and that means the bright ones too, whether they have a physical disability or not. Think of Stephen Hawking, one of the smartest people in the world.
I'm not someone that thinks all is rosy in education. Who does? But it's a complicated problem with issues of funding, parenting (or lack of it), unfunded mandates, charter schools taking away public school funding, mandates like common core that are not vetted fully, etc, etc. I think there are numerous people and groups to blame for getting us into this situation. I'm not sure how we're going to fix it.
Yes it is a complicated problem because the government is in the mix. Students who need special ed should get it.......but not sitting in the same classroom and expected to do the same work as others. Hell my kids sit around at school bored off their asses waiting for others to catch up. I used to have em in private school but it got too expensive. Twins cost money.........lol. They read Stephen King books lately and the teachers get on em but when you drop an A on every test what can the teacher do? Oh they go tell the ****how to spell his name. So it goes. Not that I have anything against the** but the smart kids are being left behind too. Not challenged. Then half the time they are schooled on antibullying crap which all the kids know is just pure BS or global warming nonsense. I just tell the kids you gotta just make it to the end. My oldest is out after this year and he is ready to go.
Last edited by toobusytoday; 07-17-2014 at 10:55 AM..
Reason: removed inappropriate language
Folks now think that college degree has to be had to do anything in the world. It does help but now days so many have one who sit and do nothing employers don't really care anymore. I was very happy the boy got that job as it is something he can lean back on if need be...........or just do it for a living. Being happy IMO is more important than some college degree and a fancy office job. What I tell mine all the time. Hell I'm not happy.............lol. I should look into working on cars maybe?? lol
It's been a while since I've seen a study on this but the last study I read on happiness and career choice had auto mechanic in the #1 spot because it's meaningful work, they make good money and they do not take their work home with them. My brother is the best dad. His job allowed him to do things like come in at 4:00 AM so he could leave early and go to a little league game. All that mattered is he delivered the cars when promised.
I was fortunate to land a flexible engineering gig when my kids were young. Right now I'm a teacher and IMO this would be one of the worst jobs to have if you have kids. I take things to grade home with me every single night and stay late 4-5 days per week tutoring kids and setting up labs. There's no way I could have volunteered a my girl's school if I'd had this job. I did it all the time as an engineer. My brother did it all the time as a mechanic (just took long lunches).
You don't need a degree to have a good paying job that gives you a sense of accomplishment and allows you to have a good life. Unfortunately, we're teaching our kids they have to go to college and that is nonsense. Many jobs do not require a degree and many aren't worth the cost of the degree.
I did a pay back analysis on my engineering degree compared to someone who started working on the assembly line (unskilled) the day I started school and found that the break even point by the time you considered the cost of my education and the income I did not earn while I was in college was 25 years (NOT counting OT opportunities). I ended up having a 17 year engineering career before getting downsized out. The only saving grace here is the simple fact I never had that assembly line job and the last two years of my education were on a full scholarship so I did better by getting the education but the fact is someone who started on the assembly line the day I stared school did better than me with a lot less effort.
People need to do what makes them happy not what everyone tells them to do. For me, education made sense because I didn't have options without one. For my brother it didn't make sense because he had options. Make sure your son knows he has the right to choose working on cars.
Part of the problem is no one can agree on the goals of education. Just within this thread, there are multiple references that cloud the lines between training and education, between developing critical thought/creative problem solving and knowledge. And to an extent that's okay, perhaps that discussion and conflict keeps us from veering too far in any one direction. Certainly there's a need to educate kids so they can problem solve, but there's also room to train them how to do simple math, or have a knowledge of history. I would contend we can't sacrifice any one component of "education" (in its braodest definition) for another. The problem is measuring success (and I don't mean measuring for teacher pay or school funding, I mean measuring to assess how we are doing and work to improve. Too many moving parts, but I'd rather we work on it, argue about it, than to accept "the curriculum of 19XX was fine, let's just stick with that forever.
The original post and the posts hog-piling on top of it are simply working from a demonstrably incorrect presumption.
First, the idea that education is "worse" now holds no water. Overall test scores and other educational quality indicators have stayed the same over the last 40 years, BUT that's despite much higher enrollment levels, and lower dropout levels, especially higher enrollment and graduation rates among historically lower-performing Black and Hispanic groups. Indeed, the fact that the achievement gap has narrowed substantially explains how this is mathematically possible.
Better yet, current 4th and 8th graders appear on track to post overall gains beyond this already fairly impressive performance.
We have fallen behind internationally, but that's solely due to class issues. There is no other OECD nation that has a similar concentration of poverty in individual schools that we do. Put another way, performance among students in no-poverty districts ranks at the very top (i.e. Finnish levels of performance). Students coming from very high poverty districts, which we have a lot of, score near the bottom of the OECD. But that's not an indictment of our educational system (see the achievement gap narrowing noted above), but of our acceptance of basic inequality.
Sorry, I think you are actually operating on a poor presumption here.
Your whole post is basing quality of education solely on test scores. "Test scores" and "quality of education" are not even close to the same thing. Sometimes, in fact, they are even in opposition (for example, spending time teaching to the test often sacrifices real quality learning experiences).
Test scores do not reflect quality of education, so you can't use test scores as an argument to prove that the quality of education hasn't declined.
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