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I agree with this as well. And want to note that where I live we have very poor white people who live in the inner city and send their kids to school in inner city schools. We also have a lot of poor white children in foster care in my area due to drug issues of their parents and many of them suffer from prejudice and bias in the school system as well.
You'd think people would be more compassionate of children facing difficulties in life, but you'd be surprised how lowly some teachers view foster kids or kids who are from housing projects or certain neighborhoods. Often due to no fault of the child behavior-wise. My mom intervened last school year with a teacher who was seeking to get a white foster child expelled from the school she teaches at because the teacher was just combattive with the child and when the child would return the argumentative nature of the teacher, the teacher claimed the child was disruptive and a severe behavioral problem in the classroom. My mother had this child the year before and the child came from a very hard background in relation to parents neglecting them but she never had any outrageous problems with the child because she just doesn't speak to children in a mean, disrespectful way that some teachers do.
IMO, and I've seen it first hand as a volunteer in the classroom and with programs I've helped teach at afterschool programs, getting rid of teachers who do not like children or who hold grudges against kids and who bait the kids into poor behavior are a huge issue in public schools. You have to be a certain kind of patient person to deal with a lot of kids on a regular basis. My mom has always had that sort of patience but many educators don't have it and IMO they shouldn't be in the classroom.
The principal who brought me to the inner-city school used to say all the time, "I don't know why people who don't like schoolchildren want to be schoolteachers." I see it all the time, along with the low expectations and the teachers who are just there to babysit and pick up a paycheck. I want to run them out, but there are no replacements available. I say all the time that we have a shortage of INCOMPETENT people--people who are willing to be teachers albeit unable to teach. We can't get enough warm bodies in front of the students as it is, and I don't see that improving.
One of the main problems with the current school funding model is the reliance on property taxes and the resultant disparity between districts with high property values and those with low property values. I think that a VAT such as what Informed Consent supports would be a better model. Then set the per-pupil funding level at a level that will ensure adequate resources. Wealthy communities could still band together for fund-raising to give additional resources to their schools, while the schools in poorer areas would be funded at levels that would enable them to meet their students' needs. One poster indicated that he lived in a state that does just that, California, I think.
Sounds like that local elementary teacher was just being honest.
In my opinion, it's not a teacher's job to compensate for parenting deficits of pupils. It's the teacher's job to teach those that want to learn -- nothing more. Those that don't want to learn probably shouldn't even be allowed in school.
If the schools do not attempt to mitigate the deleterious effects of bad parenting, then our society is writing off the talent of citizens who are born into unfortunate circumstances. Those who don't want to learn in school probably would be interested in making money as quickly as possible. Direct them out of academics into work-related classes that will prepare them to get on a payroll rather than dropping out of school. That will help increase the tax rolls while also getting uneducated young people off the street and out of other people's houses during the day.
How do you force students who don't want to learn(for any reason, just or unjust) to learn? If you can't force them to learn, what do you do with them and how do you keep them from ruining the learning environment for those who do want to learn? Answer those questions and we'll be well on our way towards improving our educational system.
You can't force learning, but you can try to entice children into learning. The problem is that for the last 14 years, we have turned public schools into test prep drill centers. The amount of time spent on testing will drive even the most interested student to boredom. Put disaffected students into a career track that will let them start earning money while still in their teens. If they decide to pursue academics later on in life, then our system lets people go back to school at any age.
I have never said a person’s fate is determined at birth. I came from a poor family. My parents insisted and helped me study. I was able to go from bad schools to best schools based on merit.
Being poor not equal to not having poor education.
So you were born poor, but you had parents who insisted that you study and helped you do it. What if you had been born to parents who instead wanted to party full time and pimp you out. Do you think that might have impeded your ability to be successful as an adult? For students who lost out in the parent lottery, a high-quality educational experience can help them overcome the challenges that beset them when their parents are worse than uninvolved. Or are you okay with just writing off those citizens as if they were trash to be swept aside and then thrown out?
Do you have any understanding of human decency? Do I really need to explain this?
Our “mine” refers to money we earned legally. Damn right I will spend my money in my way. You are NOT entitled to my money that you haven’t earned!
Your “You get nothing” is forcing other people at gunpoint to give you THEIR money!!!
How low can a person get?
You live in a society. For tens of thousands of years, humans have contributed to the group in which they lived. A few thousand years ago, after the advent of commerce, that contribution became taxation. If you don't want to pay taxes, don't live in a society. Go buy an island somewhere and make all your own rules.
Some kids don't want to learn anything they are going to learn in a school, from a teacher, in a classroom setting. You won't help the kids who want to get a formal education by denying the existence of those who don't.
So don't give them a formal education once they hit puberty. Get them to working and earning money. Most kids that don't like school do like money. I want them to earn it legally rather than by robbing, gambling, pimping, stealing, or dealing drugs.
This is a thread looking for a problem, do wealthy people not have the best school districts both public an private or just another claim that poorer school districts should fend for themselves.
OK, suppose we throw a lot of money at the school for poor kids. That's only half of it. How do you propose we go about making he parents and the kids care about education?
Here in Mississippi we have never tried "throwing money at schools". I just want to make sure that physical facilities are all high-quality, that high-quality resources are available in every school, and that every teacher is a high-quality, well-trained, hopefully experienced instructor. Just getting that much would cost a good deal of money, but it would be targeted, not just "flung" at the school. Throwing money at schools for the wealthy seems to work just fine. If not, then the top schools would only spend $8,000 per pupil as poor schools do rather than charging $45,000 as the schools like Collegiate in Manhattan or Sidwell Friends in D. C. What do those students get for that extra $37,000?
What does the rich school have that the poor school doesn’t?
Answer: engaging parents and a culture of education focus.
Real life answer: About another $20,000 to $40,000 more per pupil.
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