DarkWizard12

I know in Texas, education is an ENTIRE MESS due to the reasons mentioned above. Over 300 schools are expected to close down next year if they do not improve, and I've seen how those schools are, it makes me want to yell at the state "The teachers don't need your dam* money! They need you to let them teach!"

American

My boy, you finally are getting the idea. Not a single word in the US Constitution deals with education.

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It's Obama's fault!

UtahBill

I got 13 years on you, "my boy".....
acutally, there is a catchall phrase, something about providing for the common good?
But we didn't have public education for the masses unless the local community provided it. After the child labor laws were passed, and we had gangs of kids roaming the streets instead of working in the mills and factories, THEN public education became a necessity, if only to lower the crime rate.
Hey, I was there!

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The Age of Reason doesn't have to be a thing of the past.
Being judgemental is the prime directive of some evangelicals.
No success can compensate for failure in the home.

1069

As a cynic and a pessimist, I must warn you that you'd better hope the kid's parents don't deliberately put marks on the back of his neck, take photos of them, and hand them over to CPS as evidence in the investigation, all in an effort to sue the school system for millions of dollars.
I wouldn't put anything past anyone, in this litigious society.

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Lightdemon: "Is 10 going to outer space or something?"
Jerry: "...yes, 10 is going to outerspace."

Bones

I went to a public school, and although I left over 7 years ago, I wonder if things would be different if I had have gone to a private school.

I was the sort of kid with learing troubles, which only started when I reached Year 9. It seems Year 8 was as far as I could go. I had trouble understanding my work, and I also have a hard understanding things, so people have to be patient with me, and explain things to me over and over until I manage to understand.
I had a learning assesment done, with recommendations for my teachers - all they had to do was help me out in class, and tell me what they wanted me to do, rather than give me written instructions. I learnt better with oral instructions, apparently.
The teachers ignored this, and continues to teach in their way, by handing out paper with our school work on it, because they were too lazy to speak to us.
Most of the work I could not understand, and I would spend the entire class with my hand up, waiting for the teacher to help me out. They'd see me, and ignore me.
See, this is why kids play up in class - they have difficulty in learning, and when you are ignored, whats the best way to get attention? You play up, which is what I did. I got attention, but not the attention I needed. I got told off all the time for not doing my work, when the teacher knew I couldn't do it.
I ended up passing Year 9, and my teachers even had the gall to tell me that I should have been kept down, and repeated Year 9.
So I was put into a Year 10 class, which was impossible for me. I was usless, and acted up more and more, skipped classes, got depressed, cried because I thought I was stupid, and got angry because no one seemed to care that I was someplace I shouldn't be.
The system here is basically to get rid of the kids you don't like. That is, even if someone shouldn't pass a grade, put them up a grade anyway, so you don't have to deal with them.
Towards the end of the year in 1999, my teachers told my parents they should take me out of school as I obviously wasn't coping.
As well as the impossible work load, I was being bullied each and every day. I was kicked, punched, slapped, spat at, called names - all this even in class with a teacher present - just because my so called friends decided to spread it round school that I was gay. I was subjected to the worst homophobic torture, and nothing was done about it. I was told to leave because the teachers couldn't cope with my troubles in learning, and also because they didn't have a bullying policy in place.
I imagine that if I didn't leave, they would have passed me anyway, and put me into a grade two years higher than I should have ever been in.
I mean, there are kids over here who are in High School when they're actual year level of learning is that of a forth grader! Kids who can't read or write are being sent to high school!
A couple of years after being made to leave school I had a learning test done again, because I wanted to do a math and English course and they needed to know what year level I was learning at. The tests showed I was at a learning level of that of a Year 8 in both subjects, which proved that my teachers should never have passed me.
I could sue if I wanted - I never got the education I deserved, and even the bullies got a better education.
The public school system is a sham, and needs to be changed to prevent kids falling through the cracks.
People wonder why we have all these kids wandering the streets making trouble - possibly because they are bored, but isn't it possible those kids were like me? Isn't it possible they were ignored by their teachers who didn't give a **** about them?

metreon

The only thing wrong with today's public education is decent parenting, imo. For example, you can find studies of the "boat people" from Vietnam and Cambodia that came here after the Vietnam war there ended. A large mass of children who didn't even know English were suddenly plopped in American public schools across the country. Within two years they were mostly out-performing their American counterparts academically, despite apparent handicaps such as lack of English fluency and large family sizes. There was an extensive article about these initial findings in an early 90's Scientific American, (sorry I can't remember the exact date).

The research recently published, showing how "model-minorities" don't actually all perform as well as the stereotype, actually does not conflict with the poor-parenting theory I have. Although, most asian communities do stress education as a cultural value, very often the actual immigrant culture changes quite dramatically with each generation. With subsequent generations in the US, asians become, if you'll excuse the metaphor, more like Apple Pie with Soy Sauce on top. They still talk up education alot, but they interact more like other Americans with their kids, - through isolation and dictates for good performance: the "go to your room and study" approach to parenting. That melting pot phenomena is not properly addressed in the newer research, imo.

Also, because of language and other culture shock issues, newer immigrants are more socially isolated from direct interactions with other Americans, thereby amplifying any good or bad aspects of their culture. If that were not true, new immigrants would have no need to create or maintain "culture towns" like a Chinatown. That initial cultural isolation suggests it is the influence of other factors outside of the actual public school curriculum itself which accounts for good or bad performance.

Parenting style, then, is the only remaining factor in the equation, since the cultural isolation of newer immigrants would tend limit the effect of the broader culture around them. And in fact, since kids commonly bully minorities and other misfits, the prevailing kid cultures might actually help to reinforce that cultural isolation, at least for newer immigrant students.

So what exactly do new asian immigrants do that helps their performance? Classic educational theory says larger family sizes inhibit the overall academic achievement, since the number of interactions between parents and children go up geometrically with a linear increase in the number of children. In other words, mature interaction gets diluted with more kids, therefore large families end up turning out a lot of blandly performing students. The premise here, therefore, is that only a parent can inspire, guide, or otherwise motivate kids toward higher academic achievement, at least conveniently within a family setting.

New asian immigrant families were the paradoxical exception. No one can say exactly why, but it was commonly observed that after dinner their large families cleared the table and sat down as a group. Since children are rarely the same age, but differ by one or two years at the most, each older child was tasked with tutoring a younger child on up, until the oldest child was being tutored by the parent(s). That way every older child not only did his own homework, but through tutoring material from their prior year, ended up also reviewing material already learned. It was a much more intensive social as well as academic environment than in most American homes where kids are basically told to go upstairs and lock themselves in their rooms with their homework.

I suspect as those new immigrant families become more integrated into the mainstream culture, such advantages are weakened, with only the thin skeleton of the original family life that made many new immigrants successful, remaining. They may retain the word, or dictate, of their culture, but it is a faded memory: over a generation or two end up losing the parenting culture to achieve it.

There is far too much emphasis in the failure of schools, when in fact the failure is in parenting. The phenomena above may also explain why an occasional teacher-mentor celebrity is so successful, causing people point to them and lament, "we need more teachers like that". Those teachers typically inspire the entire class in a way that makes that group of kids a small community of mutual self-help, learning, and review. They create their own isolation of being special. Those teachers have become the parents that should be in every student's life.

mikhail

You know the subject of education is interesting its one of those topics that people are never gonna be happy with ive never heard anyone say "wow isnt the education system great in this country".It least America isnt pushing for more faith schools like in the UK.

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The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.

Mach

Why would they? No one likes anything they have to pay for and work for by nature. They prefer infinite power handed to them on a whim.

I would argue that the sign of a good working, public system is one that pisses everyone off each in a different way and is hard work to maintain. If it made 100% of people happy, do you really think it would be cost-effective and wouldn't all the liberatarians rail against it? Of course

-Mach

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Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is an illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and I am content.- Conan

dirtpoorchris

Just like everything else that is now wrong with America you must blame Bush.

He insists over and over that his No Child Left Behind program needs its time to work. My brother is passing due to lower standards and remedial programs. Hes not stupid at all. He just doesn't put any effort in school what so ever. I think he needs to be held behind over and over until he is too his grade level. My mom tried getting the school to flunk him but with this no child left behind bull**** they just keep on rubber stampin his card. With all this 1 week GED bull and program set up to where lazy asses get passed we are essentially blurring and merging the stuff we need to determine where you belong pertaining to workplace. If you are a dumbass and cant get over a bar that needs to reflect on you and you get nothing equaling a Diploma or GED so you can't even work at McDonalds.

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Leave it to US. To make the sun rise in the West. And fall on the East.

DeeJayH

thats some funny ****
oh you were serious
i misunderstood Sgt Stinger
grrrr, i mean, ahh whatever

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These days it seems that the deadliest place on earth for an American to be is inside the womb. - Joshua P. Allem