This is a crisis we'd better get a handle on before it's too late -- if it isn't already!
Posted on 05/24/2016 8:20:18 AM PDT by Kaslin
Any serious effort to deal with behavior problems will be “racist”.
The American Education system, like many other Liberal run institutions, is not about educating students. It’s first and foremost about employing teachers and feeding the Unions. The second objective is the money. “Education” is a cash cow and low hanging fruit for the government to collect more because it is always “for the children”.
Finally, they need to show some minor improvement (but not too much) so they can point to the affect of their efforts. They do this by constantly changing the way their efforts are scored and/or graded. There is no baseline so we measure against the world in some semi-objective comparison.
Notice that there is never any discussion about how important history is. It is the basis of our constitutional self governance and it doesn’t get “tested”.
Way more than 1/2 of American students are below average.....
I think you got that right.
Exactly - the US Dept of Ed will use the policy of "disparate impact" to hammer any district into compliance with what D/Ed thinks the numbers should be. It happened in Oklahoma City and added to the merry-go-round of carpet-bagging superintendents that have rolled through there in recent years. Meanwhile, classroom teachers are told their "classroom management skills" are deficient when the feral hellions prevent effective instruction to those who want to be there.
This is a surprise? The shift in dollars away from education has been a steady straight line consistent with the raising of poverty entitlements. According to the Weekly Standard, New data compiled by the Senate Budget Committee shows that, last year, the United States spent over $60,000 to support welfare programs per each household that is in poverty. The calculations are based on data from the Census, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Congressional Research Services. The liberal side of the house, doesn’t see this as a problem trend because they see this as a way to aid in their continued efforts to keep control of government by dumbing down the capacity of the graduating(?) young adults and by teaching the use of entitlements thus increasing their dependence on the politicians and their dollar eating programs. What you’re seeing now is the accumulation of the effort starting in the 60’s with the invention of programs like AFDC, which finally peaked in the mid 70’s, and food stamps which were invented in 1964 with the food stamp act. So this isn’t a trend, it’s a planned out effort.
red
There’s a chronic problem in education for a couple of simple reasons:
Break up of the family and legitimate family values, and a failure to honor God.
Both Mon and Dad need to take responsibility to create a strong family unit and religious upbringing - all by example, of course.
We landed a man on the moon with chalkboards, textbooks, and slide rules. Money is not the problem, nor has it ever been.
He means that the "adequate funding" provided by Federal, state, and local taxpayers has vanished into political patronage jobs, political patronage contracting/sourcing, and outright theft at every level.
Most of them probably can't read Proust or Jane Austen, either. Many young persons graduating with degrees in the liberal arts (with or without debt) haven't spent their college years studying the great (or even pretty good) works of the Western literary tradition. They've been in leftist indoctrination programs.
Not to mention one of America's problems (among the other thousands of serious problems plaguing us) is that we trivialize evil by reframing with euphemisms.
Homosexuality is "gay." Adultery is an "affair." And psychopathic, antisocial, thug behavior in the classroom (which should be immediately dealt with in the harshest manner possible) is now "behaviorally challenged."
This same subject comes up every two weeks or so on Free Republic.
The responses are also the same.
“They’re teaching worthless subjects and handing out worthless degrees! These kids need more math and science!”
OK. How are we going to get more of them to study math and science?
Are the problems we now face caused because of a lack of math and science education?
If we sat every student down at a desk with a gun at their head and made them study math and science for 18 years, would all of our problems be solved?
This is a conservative site, but it sure seems like all those math and science geniuses are liberal. How many research university department heads are posting here at Free Republic? How many of those whiz kids in the Silicon Valley come here? They know their math and science. But they can’t seem to be able to figure out how to help our nation.
Curriculum and textbook writers are dominated by liberal and even revolutionary thinkers. Read you kids history book, it will stun you.
Students are allowed to behave as they wish without limits. Combined with mainstreaming all students together regardless of capability, skills, aptitude, attitude and mental health has turned the classroom into a cattle pen of behavioral problems.
Parents will sue for any reason anytime. Administrators are scared to death of this. Special Ed IEPs use more educator time that preparing lessons. Every parent thinks their kid is incapable of being a brat.
Administrators are teachers promoted to their highest level of incompetency. Most principals don't have any experience in operating a large business or dealing with suppliers and contractors. Yet they are placed in near complete charge of financial and facility improvements in their school.
School districts are enamored with computer technology. Computers are the classroom babysitting equivalent of the TV or video game at home. Students that understand the technology are deluded into thinking they are educated because they can access files on a computer that provide answers rather than actually derive an answer from knowledge and analysis.
When given money school districts spend it on new buildings, supplemental technology and motivational seminars/lectures for teacher in service meetings. It rarely goes directly to something that benefits student performance. They never spend it on textbooks and teaching resources, supplies or classroom furnishings.
Way too many teachers are the kids who loved being in school and entered the profession so they could stay in a Peter Pan world.
Beware of any teacher that sponsors all the social clubs. They may not be predators but may be so socially underdeveloped that they identify more with the 15 year olds rather than the adults in their life.
I am a retired high school teacher. I taught vocational classes in electronics and I taught physics and intro to engineering. Before that I spent 9 years in the USAF and then 12 years as a quality assurance engineer in General Dynamics on the Tomahawk, M-1 and F-16 programs.
I have certain relatives who have snatched themselves half-bald over the issue. Suddenly in his early twenties the kid decides he wants to study science (I'm thinking "great, at last!") but from high school he has a substandard GPA and no apparent study habits at all. Figures he's taken some junior college courses and he's smart enough to walk right in and put his nose to the grindstone now that he knows what he wants to do.
Yep, he got clobbered. Humiliated.
So the answer to your question, I think, is to place more emphasis on study methodology than we have in the recent past, because the kids are reaching the U with (1) a huge looming debt just to be there, (2) little real focus on what they intend to do for the rest of their lives (no surprise there at age 18), and (3) without the basic study skills to address whatever subject they do finally focus on.
It isn't just the debt issue, it's a matter of preparation, and they're not getting that. Had a long conversation with a young plumber only last evening who was laughing about how much classroom time he had to spend just to get his professional certs. "College would have been easier" was his conclusion. (BTW, he is one heck of a good plumber and he's pulling down some serious coin for such a young feller. No college education doesn't equate to no education.) Bottom line - you can't escape it so they might as well teach it in high school. Less social activism, more skull sweat. They could call the course "This Is How To Study". It wouldn't even have to be a major adjustment.
Is it really the student’s fault?
You paid the plumber to fix a plumbing problem.
The student pays the professor to teach him something.
If the plumber couldn’t fix the plumbing problem, would you pay him?
If the professor can’t teach the student the necessary information, should the student pay him?
My college classes were pathetic. The professors struck a pose and lectured. Pass their test or fail. Need help? “Perhaps you shouldn’t be in college.” Perhaps they shouldn’t be teaching.
Our professors have received a pass for far too long.
Their job is to teach, not pose.
ping
Well, mostly. As you've pointed out, in the right curriculum you can get by without really having to study; ironically that tends to be the "Studies" curricula. Don't try it in Engineering, and that is precisely what our author here is talking about. Sure, we need more engineers and scientists, but we can't start building them in their Freshman year at the U.
And yeah, you're correct about the difference in teaching, which is what my young bud Dusty was talking about. Those professors who practice the no-nonsense approach (and I know a lot of them, too) get terrible online reviews as inflexible hard-asses. They also get excellent students and excellent results.
Play it out to the end.
What would happen if professors were paid only if the student mastered the course?
The professors would scream.
Then, they would develop a pre-test for their class. That way they weed out the students who aren’t prepared. That reduces the number of students and causes the professor’s pay to go down. Oh my.
No pre-test.
The students aren’t prepared and fail and the professor doesn’t get paid. Oh my.
The professor passes all the students.
You make the students prove competency in the subject by passing a standardized test not administered by the professor.
Then you stifle creativity by the professor and students.
Yes, but all would be trained to a standard of competency. Like the countries we worry so much about.
This is a crisis we'd better get a handle on before it's too late -- if it isn't already!
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