Canuckus Deploracus wrote:
I believe that the majority of educators are true to their calling and provide an excellent education to their pupils....
Majority? I went through school when the curriculum made a little more sense than it does now. I was in private school for 4 years and public school for 7 (took my GED in 11th). I have 70 or 80 credits in 2 year college and still need 8 to get a degree...lots of electives
. Then
I became a certified adult tutor while I was in prison and found out I had a knack for putting men at ease and helping them understand. Prison is full of ADHDs, dyslexics and
tactile learners many of whom were mislabeled ADHD by public schools which were prepared to deal with neither.
Most of them came through continuation school.
My honest opinion is 20% or more teachers should find another job! They don't like kids, they can't tolerate certain personalities, they don't like explaining things or they've been there too long and need to retire. I've had teachers who were numbskulls and didn't know what they were doing, some who were social engineers who were there to indoctrinate and some who were shirkers and did as little as possible
Most teachers do the best they know how with what they have. This majority group can improve a lot with time...
...and a few teachers are
born to it. Explaining the same thing 20 different ways until everyone gets it takes more than patience; it takes intuition, invention and the ability to recognize and use a student's strengths to their advantage. I may have had 6 teachers that were like that although I've met many people who
weren't teachers but were born with those gifts.
Quote:
Subject matter, teaching materials and realia are often outside the regulation of ordinary educators...
This is a hyuuuge problem! Worthy of a dozen threads. Let's name a few:
1) They graduate people who are functionally illiterate.
2) "Literate" students are fare less literate than they were 100 years ago.
3) They're spending time and money socially engineering young people to accept without question whatever they're told; even more
to despise certain points of view. They're teaching them to
believe only a world authority can prevent climatic catastrophe. Tower of Babel...again.
I won't even get into top heavy administrations;
phat pay, perks and pensions; off the
wall building projects with associated maintenance costs, which ALWAYS show up in classrooms, hitting teachers hard and students harder. No incentive to save money. The
incestuous relationship between politicians and public employee unions...
Quote:
New ideas, facts and information are critical to an education in this ever changing world...
Ya, this is very true; but language
excellence, mathematical
proficiency and scientific
curiosity aren't priorities for the System anymore...and analytical, independent thought? Nope!
Quote:
Ideals are often considered radical before they are considered mainstream...
I wonder if that's why they showed me this short film, "The Lottery", when I was in 6th grade. I'm 56 now. If you've never seen it, it's an attack on traditions. A small town has a traditional "lottery" and while they prepare for it the people go off and gather all these stones. The camera goes here and there listening in on conversations between folks about the lottery, some like it, some don't, some want to end it, the geezers are mad, "We've
always had a lottery!" So they put their hands in the jar, pulled out their tickets winner's prize is to be stoned by the rest of the townsfolk in the public square, which then happens.
Quote:
The most important education should cone from the home...
The definition of which has become as blurred as the members of...a situation that might be better understood at the local level as far as how it affects school's ability to teach. Get rid of the DOE.
My ma had me at 18, divorced my dad and married my stepdad before I was 2. I have a good recollection from about age 3. Ma was an emotional wreck after the roller coaster of the previous few years, suffered terribly from PMS (no one called it that then) and was using amphetamines and alcohol.
Even so, she read to me and my little sister, from books we still have and she'd go into character as she read. She did the Disney Uncle Remus stories particularly well. She showed me in a very tangible way how the written word could be translated into the spoken word and made fun.
I don't think "home" is what it used to be after 50 years of sabotage. I think people who came up like me have less of a chance to learn than I did.