Posted on 01/28/2008 9:48:58 AM PST by lastchance
Rather than strong family units - as we had in the past - we now have 50% divorce rates, Mom and Dad working to keep up with the Joneses, and schools/daycares serving as (extremely poor, IMHO) surrogate parents.
The good news is that I'm seeing a backlash against that. With two kids of my own, I'm a little more cognizant of what other parents are doing. I'm seeing a return to the close-knit families of old, with kids not moving as far away from their parents as the previous generations did. My Mom and Dad see their grandkids several times a week. Contrast that with my own experience - my grandparents were a thousand miles away when I was growing up and I saw them every other year, maybe.
Closer knit families are a positive thing, but it will take a generation to see the final effects.
WT:”What was the graffiti in the restrooms like? That should give you a clue to the “socialization” in the school.”
That reminds me...
As a contrasting point, I remember at my son’s Christian school that someone had put some graffiti in the boy’s restroom (and it wasn’t even bad language) and the person responsible was expelled.
If kids are given standards and held to them, it is amazing how well they behave and submit to authority.
Anyone who puts their children in public school must be prepared to spend a great deal of time with their child un-doing the damage caused by the secularism and self-worship that is preached. Besides the fact that they need to be taught basic subjects that the public school never finds time to teach...
Indeed, parents "should" be reading to children, but I say again, unless the student is mentally retarded, they should come out of first grade knowing how to read, not matter WHAT the parents did or didn't do. This was the case from the Revolutionary War up until about a generation or so ago.
All having the parents read to children does is to make the teacher's job easier.
Pathologically peer dependent is the perfect phrase for what I'm seeing in the middle school where I teach. If one little girl shaves off her eyebrows and pencils new ones in with a sharpie like a chola, they all start doing it. One little boy uses his eraser to rub a permanent scar into the back of his hand, and they all start doing it. Half the boys in this school have permanently scarred themselves, and they don't even know WHY.
I know why!
My daughter is not mentally retarded, but she couldn’t read in 1st grade.
She is dyslexic. Dyslexics have normal IQ, but learn differently (usually they are visual learners).
Actually, the school was very clean. The kids were very good looking, clean cut kids.
I think it was the liberal agenda getting passed on down to the kids from the teachers, and the parents are just allowing it.
We’ve been in public schools with good teachers and bad kids. That’s a horrible mix.
This wasn’t the case. This was okay kids, but bad teacher. Unfortunately, the kids don’t have the backbone (or maybe the knowledge) to know that the play was unacceptable.
Sorry, but I consider dyslexic in the same category as mental retardation---it's a special case that needs special treatment. But the huge majority of children are NOT dyslexic, mentally retarded, or whatever the disability of the day is, yet many of them too are not learning to read. And THAT situation sits squarely in the lap of the "education professionals" (I refuse to use the word "teacher", because that implies a degree of respect I don't have for what sits at the head of today's classrooms).
My mother taught first and second grade for thirty-five years, and it was a VERY RARE occurrence for any child to leave her tutelage NOT knowing how to read.
This is such a sweeping and false generalization, that it is hard to believe that anyone would utter it. I understand why homeschoolers so enthusiastically support what they are doing. But I don't understand why they are so negative about other educational options, such as sending children to private or parochial schools. You are not going to win converts to your cause by being so self-righteous and self-congratulatory while being so dismissive and even derisive of the choices that other parents make. It is no wonder that you are always preaching to the choir--they are they only ones who are going to listen!
And don’t forget that before modern times, life expectancy was much shorter than it is today. It did not make sense for people to wait until their twenties to marry or start working if they were going to die before age 60.
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Get accustomed to it. You will be seeing and hearing it more.
It used to be that homeschooling was attacked because people doubted that parents could do as good a job. Wow! Few are using that argument any more. Homeschoolers as a group far outshine the institutionalized children.
Then there was the, “What about socialization?” canard. That too has been put to rest.
Next, it was determined that not only was it possible to adequately socialize homeschoolers, it was found that there socialization was **superior** to the institutionalized child. Homeschoolers could confidently state, “Socialization is one of the very best reasons to NOT to institutionalize your child.”
What will soon be understood, Steadfastconservative, is that not only do homeschoolers enjoy superior socialization and academic achievement, but that the institutionalized child is actually artificially retarded in his social and academic development, and the peer dependence seen in many institutionalized children is not **normal**. It is **abnormal** and even pathologic!
This is NOT being negative about other people’s options. It is stating what I see as a truth.
Apparently, A Perfect Lady, a women who is an actual teacher in an institutional school agrees with me. A **teacher**, with daily experience with children in this setting, AGREES with me. So...If a **teacher** can understand that peer dependence seen in institutionalized children is pathologic, I fully expect that many in the general population will come to this realization as well. ( see post #16)
As for individual parents, each knows their child and their personal circumstances. They must make decisions about the best possible setting for their child based upon their health, finances, and personal disposition and talents. Before making a decision, it is important for parents to have **all** the facts. If pathologic peer dependence, poor socialization, and inferior academic results is part of the institutionalized experience, then parents should KNOW that.
BTW, I looked it up and the average age at marriage was 24 for women and 27 for men.
But your mom probably was not dealing with children of illegal immigrants whose parents don’t even speak English.
There were not as many parents that did drugs and had crack babies, etc.
I would venture to guess that your mom mainly taught white kids whose parents didn’t do drugs and could speak English.
It’s a different situation now, and you can’t put all the blame on teachers.
Now, you can definitley put blame on some teachers. Because in with all of the horrible kids & parents, are lazy teachers who are on tenure and won’t get fired.
Not often, but it did happen. Though in this case the migrants were legal--this was in the days of the bracero program-and we had one family of Mexicans who showed up regularly following the pecan harvest across the southern US. The eldest daughter was in my class, spoke English reasonably well, and eventually married one of my distant cousins.
"There were not as many parents that did drugs and had crack babies, etc."
"Crack babies" fit the category of mentally retarded.
"I would venture to guess that your mom mainly taught white kids whose parents didn’t do drugs and could speak English."
That's true---just like it is true in "most" classrooms today.
"It’s a different situation now, and you can’t put all the blame on teachers."
Not really. We're talking about FIRST GRADERS here. The most pliable children available---they will NOT be on drugs. There is simply no excuse for any mentally "normal" child not to come out of first grade knowing how to read, though for non-English speakers, they probably should be allowed 'til the end of second grade, but no later. They'll pick up English fast enough in the first grade (total immersion, y'know). Too many teachers are too caught up in their "theories of education" (and I get a whiff of that odor from some of your comments) to get down and use what works to teach the children to read.
Your attempts to make excuses for the "education professionals" just will not cut it.
Just so you know, in California the majority of first graders are hispanic. The last year in public school for my daughters’, their school only had 40% white population. This is in a well-to-do area of San Jose.
Only a handful of schools in San Jose Unified are mainly white. There are some schools that are 80-90% hispanic.
I grew up in Dallas, and I was looking at the demographics of my old school district, Richardson ISD. Anyway, it has a very large illegal immigrant population now also. Most of the schools are 40% hispanic, %20 black, and 40% white.
My old school district in Dallas was predominantly white 20 years ago. It had a few schools that had blacks. Now, it’s totally changed.
Then you look at schools and look at how many qualify for free lunch program and you will have tons of kids. That means they are poor.
I think the middle class kids are going to private school or being homeschooled.
It’s just not the same.
The last year we were in public school, I felt so sorry for my daughters’ 3rd grade teacher. The principal gave her lots of problem kids because she could handle it. She had a kid from Ethiopia who could not speak any English at all. She had kids from other kids that had moved to the area who could not add anything in 3rd grade. Then there were a couple of white kids whose parents were going through divorces and the kids were acting out in school.
My special needs daughter looked great compared to these kids.
Then the principal never backed up the teacher. She would send troubled kids to the office, and the principal would do nothing.
She ended up quitting after that year.
We had more problems with awful public school administrators then we did with awful teachers. We have dealt with bad teachers, but most of the administrators were horrible and really did not back teachers up or scold teachers that were doing wrong.
Just because you think that something is true, that does not mean that it is. And in this case it isn't. Moreover, you are not just being negative about other people's opinions (while completely ignoring any defects in your own loudly-expressed opinions), you are being negative about other people. You have made several derogatory and insulting statements about children who go to school--they are "pathological," "abnormal," "institutionalized," and "socially retarded." You are so convinced about the rightness of your opinion, that you do not care if have to sacrifice truth and charity in order to win an argument. Frankly, it doesn't speak well of homeschooling that some of its advocates would act this way. My children may end up being "socially" or "educationally retarded" because they go to school, but at least they won't end up being morally retarded.
Then you look at schools and look at how many qualify for free lunch program and you will have tons of kids. That means they are poor.
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It means they are illegitimate, or living with a divorced mom.
Uh oh! You must be a government school user.
Anyway...I am certain that you fully evaluated your family’s situation,( health, finances, talents, and disposition for teaching, etc.) and have made the best possible choice for your children.
And I have to say "so what". Pick any major city, pre-WWI, and you would find ethnic neighborhoods with just as high a level of "non-English speaking" students---only the languages were Italian, East European of various sorts, and a smattering of most anything else. And yet the school systems of the day taught 95+% (or higher) of the children of those families to read, in English, CERTAINLY by third grade.
"Then you look at schools and look at how many qualify for free lunch program and you will have tons of kids. That means they are poor."
LOL. The school my mother taught at (and I attended) had students who were all rural from the poorest part of our parish. Many of the students were "swamp rats" (Cajun kids, for some of whom English was the second language). All poorer than dirt. Yet they all learned to read, the vast majority in first grade, though some took a bit longer. That school was looked down on by pretty much all the other parish schools, because it was small and poor. But that school turned out the first two National Merit Scholars the parish produced. Sorry, but poverty is no excuse for not teaching well.
"We had more problems with awful public school administrators then we did with awful teachers. We have dealt with bad teachers, but most of the administrators were horrible and really did not back teachers up or scold teachers that were doing wrong."
And how many of those administrators had been teachers?? Most school administrators ARE former teachers, and non-teacher school board members have been so snowed by the "professional educator schtick" that they "sit down and shut up" when the latest nutcase education PhD starts advocating the "latest and greatest" crackpot education theory.
The "education professionals" are going to have a LOT to answer for in the next life. The USA spends FAR more on education than it ever has, and gets far less than it once did.
The USA needs to fire nine out of ten "school administrators" (who do zero to actually foster the process of getting kids to learn) and move back to the education methods of pre-1940 and earlier.
“The fact that there is a great divide between what education ought to be and what it actually is suggests that there is someone who is benefiting from the status quo.”
There are alot of people who benefit from the current set up of the public schools indoctrination ruse. I would be interested in the next installment.
A little "out there" maybe, but hey, he was contemplating the universe; "out there" was where it was at. :)
Not saying your daughter will be an Albert, but ya never know.
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