Education in America??????

[marharth]

I don't think he was blaming teachers in general, more of blaming teachers unions.

 

I support unions for the most part, but teachers unions are in every possible way terrible. That is most certainly another problem with our system.

Edited October 11, 2011 by marharth

[Deleted472477User]

I don't think h was blaming teachers in general, more of blaming teachers unions.

 

I support unions for the most part, but teachers unions are in every possible way terrible. That is most certainly another problem with our system.

 

 

Why is this? I thought they existed to keep teachers from getting screwed. You always hear about how they don't get nearly enough money for all that they do. I wouldn't want them to be paid less, but I admit to being ignorant in this area.

[Kendo 2]

"I'm a teacher. I'm horrible at my job. I do just enough to get by but I really don't have to do that, since I can't be fired on the basis of job performance. As long as I don't commit a felony or sleep with one of my students there is no way to get rid of me. I can sit behind my desk and watch generations of kids learn nothing and retire with a pension. Thank ye gods for my union."

 

Teachers are one of the few professions (outside of judges and politicians) where job performance is not grounds to fire them. That needs to change.

[marharth]

Teaches unions no longer exist to protect themselves from unjust actions, they exist so no one can get fired for being a terrible teacher.

[Flintlockecole]

Teaches unions no longer exist to protect themselves from unjust actions, they exist so no one can get fired for being a terrible teacher.

http://www.theprovince.com/business/Steep+demands+teachers+union+favours/5369493/story.html

 

This should be of interest for you folks. Teachers Unions in my opinion are a legal mob, not worth the time and money.

Edited October 14, 2011 by Flintlockecole

[marharth]

Nice article.

 

I am starting to dislike public unions in general.

[lukertin]

The turn of the recent discussion in this thread has prompted me to take a deeper look and further clarify my initial post on the first page of this thread.

 

Objectively speaking, there are only a few distinct groups upon which to cast the blame for failing public education:

 

1) Teachers

2) Students

3) Parents

4) the State

 

1. Blaming the teachers is a complete dead-end because many of States operate just fine with Teacher Unions and still manage to convey excellent high-quality education to their students. Blaming the unions is nothing more than politicized red herring trying to get people to blame the wrong problem because the advocates have some personal agenda against collectivized bargaining and completely fail to see the full picture. So by blaming the teachers, you are actually meaning to stipulate that the quality of teachers varies regionally, or that the State is hamstringing teachers by constraining what and how they teach.

 

2. Blame the students. This is a rather moronic method of laying the blame. Children start off with a blank slate and their success lies entirely in their environment. Obviously, some children don't care about education but that fault lies initially with...

 

3. The parents. This is actually the number one problem. Parents who don't care, or give a flying f*** about their children's education beyond a 'you must go to school' are the number one reason and blame for crappy education. They simply don't care. They don't care if their children learn how to spell, or do math, or learn history. It doesn't get any simpler than that. Yes, richer families tend to have children who are 'smarter' (Actually, no, think about why that is, richer families tend to have fewer children and spend more of their time and energy raising those fewer children; poor families tend to have more children.) However, parents would rather place the blame anywhere else rather than themselves, because that is human nature. So long as they refuse to recognize themselves as the key to their children's education, their children will continue to grow up (relatively) dumb.

 

4. Blame the State. You have blame the State for doing things like outlawing the teaching of evolution or requiring the teaching of creationism alongside evolution, and failing to give schools enough funding for scientific and historical education. This decision making ultimately lies with the people, however, and not the State, because the people are electing legislative representatives to continue the status quo and do not care about actually improving their State's education. Forcing graduation standards upon middle and high schools doesn't solve the problem--Teachers and administrators will falsify test results before it means that they lose their funding, or their jobs (Yep, the No Child Left Behind act and similar legislation decreases academic funding to underperforming schools as measured by standardized testing. How's that for logic?). These kinds of people are making your laws, because they don't understand anything and are a product of public education.

 

Ergo, the two main focii of blame lay at the parents, and the people, and they arise out of apathy towards improving education (probably because they were poorly educated -- but this is not relevant and is an entirely different discussion). Having reasonably identified the source and cause for failing education if it exists, I will explain the content of my initial post.

 

My initial derision of the people of the South as 'fostering' a state of uneducation and stupidity in their students is based on this rather logical conclusion, nothing more. Thus, my statement: "[it lies with those] problematic States with dumb people who have no desire to be smart". It is clear to me that they have no desire to be smart. If they did, they would be educating themselves and coming to the realization that they need to effect change in their State government to improve their state's public education, to make a better world for their children.

 

But they don't.

 

Because they don't care. This isn't some new phenomena that suddenly arose, it's continuous and systematic (as you can see from the links I posted on page 2), and symptomatic of a specific demographic, and I will continue to hold my belief until someone presents convincing evidence that neither the parents, nor the people (who are collectively responsible for the State) are to blame.

 

Meanwhile, I'm almost certain that the majority of the clamor arises from citizens in well-performing States and other citizens in well-performing regions of underperforming States, who are concerned not only with improving the education in their State, but with the level of education in the USA as a whole because the bad apples are dragging down both the outside perception and domestic perception of failing education as a whole.

 

----

An aside:

None of my teachers in high school supported standardized testing, all unionized. That ran the gamut from the radically libertarian US History teacher to the Advanced Biology Doctor (who was basically the one guy who taught all the aspiring pre-meds), to the Physics teacher (who taught all the future engineers), to the AP Calculus teacher, who, by the way, was the organizer for the school's Math team, a team who has advanced to the State Finals every year for what I believe is now some 14 consecutive years, and only taught what amounts to being every single student in the top 20% of the class.

 

Now, is their interest against standardized testing being a watermark for school efficiency primarily rooted in a desire to 'keep their jobs', primarily a show of solidarity with their colleagues (? why would they 'lie' to their own students ?) or primarily an interest in maintaining what they believe is a true, non-adversarial scholastic environment for their students? They aren't underperforming teachers, every single one of them teaches the highest level classes available to students, including 'college-level' AP classes. I don't buy censuring of the teachers as a class on whole. It takes a certain type of person to even want to be a teacher.

Edited October 16, 2011 by lukertin

[SilverDNA]

Incoming Transmission

Additional information...

 

Hidden curriculum (Wikipedia)

 

Schools, Education and Social Exclusion by Jo Sparkes (PDF)

 

Transmission End

[everybodysop]

America having education problems? neh neh neh we're the best nation in the world blah blah blah

 

I'm joking. I can vouch for this pretty well! I went to a few schools. One of the better public schools in my city: the teachers were afraid to tell the students to be quiet in fear of being struck. The students mostly took their pants off in class and did dances, while yelling rap music. Mention science, and they will cackle like hyenas.