If a Policy is not Working do you Increase it?
 

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Our education system/philosophy is not working.

That is an opinion but I'll assume most will accept it.

I believe most will agree that 25, 50 or 100 years ago students graduated with a better grasp of what use to be called the "three r's".

Here's another issue, big problem:

Asians and whites do much better academically than Hispanics and blacks.

Our spending, social programs, political correctness (I'm not sure if this is relevant but put it here for completeness) and reverse discrimination policies are not making a dent. Some would argue they are hindrances. Some not.

So, using the structure of classical debate -

If one agrees that our current approach is not working do we increase those programs (which seems to be the goal of a segment of the nation) or do we pursue an alternative?

Oh, here's a link from the W Post giving some context -

Student Evaluations

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I do not see anything to say that the education system is not working OK. Sure it could use some tweaking but I think the system it's self is sound. The problem is with the users. Parents are not as active in school as they used to be. The schools (especially in inner cities) are dilapidated and behind in updates. Class size is increasing. Politics is trying to intervene (fight over teaching creationism as science comes to mind). I am not sure how to fix the user part but the school system it's self is still good IMO.

Bring in Asian educators...now THEY know how to teach.

You might think the asian educators can move mountains and the sky with the moon but I would disagree. That is like saying you have a failing liver and we can transplant a liver to you and life is good. Just you try that and see. It won't be as simple as you think it is. To the layman, yes.

You cannot teach someone who does not want to learn. US kids are different than Asian kids. Different mind set. Not worse or better, just different. An Asian teacher would fail miserably trying to apply the same techniques in a US class room.

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I started saying my two statements were opinions but thought most would agree.

If you don't then you can reject my premise/question and take it where you will.

I think this is a good topic to discuss. Minority disparity is real important as well.

Of course the suggestion of chilcutt and similar ideas are one of the things I think is needed. But I'm primarily encouraging a conversation and seeing what I can learn.

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We cannot know simply because we cannot copy the environment here like they do there. There is no urgency to succeed here like there is there. There is no support from the govt or the parents like there is there. Hence we can never know. That is why I think simply transplanting asian teachers cannot fix the problem.

Parents are the first and most important teachers. With 30+ years of first hand experience, I can say that there is virtually a 1:1 correlation between successful students and parents who are actively involved in their kids' education. Yes, everybody knows a kid (I wrote about one in another thread) who's beaten the odds, but they are a rarity in my experience.

The numbers of single parent households for latinos and blacks are much higher than for asians or whites. 40% and 67% versus 16% and 24%. Given the economic situations most single parents find themselves in, it's virtually impossible for them to be proactive in their children's schooling.
Kids from single parent homes are very often ill-prepared to make the most of any given school day. They come to class unfed, often times unclean and lacking sleep. They frequently were not read to as babies (this in my experience is critical) and there is no reading material in the home. With little parental emphasis on learning, they've lost the natural inquisitiveness that kids are born with.
I don't believe the system itself is broken. The old saw about operating schools like businesses is silly. A factory that makes widgets has the right to send back inferior raw materials. Schools don't. Their raw materials are kids, and you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Beating kids and their teachers over the head with standardized tests isn't the answer either. It's often pointed out that charter and private schools do better on these tests. Of course they do, they don't have to accept inferior raw materials, public schools do.

Culture does have a lot to do with it. Besides, not everyone is capable of learninggeven though we want everyone to " succeed " and get a "degree". Remember what happened in the Wizard of Oz? The Wizard gave the Scarecrow a degree, oh boy, he's got everything he needs!

Plus, there are at least two, and I'm sure, many other, considerations:

1. Not everyone can learn. Some people either can't or are not willing to expend the effort.

2. There is the argument : "Why learn if I can become a rapper and make money talking about fake gangstas and my posse?" It doesn't matter if it's reality or not, as long as you get someone in more of a dream word than you are to believe it, buy the CD and make you richer than you were.

Learning is hard,. But like any skill, it has its rewards if you feel that they are rewards.

A lot of it is personal, some of it is genetic.

I once saw a little poster in a cubicle at the Pentagon, when I went there to teach a class.

It's a box of fries with a smiley on them and the caption: " Not everyone is cut out to be an astronaut..."

Agreed. I think that is as good a rational as any to make an investment in trade schools as well as standard public schools.

The problem is that the consequence of failure is lessened in our culture as much as we can do for the failures. That will NOT encourage the new generation of wannabe failures as much as watching live the results of a painful future and seeing what awaits their failure.

In the subject of learning History:


while kids aren’t getting better, they’re not getting worse. The history of history-education evaluation is littered with voguish pedagogy, statistical funny business, ideological arm wrestling, a disproportionate emphasis on trivia, and a protocol that insures that each generation of kids looks dim to its elders.

“We haven’t ever known our past,” Sam Wineburg, a professor of education and history at Stanford, said last week. “Your kids are no stupider than their grandparents.” He pointed out that the first large-scale proficiency study—of Texas students, in 1915-16—demonstrated that many couldn’t tell Thomas Jefferson from Jefferson Davis or 1492 from 1776.

A 1943 survey of seven thousand college freshmen found that, among other things, only six per cent of them could name the original thirteen colonies. “Appallingly ignorant,” the Times harrumphed, as it would again in the face of another dismal showing, in 1976. (And it’s not just Americans: an infamous 2004 survey revealed that a small percentage of Britons aged sixteen to twenty-four believed that the Spanish Armada was vanquished by Gandalf.)


New Yorker June 2011

I like both of those ideas.

I'm sure all (almost all?) of us think kids need to know how to read, write, add 2-digit numbers, etc regardless of whether they go to post k-12 or box up fries the rest of their life.

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obviously, we need to bring back the bible into the daily curriculum. and prayer as well. and corporal punishment.

Disagree. I'd say vastly worse.

True a US teacher has to waste a staggering amount of time on psychobabble and crowd control.

- Peter.

At least someone has come out and said it. The analogy is apt, if unpleasant.

- Peter.

Bad schools, bad students, bad administrators, bad unions, bad teachers, bad parents . . . as far as I can tell, this isn't a modern problem, it's been the history of education.

little to no consequence and Low expectations, you forgot. Therefore bad results. Pretty straightforward.

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Take a look at a 6th grade english text book from 1900.

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That would be an interesting comparrison.

- Peter.

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I've seen one - I'll see if I can find a link.

Look at the letters the soldiers from the civil war wrote home to their wife's as their comrades lay around them dead and dying. Think of Ken Burn's documentary on PBS. If I could've written that well I may not of become an engineer.

When I was in 5th/6th grade we diagrammed sentences. What % of HS graduates do you suppose could do that?

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& how to use the cane!!!

When a teacher comes to a country that doesnt allow corporal punishment & they have a back ground of using it, they are like a duck out of water.

Re-introducing ability streaming would improve things.

Society has introduced/forced behavioral streaming by taking the well behaved students out of public education & putting them in private schools. This keeps the more academic students away from the violent/future felons in the community. Its a win situation.
Students need to learn early that an education is a privilege, not a right & if they dont behave, they loose their right to an education.

Reducing the size of the bureaucracy running education depts is always a good way to make more resources available at the coal face. Private schools dont have these over heads.

"I may not have become an engineer"
Just saying...:D

I have lots of those old books here in the house. If it didn't cut into my boots on the porch rail/Guinness/Sunset/Listening to the animals contentedly munching their hay time I'd scan some for you. Bear in mind that in 1900 precious few individuals went beyond the 6th grade in school. My grandmother graduated from the 6th grade at the same school I administered and at the age of 16 became a first grade teacher. The old "look at what kids had to know in (insert year)" wears pretty thin after a while.

"nostalgia ain't what it used to be" :D

p.s. i think sjh likes those 1900 schoolbooks cuz they be talkin about jeebus.

the problem with schools in this country is unions

McGuffey's 6th Grade English
 

Found the 6th grade English text book, McGuffey's Reader.

http://www.stinkbusters.net/eng-02.gif

here'e a typical passage for reading -

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Remember my initial opinion; the quality of education has diminished over the past 100 years.

more, next post.

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Supplemental reading for 6th grade & beyond
 

This is what an 11 or 12 year old was expected to be able to read and comprehend in 1900.

You'll note I'm sure 7 works of Shakespeare!

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A link to the 6th grade primer your great-grandparents used.

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yes. and all these well-educated people of this country somehow managed to keep the klan chock full of members and carry out at least a hundred lynchings a year of blacks (and the occasional jew), believed that women were no better than chattel, changed the name of sauerkraut to "liberty cabbage" during world war I, believed native americans were "dumb injuns", any people of color or of recent arrival i.e. irish, blacks, latinos, chinese were second class citizens, to be scorned and exploited, and with the great wisdom and moral fiber inculcated in them in their education, kept bootleggers thriving during prohibition. also, syphills and gonorrhea were rampant.

any other revisionist history you want to peddle?

WTH is a 'Comus Lysidas':confused:

I think you are obsessed with attempting to insult sjh because in the past he has talked about being a christian.

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Remember we had had a fairly pleasant, non-adversarial give-and-take about education -

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which instead became an indictment of ??? - I guess I'm not sure but I've got something to do with it.

Please note the bit at the end where suggesting earlier education methods is related to an increase in VD.

Pretty amazing how much people reveal about themselves as they seethe irrational hate.

Of course the thread had been about children learning their three R's...

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The main issue with education is that children are failing because parents put far too little effort in their children's education. If parents make it important, they failing would largely go away. I see it everyday in my son's schools, and my wife is a teacher.

The number one issue with parents is a two parent home, which blacks and hispanics largely do not have. A major issue here is the culture of thinking which stops them from believing they need to succeed and will get support from the government instead.

insulting?

no. he thinks he is a clever propagandist. i am just pointing out the nature of his beliefs. how could that be "insulting", if it's the truth? it might be embarrassing to him to be revealed for what he is, but is it my fault if he is a - none too subtle - unrepentant ideologue?

Irellivent.

- Peter.

He said nothing about christ or religion in the majority of posts, yet you bring it up out of the blue time and time again without cause.

I awoke early, body's still transiting from bed-ridden to being upright. At 5:43 AM I posted my first post. I have put up a total of 21. That's easy to verify.

I started no threads or discussions on my faith. At 10:42 AM I replied to elcivito's attempt to use Christ's Sermon on the Mount to further his agenda.

And at 12:12 PM I responded to spdrun's statement that if I was a better Christian I would have his values.

That's the totality of my comments about Jesus in the public forum today. Never initiated it, never promoted it, etc.

BTW - It's easy to see if I'm telling the truth. Take a look.

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McGuffey is remembered as a conservative theological teacher. He interpreted the goals of public schooling in terms of moral and spiritual education, and attempted to give schools a curriculum that would instill Presbyterian Calvinist beliefs and manners in their students. While these goals were considered suitable for the relatively homogeneous America of the early-to-mid-19th century, they were less so for the increasingly pluralistic society that developed in the late 19th century and early 20th century.



do i need to draw you a picture?

what's next? "intelligent design" (sic)

Two poems, I believe by Milton. I think there may be a spelling error.

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X2- must have had a bad experience as an altar boy or something?

must be feeling threatened, and therefore must attack the messenger, instead of dealing with the message? (jesus is very proud of you.)

I doubt Jesus is proud of me since I am an Atheist, so what is your reason for trying to ridicule everything SJH says based on the fact that he is a Christian? I know very little about religion, but I know enough about psychology to gather that Christianity did something to you that was very damaging, so your hatred of it is understandable. Care to share what happened? It could be helpful in you coming to terms with your experience(s).

Your first two derogatory posts in this thread alone were before any mention of McGuffey, or religion.
What message are you trying to get across- and to whom is it directed towards?

BTW I could care less about organized religion- I believe it is a overall detriment to human society and normally fight it's unstated goal to spread it's sphere of influence.

So again- why are you being such a troll about this toward him?

Being a member of the boomers, who supposedly had very good scores on college prep tests, I can say this:
1. My kids used to bring homework home that seemed to me as if they were doing things in junior high that I did in high school.

2. There is a lot of talk about dumbing down shools these days, which I find a lot of silly talk. see #1.

3. I went to an excellent small town school, Greencastle, which contained all the children of professors from DePauw university, most of whom were very very bright and very very focused on education.

4. I went to Ball State University to the Architecture school which is generally regarded as one of the top Architecture schools in the country.

5. My wife is a fourth grade teacher in Lafayette School Corporation.

6. I served for four years on the LSC school board.

7. Public education is currently under attack from the political and religeous right. At the moment, at least here in Indiana, the right is winning.

Why is public education under attack from the right?

Here are my opinons:
a. People on the right generally want to favor the people who already have money and power.
b. Public education is by far the most expensive item on our domestic budget.
c. The right wants to eleminate all unions, even though the teachers union is a pretty weak entity here in Indiana at least.

Personally? I came from a working class family who valued education. I have seven siblings. Without the pell grants and college loans I probably would have missed out on college.

I think public education is the backbone of our culture.

I think having the working class be financially successful enough to be middle class is what made our economy the envy of the world.

Are Unions inherintly good? Not necessarily. Are they inherintly bad? Certainly not. Unions provide protection to workers where it is needed. The law currently allows Unions to be formed whenever the workers at a place vote it to be so. That seems fair to me.

If a Union is not needed, great.

Education is expensive but it needs to be viewed as an investment not an expense.

I have had an excellent life which is based on the readily available public education that was present when I needed it. I am in favor of making these opportunities available to all children regardless of their race, ethnicity or financial background.

Our country has been doing that.

We should continue to do it.

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It starts out that I say education has deteriorated.

I'm told, talks cheap, prove it.

I say, how about letters from 1865 or textbooks from 1900.

Someone say show us.

I Google 6th grade english primer 1900 & then put up the first one I find.

Now it turns out I'm really trying to engage in subterfuge and bring Jesus/God/Protestantism in 'through the backdoor.'

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I'm still waiting for the explanation of how all of this causes VD.

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I went to public school in Asia so it wasn't some elite school. 6 yrs Primary school, 4 years Secondary school and 2 years Junior College before college so it is pretty similar. In my 3rd year of Secondary school or High School, I was doing Calc and Physics and Chemistry. When I came here, I was doing the college level Calc and Physics and Chemistry that was at the very most, a little more than what I used to do and I was no scholar.

Mine sure didn't.

How many HS students can diagram a sentence?

For brevity sake I have excised. Complete quote is above.

I introduced this topic for discussion because I believe it is important.

I am not a 'secret agent' of the right. I'm an observant individual who believes many dreadful decisions have been made during my lifetime.

Here are some statistical generalization that I will gladly defend:

1. The quality of education has drastically lowered in the past 100 years.

2. Massive increases in expenditures have not stopped this.

3. The main response of the status quo is to demand an increase in the approach that has been is use during items 1 & 2.

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I thought you were in the military in Singapore?

- Peter.

Tom- now that you no longer have the power to issue infractions to those who have a different view of union teachers than you, I will respond to your opinions. As a product of, and a parent of three children in the public school system I believe I have an informed view. First off- the teachers union does not exist for the benefit of the students. Nothing they do or stand for in any way helps to further the betterment of education. They are a left wing organization bent on imposing their agenda on the children, and enriching themselves at my expense while doing it. My kids go to one of the best public schools in the country, yet at the 10th grade level my daughter is doing work I did in the sixth grade. But she has learned a lot of things I wasn't taught; Global warming, gay rights, hate speech, American bad, everyone else good, etc..

Public education is under attack from the religous right? Are you serious? You make it sound like they don't want the kids to learn. What they don't want is a bunch of highly paid leftist indoctrinating the kids when they are supposed to be teaching them the three R's. For the record- kids who go to religous schools receive a vastly superior education than those from public schools. This was not true when I went to public school. The bottom line is; the system is broken. Kids are not receiving a quality education because the union teachers and administrators are not about doing what is right for the student, but what is right for their agenda and pocketbook. You can't convince me that an organization that would appoint Kevin Jennings as its "safe schools" czar has my kids education as their priority, and not a politically correct agenda. Yet they always want more money even though the districts that spend the most per pupil have the worst scores/ graduation rates!

All of what I wrote above certainly does not mean I think every union teacher is evil, or out to further the radical agenda, but unfortunately enough of them are to where they are the norm rather than the exception. I am in contact with, and friends and neighbors with a lot of my kids teachers, Sadly the ones who are truly interested in educating are retiring due to the hostile environment for those who don't follow the party line. Go to any school and look in the teachers parking lot and count the Obama bumper stickers versus the McCain ones and you will quickly see what side the teachers are on.

My personal experience, as well as those of my children, with the public school system is pretty much the opposite of the post above.

:rolleyes:Then she is not going to one of the best public schools in the country.Are you suggesting that science classes should not teach anything about global warming? That would be a fairly radical, politically-motivated change to the science curriculum.I'm going to call baloney on that one. America is big enough, IMHO, to withstand criticism now and then. What are you afraid of? People are still getting after Obama for his so-called apology tour. All he did was enhance our reputation abroad by saying things that everyone knows to be true but for some reason would not say. He didn't cast the country in a bad light, at all. People are way too thin-skinned on that one, IMHO.Yep, pretty much. http://www.texastribune.org/texas-education/public-education/texas-social-studies-receive-failing-grade/