Anyone watching 20/20 on abc now?

[JoeFahey]

It is actually kind of making me mad. But it is hard for someone his age, who has not been in education to understand. Public education is not as affective as it used to be I am sure, but it is for far different reason than he is giving. He is blaming it on the schools, and their teachers. But it is simply because kids have no sense of discipline and respect for the most part nowadays. Most teachers cannot deal with these students. Teachers should be able to deal with disciplining to a certain extent, but not to the level that today's society requires.
I am currently a Junior in High School, and we do not have any of these issues he is addressing, but I know many more schools located in much larger cities have big problems with student discipline.

All I am trying to say, is that is not as much the teacher's fault, or the school's fault.

 

[waggy]

Originally posted by: JoeFahey
It is actually kind of making me mad. But it is hard for someone his age, who has not been in education to understand. Public education is not as affective as it used to be I am sure, but it is for far different reason than he is giving. He is blaming it on the schools, and their teachers. But it is simply because kids have no sense of discipline and respect for the most part nowadays. Most teachers cannot deal with these students. Teachers should be able to deal with disciplining to a certain extent, but not to the level that today's society requires.
I am currently a Junior in High School, and we do not have any of these issues he is addressing, but I know many more schools located in much larger cities have big problems with student discipline.

All I am trying to say, is that is not as much the teacher's fault, or the school's fault.

i agree its not the teacher's fault. its the teachers union, school board, parents and students fault.

politics have done more to hurt the education of children then TV or anything else.


edit: that is not to say that there are not bad teachers. lord knows i have had a few over the years.

 

[Lyfer]

Public schools is the suck.

 

[GTaudiophile]

Teachers unions and lack of parental discipline. For the latter, I suppose you can blame the break-down of the two-parent household AND over-taxation, forcing both parents to work.

 

[bctbct]

teachers are like any other sector. Some good, some bad. Everyone thinks throwing 6-8% raises at them is going to make them better. ha

 

[JoeFahey]

How do teacher's unions affect this? I am sure you are right, I just do not know much about them.

 

[GTaudiophile]

Few Americans are aware of this, but the rest of the world is very aware of this. Kind of like soccer and the World Cup.

Anyway, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) conducts a test every 3 years (2000,2003,2006) called PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment). The goal of PISA is to assess 15-year-old public school students, male and female, in the principal industrialised countries of the world in the subject areas of Reading, Math, and Science.

Here are the results of the 2000 study:

READING
1. Finland
2. Canada
3. New Zealand
4. Australia
5. Ireland
6. Korea
7 United Kingdom
8. Japan
9. Sweden
10. Austria
11. Belgium
12. Iceland
13. Norway
14. France
15. United States
16. Denmark
17. Switzerland
18. Spain
19. Czech Republic
20. Italy
21. Germany
22. Liechtenstein
23. Hungary
24. Poland
25. Greece
26. Portugal
27. Russian Federation
28. Latvia
29. Luxembourg
30. Mexico
31. Brazil

MATH
1. Japan
2. Korea
3. New Zealand
4. Finland
5. Australia
6. Canada
7. Switzerland
8. United Kingdom
9. Belgium
10. France
11. Austria
12. Denmark
13. Iceland
14. Liechtenstein
15. Sweden
16. Ireland
17. Norway
18. Czech Republic
19. United States
20. Germany
21. Hungary
22. Russian Federation
23. Spain
24. Poland
25. Latvia
26. Italy
27. Portugal
28. Greece
29. Luxembourg
30. Mexico
31. Brazil

SCIENCE
1. Korea
2. Japan
3. Finland
4. United Kingdom
5. Canada
6. New Zealand
7. Australia
8. Austria
9. Ireland
10. Sweden
11. Czech Republic
12. France
13. Norway
14. United States
15. Hungary
16. Iceland
17. Belgium
18. Switzerland
19. Spain
20. Germany
21. Poland
22. Denmark
23. Italy
24. Liechtenstein
25. Greece
26. Russian Federation
27. Latvia
28. Portugal
29. Luxembourg
30. Mexico
31. Brazil

If you want to dig deeper, visit the PISA web site.

Basically, one can conclude that the USA is middle of the pack. Is that good enough for the world's only Superpower? I don't think so.

But countries like Germany who once thought they had the best education system in the world received a HUGE wake-up call from PISA...and they are acting FAST to move themselves up in the rankings.

 

[Aztech]

Yeah, I watched. A good show to bring up much needed debate about the weak public school system in the US. As someone who came over to the US from the Middle East at age 8, I can tell you that the public schools here are WEAK. It was so easy that I tested two grades higher than kids my age. I ended up graduating from High School at 16 with honors without much effort.

John Stossel painted an ugly pictures of the teacher's unions to me. Competition is good and they're against it. Rewarding the best teachers is good and they're against it. Charter schools are doing good and they're against them. It seemed to me like they were just protecting their cushy jobs where they don't have to perform.

Parents should be able to choose schools for their kids regardless of the zip code they live in. The lottery for getting into the best schools is a sad concept. Close the underperforming schools and let competition decide the fate of schools.

American children are losing, bad.

Edit: Also, teaching another language from early on is common in many foreign countries. Why not here? Two years of a language in High School is a complete waste of time.