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are you kidding me? try googling and see what you get. I can't link them because it is a copyright infringement but trust me, there are more than I care to count.
Most guys wear shirts that have the name of the company on them, e.g. "Abercrombie", or the name of alcholic beverages, or sports teams. My brother once wore a T-shirt to school that said "Budweiser, Breakfast of Champions". Now he might have looked dumb in that shirt, but it didn't say, "Allergic to Algebra".
All who fail the school system, did it all by themselves.
Both public and private systems try (but with the private, the parent has a direct investment, but even that does not guarantee success),
but if the student does not want to learn, and has little parental support,
guess what - no matter how much is spent, you're not going to learn a darn thing.
With regard to private schools, your argument is valid. But for the public system it holds no water.
For most schools in the private system, you get out what you put in... However for most public schools, you are lucky if you've received the tools needed for success by the time you reach 5th grade. The odds are stacked heavily against you from day one. If Mom and Dad didn't raise you well enough to make up for the failed education you will likely receive, and be prepared to send you to a private school if need be, you're out of luck and at a severe disadvantage.
Most people who leave the public school system smarter than when they went in, are smarter because they received superior educations from a source outside of school (the History Channel, anyone?) And many of these folks also have parents who prepared them in advance for the pitfalls of the failed system, so that they wouldn't inherit its failures and be doomed to fail in life as a result. Not all who fail, fail of their own choosing.
We have to remember also, that in the private system parents have more freedom to support their children than in the public system. This is experience talking. In my 4 years of private high school, my mother had more of a say in how I was educated than in any of the 8 years prior to then (all of which were spent in public schools).
I wish I could say that, on average, a student's success in the public system is determined by how much effort he/she puts forth... But unfortunately that is not the case and hasn't been for over 30 years.
I can tell you that going into a private college-prep high school having spent 8 years in the public school system, was far rougher and more extreme than it should have been. Despite having excellent (some would say superb) writing skills and strong will and determination, I did not pass Algebra I until my Junior year. In fact I struggled with anything requiring more than basic computational skills. To this day, I cannot do Algebra.
Even so, I graduated and even went on to earn a bachelors degree... But you would have to be crazy to think I wasn't failed by the public school system. The only thing that kept me from being unprepared for life by high school graduation, was going through a private high school that actually gave me the freedom to make something of myself (and make up for years of being failed by a horrible school system). And my story is just one of millions; there is an entire generation of people who've been through what I have.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ceece
I'm not seeing a controversy here. Oh, people will make it one and give stuff like this way more attention that it would have received otherwise but whatever. It's a joke shirt that most people would wear a couple times for laughs then forget about becasue it's not actually trendy.
Besides, nobody bitched about the t-shirt I wore in highschool that read "Home of the Whoppers"...lol.
Ding ding ding, we have a winner!!!
It took 2 pages and 20 replies before someone finally figured out the message of this thread. Good job!
Last edited by CornerstoneEagle04; 09-22-2011 at 10:26 PM..
And those are just the college students! If 70% of all college students have to take remedial courses after beginning their first year, the majority went to public high schools, and they are the best students these schools are producing... It can mean only one thing.
You're not quite at rock bottom yet. But, yeah, it's horrific. I used to teach an Intro IR Theory class with 100+ students and I'd swear the American kids all submitted stuff written by texdav (the foreign students did really well):
Quote:
Originally Posted by texdav
it is a trust fund as written i the law that createdit. certainly it is a specail one in that it cre4ats trustee;that is the only one who it can be invested in;a trusteee who detewrmines the interest rate often below noraml interest rates. But like nayhting their is still moeny invested its a fund. But its becomeing more a ponzi skeem as one is paid put of thecontributions of another as the fund does not meet ralirty of investing. if that were true then i the 90s; the fund would have grown quickly on increased interest while less so since.it appears more and more that it was created as a can lose skeem for more mney for government to borrow and spend.But this is the new trust fund called SS that voters bought and their representative put into law and we have to live with what the trustees reproted i that a set return is not gaurnateed at all. I wander if people see governamnt i thsi insatnce as the same as tose who promoted bad mortage loans?Its really the same except it more accdepted in politcians it seems.If this were wall street or private compoan y the madden crowd would be ready to ahng them.
Whatever happened to those "My School Superintendent is a Moron" t-shirts?
[don't buy the clothing in question if it bothers you]
All right, that now makesthree people who've failed to detect the facetious tone of my thread title!
It just goes to show how highly-charged and controversial this issue is. It's as though just mentioning it sucks out all capacity for humor from people.
And yes, folks should not buy the clothing if it bothers them. It is a non-issue in so much as it's not the big deal people make it out to be, and the sexism argument is a flawed one which cannot be made legitimate. But on its own, it is not a non-issue.
The manufacturing of these T-shirts says something about our society and where we are at now, versus three decades ago. It's a tangible representation of how awareness of the public school system's failures has increased. It is also an indicator of how fed-up people are with being cheated out of a good education and pigeonholed as a result.
Truth be told, I'm in favor of these T-shirts. There is nothing inappropriate about them. They are not sexually explicit, contain no toilet humor, and are not otherwise inappropriate by any stretch of the imagination. I wish they were around when I was in public school! If you have no voice, and aren't old enough to vote (but still want to be heard), then expressing what you cannot say with what you wear is your only viable option.
Frankly, the article I cited in the original post is a perfect example of an arrogant attempt by political correctness thugs to agitate, annoy, and dis-inform the general public. It is just one of many. The media is infested with these miscreants who seek to divide people for the sake of making a political statement. They publish their articles hoping to fool people into thinking that what they're reading is actually "news"; in reality, it's nothing more than an attempt to get folks to "feed the troll."
Unfortunately, most people fall for it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mircea
You're not quite at rock bottom yet. But, yeah, it's horrific. I used to teach an Intro IR Theory class with 100+ students and I'd swear the American kids all submitted stuff written by texdav (the foreign students did really well):
I think what you meant to say was "We're not quite at rock bottom yet" (as in, we as a people). I personally didn't hit rock bottom, as you put it, but likely would have had I not been able to escape the educational black hole known as the public school system.
The saddest thing is that for many students (if not most), it's not their fault they're inadequately prepared for life upon graduation. Remember: most of the teachers are a product of the same failed system their students are stuck in; it's a textbook example of the blind leading the blind.
Like I said, if you're confined to the public school system you had better have good parents who can make up for the dereliction of your teachers. If not, you're more than likely doomed to inherit the failures of the system.
Last edited by CornerstoneEagle04; 09-23-2011 at 02:29 PM..
Like I said, if you're confined to the public school system you had better have good parents who can make up for the dereliction of your teachers. If not, you're more than likely doomed to inherit the failures of the system.
I have to disagree with you. When you have a class of students that vary in skill and retention from an average of 0 to 100 how much can you teach in one sitting and have them ALL understand ?
Tracking was gotten rid of years ago in favor of integrating all levels of learners in the same class with the hopes that the smarter learners would pull up the slower learners.
That didn't work..the curriculum has to be dumbed down so the slowest learners can learn and pass those state tests to make AYP and NCLB mandates in order to get their Fed Funds.
When you have a class of students that vary in skill and retention from an average of 0 to 100 how much can you teach in one sitting and have them ALL understand ?
It depends on the class size. Small classes (generally 12 students or fewer) offer significantly more potential for effective instruction than large ones. It has always been this way. Studies have shown that the maximum number of people a person can effectively supervise at any one time is 5 (with 3 being the most desirable number).
Even with vast differences in student skill and retention, your ability to teach effectively is either strengthened or hampered by the number of students you have in your class. It's easier to teach a class of 7 below-average students than one with 30 above-average performers. Knowing your material and how to present it is only half the battle.
Unfortunately, the average public school classroom has no fewer than 15 students and some really do get as large as 30. There just aren't enough teachers in the public system, and there's not a whole lot of motivation among Americans to pursuing teaching jobs. So even though many of the empty positions could be easily filled, no one wants to fill them.
And who can blame them?
Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyTexan
Tracking was gotten rid of years ago in favor of integrating all levels of learners in the same class with the hopes that the smarter learners would pull up the slower learners.
Yes, and it's sobering to think that the U.S. Dept. of Education knew this immediately after the results started coming in, yet did nothing. The "one size fits all" approach to administering curricula does not work, and would never have worked even when society was less selfish than it is today.
This kind of approach is only effective in Socratic method-based academic systems. This is one of the reasons why I'm so in favor of getting rid of the current lecture-based system completely, and replacing it with one based solely on the Socratic method. What we have now is a system that is unacceptably inflexible and unrealistic, especially when compared to the typical workplace environment.
In college, I went through both methods of instruction. I can tell you with absolute certainty that a person learns more spending 15 minutes talking with 3 classmates, than from listening to one person for an entire hour.
If the Department of Education wants high school and college graduates to be prepared for the workplace, they must offer instruction which actually prepares them for the workplace environment. Otherwise, public schools will continue to churn out ''dead weight'' graduates and recruit teachers from that same pool of people.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyTexan
That didn't work..the curriculum has to be dumbed down so the slowest learners can learn and pass those state tests to make AYP and NCLB mandates in order to get their Fed Funds.
It's not the teachers.
Well, the teachers are certainly not the cause of the problem... But they aren't helping to provide a solution, either.
There are so many terrible teachers out there, that poor teacher performance has become the most highly visible mark of failure in the public school system. And it is also the one which affects students the most. Dumbed-down curricula, AYP and NCLB mandates and all the other "behind the scenes" impediments are really nothing compared to the effects of bad teaching.
In fact, quality of teaching is so impactful that good teaching actually helps counter the kind of problems you mentioned. In spite of these issues, good teachers do help students make the best of what has been handed to them. Sadly though, there are far too few of them.
Given the fact that most public school teachers have received the same substandard education as their students, it's only logical to conclude that what they give back is just as bad as what they've received. Garbage in, garbage out.
Oh, and did I mention that the people who set the AYP and NCLB mandates, as well as those who dumb-down the curricula, are also products of that same failed education system?
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