Is it that bad? If anything I think we get a pretty good deal. Hell, the kids here in the Republic of Korea go to school til 6 PM every night. At first I was amazed at how much the culture over here values education. Now I feel sorry for these little dudes. So much stress and emphasis is put on education that these kids don't get to have fun. They have no idea what it's like to skip school on a Friday in May...go to the lake...get hammered..sink a pontoon boat by putting 30 people on it...and get laid. Man, I miss high school just thinking about those days. Seriously, I had a lot of fun in HS and was able to knock out AP Calc (1&2) & Physics and concurrent enrollment my senior year to get 9 hours of college intro classes outta the way. And this was in some podunk town in the middle of nowhere, OK. All our teachers were required to have masters or be working towards one. The school board required it and also paid the tuition side of it. Of course, school board participation and elections were bigger to the locals than national politics. Maybe that had something to do with it. Either way, I was provided whatever opportunity I so desired to work towards. Sometimes I wished I had scratched a little more for success than itched for it. But oh well, I wouldn't give up the days of deviant activity just to be a little smarter.....how many of you actually retained all that education. When I started studying for the GMAT I realized how stupid adult hood had made me....I should of took the GMAT in high school. By the way, if anything we should add an hour of physical fitness and dieting classes. These kids are getting too fat.
I'd agree that the single biggest problem is getting parents to give a damn. If you're a politician, you can't force that, but you can spend more, therefore you spend more, showing yourself to be a great leader.
It's really hard to say if teachers get paid a fair amount of money or not. I'd tend toward not fair from the perspective that some are more or less worthless and stealing a check and others that do a really good job get paid way less than they could make elsewhere. When you don't have performance based pay to speak of that is what you get. My opinion only I could be wrong. It is a living wage though. 2 married teachers in their mid 30's are going to net 100k or so a year combined, with all summer off and a week for spring break and 2 over christmas. That would put them just barely out of the top quintile, which seems fair to me, but I could be talked out of that opinion I suppose.
One rotten apple spoils the whole barrel. Only in most cases, it's more than one rotten apple. You can have a group of, say, 25 good kids in a classroom. Throw in five ******** and learning can grind to a halt. When schools try to throw out the ********, who frequently come from lower-income families, they are accused of denying educational opportunities to disadvantaged youth. You wouldn't believe what it takes to get a kid thrown out of a public school these days. Admittedly, kicking the rotten apples out is only a partial solution. What do you do with them once you separate them from their non-*******, non-criminal peers? In my opinion, alternative school needs to be something like boot camp. Tough love, it's the only hope a lot of these kids have.
this is the key missing element from Vocational training. If we can't confidently let 18 year olds into the work force with marketable skills our schools have failed.
Educational system in this country is not about knowledge or bettering yourself. It is about conforming, submitting and consuming. You are the lackey of the corporation and you will be a good cog in the system.
Get rid of bilingual education. Below are some comments from a discussion about schools in the East Dallas area (some of the public schools that serve the Lakewood area are highly regardedl). Parents from Lipscomb Elementary want the district to restore grades 4 and 5 to their school, which was turned a few years ago into a PreK-3 campus. When Lipscomb kids hit fourth grade, they're bused over to Mata Elementary.
Here goes my thoughts on the education. Call it what you want, 'intact', 'good', 'positive', 'supportive', but a family that values education generally produces kids who value education. This is something that you can't legislate. Some teachers should make 2 to 3 times what they make now. These are the good teachers and they should be compensated VERY well for their effectiveness in teaching and how much they care about kids. Some teachers should make about 1/2 of what they make because they are there to collect a paycheck and nothing more. In Killeen, I know that teachers starting pay was about $40,000. Low cost of living, and that is a pretty good starting pay for any job in Killeen. There are people who live in Killeen who went to surrounding school districts like Belton to make about $30,000 starting pay because of the difference in the kids at the school districts. To me, this is a tie in of the first point. Most enlisted service men and women don't value education, and likewise their kids don't. That is what I saw living there for 3 years. Also, money doesn't 'buy' a better education these days. Why do you think so many are opting out of the system and doing homeschooling? I am convinced if kids read the right books and consulted the right cirriculum then they could come out better educated than kids in expensive schools. The difference is the willingness to actually work to learn. Last point here. Our schools don't suck. Our teachers desperately need support and help. Parents who shove their kids off to school and expect them to learn, but offer no support.... it just doesn't result in educated students. People in our society suck. That is why you can have 2 kids go to the same school and have the same teachers and one will succeed and learn and the other doesn't.
This is one of the better threads I have seen around here in quite some time. I just read this and agree with a lot of it:The Link
I will say that is threads like that that make me proud of WM. This is a real conversation about an issue that matters. While we might not all agree on the methods to achieve a great education, but we all want to see people in the US get a great education. Kudos to WM.
While the most important thing is preservation of intact families, here are a couple of things that might help: 1) Single gender schools. Boys and girls aren't the same and don't learn the same. The key gap right now is that males are lagging behind in achievement. The way schools are structured right now is feminine in nature and causes boys to overcompensate for their lack of success. 2) Realize that the static classroom model is dead. The "I talk, you listen" model that worked on drooling, brain dead boomers doesn't work on savvy milennials and beyond. It doesn't work in the classroom, the courtroom, or anywhere else. Everything needs to be interactive now. The people that came up with American Idol can figure this out; our really really "smart" education bureaucrats with lots of advanced degrees can't.
Laphroaig, you bring up a good point about the way teaching is being delivered and the needs and culture of the newest generations. Not sure how, or if, this is being addressed but I would think that is pretty important with making learning more effective and interesting.
