Quality of Raw Materials Stymie Education

[NCDem60]

Schools are suffering from a problem that will bring down most industries. A lack of raw materials suitable for the task. I don't mean money and supplies. For the most part they are sufficient. The problem lies with the students themselves. A significant number lack any structure and support in their home life. They come to school totally unprepared to learn or to make any effort of their own to achieve success.

Many do not see any value in education and what it can mean for their future success. They sit in class because they have too, but that is about the limit of their participation. Assignments remain undone and a grade of "F" doesn't even get their attention because at 16 they plan on dropping out. It is difficult to discipline these students because, no matter what type of discipline plan a school might develop, the last resort for the most disruptive students is suspension. Exactly what they want. A reason not to have to go to school that day. Constant discipline problems in a classroom have a devastating effect on those students that do want to learn and pull down the achievement level of the entire class.

Parents of these students tend not to appear at school for anything other than a discipline problem and often take the side of their child no matter how disruptive he has been. Without parental support, a school does not have much chance of correcting a severe discipline problem. I was no angel in my school days but it was never what the school would do to me that got me to behave. It was what good ole dad would do when he heard about it that kept me in line. There is a severe lack of parenting skills, particularly in single parent homes, when the single parent is left without any in home support themselves.

I taught, and was an administrator, in a middle school that had 79% of its students on federal free and reduced lunch. We bus everyone, even those in sight of the school can get on a bus. Seems wasteful. So why did we do it? Because attendance records showed that for students that lived near the school and had to walk, a rainy day would quadruple absences. A cold day, absences would double. No reason to get cold and wet for something as unimportant as education.

One year we tried to increase parent attendance at evening functions by running activity buses into the projects and poorer sections of town. Many parents had said they had no car so they couldn't attend. The buses ran empty for the most part. The real problem wasn't transportation but apathy.

Vouchers can not and will not solve this problem, although if you could find a way to get all the motivated students into one school it would be very successful. However, the overall number of children being unsuccessful would remain the same. After 34 years in education I don't know the answer. In recent years I have come around to the view that problem schools and students are just a symptom of far deeper societal problems.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. I've known that since 1966

when I volunteered for one of the first Head Start summer programs. My mom was an elementary teacher, working in the kind of schools you described. Even back then, she said how difficult it was to instill learning when children didn't even see a book before they got to school, had absent parents, and basically raised themselves. She hoped that Head Start would be the magic cure-all. Well, it helped, but as you know it wasn't the cure-all. Now even more folks work such long hours that their kids are basically on their own. I noticed a decided change in attitude towards school when cable television came to the small town where I taught for 17 years. TV, that reliable babysitter, taught foul language, that violence was cool, and that to be smart was a bad thing. Interestingly enough, after I moved to another state and worked with people who didn't have televisions in their home, I found the attention spans of their children to be much higher than those I'd worked with before. They tended to work on solutions by talking things over rather than fighting. And hard work-manual labor--was valued as well as education. The parents were much more involved with their kids and the results showed.

[mia]

2. Well said. I'm a teacher and can vouch for the fact that too many

children come to school unprepared to learn. I believe that their parents really don't know how to do any better. It's not for lack of love or caring. I wish that parenting skills were taught in the high schools.

[mike_c]

3. I'm of two minds about this....

First, I am an educator myself, but I did not finish high school and in fact the OP pretty much describes my student tenure after fifth grade or so when I totally lost interest in school. Mind you, we're talking about decent suburban schools in the 1960s and early 70s. My own experience has taught me that the educational system itself must engage students. Students who don't value what it has to offer, for whatever reason, cannot invest in their own learning and that investment is utterly key to any success in education. Learning is work-- kids have to be motivated before they will work hard enough to matter. If the education system cannot provide that motivation, some folks find it later in life. I literally began a program of self study during my mid-twenties with an old fifth grade arithmetic text from the local public library. I've told this story here before-- I eventually dedicated my doctoral dissertation to the Martinsburg WV public library almost twenty years later.

The point is that horses will drink when they're damned good and ready, and when that happens, don't stand in the way.

My other thought is that I'm increasingly wondering whether we should be trying so hard to educate children who don't want to be educated. Don't get me wrong, I'm a strong proponent of a public and utterly free education system, including higher education, but the truth is that if we can acknowledge that PhD programs aren't for everyone, why might it not be true that college isn't necessarily right for everyone either, and if that's the case, maybe high school isn't either, at least as we know it today. It certainly wasn't for me, at least not until I was well into adulthood and had a family-- and a sudden sense of how long life was going to be.

[dkf]

4. That is why we need someone like Obama to stress the role of Parents in education.

I love the story of how his Mom got up at 4:30 in the morning to teach him before he went to school. Somehow I can't imagine John McCain going on much about this and I really haven't heard much from Hillary at all.

[LWolf]

5. I have (3) 8th grade boys

this year who sit in class every day doing absolutely nothing. It doesn't matter what the current topic is, what the activity is, or which teacher's class they happen to be sitting in.

They are polite. They are likable. They simply "don't care to do" anything that is offered them, and they calmly accept their "Fs" without complaint.

Their parents yell at them every time there is a report card or progress report, and they spend about 2 weeks doing possibly 1/4 of what the rest of us are doing, and then quit. Again.

I don't know what else to do with them. It really doesn't matter what opportunities they are offered, when they've made up their minds to refuse them.

I have another few 7th graders who do the same.

[Reader Rabbit]

6. You're describing the majority of my classes last year!

I'd always had, like you, several students who just didn't care. Last year was the first time I had a large number of students who just didn't care. You can imagine how disheartening it is to phone a parent to let them know that their child is doing little to nothing, and is failing the class, only to have them respond blithely, "Okay." It sure opened my eyes: The kids didn't care because their parents didn't care. How do you counteract such towering indifference to education in just an hour?

This year I'm lucky. Nearly all the kids care, and the ones who don't will at least make an effort after a phone call home. It really does emphasize the importance of the home environment in educating young minds.

[LWolf]

7. You're right; home environment is a huge factor

that we don't affect, and that the current powers that be determinedly overlook.

This spring I had two families take an extended spring break, together, to Hawaii. 4 kids who were gone for an extra two weeks. Their families told them not to tell us that they would be gone longer; they didn't want any school work sent with them. They expected that their kids would catch up easily when they got back, despite the fact that they are heavily involved in extra-curricular sports activities every day after school and all weekend long, and that their attendance is spotty to begin with.

They don't think anything about taking off for a day here, a week there, and just expect their kids to be excused from anything they missed, EVERY TIME.

I have several kids who don't have a home phone, and whose parents I've never met; they never come to school. You cannot contact them for any problem.

I have another who is homeless, and another who has an alcoholic single parent. That one has been gone for a week now, and we've got social services trying to find her to make sure she's ok.

Some of our parents don't actually WANT high standards or a quality education. They are happy with semi-literacy and and some basic math facts, and resent that we expect their children to learn anything more.

Then there are the families who are into the blame game; it's always someone else's fault when things don't go well.

I'm grateful for students who are committed to success, and for the families who support that kind of attitude towards learning.

[KitSileya]

10. Tongue in cheek - give them...

...Bartleby the Scrivener to read, and tell them it's about themselves. Or would that reinforce their purposelessness?

[LWolf]

11. Interesting idea.

:D

Perhaps it would make a great parting gift to give them when they leave us at the end of this year, lol.

[MichiganVote]

8. What gets me is that somehow people always seem to assume that the "waste" in education

are the special education students. I beg to differ.

I have found that there are many, many more at-risk kids who flail and fail in school than students who have special needs. And I'm not talking about the borderline LD or CI kids that get certified because somebody bends the rule a hair here or a hair there.

Sorry folks....its the business of the family to instill expectations. Its the business of the school to reinforce them. When they are lacking in the home, the home needs to help the school, not argue with them about it.

Have I seen lousy teachers? Sure. They exist. But I have seen many, many more parents who magically think their kids are going to raise themselves. Predictably, the kids do a bad job of it.

[flashl]

9. Some surveys about the "raw materials" who speaks to the MASS ILLUSION of education ...

The report, "Children Left Behind: How Metropolitan Areas Are Failing America's Children.

Survey: 9 of 10 students had passing grades when they left.

The Civic Enterprises survey found that 70 percent of dropouts were confident they could have graduated, 81 percent recognized graduating was vital to their success, and 66 percent said they would have worked harder if expectations were higher.

The study, commissioned by the Gates Foundation, surveyed more than 450 racially diverse 16- to 24-year-olds in 25 different locations with high dropout rates, including cities, suburbs, and rural towns.

"These kids are telling us that they're capable," Bridgeland says. "They're interested in having more challenge and more engagement, and they painted a picture of what school ought to look like."

---

In a survey of high school dropouts they give their reasons for dropping out:

• A lack of connection to the school environment
  
• A perception that school is boring
  
  
  • Nearly half (47 percent) said a major reason for dropping out was that classes were not interesting
  
  
• Feeling unmotivated; academic challenges
  
  
  • Nearly 7 in 10 respondents (69 percent) said they were not motivated or inspired to work hard
    
  • Two-thirds said they would have worked harder if more was demanded of them
    
  • 70 percent were confident they could have graduated if they had tried
  
  
• The weight of real world events
  
  
  • A third (32 percent) said they had to get a job and make money
    
  • 26 percent said they became a parent; and
    
  • 22 percent said they had to care for a family member
  
  

In case some may not been paying attention, students ARE graduating in higher numbers and colleges are UNPREPARED to handle the INCREASED successful rates of graduation. Students who worked hard to graduate from high school and prepared for college are now placed on 'waiting lists'.

In addition to high school students' college applications sitting in waiting lists, graduating high school students are facing, in some instances, insurmountable obstacles obtaining student loans.

And, another stark reality that never surface in these discussions, educate students to do what? Where are the JOBS? Where is that elusive future opportunity?

Out-of-field employment is an accepted norm. However, there's been an unacknowledged trend, graduating college students have been facing a disappearing job market for more than 20 years. This trend, the disappearing job market, forces college graduates to compete with high school graduates for jobs and a place in soup lines.

An honest inspection of an education system that leads thousands of Americans to the bridge to nowhere also requires honest discussion.

Bottom line, what matters most, the 'raw materials' perception and feedback. The surveys noted above provide that feedback.

[LWolf]

16. I think both matter.

Some realities about "boring" and "interesting:"

Some things are boring. That's reality. Often it's because large class size, limited budget, and a heavy load of curriculum to deliver in one school year limits the methods of delivery. The more engaging it is, the longer it takes, the messier it is, and the harder it is to deliver to over-crowded classrooms. I have some really fun units developed for history that students love. One 8th grader just told me yesterday what he remembered about Ancient Greece from 6th grade; predictably the most fun things we did, connected to significant content.

This year, though, we walked through the book. It wasn't fun, but we did it anyway. Why? Well, let's see. In 6th grade, one school year, I'm supposed to "cover" prehistory, mesopotamia, egypt, india, china, greece, rome, and mesoamerica. We have one of the shortest school years in the nation: 168 student days. In order to increase time spent on reading instruction, a district goal to raise test scores, the actual number of minutes for social studies was cut this year. Racing through the text was the only way to get it all done. I would prefer to just skip some, and focus in-depth on a few other areas, but I also have to document that I've delivered everything I'm supposed to. None of those areas are covered outside of 6th grade.

That's the factory school model public education is built on. It needs to change. That takes commitment and it takes scarce resources. I haven't found many people willing to invest the resources it would take to move away from the factory model of education.

I'm going to spend the summer working on MY problem, and see if I can restructure everything to allow us to focus in-depth on a few of those areas. There is no ideal solution in the current structure, though, and I know that.

"Raw materials" ARE a factor. Reality: attitude is a choice. You can choose to be "bored," or you can choose to find something interesting in the content, even if you don't like the delivery. I don't choose to enable that blame game. Active, independent thinkers and learners will find something interesting to keep them engaged even when the structure Another reality: attitude is often a product of the home attitude or the community or cultural attitude toward school and learning. When school and learning are valued, students are more motivated to learn than when they aren't, regardless of what is going on in the classroom.

I'm getting ready to do a home visit for a 7th grader. The parent is an alcoholic, there is suspected drug use in the home, and suspected statutory rape of the student, who has been on her own for all intents and purposes for several years. She lives in the home with her mom, but there is no care or supervision of any kind. This student hates school, hates teachers, and generally hates the world. She's waiting for the day she can drop out and the law won't force her back. We have 3 more years to reach out to her before she slips from our grasp.

There is no circus we could put on in the classroom that she would find "interesting" and motivating enough to engage in learning. She is just one example of many.

[flashl]

17. Raw material success

A School Succeeds With Extra Study and Little Homework

Mr. Leonard is a man of many solutions, many of them innovative, many of them, apparently, also effective. In New York City, only about 50 percent of students manage to graduate in four years. At Bedford Academy, 63 percent of the students qualify for free lunch, a majority are being raised by a single mother and another significant number are being raised by someone other than a parent. Yet close to 95 percent of students graduate, and virtually every one of those goes on to college.

Mr. Leonard does not achieve those results by stocking the school full of nothing but high-testing students

[LWolf]

18. When we're

thinking about "raw materials," we're not thinking about high-testing students vs the rest.

We're thinking about the students who come to school hungry, without proper medical care, the latch key kids, those who don't have any safety in the home. Maslow's hierarchy: to successfully grow intellect and develop academic skills, at least the first 2 levels of need must be met before they step through the door.

We're thinking about kids who come from homes that don't read, that don't talk much, that are semi-literate themselves. Those kids start don't start kindergarten with the full range of language development that should have happened from birth forward. They start school behind, and while many make good gains, few catch up.

We're thinking about the kids whose families don't value education, whose families pass those values on to their kids, so that the kids have a confrontational, defiant attitude towards school and school personnel.
Schools are about offering opportunity. I'd like to do away with the factory model we operate under, so that we could offer better opportunity. We can't force people to value that opportunity, though. We can't force them to make the best of it. At some point, the student has to be accountable for engaging in the opportunities offered.

There are many reasons why students aren't "high testers." The issues mentioned above are significant factors in that equation, and they aren't under the control of public education. Neither should they be.

If we wanted to raise test scores, the best thing to do would be to pour a flood of resources into communities, reducing poverty, increasing employment, community and social services, child care, etc.. Raise the standard of living for all, and you will automatically raise test scores.

Then, if we restructured away from the factory model towards a new model offering higher quality of service, we'd have more students who could take advantage of an improved system.

[jody]

12. I agree with your post and the varied replies sharing similar views. Without reducing in any way

the importance of the problem you cite, we must also find ways to provide the best possible education to those gifted students, perhaps about 2%, from which will come the scientists and engineers who can lead us into the 22nd century.

What a terrible waste for a gifted child to be born into a family and social environment that ignores her/his intellectual gift and may even disparage the child for being a good student.

I understand that most states have reduced funding for gifted education programs to the point of near elimination.

[AdHocSolver]

13. This blame-the-victim attitude is the primary reason why most of the school systems fail at ...

educating children. The reason kids don't learn is because the educational system sucks.

I say this as a graduate of U.S. public education, college degreed, including a degree in education, school teacher for a couple of years, and a parent of children who went through the education "mill".

The children aren't stupid. They realize that they are being sold a bill of goods and are merely mentally, if not physically, dropping out to preserve their sanity. I mentally dropped out in the third grade, and only re-enrolled mentally in middle school when I was fortunate to land in a few classes that had talented and inspiring teachers.

The same was true in high school. There were a larger number of talented and motivating teachers in university where I earned my B.A. degree. In the college of education I attended, only two professors stand out.

I taught in a variety of school settings over a two year period, including inner city schools. I did see kids with personality problems, exhibited largely as apathy, and some with "learning problems". On the other hand, I could never correlate the "difficult" kids as having problems solely because of their home lives. Some of the brightest kids had "home" problems.

Most of the problems were due to an openly hostile administration (calling the police if a kid sneezed the wrong way), lazy or cynical teachers, poorly written textbooks, attempts to enforce "extreme" discipline, "social promoting" kids who were nowhere near grade level in their skills.

I always tried to have discussions with the students early on to find out what would motivate them to learn and not cause me discipline headaches. One of the first classes I was assigned to as a "regular" substitute was one in which a popular teacher had been canned. The kids liked him, but the teacher had been too "innovative" and "controversial" (he was written up in some newspaper articles on education).

I was warned by the administration that this was the "worst" class in the school (it was eighth grade), and I had to be "firm" with them or they would "run" me out of the class room. (I was also notified that there was a police officer available on the premises, if I needed assistance.)

I found the students animated and so we had a discussion and made a deal. If I used their former teacher's teaching techniques, they would behave themselves. I found the guy had been very imaginative, and things ran well for about four weeks. I had even been praised for the expert control I had developed over this "troublesome" class.

Alas, it was not to last. The department head made an unannounced entrance into the classroom, realized after a few minutes why I was doing so well, and at the end of the day, I was told not to return.

After other negative teaching experiences, I finally gave up on education as a career.

My kids went to suburban schools which were somewhat better. However, most of the time spent in school was wasted.

In no particular order, here is a list of problems I see with education in the U.S.

School systems are highly politicized. Besides NCLB, getting funding to repair or upgrade schools is almost an exercise in futility. One school downsized me to enable some administrator's brother-in-law, who lost his teaching job, to replace me.

Text books in the el-hi grades are written by educators who are into "teaching techniques" rather than experts in the area of study. My kid asked for help with history questions he was assigned. I couldn't figure out how to answer the questions as it seemed that the questions were written by a group of people residing on a different planet from those who wrote the text. I checked to see who the authors were. Eight professors of education, not one professor of history.

Colleges of education are populated and run largely by idiots who have no knowledge of, or concern about, children.
What they purvey in colleges of education is either irrelevant or harmful to learning how to teach well.

School systems are hostile environments to learning and to children. The children can sense this. They are not fools. Once the school administrators discovered my "success" at motivating my students was due to trying "innovative" techniques, I was asked to leave.

Added to all this, the American culture has dumbed down the youth to the point that few of them can get motivated to delve into any subject at more than the most superficial level.

To get someone to learn, first you have to motivate them. You can motivate them by getting them to want to create something or to solve a problem (and I do NOT include getting grades or answering stupid exercise questions or the very unimaginitive assignment my kids really hated, write a paper about what you did on vacation). The best teachers I had would demonstrate by working out complex examples in class and explaining in detail the reasoning that they used to achieve results.

I am not criticizing teachers as a group. I saw some very successful teachers (one of my son's very able teachers opined "They even pay me to teach"). Many lived on the good feelings engendered by their "successes". Many others seemed to just trudge along from day to day. It is not their fault.

However, neither is it the "lack of quality students". How would you teachers feel if YOUR teachers thought that they tried hard, but YOU were "poor raw materials" for them. Most of the teachers today are products of the same system in which I taught almost forty years ago, and I could easily make the same criticism about YOU.

The problem is that the educational system is flawed as to goals, methods, and implementation. The Colleges of Education and the Departments of Education are run by a group of self-serving incompetents who have agendas not related to the actual education of children. The same comments can apply to certain political and religious leaders.

Not only is the culture "dumbed down", but so is the school system. My kids would complain that each grade was mostly a rehash of the previous grade and most of what they were taught was boring. If society is dumbed down, maybe it is because the schools are dumbed down.

If you really want to make changes in the system, first understand what is really going on in the larger arena. Stop looking at the students you get to understand the problem. Look, instead, at the school system, or more accurately, the "education factory", in which you work.

[NCDem60]

14. Amazing

"....Alas, it was not to last. The department head made an unannounced entrance into the classroom, realized after a few minutes why I was doing so well, and at the end of the day, I was told not to return.....

...After other negative teaching experiences, I finally gave up on education as a career.....

....One school downsized me to enable some administrator's brother-in-law, who lost his teaching job, to replace me."



You would think that someone like yourself, that has all the answers, would have been able to keep at least one of their teaching jobs.

[proud2BlibKansan]

15. LOL MY thoughts exactly

So many experts. Yet so few with their feet in the fire.