Posted on 03/15/2012 2:13:26 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
If it wasn’t so tragic, it would be comical. Our schools seem to be run by Italian cruise ship captains.
In a society, where everyone is immersed in language and surrounded by words, we somehow manage to have an illiteracy crisis. Recent government tests show that two-thirds of the kids entering middle school are sub-literate. This country has 50 million functional illiterates. Furthermore, SAT scores are falling. American students don’t compete well against students from other countries, even though we spend vastly more per student than almost everybody else. Ordinary citizens know less and less general information. In short, public education is a disgraceful sham.
If public schools were a publicly traded corporation, it goes without saying that all the top people would be fired today. New management would be brought in. New policies would be tried until improvement was manifest to everyone. You know this is exactly what would happen in any practical, sensible part of the universe.
So the question must be: why has our Education Establishment been allowed to make a mess of things year after year? Did it win an election running on the incompetence platform? Is there a fix? Can you attend a graduate school of education only if you sign your brain over to a cult?
Well, let’s not indulge too much in the ridicule of the ridiculous. Let’s focus on the main prize, which is to fix this mess.
[ARTICLE CONCLUDES BELOW]
Indeed, if Arne Duncan and President Obama can lock in their Common Core Curriculum, it seems to me we’ll get more of the same but worse. So who can save us?
Obviously we have to look to the larger world for leadership and salvation: prominent citizens, community groups, private schools, conservative political groups, and particularly non-profit organizations.
Many of the big-name non-profit organizations (in business, politics, military, and other fields) are officially devoted to education reform. Often, these groups solicit funds for that exact purpose. But education stays the same or gets worse. Isn’t that intriguing? I’ve called up some of these organizations to ask: are you really doing all you can? Is it unreasonable to ask that you try harder? (Contributors should ask the same thing.)
In all cases, we need to move to a higher level of seriousness. The Education Establishment, intent on its ideological goals, has dumbed down not just the schools but almost every discussion about the schools. We’re trying to discuss the architecture for a new building even as we are dog-paddling around in a swamp. First, let’s drain the swamp. Then we need a lot more people with what Hemingway called “a good bullshit detector.” Virtually everything the official educators come up with is either trivial, a distraction, or outright BS. Let’s call it what it is as a simple first step toward reform.
Seriously, folks, you simply cannot create 50 million functional illiterates without some serious stupidity or you are trying very hard. Isn’t that a fair statement? It’s not as though young kids are living in the jungle and never see a printed word. No, we are all surrounded by language from the time we open our eyes. TV ads. Packaging. Magazines. Billboards. Menus. It’s almost inconceivable that our public schools can actually prevent children from learning to read -- that’s how I would put it -- but prevent reading is exactly what they do. Ditto so much else that used to be taught in public schools.
Quick, find some top-level educrats and say: you’re fired.
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Bruce Deitrick Price is an author, artist, poet, and education activist. His simple 10-point blueprint for school reform can be found here: “A Bill Of Rights For Students 2012.” (http://www.improve-education.org/id90.html)
Demonstrably false. Let's consider Carly Fiona - before she was fired by HP, she laid off over 60,000 HP workers, many who had been with HP for decades. The money she 'saved' by this wave of terminations, was enough for her to buy 7 Lear jets; so she and her Sr. Management could fly without having to mingle with the 'great unwashed'.
Upper management is always the very last to go out the door; and when they do, their Golden Parachutes guarantee that they will never .... ever ... have to work a day in their life again.
> If Public Schools Were A Business, All Of Top Management
> Would Be Fired
In China, they would be executed.
It’s because of the lack of phonics. One can’t master a vocabulary of any size with “look-say” liberal instruction.
Redundancy Warning ...
I have been submitting the following in every thread concerning public schools.
The “public school” is BY FAR, the largest, most expensive, most subversive, and most destructive entitlement program in the country.
The “public school” is better understood as the “government school collective”.
It is silly to imagine that you can fix the public schools, because the very concept itself is communist.
If you want to win the culture war, have lots of children (see my tagline) and homeschool them or form your own school cooperative with your church or synagogue and like-minded friends and relatives.
If you have children, make whatever sacrifices you must to get them out of the public schools.
DO NOT FEED THE BEAST!
Especially not with your own children.
Actually they would be CEO of G.E.
ping
When the schools fail these days, we give them more money. lol.
Single payer will never, ever work. How much more evidence is needed that Adam Smith was correct or Friedrich Hayek, or Milton Friedman. Single payer will never work.
There are two requirements for education to improve.
a) Parents must pay directly for their children’s education.
b) Fathers must raise their children.
If the federal government(in general) was a business, probably 2/3 of the employees would be fired with the leaders(legislative and executive) thrown in prison.
“why has our Education Establishment been allowed to make a mess of things year after year?”
Simple answer. The schools are controlled by unions who are looking out for the interest of the teachers, not the children, and the teachers are interested in getting another paycheck, no matter what.
The Marxists/ Communists are so entrenched we will never get reform, until "their revolution" the kind that Ayers, Dorhn, Piven and Van Jones want, except only the Republicans/Conservatives will have the guns, ha ha.
On their side will be the 50 million illiterate "children", the OWS crowd, welfare queens and the pot heads. Lets face it, it is all by design they want more ignorant "voters" and takers to secure their place as the rulers over the dummies.
If Public Schools Were A Business, All Of Top Management Would Be Fired
_______________________________________
As a professional educator who takes her educational vocation seriously, I vociferously respond, “Amen....and ......AMEN!”
Agree. If the communist/socialist/liberal/progressive bastards, including the unionistas are separated from the educational system, then things could turn around for the "good of the children".
These leftist, here in USA, noticed and learned something from previous Communist regimes from Europe which eventually collapsed. Those regimes made a mistake by pushing hard for a good education, so they can prove how superior Socialism will be compared to the "evil" Capitalism. One thing they did not realized: it is harder to oppress a well educated population. Now, here they will avoid at any cost their Eastern European comrade's mistakes. These leftist must be removed from the education system!
1. Restore public education to solely local control. No policy decisions should be made at higher than the county level, and 80 percent or more should be made for individual schools by their administration, with regular oversight from local committees composed of regular people from the neighborhood, preferably parents with children at the school.
2. Restore the ability of teachers to maintain order and discipline in the classroom. Teachers shall be authorized to exercise reasonable corporal punishment in moderation when needed, and not subjected to prosecution, civil liability, or administrative punitive action when written guidelines for such punishment are observed.
3. Reduce class sizes to a level manageable by a single teacher. Classes should contain no more than 20 students under any circumstances, and ideally no more than 10, so that all students can receive sufficient attention from the teacher to learn the curriculum.
4. Teach using the classical education model. By implementing elements of the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) into primary education, students will not only learn specific facts and concepts about a given subject, but will learn how to engage the learning process for themselves in any subject.
5. Emphasize literacy as the primary skill. Children who cannot read cannot study. Children who discover the pleasure of reading will read far beyond the requirements of their schoolwork and, given a steady supply of quality books, will proceed to educate themselves.
Having reviewed these five points, I realize that there is essentially no possibility that they can be implemented in the current public education model in any meaningful way, absent the return of this entire nation to the sensibilities and politics of the 1890s. These five points, however, do work quite nicely in a private or parochial school, and even better in a homeschool. In fact, the first three points are inevitably part of a home education effort.
That is pure BS.
The smaller class size was and is nothing more than a ploy by the libs to make more teacher's jobs available, thus adding to union funds and more control.
Has nothing to do with the ability to teach.
A good teacher can teach a group of kids under an oak tree out in the field, a failed teacher, cannot, regardless of the limits placed on the number of children.
Have we met? Have we established such an intimate relationship that you should so address me, without the benefit of either doubt as to my meaning, or respect toward my thinking?
Under the presumption that you deserve a civil answer, I will proceed as follows:
Has nothing to do with the ability to teach.
A good teacher can teach a group of kids under an oak tree out in the field, a failed teacher, cannot, regardless of the limits placed on the number of children.
I am willing for the sake of argument to cede you this premise. I will advance my own counter-argument that while smaller class sizes may not be essential for quality teaching, they do make it much simpler to enforce discipline and order in the classroom (or under that oak tree out in the field), which are indispensible to learning. Every minute a teacher spends dealing with a disruptive student is a minute stolen from classroom instruction, and this is true even of the best of teachers.
I am no fan of teachers' unions or the modern education establishment. I believe that they both perform a gate-keeping function of credentialing for the purpose of ensuring that they have control over the market for teaching jobs.
If there are disruptors, the teacher either knows and has the methods at their discretion to handle the situation, or they do not. This is not directly related to class size, rather to the mindset of the teacher, and the administration's policy towards discipline.
The BS comes in when the thought is conveyed that the class size, down to 20, or 10, or 13 1/2, must be reduced in order to increase the efficiency of the teacher, less being better, when in fact the whole reason for that plan being foisted upon the public was no more than a way to increase and guarantee the need for more teachers working for the state, thus increasing the union's power to deal with the state and public.
Need to get ready for work, will check with you later.
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