This picture says so much about changes in education. Switching blame.

[madfloridian]

Posted at Twitter

I remember those days from the 60's. Things really have changed. We teachers were not the enemy back then. The "reformers" have used propaganda to switch the accountability.

[NYC_SKP]

1. Things have changed. I found my sister's 1966 8th grade graduation program just yesterday.

I was in 4th at the time, a small rural school.

I remembered every name on it, my aunt and uncle each had prominent roles in the school.

Uncle John was on the board, everyone was a local grower and a parent, the parents practically were the admins.

Times change.

K/R

[madfloridian]

4. Yep, changed in many ways.

[gopiscrap]

2. No kidding

and it's all about fucking over the unions and privatizing education. We should NEVER have allowed private education in our nation...it builds separate classes and creates an economic divide. FUCK the reformers and double fuck those who are supporters of charters and private schools. (many of those supporters are very often racist of crazy ass fundies or mal contents of some nature or other)

[Indydem]

3. I guess thats one way to look at it...

OR you can look at it and say that the traditional American hierarchy has degenerated to the point that little timmy blames his teacher and smiles all the way to the couch so he can play xbox.

[progressoid]

5. Hey Madflo!

Nice to "see" you again.

I'm sending that cartoon to my parents (both retired teachers).

[madfloridian]

7. They will appreciate it.

back at you.

[Uncle Joe]

6. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, madfloridian.

[madfloridian]

17. .....

Most welcome.

[DirkGently]

8. KNR. In a nutshell.

[truedelphi]

9. I have had at least one friend that went from the afffluent public

School in the suburb to the inner city school, because at least in the inner city school, the politics of soothing parents over why lil Jimbo got a bad grade didn't take up so much of their time.

[bluesbassman]

12. Did you read your post out loud before you posted it?

I'm not suggesting you're racist truedelphi, but wow the language in your post sure reads that way.

[truedelphi]

13. What?

I am from Chicago, which has the sad reputation of being the murder capital of the nation. And yes, it is much worse in bad neighborhoods, which historically are in the inner city.

I mean, even that really funny comedian from Compton Calif., acknowledges such a thing exists as inner city concerns about surviving. He does a great joke abut how his neighborhood has all these stop signs with bullet holes. And the punch line? "So what do you do when you pull up to a stop sign with bullet holes? I'm telling cha, if th top sign has bullet holes, you do NOT STOP, that's what you do."


Citations::
http://www.neontommy.com/news/2013/07/200-homicides-deaths-chicago-ignored-and-forgotten

USC journalism school project
####

http://colorlines.com/archives/2013/02/chicago_youth_violence.html

####
http://www.nrapublications.org/index.php/14155/whats-behind-chicagos-murder-boom/
Between Jan. 1 and June 27, 2012, a staggering 250 people were killed in Chicago—that’s almost enough to fill several standard-size buses. That’s 38 percent more homicides than occurred over the same period in 2011, at a time when most cities have declining murder rates. It’s also the highest number Chicago has reached during the first half of the year since 2003, which had 601 homicides for the entire year, according to the Chicago Police Department.
####

[bluesbassman]

14. Well, I know Oakland and Richmond aren't quite as tough as Chicago...

But I'd think twice before calling somebody "Jimbo" when I'm in the 'hood.

And yeah, surviving is priority number one in all of those communities, but I know parents there that are trying to raise their kids up right, and education is pretty important to them. Pretty important to the teachers I know there too.

[truedelphi]

16. Oh for Pete's sake (If that is allowed)

When I typed out Jimbo I was thinking of a classmate of mine with that nickname. White as a lily, goof ball and class clown.

I didn't say that education was not important to people in poorer neighborhoods. I have lived in poorer neighborhoods off and on since adulthood. My "diss" in my original post was against the damn entitled rich people, whatever their ethnicity. The kind of people who put one or two items in their shopping cart, march the cart over to the checkout line, leave it there, and then do another 20 minutes of shopping, but expect people to wait for them to finish shopping before going ahead of them. Who manipulate the system every which way they can, who view "rules" as being for "that other type of person" etc.

And as much as working class or middle class people in poorer neighborhoods might want their kids to have a decent education, they also know if their kid didn't get a good grade, because their kid spent all day on their X box, it's something they are going to talk to their kid about. They're not gonna go storming to the teacher's lounge, letting the teacher know that their cousin has an "in" with the Superintendent and will see their job is gone next semester.

[bluesbassman]

31. OK, point taken and my apologies for reading something into your post that wasn't there.

[truedelphi]

33. So if we can bury the

the hatchet on both sides, I am hoping this is the start of a good friendship.

Blues bass players are my favorites. You can't grow up in Chi Town without succumbing to the blues. And what would the blues be without the bass?










(My apologies to any Native Americans, with regard to hatchet mention.)

[CrispyQ]

27. Little Jimbo is the uppity suburban kid whose parents need soothing, not the kid in the 'hood.

[Starry Messenger]

10. k&r

[nikto]

11. America will be such a strong and well-informed country...

...when these spoiled little brats grow up.
("Gimme, gimme, gimme, waaaahhhh&quot



Not.

[SheilaT]

15. Here's a slightly different way to look at it.

If you go back about 50 years, when I was still in school, there were two major differences between then and today. One was that a significant number of children had parents or grandparents who were immigrants (mainly from Europe) and who whole-heartedly subscribed to the earlier viewpoint depicted in the 1969 side of the graph.

The other is (and this is very closely connected to the first) that public education was seen as a way to climb above the hole that immigrants typically found themselves in.

I have lived in several different states. I attended public school in two different states. My children attended public schools in three different states. One thing I noticed when my children were in school was that the worse the public schools, the more complacent the parents were. The better the public schools, the more anxious the parents were. If the school were simply okay, the parents were content. I noticed this in more than one state, so I'm inclined to think it may be something of a universal. If you live in a place with mediocre or crappy schools (and from now on when I say schools I mean public schools) you simply have no idea how much better than can be. If you live where the schools are good, or maybe even excellent, you are caught up in the "how good a college can my kid get into" rat race.

I'm not sure what the solution is, except to hold students accountable. Not the parents and not the teachers (although the teachers are by default accountable if the students are). The students.

I wound up switching my two sons from a very good public school into an even better private school for very personal reasons that have nothing at all to do with the genuinely excellent quality of their public school district. But in the private school I saw how good it could be. Most of the parents really cared. They wanted their kids to learn, to do well, to get excellent test scores and get into good colleges.

Here's a relatively trivial difference between the (and remember, it's really an excellent) public school and the private school. The day before the last day of class before summer break my kids were learning new material in the private school. In the public school they'd turned in their textbooks the week before and were watching videos. Really? Why not teach up to the final day?

The sense of entitlement that's illustrated in the OP is genuine. But there's a whole lot more behind it. Let's stop teaching to the test. When I was in school we were taught content. We also took standardized tests, but they were regarded as a nuisance, as something that took a week away from instruction. The results were used to figure out how we were doing as individuals and as a school, but they were not the be-all and end-all of our school day or year.

When my kids went to the private school the emphasis was on content, on what was being taught. They learned so very, very much because the school didn't really care about test results, even though the kids tended to do very well.

Now, the other issue is that the public school must accommodate all students, especially those with special needs which can be rejected by the private schools. So let's fund the public schools properly. That was the other thing I learned from my kids attending a private school. Funding. It's crucial. There must be enough money to educate the kids. All of them. The smart ones. The dumb ones. The average ones. The ones that need one-on-one instruction.

Education is the future of this country. I used to be very unpopular at the private school because I kept on saying that I should not be exempt from penny on of taxes to pay for public schools. I understood quite clearly that I was vastly privileged to send my kids to the private school. And for all of you who attended public school, here's the thing. Your own parents did not pay the full cost. If you had kids, you did not pay the full cost of their education. And for those of you who never had kids, all I can say is that public education is a promise we make to each other, across the generations. In the end, our quality of life absolutely depends on the quality of public education.

[madfloridian]

30. It bothers me that Florida has no oversight over private schools.

http://www.floridaschoolchoice.org/Information/Private_Schools/general_requirements.asp

The Department of Education does not have jurisdiction over private schools. Legislative intent not to regulate, control, approve, or accredit private educational institutions, churches, their ministries, religious instruction, freedoms, or rites, is explicit. The owners of private elementary and secondary schools in Florida are solely responsible for all aspects of their educational programs, including:

Certification, qualification, and training of teachers and administrators;
Content and comprehensiveness of the curriculum;
Duties, qualifications, and salaries of faculty and staff; tuition, class size, fee scales, pupil expenditures, and refund policies;
Student assessment, academic credits, grades, and graduation or promotion requirements;
Student regulation, dismissal, and expulsion policies; and
Student records content, retention, transfer, and release.

Note they are not required to hire qualified teachers..

Many are quite good, but many also are very poor.

As public schools are depleted of funds here more and more each year, they find it hard to accept the rejects from private and charter schools. Thus an unfair advantage is given to the private sector.

I agree public education is the key to the quality of our country's quality of life.

[SheilaT]

35. It's my impression that in general private schools are not

answerable to the state they're in. Good ones are accredited by one of the outfits that accredit private schools, but not all of them do that. The school my kids went to was (is) accredited by the National Association of Independent Schools.

One thing that I felt I learned from the private school experience was that we do not adequately fund our public schools for the most part. I get so tired of hearing people say, "It won't help to throw money at the schools," when in reality that's not been done.

Here's another common statement that makes me crazy: "When I went to school we always had at least thirty kids in the classroom and we learned just fine." Yeah, but back then (and my 6th grade class was 40) we simply had no special needs kids in school. None. There were the "Special Ed" kids who were in the same building, but we barely ever saw them because they were kept entirely to themselves. And that wasn't a very large group. Now, for lots of reasons there are lots of kids with some kind of special need, and there's not much funding for them.

Too bad the national budget's biggest share isn't to education at all levels, then Medicare, Social Security, infrastructure, lots of other stuff and then the military.

[liberal_at_heart]

18. I am one pissed off parent. That's for sure. I thought we have solved our problem.

We switched school districts and he was finally put in a math class that fits his level of understanding. I was told this would have happened at the high school level at the other school district as well. Apparently there is a little more flexibility in class selection at the high school level. Anyway, he's in the math class he needs to be in and his teacher even told him he would be graded mostly on effort. Then I get the introduction letter for his English class. This letter informs me that they will be following the Common Core Standards in the English class. Now just like the math class in his previous school district, this English class is special education. But it will be following the Common Core Standards. I am so pissed. Someone needs to start suing the school districts over this. The damn Common Core Standards are in direct conflict with our IEP rights. I wasn't ready to seek legal action before, but I am so pissed I just might be now. And I swear if they ever try to tell me that my son can't graduate because he hasn't passed all of his classes or because he hasn't passed the necessary state tests I will sue their ass so fast they won't know what hit them. The one bright spot in all of this is that the special education teacher for his English class is also his IEP manager and advocate and she has already called me to ask if my son wanted some ear plugs to wear during class assemblies. This touched me. His last IEP manager and advocate never did anything like that. Mostly he just blamed my son for not participating in math when in truth the reason he wasn't participating in math class was because he was put in a class that was two years ahead of his comprehension level. Anyway, it really did touch me that this teacher called me. I think I am really going to like her. I'm probably just not going to like the class and the amount of pressure he will be under.

[madfloridian]

19. Agreed on Common Core.

Last edited Tue Sep 10, 2013, 10:36 AM - Edit history (1)

Those with IEPs should not be forced into classes like that. Education should not be a one size fits all thing....standardized requirements and testing are doing so much harm. Best to you.

[tblue37]

21. Typo, MF--I am sure you meant that it should NOT be a

one-size-fits-all thing.

SInce you are my hero as far as keeping the whole education issue front and center (as well as the damage "reformers" are doing), I would hate for you essential point to be misunderstood because of a typo.

[madfloridian]

22. Thanks for that. Fixed now.

[riderinthestorm]

20. K&R nt

[Nine]

23. I think it has more to do with how grades have come to be perceived.

We talk about "high stakes testing" but grades themselves are high stakes. They're no longer seen as mainly a communication between teachers and parents to let the parents know how well their children are doing; now they're seen as things that follow a child around and determine his next opportunity, and the next after that, ultimately having an effect on the child's lot in adult life - college, career, income, etc.

One proof of this is that if a child brings home a poor grade, parents want to know why they weren't informed sooner. Once the child already has the grade, this is seen as "too late." We can blame parents for having this view of the importance of grades on their children's futures, but are they wrong? Isn't this why parents in some areas work so hard to get their kids into the "right" preschools? I don't think parents see a lot of mobility when it comes to education. I think they fear that once their child falls into a certain track, they will never be able to get the kid out of that track and the kid's future is doomed.

[liberal_at_heart]

28. learning is suppose to be a long term goal. Grades put too much of a short term

stigma on whether the student is a success or a failure. And grades don't give you feedback on things like perseverance, determination, resourcefulness, and creativity. Corporations are taking over our public education system. We are becoming grade obsessed and it is hurting our children. My son who is in special education but in a general education science class never can seem to keep up with the workload in that class. But when he comes home he speaks so intelligently about things like water condensation, CO2 gas reduction in cars, the planets, and just all kinds of things. These kind of things just come out of his mouth in regular everyday conversation and I have to look at him in amazement knowing that he is learning so much. His grade in science class does not reflect that however and I really don't care.

[Coyotl]

24. Education is all about transcending this sort of simplistic stuff and grasping complexity.

Or, is that supposed to be a funny?

[madfloridian]

29. A good cartoon "grasps complexity" in a very "simplistic" way.

While the exaggeration is there, the underlying message is clear.

In this case the education "reformers", mostly corporative types out to make a profit...have put all the burden on teachers and schools. Then come the high stakes testing which allows the public schools to be disgraced and replaced with privately owned schools.

[liberal_at_heart]

26. I have to admit, I don't like either picture. In one the kid looks like he has low self esteem and

in the other he looks conceited. There must be a balance somewhere. Most of our kids are good kids. Just like most of our teachers are good teachers. Most of our kids want to learn. Of course they don't always want to sit and listen to lectures or do homework. They are kids. That part of it is natural. But most kids are bright and intelligent and want to learn. I love listening to my kids come home and talk about things they are excited about. That is one of our problems. Becuase our education system is not flexible enough and individual enough our kids don't get to learn about what excites them. Yes I understand they all have to take the broad range of fundamental classes such as math, science, English, and History. But if our system had more flexibility we could figure out what our kids are passionate about and try to put more of those things in their individual curriculum. It is the system that is broken, not our teachers, and not our kids.

[madfloridian]

32. Agree both are exaggerated.

Cartoons use simplistic exaggerations to make a much deeper serious point.

[Squinch]

34. The point is that in one system the child earned and owned his learning accomplishments and

difficulties. Today the teachers are blamed for the effort and native abilities of children, both factors over which they have little control. The parents feel absolved, but at least with respect to effort, the parents have much more control over the child.

[seabeyond]

36. Son sophomore and third week in. Looking at grades I see us history son has all 0's.

Pretty sure there really isn't an issue but it was marked missing on four assignments. Sent email to teacher

This is mama xxxx, is my son having a problem in class. Please let me know cause if so he is in soooo much trouble when he gets home

Teacher sent email

Good kid. My fault. Behind entering grades. You will be pleased

But, she was sure to voice a thank you for paying attention and being involved.

I let her know, any issue, I am receptive.

This high school

What I noticed over the years and two kids. Rich school, poor, private and public. The teacher is surprised with the involved parent. Should be the other way around.

And they so value and appreciate it. Every teacher I have come across hash kids best interest. Even if I did not like a particular personality

I am sorry what is happening. But it is our culture as a whole anymore.