UtahBill

High dropout rate is more a failure of the parents than the education system...

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Education is expensive, ignorance is costly.

Each generation should have more opportunities than the last, but not at the expense of the next.

lizzie

To me, having at least a high school diploma and no college is better, as far as the job market goes, and as a guage of one's determination to finish things, than dropping out of high school. If I owned a business providing a service that didn't require highly skilled and educated labor, I would much rather hire high school grads than drop-outs- not because one was smarter than the other, but because one shows more willingness to hang in there.

lizzie

The way I see it, most of the problems with educating kids are a failure of the parents, but the education system itself has declined as well.

Bodhisattva

I am not sure that I agree. The education system has better trained and more highly qualified teachers than ever. They are constantly engaging in PD courses and have a more detailed observation and report system than ever, in addition to having better curriculum and understanding of relevant skills. Teachers also have many models that help with teaching diverse learners, SDAIE, ESL/ELL, etc.

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"Only pompous idiots have a quotation as their signature" - Agnapostate

UtahBill

IMO, dropouts should not get above minimum wage until they reach 18....whatever it takes to keep them in school, we should try it...

__________________
Education is expensive, ignorance is costly.

Each generation should have more opportunities than the last, but not at the expense of the next.

lizzie

I'm sure you're more qualified than I am in your thoughts on the subject. My point of view revolves more around what seems to be an increasing interest in educating kids socially rather than intellectully. This may be necessary due to the decline in parental involvement and support of the education system, but I see much more inclination toward teaching social awareness these days in proportion to facilitating intellectual and critical thinking skills.

Bodhisattva

I agree with that. Teachers are facing a growing issue of having to teach students basic social skills that were, I guess, taught by parents before. Even when parents are asked in for conferences regarding their children, not much changes, it is as if they go home knowing the issue, but not how to address or solve it.

Most parents don't seen to realize that most social skills and patterns are learned and developed in a child's first five years of life. That is their foundation. If a kid grows up with structure and consistency in rules and expectations, then when they go to school these skills are alreay in place and as long as the kid wants to behave, they will. Today, many kids want to behave but they are simply unskilled in paying attention, not interrupting/listening, being pro-active regarding problem solving, reading directions and remembering what they... you know, attention is a huge problem with kids, they can't, even top classes, read simple directions and figure out what they mean on their own anymore. It is strangely pathetic. They read and then ask what it means, or read (seemingly) for a minute or two, say that they don't understand, when asked what they were being asked or if they read directions, they say no. You sit back and think, "WTF? The kid just said that they don't understand the directions when they haven't even read the directions and then they ask me to tell them directions and show them the line in the text that has the answer"? It is bizzare. Cut and pasting, inability to write an essay or to brainstorm. These are skills learned from parents doing games and playing... interaction, talking, drawing, etc.

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"Only pompous idiots have a quotation as their signature" - Agnapostate

lizzie

Yes, I think we have a multi-generational problem now with social skills and attention spans. Some of our young parent-age people are parenting their children, but many of them did not receive parenting from their own parents. They don't know how to do anything constructive with their children. In fact, they act like their own children in some respects. At the risk of being flamed for saying this, I believe that Ritalin and other drugs for hyperactivity are substituting for parents these days. They put the children in drug-induced state of physical control, but some of the children only have their symptoms masked, and are not being taught how to be attentive or concentrate (unless you sit them in front of a video game.)

Absolutely.