The Recipe For Educational Disaster?

It is true that what was important in our school day is not what is important today.  I, too, have tried to convey this message to my children, who, also can't write worth a flip!  My 10 year old, borderline, autistic son writes better in cursive than he does in manuscript!  I think his teacher only gets on to him about his math, now.  They don't have cursive numbers.  Oh well.  He does try.  But, now, they have traded the ability to write well in for the ability to type fast.  They have contemplated the fact that, to forge a green world, one must reduce the use of natural resources.  Our children are being taught.  Not the way WE think they should be, or what we think they should be taught, but, they are getting the knowledge and skills that they need.  My children are actually learning more advanced stuff than the advanced classes of when I was in school.  As for discipline, that comes down on the parent!  My parents didn't let me get by with a lot of things that children get away with today!  Thanks to this thing called C.P.S., people are afraid to teach their children propper respect and self discipline.  It shames the parent!  I see children telling their parents what to do and what they (the children) will or will not do.  Who is raising whom?!  My children have tried these tactics on my wife and I to no avail!  At any rate, knowledge and discipliine both start at home.  If it is not taught at home, then it will not be taught!!!   To blame the institution is to trust the institution to raise your children.  Thats not their job!!!  As for "no child left behind", what to do with a child that refuses to learn?  That child probably has parents who refuse to teach!  After all, children live what they learn, and learning starts at home!     

Working conditions before the advent of unions, especially in mines and manufacturing, deserve to be studied before condemning outright all union activity. As for schools, and what is taught in them, much of it stems from collegiate schools of education who's lecturers mostly have never set foot in a public classroom. But discipline is very much a factor stemming from the lack of backbone by principals who are afraid to back their teachers in the face of parental complaints. But all of this is extremely complex and there are no simple answers to what has transpired over forty years.

cjesusfreak2,

While it is true that learning starts at home, the reason kids are failing is that we are not "doing our best to teach" them.  We fall short ourselves, sometimes missing the lesson from our own mistakes.

1. Parents and leaders should teach children by modeling an example.
2. Live, do and teach the things you would like your children to do as an adult.
3. Stop doing everything that you do not want them to do.
4. Help others to identify and solve existing problems before bringing more problems into the world.
5. After you've helped solve world problems, then focus on adding a few more little people to help pick up where you've left off.
6. Vision, change and education = progress.

Peace and blessings,

~ nmpb ~

i concur with the questioner, as my wide experiencw revealed that the average teacher is incompetent, not perhaps in his/her specialty(and that is common, too) but in life in general, being, in the end, so specialized that he/she has no life except in specialty areas. None of my math teachers,1945-56, had the faintest idea what life was all about, and therefore could not relate, or teach, kids who were still generally alive and unspecialized. They lacked the ability to relate their specialyies to everyday people, fell into and remained in that rut for the duration of their careers, in the end having wasted their efforts, and bullshitted themselves that they were doing a valuable service for our youth.

Concur also in the European approach, which invests scarce resources where there is a certain return, not pouring good money after bad in an effort to elevate the incapable. I suggest a Reading of IQ published about 1990, much maligned as racist, etc, but which makes much more sense than our current approach. Invest in the best and brightest, regardless of race, ets, let the rest fall by the wayside, which they will invariably do, no matter the billions we pour into them.

Being teachers is an undistinguished walk of life

Incapable of teaching? Yeah

I hate to inform you of the facts, Marinerecondad, but you know the trillions of dollars in the budget this year? Are you aware that budget was done and passed by the Republicans prior to Obama being sworn in? Are you aware that GW, with his catch phrase, "No Child Left Behind," was all smoke and mirrors and did not help the problems, but exacerbated them. I will agree to only one of your points and that being we NEED the most skilled teachers we can find. Pay them a fair wage. Have them teach our most important commodity --- our future children to become as technically proficient as our foreign competitors. Once we have done that, without the smoke of mirrors and gingoism, then and only then will be have those trained for the next generations. Michael Joel Held