I just read this article.
If this is true I think that this is quite bad. I see the same tendencies over here. The only countries that do actually increase the amount of teaching are the countries that do pose an economical threat (or are feared competition) to the western world.
I think that we (western people) are just getting fat and lazy, and are prone to falling for questionable marketing statistics.

AlpineRAM

 

I don,t have a web site to refer to but in some Parrishes (Countys) in Louisana the history books only go back to 1960s which they intirely omit that period in our country.They do not cover any of the civil rights or Vietnam war actions.

 

AlpineRam Wrote:
think that we (western people) are just getting fat and lazy,

you forgot pampered, and gullable.

We're a nation of consumers and not producers.

"No Child Left Behind" is a joke and the government is too chicken to make the hard decisions and waters them down. Some day we'll all pay for those indecisions today

 

When history is ignored, we are sadly forced to repeat the same awful mistakes over again.

 

We're already paying. Badly.

Last year my son took a test to enter the gifted student program at his elementary school. He had perfect scores in science, math, verbal ability, cognitive reasoning, etc. He did not get in, however, because he failed in the area of "culture".

Late in the culture test, he desperately tried to tell the test giver that while he knew little about "Dennis the Menace" and "Pokemon", he really liked to read about ancient Egypt and the Second World War, and he could tell her all about Kufu's Pyramid or what the **** Party did in Germany. But those kinds of things weren't on the test.

He's nine.

This year, my son's third grade teacher is a twenty-three-year-old fresh out of an education program at college. He tried to talk with her in class one day about the Minotaur, the mythical bull-man that inhabited the maze beneath King Knossos's palace in Greek mythology. She had no idea what he was talking about, and thought he was making things up. So she punished him in class and sent a letter home to us complaining about his "lying" and "runaway imagination".

We are putting a generation of badly-educated slackers in front of our children in school -- public or private.

IMHO -- but in my job, I see it directly, every day. As parents, we need to make strong demands and not be put off by educational administrators who are part of the problem. Higher education also needs to apply higher standards to the process there. It doesn't mean we demand things like "no evolution in school". It means we demand a higher standard from public and private educators, and be willing to dig a bit deeper to reward those who do their jobs well.

Rant off.

 

Tartarus,

I certainly agree with what you say.................................

I think the liberal interputation of "No Child Left Behind" got us into this. I know a lot of you are not near as old as I am, but I can remember when I was in high school in the early sixties, they were already making exceptions for people that were not quite up to par with everyone else. Since then, it has gotton worse, as I witnessed my three kids go through the public education system. I think for years it was called "Soicial Promotion". Kids were passed on so they would seem to be like everyone else. In the college athletic world it ran rampant....if you could play sports, you could get a degree! I think the result of this is apparent when some high paid athletes are interviewed.

You sons teachers ignorance is not her fault....it's a result of our pathetic education system.

Bottom line..........no child should be left behind, but we can't all be super stars. Some people are ment to be CEO's and others are destined to work at McDonalds. We need all of them. Stop punishing the norm because some liberal wants everyone (except them) to be treated the same or don't think some "subjects" should be taught because someones feeling my get hurt.

If I could type faster, I could really get wound up on education and government give away programs.

Just IMHO..............CR

 

Crobtex & Tartarus,

You guys have certainly hit on what our educational system is all about. I agree with everything you guys have said. Just wanted to add some fuel to the fire.

I teach in a private college, auto collision repair.
Most "educated" parents don't want their children going into "labor" intensive jobs, even though the children or young adults really want to go into a trade.
I've seen it first hand with a former empoyee of mine who's dad thought he should be at a "desk"
I see it almost daily at school.

Both of my children were given every opportunity to go to school/college, and both went for a while. Both dropped out.

One is managing a Nat'l coffee chain store in ND
The other is managing a Nat'l restaurant chain store in ND



The only thing I've ever stressed to them is to be happy and enjoy what they are doing...

Thanks for the vent....

Bob B

 

Brace yourselves fellas....

First off, Markus, the AJC is not a very highly regarded newspaper. Partly because it's not as crazy as the big papers, but mostly because they often just don't get it right.

But this time they did.

My wife is a teacher. She gets angry when I condemn the teaching profession as a whole, but I have to tell you that most of the "training" she undergoes makes me want to puke.

Why is education being gutted? Why are we producing a generation of functionally illiterate people?

The answer is simple: those in charge of education have values that place education towards the bottom of the list. Instead, they focus on self-esteem, "cultural awareness" and other politically-correct items of indoctrination.

Yes, indoctrination. The schools exist today primarily (in my view) to undermine the role of parents. They inculcate values often QUITE contrary to those which the parents are trying to instill in their children.

That is, SOME parents. There are some parents who are all too glad to surrender the role of parenting to the public "education" system. They are too busy living it up to be bothered with the responsibilities of parenting their children.

For those who DO care about the values their children adopt, placing them in public school is often quite troubling. First, they are exposed to children whose parents are like those I described above. These children have foul mouths and no discipline-- and they rub off on your own children. Once, as I was walking my wife past they playground at her school, we overheard a second grader talking about how he wanted a certain girl to be his girlfriend so he could have sex with her. SECOND GRADE!!

Not only will they learn bad behavior from other kids, they learn wrong values from their teachers. The THEORY of evolution is NEVER presented as a theory-- but rather as indisputable fact, despite how easily it can be disproven.

Instead of pushing the kids to achieve and holding them accountable when they don't, the children are told that they need to have self esteem. What are they supposed to be proud of if they have achieved nothing????? How can they feel good about themselves when they bisbehave?

It's paradoxical but true that the happiest people are those who deny themselves many of lifes "pleasures". A lot of the happiest people you will ever know drive older cars, have an older TV, etc etc.. This also applies to the "pleasure" of venting your anger (misbehaving), indulging in movies that titillate the senses, etc.

While I do believe that EVERY child has inherent worth, I DO NOT believe that every child is inherently good nor do they all have equal ability. This myth of the perfectable human (at any age) is the dangerous cornerstone of Communism, the tower of Babel, etc etc.

The functional illiteracy of many students is not a goal of education, but rather a byproduct of the view that schools are a laboratory for social engineering by those in charge of education. Unfortunately, many of those people do NOT have values that you or I do. They view themselves as part of an enlightened few, and only they are smart enough to raise our kids. It's that age old liberal idea that we aren't to be trusted with our own lives.

Parents, take charge of your children and their education. When you abdicate that role, there are many chomping at the bit to make you irrelevant.

 

My only question is What ever happened to culpability? People NEED to take responsibility for their own actions. If a student doesn't perform as well as the next SO BE IT. That is just the way life is. Deal with it. I certainly can't perform as well as some peolpe on tis board. I can probably out perform some people on this board. That is just the way it is. The education system needs to deal with these issues in an appropriate manner.

Tom

 

I heard that we are no longer teaching the history of ww11 in school. It is no longer acceptable to teach the reasons why we entered this war. Because it is socially un-exceptable to teach what the hatred of other nations brought upon our country. It is however acceptable to teach our young tha we dropped bombs on cities and killed people for what reason ? It is strange to me that we as a people are not giving our children the education that allows them the information to make future decisions based on past experience. History is a great teacher in itself if given the proper information to gauge it by.

 

With due respect, I disagree with any interpretation of educational problems that places politics and political correctness at the center. To be honest, most public school teachers don't know enough about politics or the concept of PC to be very dangerous to their students. This is not to say that schools are not politicized -- but that issue is among administrators, who construct the curriculum and shape the process.

The problem with public education today is that professional educators focus far too much on process, and not enough on content and dynamic. In other words, they're much too impressed with "how to teach" and not at all impressed with "what to teach". So you get "teachers" coming out of colleges stuffed with lesson development experience, but empty of anything substantive to put into their lessons. This problem comes about because education departments in colleges are usually in conflict with the "content" departments they depend on -- the history programs, literature programs, physics programs, psychology programs, etc. So emphasizing "process" is a way of declaring professional education's independence from historians, physicists, and English professors.

The downside is that independence gets you teachers who know very little about what they teach. So professional educators spend an awful lot of time fighting with content people, and justifying why knowing history isn't as important as "knowing" how to teach it. (Think about how ridiculous it is for an "educated" person to take such a position.)

IMO, Ed.D's (doctorates in education) ought to be done away with. Bachelor degrees in education ought to go, too. Teachers ought to take a degree in a content profession, and then another year or so in "process" or teaching skills. Five years, maybe more, yes, but then make it worth their while by paying them what a good teacher is truly worth to this nation.

 

I agree with every word. I don't find our posts to be in conflict at all.

Want to see something interesting? In any given college, look at the average SAT/ACT scores of the students enrolled in different majors. Sad to say, but those "education" majors are among th lowest across the board.

The focus IS on process. Only by hyper-analyzing the process can the "professional" educrats claim some kind of unique qualification. BS!!!

Who's more qualified to teach engineering, a lifelong engineer or a somehow who has only read about it?

One reason that the educrats have gotten away with their shenanigans is because they have BEEN ALLOWED to get away with them.

Only when parents (citizens) standup and demand better will things improve.

Thanks for the GREAT post, Tartarus.

Justin

 

i think u all bring up some valid point but i live in this cultural mecca(sp) and dealing with the individuals I do I believe the one thing i agree with most is culpability. No one not even parents want to take responsibility for there children or there actions. I deal with all sort of culturs and income levels and certain ones are better than others but none are perfect. there are easterners that have highly educated children but that lack social skills because all they are made to do is work. then there are american who want nothing to do with htere children but if u call mommy or daddy and tell them u have there son they yell at u an say little Jonney would never do that. It is not the schools or anyone elses responsibility to see to the moral, educational and social well being of children it is the parents. if you have kids you should be held accountable for every thing they do or are required to do till they move out. our penal law say you are responsible for the moral upbringing of your child and can be charged if he is being exposed to what used to be considerd socailly incorrect but these days people are so liberal almost anything goes. at work we joke that anyone can have a child but u need a license for a dog...my son is still very young and im looking at his education as my chance to relive my school days and relearn everything ....im done for now

 

Edit: I forgot to mention that the teachers don't know about political correctness because to them it's not PC-- it's NORMAL!! Listen to any of these politicians talk about special interest groups-- they'll never list THEIR supporters as special interests; it's always the others guy's supporters.

So either the teachers are willing accomplices to the educrat PC takeover, or they are grossly ignorant. Either case is unacceptable!

Besides, your distinction between teachers and administrators is not much of a clear cut line. if teachers didn't believe the curriculum, would they still teach it whole-heartedly? Can the NEA survive on the dues paid by administrators only? Hardly.

Why is this true? Why are there overwhelmingly so many liberal people in the education business? i think it's the same reason that there are so many liberal people in journalism. It's that change-the-world mentality, the belief that they can make a big difference. Ultimately, i suspect it's an attempt to satisfy a self worth caught up in a need to feel significant.

I have met and talked at length with many teachers. Conservative teachers are a rare and dying breed. There's a reason the NEA goes Democrat every time.

There are many parallels between the liberal psyche and the educator psyche.

Suffice it to say that I think MOST teachers are not the ignorant pawns that it appears you are trying to make them. Though I have to admit-- since becoming an adult, I have met some AWFUL ignorant teachers. So many, in fact, that my opinion of the intelligence of many teachers at the lowest grade levels has been tarnished greatly.

Justin

 

Justin,

I certainly agree with most of what you are saying. I teach at the college level in a technical capacity, ie; Auto Collision repair. I have an Associate degree in that field. I also have an AAS degree in Pre-Nursing.
The college that I work at GAVE me the authority to change the entire curriculum. Which I promptly did. Most educators at technical schools teach students with the old "I learned it this way, so that's the way you are learning it" method.

I disagree several times a day with my co-instructor, who has been teaching for 13 years, on points of "that's not the way its done now". He has been out of the industry for so many years that he sometimes just does not realize that some of his methods are now outdated!

My major point is that in some cases, the educators ARE at fault. I've found that a helpful and incited administration is imperative to good education. I got into teaching because the physical aspect of doing body work on a daily basis was becoming more and more difficult. I just plain hurt on a daily basis. I've got about 5 years to retire...I don't know if I'm doing this because of some inward calling to "make a difference" or some self worth to "feel significant" as you put it.
I just thought it would be fun! I'm in my second year now and I'm having a blast!
I laugh with the students, cuss at them when they screw up, and in general, remain the SOB that I am. (I think they like it) My students KNOW that their chosen profession is not going to be a cake walk!

Just a cranky old SOB

Bob