When we were smart.

[SoCalDem]

Think, for a minute, about just who taught the people who started the Space program, who taught the successful people who have recently retired, or the ones soon to retire.

There was a time when America led the world in education.

I am not talking about "higher education" or the Ivy League colleges...just your basic run of the mill elementary/secondary system that most of us participated in.

I was born in 1949, and for the time that I spent inside the US, there were MANY small neighborhood schools. Every morning, a parade of neighborhood kids trekked a few blocks to their school. Their teachers were likely to have been women,....women who most likely were single and older..

When people had stable/steady jobs, they did not move all the time, so these children all knew each other, and knew each other well.. their mothers probably pushed them in their strollers, together, and they would go on to the same junior high, and senior high.

It was all gradual, and easy.. It was just a slow and steady progression.

The local primary school may have encompassed a 4 block radius, and then the junior high maybe a 12 block radius, and then onto the "big pond" of high school.

Kids were tested, and school was not "easy", but most of these kids were taught by teachers without a masters degree.

It seems that with each "new method" that came along after the 70's, there were just more layers of chaos piled up, one on top of the other, and more attention was paid to the process, than to the actual teaching in the classroom.

Schools are just so big these days, and the pressures on kids & teachers are so intense.. I feel badly for all of them.

Apparently those "old-timey" teachers had something right, because the kids they taught seemed quite well-prepared to go on to college, and to do some pretty amazing things.

It's too bad so many of them are gone now. They might have given some guidance we need desperately these days..

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. "There was a time when America led the world in education. "

Link?

[SoCalDem]

8. Think Post WWII..

I do not have a "link"..but when one considers how the rest of the world was faring in the post war era, it;s not hard to see why we were going all over the place, helping other countries get back eductaing kids, instead of hiding them from bombs.. we were one of the few places on earth that were not reduced to rubble..

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

10. Yeah, post WWII.

Back when we had segregated schools, many girls didn't finish school because of the sky high teenage pregnancy rates, and an illiteracy rate over three times higher than it is now.

I'm going to need a little more evidence than nostalgia.

[SoCalDem]

11. Google away..

I am not advocating the bad things that the era produced.. I was MERELY commenting that TEACHERS and the act of schooling was different..simpler..

Like things are perfect now? :rofl:

Moving on to new and untried things in education, has consequences.. kids have ONE chance at being educated as kids.. when they are grown up, it;s too late to go back and be a 4th grader:)

have a chill pill..I am not attacking YOU,.. I don't even KNOW you :):hi:

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

12. "Like things are perfect now?"

Well, they're better now then "back when we was smart."

Google yourself.

[Hissyspit]

2. I've heard horror stories of how teachers treated students back in that day.

Watch out for the rose tint on your glasses.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

5. Back in the good old days of 1949:

[monmouth]

6. Children were disciplined and they caught hell when they got home,

the parents didn't rush to school to berate the teacher or threaten to sue.

[Hissyspit]

13. Often the disciplines were unfair and at the expense of students who didn't fit in.

This is PRE-women's rights revolution and civil rights revolution and there was awful understanding of students with disabilities.

I'm not particularly happy with how things are nowadays with public education, but most of the "everything was great back in the good ol' days" attitude posts are not nuanced nor supported by any particular research on the part of the posters and aren't particularly convincing.

[monmouth]

14. I can only speak for myself who attended a public school in NJ. I

received an excellent education. You are right in that there was no special ed classes for those who needed it, the teacher did the best she/he could and that is regrettable. Many students would, on their own, try and help the student who was behind. I was in school right after WW2 and during Korea. I remember when Israel was made a state and remember a television being brought into the auditorium when the Queen was crowned. I also remember when Jackie Robinson played his first game and the AA children in my class walking a lot taller. Small town, small school, wonderful.

[Waiting For Everyman]

19. I never saw another student treated badly in 12 years of public school. (1956-68)

That would be lots, and lots, and lots of kids I passed through classes with (often 40-50 in a class). My high school was about 1500 kids in 3 grades (10th, 11th, 12th).

I heard horror stories from neighbors in parochial schools all the time though.

[ulysses]

3. I suspect that there are a truckload of things that factor into this.

A lot of the Olde Ways probably did have merit. A lot (kids w/ disabilities) didn't. Society's changed a lot.

[ColbertWatcher]

4. School became the latest field for the GOP to experiment on.

They found that lots of government money could be made off defense. So, they simply adopted the Military Industrial Complex to education.

Just off-hand I can name: textbooks, "consulting," modules (or systems), charter schools and vouchers. And I'm sure there are more.

[Doremus]

7. Back then bankers' kids went to school with blue collar kids.

I look in the old neighborhoods in inner-ring suburbs like Shaker Hts., which at one time had the highest per-capita income in the country.

The streets are anchored on either end with large 3000+ sq. ft. houses and in between are more modest homes. Manufacturing executives, bankers and the like owned the larger houses. Their kids played with, attended school with and basically grew up with the other kids on the block.

Now most of the nation's wealth is concentrated in something like a dozen zipcodes. Children of the wealthy attend private schools for aristocrats only, no one else need apply. They live behind locked gates and socialize only with others of their "own kind."

It's no wonder they're screwing us. We're faceless and nameless strangers they need to be protected from.

[Fovea]

9. Back before suburbia became exurbia

Indeed, you are describing America before Suburbia.

I live in an old city neighborhood. You can still see the faint scratches left by community.

[Lyric]

15. That was back when most of the world had *no* education.

So it wasn't hard to lead.

Unfortunately, conservatives who are terrified of "progress" have dragged their heels about keeping our educational system up-to-date. Because THEY wanted to keep everything EXACTLY as it was when they were young, the other nations of the world are passing us by.

God I loathe conservative ideology. It's like standing in a stagnant, putrid pool because you're too terrified to venture out into the running water. *sigh*

[SPedigrees]

16. we need a standardized curriculum

No one mentions the federally mandated standardized curriculum of that era. Teachers blame students and parents; the administration speaks of bad teachers. Back in the day a kid from a public school in a hick town somewhere learned the same math and reading skills as a kid in a public school in a posh urban neighborhood, because all teachers, regardless of how good they were, were required to teach standarized basics. (I was born in 1950 and I remember this.)

Then came the era of "new math" and "word recognition" and now you have adults who can't spell or sound out a word, or add without a calculator. Also most have no concept of why our civil liberties exist and how they were put into place.

I submit that more important than merit raises or anything else, we need to restructure the federally mandated curriculum for all public schools in this country.

I don't have a link either but you can find one with little effort. Our educational system has been in serious decline for many decades. We are behind every other advanced nation in math and science, probably in other areas as well.

[Igel]

17. Oh, that's not all entirely true.

Earlier, yes. But some schools had far greater levels of achievement than others--you could push those who didn't want to learn (with quite a few dropping out), but in other areas they had far greater offerings. This made a big difference.

As for who blames whom, many teachers are incompetent. That said, so are even more parents. Parents don't like hearing this. In a ed psych class we were given journal articles looking at parent's involvement in reading and their kid's academic success, and the conclusion was pretty inescapable. This prompted a single mother to stand up and rail against the instructors--after school, after work, after homework, after cooking and clearning, she damn well needed her 'down time' and she wasn't about to take her only 1-2 hours a day supervising her kid's homework or reading to/with her. We stared, and the point was made on both sides.

However, politicians aren't elected entirely by teachers, but also by parents. Blaming teachers is a hot topic when elections roll around. The result is that politicians throw more money at schools (accomplishing precious little of use) which makes teachers happy and makes parents part-way happy, while requiring stricter standards for teachers (making parents the rest of the way happy).

Then the entire cycle begins anew when elections come around again because the good parents with high achieving kids hear how horrible the schools are (not entirely true) and demand the best for their spoiled kids, and the bad parents with low achieving kids want their kids to be good students (not entirely the teachers' fault, to say the least).

[MedleyMisty]

18. High achieving does not always equal spoiled

I agree with most of the rest of the post, but just wanted to point that out.

[upi402]

20. 96% of us graduate and need to work, but labor history and rights aren't taught

Schools in this area are in the business of readying worker bees and NOT allowed to develop critical thinkers. Business runs the entire game and creativity is discouraged.

[mitchum]

21. But...but...but...students didn't have high tech supports and educational aids

just books and a pedagogue
how can that be???!!!

[omega minimo]

22. It was a literate society with independent voices, media and original artists.

Then came Reaganism, corporatism and manufactured stars, regurgitated cultural properties and synergistic platforms for branding the public.

Dumbing down SUPERSIZED.

TWITTER!!

:hi: