Posted on 10/03/2009 4:49:44 PM PDT by Graybeard58
The official government data about literacy in America are dreadful: 32 million adults can't read printed material more challenging than a children's picture book; another 18 million are walking around with high school diplomas, but can't read above the sixth-grade level and have considerable difficulty making simple two-step calculations. Together, these groups comprise about 25 percent of the adult population.
America has so many illiterates and near illiterates, and their number grows by more than 2 million every year, because 3 in 10 students never finish high school and 1 in 4 graduates come away with the equivalent of an eighth-grade education or less. Illiteracy affects every aspect of one's life and is a reliable predictor of poverty, crime and myriad other social problems.
There's plenty of blame to go around here, starting with derelict parenting, the explosion of divorce, cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births, and the rise of a popular culture that glorifies and removes stigmas from anti-social behavior. These and other influences make the jobs of "educators" more difficult, but it hardly excuses their malfeasance as expressed in the literacy statistics.
At the core is the government's educational monopoly, with its desperate lack of accountability and enforceable standards, and the sway liberalism and unionism hold over it. Since 1960, per-pupil spending on public schools has more than tripled in inflation-adjusted dollars, but the quality of education has diminished.
All this money pursued untested fads, and expanded schools' duties to include psychology, day care for the children of teenage mothers and a raft of other social work that distracted schools from their core mission. But mostly, the money made unionized employees wealthier and more comfortable by lightening their workload through small class sizes and other means.
Over time, schools became less focused on imparting knowledge than indoctrinating students. Their emphasis went from reading, writing and arithmetic to interdisciplinary instruction in political correctness, multiculturalism and environmentalism. Once conveyors of knowledge, teachers became passive "facilitators of learning" who strove to be students' buddies rather than role models or authority figures. Today, America's schools spend something north of $100,000 on each student from kindergarten on, and for its investment, society gets millions of illiterate dropouts and near-illiterate graduates who are intellectually unprepared for the rigors of adulthood and civic participation.
Among the products of public education are the "educators" themselves. And as economist and Hoover Institution fellow Thomas Sowell is fond of saying: "So long as public school teachers and administrators are drawn primarily from the bottom layers of college students, so long as they have iron-clad tenure, so long as their pay is wholly divorced from performance, and so long as they have a monopoly of the vast majority of students, everything else is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." Indeed, as academic performance in America further lags the rest of the world, the educational establishment pushes back against even the mildest reforms. Its solution to everything is more: more money, more dues-paying personnel, more time, more slack, more excuses.
It's bad enough schoolchildren are cast into this caldron of failure for 180-plus days a year. Now President Obama would reward the educational monopoly for decades of malfeasance by turning schoolchildren over to it year round, as if its failed practices miraculously would succeed if given more time. Oh, yes, and more money. Lots and lots of money.
That said, if this proposal turns out to be anything more than the administration's attempt to distract the public from Afghanistan, Obamacare and mounting joblessness, and the Annie Le homicide, the 19-pound baby and the latest celebrity gossip, it will be interesting to see how many dedicated "educators" would flee the profession if they had to work summers.
Ping to a Republican-American Editorial.
If you want on or off this list, let me know.
So whose fault is it? I assume it would be the teachers fault, or the people who force teachers to teach kids crap .... mmm, mmmmm, mm
Idiot schoolteachers have a lot to do with it, problems keeping order in schools also does.
It certainly will work for its intended purpose. That of further removing children from the influence of their parents and providing opportunities to indoctrinate.
1) End the wars
2) Cap and trade
3) Socialized medicine
4) Expand education (usually presented as expanding it backwards to age 3 and forwards through college...this latest proposal is akin to his campaign plank).
It's very possible he will FAIL on all 4.
He's a big fat zilch.
It is the fault of liberalism and by extension, all those, including me, who have allowed liberals to run our educational system.
yep, me too ... not reading the bills, not paying attention has consequences.
I used to think it was the teachers fault too..and it partially is, however..I believe the schools went under federal control in the 70s..and thats when the kids began to come out of school, unable to read. I believe before than, the schools were under state control.
Making a longer school day, or school session will not make kids smarter. If they arent “getting it” now..more hours wont help AND..do they intend to make the days longer..and keep the amount of homework some of these kids get?
Do they realize that some children in rural areas are riding the bus for over an hour before they get home? I have grandchildren that dont get home from school, in winter, until its dark outside.
They need to find out exactly WHY these kids arent learning and fix that! They USED to be able to learn. And kids havent changed all that much.
School has become a babysitting service ...
We switched my twin daughters to a new private school this year.
It’s been interesting the difference. Last year, they were in a school that gave tons of homework. All it did was make them stressed out, and I don’t think they really learned all that much.
This year, they don’t have as much homework. When something is difficult, they have time to actually understand the problem and work on it. Also, they have time to pursue other interests (acting, playing the flute, and reading). I’m already seeing a lot of academic growth in my daughters, and they are much happier.
One of the reasons why they have less homework in the new school is because they have less classes. They have 7 classes (english, math, science, history, pe, bible, and an elective) that meet 4 days a week for 55 minutes.
The old school had 11 classes that met for 40 minutes each. Besides the academic classes (reading, literature, math, science, history) they had art, bible, spanish, study skills, elective, and pe. They would meet for a short time, and then send home lots of work. My daughters said they didn’t actually do much work at school. I think they also spent a lot of time just switching classes.
Anyway, I think the new school is more effecient and they get a lot of academic work done at school.
Sometimes, more school doesn’t always mean a better education. I also think it’s good for kids to have time to pursue their own interests and to have time with their family.
The same folks who propagate their “Survival of the species” garbage would never surrender their stakes at the gold mine of tax dollar funded full employment for incompetents.
That does not stop them from voting though.
More school isn’t the answer, private schools are. Pick a good one and do what you have to do, like we did, to send your kids to private school.
I suggest the the courts. Think about what effect their decisions since the 1960s have done to the schools. Their meddling knows no bounds.
Not enough money pumped into education on a federal level via taxation and too much parental freedom to raise their kids the way they deem necessary.
There's too much Constitution talk going on.
We need to change that and get back to liberal control via superficial freedom talk.
We need Fascism to set things right.
"Living/breathing" is the answer.
Then people need to be fired. They have to get rid of this tenure thing. What other profession has that?
Go back to how school was taught 50 years ago. Get the damn computers out of the primary grades....
Agree, tenure is ridiculous and needs to go. But when you have a government office like the education department churning out teaching criteria, disaster is the only possible result
mmm, mmmm, mm
I put all four of my kids thru private school. Best thing I ever did.
If you’re doing things wrong for the first 6 hours of a school day, adding 3+ more hours of the same sh*t is not going to help...
Simple and eloquent LFD.
The beltway perpetually overlooks this simple understanding however.
They have to get rid of this tenure thing.
Your statement is simple and short however right with potency, NYM!
“America has so many illiterates and near illiterates, and their number grows by more than 2 million every year, because 3 in 10 students never finish high school and 1 in 4 graduates come away with the equivalent of an eighth-grade education or less”
A lot of those illiterates now have teaching degrees.
Not long ago there was an article posted in a South Florida newspaper about a teacher who was making 75,000 a year that could not pass a simple math test. (she was fired eventually) There have been hundreds caught buying fake academic credits etc.
Hell I’ve seen way to many who can’t even speak correctly and you expect them to actually teach?
I bet this is going on in more places than just South Florida.
ping
Good luck trying to fire a teacher in NYC or Chicago, the unions have a 5 foot blueprint of hoops that have to be jumped before you even think about it. We’ve had teachers that molested or smacked around kids sitting in one of the district offices picking their nails all day, for months... or years.
The fact they teach to the test instead of true teaching doesn’t help.
They also push (illegal), for parents to drug their kids, more parent participation is needed and they need to know the state’s responsibility is not raising your children.
Last year I had twin boys 12th grade reading 4th grade level... I lost my mind on the dean, who wanted to shuffle them to trade school months before grad to make their bottom line look better; I lost it on the parents as well.
Never had resource room to help with reading or any help at all. The union gets the raise without accountability every time. Yet the good teachers got harassed as well as 40 kids to a class.
Don’t get me started on the Board of Ed or mono Spanish and bilingual classes.
“America has so many illiterates and near illiterates, and their number grows by more than 2 million every year...”
And that’s been by design for the past 50 years. They’ve made incredible gains while the rest of us have been asleep. See points 15, 17, 18 & 20, below:
[From “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen]
http://www.rense.com/general32/americ.htm
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policy-making positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a “religious crutch.”
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture—education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use [”]united force[”] to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.
I’m so glad you were able to do that. :)
ping
ping
“Whose fault is it?”
It’s our fault for giving our children to the government just because it’s “free”.
If we took enough of our children out the system would collapse, the left would be substantially defunded and deprived of its privileged ideological access to the minds of our children,and we could provide our children with real education.
But, conservatives are addicted to aid-to-dependent-parents.
If you’re pinging me because of ‘The Naked Communist’ please spread it around! It’s amazing to me how many people don’t know about this. and it’s not some ‘conspiracy theory.’
Our internal ENEMIES actually HAVE A PLAN to overthrow America! I don’t have A PLAN. The GOP doesn’t have any long-range GOALS or even a VAGUE plan. Do you? *YIKES*
I have long thought that what is called homework should be incorporated into the school day. So let kids be in school from 830 to 530, with time for lunch, gym, recess, as well as classes and structured time to work on projects that the teachers check and grade BEFORE they leave for the day.
Half the people in this country are below average in intelligence - not 90% of them can appreciate the finer points of a Shakespeare sonnet or advanced methods of differentiating a quadratic equation - the fantasy that lots more hours of schooling are going to produce piles more scientists and scholars is - well, a fantasy, and an expensive and disruptive one at that......
There are a few fundamentals about government schools that are simply impossible to reform. That conservatives fail to grasp these fundamental flaws in government schooling is plainly evident in their posts. I consistently read the following:
* If only the Department of Education were eliminated.
* Local control
* Smaller districts.
* More ( or less)) parental involvement in the schools, school board, and PTA.
* More ( or less) parental help with homework
* Return schools to the curriculum of the 1950s
* Prayer in school.
* Reading the bible in school.
* Longer ( or shorter ) school year or day.
* Back to basics
* Get politics ( or religion or culture) out of the schools.
* Make schools neutral.
Ad nauseam!
None of the above will “fix” the government schools. The following are reasons why:
1) Few conservative understand that government are socialism and have **always** been socialism. It is **impossible** to reform socialism.
2) Few conservatives understand that government schools are an daily lesson in being comfortable with socialism! Every day children learn that it is OK for the government to take money from their neighbor to pay for a service that their parents want for FREE! Do this for 13 years and other socialist programs look OK too!
It is my opinion, that we have an IRS, elected FDR, and implemented the New Deal and Great Society because one to three generations of citizens had learned to be comfortable with socialism by being recipients of socialism in their socialistic government schools. It's been downhill since.
Obama wasn't made possible by our govenrnment schools. Government schools made Obama INEVITABLE!!!
3) All government schools violate the First Amendment. They force children ( who have committed no crime) into prison-like structures. Then government workers strictly control speech, press, assembly, and exercise of religion. In many ways government schools teach child to be good little prisoners of the fascist state.
4) NO government school can be religiously, culturally, or politically neutral. ( No school is.) No matter what the government school decides, the government will establish the religious, political, and cultural worldview of some citizens and trash worldview of others. This is true even if the school district were as small as size of a city block. Since it is impossible for a government school to be religiously, politically, or culturally neutral, they must be abolished. They are a freedom of conscience and First Amendment abomination!
5)All schools must choose between a godless or God-centered worldview. Neither is religiously neutral in content or consequences. This is another reason government schools must be abolished.
6) At the moment our government schools are godless in their worldview. All government schools in this nation teach children how to think and live godlessly. All government schools teach children how to compartmentalize their faith. This is not politically neutral, yet having God-centered government schools isn't religiously neutral either. There is no solution to the conundrum, therefore government schools must be abolished.
So...The above are merely some of the irresolvable internal conflicts with the First Amendment and freedom of conscience that are **fundamental** to all government schools. They can NOT be fixed! Government schools must be abolished!
that the teachers check and grade BEFORE they leave for the day.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
With modern technology, the child could and should have almost **instant** feedback.
Ditto
Should be not 10 % of them can appreciate... - no more wine for you tonight.....
Just never forget that neither political Party has done anything to change the radical leftist educational system to destroy America’s children.
Yes, but it is likely too late.
Conservatives can take back the education of children, reform the universities, and take back the culture. We must start with K-12 education.
Conservatives should **immediately** stop giving any money to Marxist colleges and universities, and instead, use that money to do the following:
Conservatives must set up education foundations that would award grants to individual teachers. The conservative teachers would open tuition-free one room school houses, mini-schools, or homeschool co-ops. The foundation would certify the teachers, approve the curriculum, and test the students. They would resemble Kumon or Sylvan tutoring centers in many ways.
The education foundations would also break the government monopoly on team sports by sponsoring sports leagues. They would also organize local theater, gymnastics, cheerleading, and dance groups, as well as, art, band, and orchestras.
The foundations would organize the parents to oppose **all** government school funding, and to elect representatives dedicated to closing down all government schooling.
As for colleges and universities:
If our college classrooms were filled to the brim with youth who were fully prepared to defend their faith and our nation's founding principles, their Marxist professors would wither before them. Soon these students would be taking their places in our colleges and universities, and in our cultural institutions.
If we were to start now, in 10 short years we could see real change.
( Not proof read.)
“Then people need to be fired. They have to get rid of this tenure thing. What other profession has that?”
Pretty much any government, union or private professional level job.
They call it an employment contract. It protects an employee against arbitrary or capricious dismissal.
Back in the late 70s or early 80s, the Chicago teachers were on strike. I was watching the coverage and a tv person asked one of the picketers what she did in school. She said and I’ll never forget, “I teaches English”.
I promises you, I’m not making that up.
Thanks for the ping Graybeard. IMO these figures are a reflection of PRIMARILY a specific urban setting in which cultural pressures keep the stars from being born, in more ways than one I might add.
I say no more.
I agree.
Have you noticed that America’s education really started nosediving as soon as there was a federal Department of Education.
Shades of 1984, indeed.
Yeah round school is disgusting.
I know you are not making it up.
It’s a lot more common than you think.
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