Ugh....so many issues....where to begin?
I also put blame on the "new age" teaching methods. many do not work and put to much priority on "self worth" or building character. not every child deserves a star on the paperwork.
one of the local schools around here wanted to discontinue a AR program (advanced reading) and testing to see where the childrens reading level is. All students were to read the what the lowest child in the class is reading. WTF!
that is one of the reasons i live in the country in a small school that has more traditional teaching. the kids start to slack off? parents are called in.
The sad state of affairs is that a lot of schools are giving into parents. Parents do not want to believe their child is doing poorly. After all, it's their child so they must be doing well. These parents vote, therefore people who want to be on the school board listen to them and don't want to piss them off.
Parents are also lawsuit happy. Oh shit! Billy brought a plastic fork to school and scratched my Samy-kins. Oh wo-es me - won't someone think of the children?! Wait - if I sue the school I can buy that new house, car and TV and teach that dastardly school a lesson. I mean - how will Samy ever recover from the mental anquish?
Now - this is all assuming the parent actually even cares about their child's education. Where my wife works now the parental involvement is very low. When my wife called one parent to let them know that their child was consitently skipping class she was told to not bother the mother with such matters as they 'weren't important' (!!!)
Parents also want to be their child's friend - not parent. It's mean to teach discipline and manner. It stifles their creative development and will put your child in mental distress. Best to let them carry on - interrupting people and throwing temper tantrums. Now the teachers have to spend time teaching basic manners and getting them to shut the fuck up and pay attention instead of the actual lesson(There is no way I could deal with the disrespectful little shits and their parents my wife deals with on a daily basis.)
Not all the fault is with the parents. Administrators are so focused on meeting the standard test scores that actual learning suffers. That's because if they don't make the grade they lose funding. What's the easiest way to make the grade and secure funding (and therefore your job)? Teach the test.
Their job being based on voting parents and test scores makes the position more sensative to those two factors than any other considerations. Teach the test = better test scores. Coddle the children = parents happy to vote for you. Administrators are being rewarded with jobs/raises for doing these things
The administrators concerns with the items above and needing to provide the same amount of education with less money seems to be leading to a rift between them and the teachers.
There are issues with teachers as well. Tenure is a tough one for me to figure out. On one hand you have it protecting teachers who are towards retirement from being fired even though they are just coasting through and not actually trying to teach well. On the other hand it protects them some really idiotic administrators (Of which there are many). Anyway - something needs to be adjusted because there are way to many teachers who really dont care about their job and are all for just barely doing their job and getting their paycheck
Tenure also results in a system where the least senior teacher is cut regardless of the skill/ability equation. You could be the best teacher in the district but if they need to fire someone and you are low man on the totem pole, your ass is out on the street
On a side note I believe that if parents/students had to pay a bill to send their kids to school they would take it more seriously. It was a great motivator for me in college. I worked to put myself through school and when others were content to skip class I though "Fuck no! I paid a lot of money to be able to go to that class. I'm going!" It worked - well most of the time. Point being education needs to be more valued/prized and I think having to pay for it in a more obvious form would force parents to kepp more attention on their child.
Obviously more would need to be done to fix this mess and maybe thats not the best idea, but frankly I am at a loss as to how to make people value a good, solid education more
The Constitution is not just "a framework" - it most definitely was intended to be a cage. A cage that was purposely made hard to change by the founders. They understood what abuses came from an overbearing and powerful central gov't and they purposely wrote the Constitution to grant them(the feds) only certain and specific powers. But alas, people haven't been taught the Constitution and the history of each piece of it in school - they just get the fluff. Disgusting.
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