Someone else "gets it" regarding teachers. Stop blaming them.

[Orlandodem]

The Bush/Obama education agenda must end.

http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/dont-make-the-teachers-scapegoats/1128332

[msongs]

1. it's about selling schools to for profit corporations, not helping kids. sorry bout that nt

[awoke_in_2003]

30. you haven't got the memo...

private industry can do everything cheaper :sarcasm: just in case.

[Skittles]

2. I've always gotten it

blaming it on teachers is absolutely DISGUSTING - of all the people to hold accountable, they start with TEACHERS? W.T.F.

[dkf]

3. Blame poverty instead. Gosh that is easy.

Might as well give up on the unfortunates. They are poor so they are incapable of learning right?

[Hardrada]

4. Simple-minded approaches will not work.

Not yours. Not anybody's.

[dkf]

7. Blaming poverty gets us nowhere. How is that not the simple approach?

[Hardrada]

14. Seems like a straw man argument which is not being made

in that manner by those you seek to criticise. I think a deeper analysis of the current arguments would be beneficial.

[DeltaLitProf]

15. Ignoring poverty makes it worse

Now isn't there another web forum where you'd feel more at home?

[OhioBlue]

5. The last paragraph

asks when are we going to hold parents and student accountable. I've heard this line of reasoning a lot - with holding the parents accountable. While I completely agree, that as a parent, I have a very, very important responsibility for my son's education. I take it very seriously. I get it. I am a working mom, I don't have much in the way of discretionary income, and I have yet to attain my BA. But, I know as a mom, this (my son's education) is one of the areas in my life that has to have priority.

However...... for a Nation, for elected leaders, for our society... how exactly do we hold parents and students accountable? I would argue that students are already held accountable with their grade cards. Parents? Well.... how? Do we mandate 20 minutes of reading/homework help? Do we mandate each start a college fund?

As I see it, we can't control other parents. We can encourage, urge and preach.... but we can't control their actions with regard to their child's education. We already hold the kids accountable via grades. The teachers are employed by public school districts, so by their professional choice, they are and will be held accountable. They are employed by the public and of the 3 (students, parents, teachers) the only ones that can actually be held accountable with any consequence by the public.

Of course administrators and policy makers deserve more accountability - I was only referring to the last paragraph.

Personally, I think the key to any education reform is the teachers. They know what works. We need them to lead on bold reform and administrators and policy makers to listen.

[Orlandodem]

9. Oh Puh-lease. Grade inflation is rampant from K through college.

Why is that? Because there are too many parents who refuse to admit that the fruit of their loin may be rotten. They think their cherub will be a brain surgeon. Parents call and complain to the principal and grades get changed. Principals tell teachers to lighten up. Out of fear, the teachers do. The child gets the grade the parent wants although the child doesn't know anything more.

Children are NOT held accountable.

[awoke_in_2003]

32. and if the child comes from a home...

that is incapable of providing good meals to make the body function properly, and goes to a school where free lunches are not available (or at least made very embarrassing- and believe me, they are)? The blame is NEVER on the child- and shame on you for blaming the kid (and just in case you say you never blamed the child, a cut and paste from your post- "Children are NOT held accountable")

[Orlandodem]

10. Oh Puh-lease. Grade inflation is rampant from K through college.

Why is that? Because there are too many parents who refuse to admit that the fruit of their loin may be rotten. They think their cherub will be a brain surgeon. Parents call and complain to the principal and grades get changed. Principals tell teachers to lighten up. Out of fear, the teachers do. The child gets the grade the parent wants although the child doesn't know anything more.

Children are NOT held accountable.

[Hannah Bell]

17. The "hold parents accountable" thing is a red herring that leads us nowhere, just as much as

"hold teachers accountable".

And as you say, there's no way to do it.

The problems in education correlate directly with having about 20% of the population loosely attached to the workforce & thus with "mainstream" american life, i.e. a kind of ghettoization that's not confined to black inner-city ghettos. Appalachia, for example, has its ghettos.

No curriculum, no amount of remediary money to schools, no charter schools, nothing is going to bridge that basic cultural divide except ending it. Some students may be helped, but the fundamental divide will remain.

If you want people to behave like they're middle class, you have to let them into the middle class. period.

[rustydog]

6. My grandmother taught in a one-room schoolhouse in Montana

and my aunt was a teacher in washington state. I have the greatest respect for teachers and regret not following them in the profession.

[bluestateguy]

8. While there are a few crummy teachers who need to be gotten rid of

There are also many more negligent or absentee parents who cause a lot of these problems before the kids even get to school.

[TBF]

11. Divide and Conquer is a very well practiced technique of the PTB -

It's been used against union workers, air traffic controllers, teachers etc...

Anything to distract from the real problem - the few at the top sitting with all the money.

[stray cat]

12. Support public school ghettos for those who can't afford to move to a district with good schools?

At least that is the status quo progressives seem to be fighting for

[Hannah Bell]

18. yes, charter school ghettos are much better.

[AdHocSolver]

13. US education is an assembly line system designed to produce docile minions for the corporations.

Until the public understands this fact, no amount of tinkering with the present system will improve it one iota.

Everyone is trying to remake a 30 year old Pinto into a brand new Lincoln town car.

Blaming the teachers, blaming the parents, and blaming the students is a political distraction.

There is NO WAY to fix the current system by tinkering. The U.S. education system has to be redesigned from the ground up.

The U.S. can learn from others' experience with school reform. Specifically, Finland redesigned their school systems "to become the world leader in student achievement. Their strategy is the opposite of what we’re doing in America."

More can be found at this link:

http://www.nea.org/home/40991.htm

[DeltaLitProf]

16. If that is true . . .

. . . why are so many teachers in unions? You'd think people training children to be machine cogs would be machine cogs themselves. But no. They're in one of the more powerful unions that has ever existed.

I await your response.

[AdHocSolver]

20. The power that you allege the unions hold has nothing to do with the way they perform their jobs.

The way teachers are expected to perform their jobs, which is dictated by school boards, school principals. vice-principals, department heads, and indirectly by colleges of education, textbook manufacturers, education media developers, and a host of people who know nothing about teaching (or how people learn), such as Arne Duncan, has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not a teacher belongs to a union.

Over the years, I have owned a variety of automobiles. These included American branded cars by union labor, as well as Japanese branded cars. Some of the Japanese branded cars were made in America, some in unionized factories, and some (to my knowledge) made in nonunion factories.

The quality and satisfaction of the American branded cars (all made in unionized plants) ranged from slightly better than mediocre to downright lousy. The quality and satisfaction of the Japanese branded cars were generally high irrespective of whether those cars were made in a union plant or not.

In other words, whether the workers were unionized or not was irrelevant. The difference in quality and satisfaction depended solely on the design and production practices instituted by management.

The educational system in the U.S. is seriously flawed. Teachers have little control over the way they perform their jobs (which is one of the major problems with education in the U.S.).

By the way, I taught school for two years, and got to see how the "system" works (or, rather, fails), from the inside.

[U4ikLefty]

27. Two years of teaching in clown-college doesn't count

BTW, teachers are not auto workers.

[AdHocSolver]

33. You are lucky I am not grading you on the material, because you would have flunked the test.

I taught in public schools in a major metropolitan area at the middle school and high school level.

My comparison of teachers to auto workers was to point out that belonging, or not belonging, to a union had no bearing on the quality of work because the teachers, like auto workers, have little control over the results that they achieve on the job.

You seem to have serious issues in understanding nuance.

[U4ikLefty]

35. Two whole years from the "inside"? Wow, you must be an expert.

I understand nuance just fine...your analogy sucked.

[ProudDad]

23. 'cause if they weren't in Union...

blamers like you and your republican friends would fuck them over!

And dismantle public education along the way...

[proud2BlibKansan]

28. I can't answer for all teachers. But I can tell you why I am in a union.

Before I even showed up to work on the first day of my first year teaching, the district had lost my application. Twice. Then they lost my teaching certificate. And they told me I was expected to show up to work (because i had signed a contract) but until I turned in a new copy of my certificate, I wouldn't be paid.

The first thing I did on that first day was ask if there was a union and how I could join it. Then I called the union, they helped me straighten out the certificate mess and I got paid on time. (My paycheck was sent to the wrong school, but that's another story.) And I could concentrate on teaching without worrying about whether or not I was going to be paid.

My story is very typical. Teachers are treated like shit by the people we work for. We also get crap from parents. Most parents are absolutely wonderful but a bad one can really ruin your day, if you know what I mean.

Just like any other profession, if workers were treated with respect, we wouldn't need unions. And after 31 years in this business, I can tell you that the union is the only stakeholder that is always accountable, has stability in its leadership and really puts the best interests of the kids first. That stability and reliability has earned my loyalty and respect.

And that's why I belong to a union.

[ProudDad]

24. Exactly right!!! (n/t)

[October]

34. Spot on! /nt

[Rochester]

19. The finest teacher in the world can't teach a child who doesn't want to learn.

And a frighteningly large number don't. I know this because I went to school with a lot of them myself. I knew plenty of people who just thought of it as a burden to be endured and forgotten as soon as possible, in later years I knew some people who were counting the days until they could drop out.
I believe that all the other problems - uncooperative parents, shoestring budgets, dumbing down of the cirriculum (sp.?) etc. are all secondary to apathetic students. I don't foresee any meaningful improvement without some fundamental changes in our culture, specifically the anti-intellectualism so prevalent especially across Red areas.

[AdHocSolver]

21. I disagree with your premise that children don't want to learn.

Most of what is taught in school is mind-numbing, useless pap. The methods used inevitably destroy intellectual curiosity. The students you mention weren't hostile to learning. The apathy they exhibited was produced by a system that grinds them down.

The mind is wired to learn, and to enjoy learning. It takes a lot of effort to destroy that motivation.

The compartmentalization of knowledge (the slicing and dicing of knowledge into meaningless and useless facts), and the practice of teaching to the test (as demanded by NCLB and RTTT) will destroy most people's interest in learning. Current teaching practices dictated by The Powers That Be will inevitably lead to apathy, boredom, lack of learning, and anti-intellectualism.

[Gabi Hayes]

22. keeping this short, because I have to get some rest before I see my

100+ kids tomorrow....no, not all in one class, but sometimes it seems that way

both your answers are correct

after they've been sliced and diced, etc., their joy of learning is ground out of them. sad but true

I work with K-6 kids (last five years), and jr. high (9 years before that), and it's very depressing to see how quickly the fires can be quashed, and both of you cover very succinctly, and accurately, the sadness, the waste, of what should be a joyful experience

on a perhaps paranoid level, expressed many times on these threads, the whole POINT, it seems, looking at it from a dialectical (heh) perspective, is to make each successive generation a more passive, more credulous consumer/worker, to make them accept their lot as neo-third world wage slaves

Idiocracy we're almost there

[ProudDad]

26. We just saw Idiocracy a couple of weeks ago...

Very Prescient!! :rofl:

Except...

With Peak Oil, Catastrophic Climate Destabilization and the Economic Meltdown...I seriously doubt that the Earth will be able to sustain large air-breathing mammals by 2505...

[democracy1st]

31. What are you talking about some of these kids are spoiled undisciplined brats that

want to skip school and misbehave 24/7.

[ProudDad]

25. What about the fact that 90%+ of what they're "supposed to learn"

is bullshit!

Most of it was when I went to school...

You were supposed to learn obedience to authority no matter how fucked up stupid "authority" was... (Korea, Vietnam)

You were supposed to learn that your task as a lower middle class person was to fill some square hole at some execrable boss's pleasure with the square peg they were trying to make you into -- for life (or until you "retired"; whichever came first)...

Any learning you undertook on your own to follow your own passion that didn't fit the first rules above was seriously frowned upon (and certainly wouldn't help your "grade")...

Come on, in the Corporate States of Amerika -- the USAmerikan Empire -- Learning is highly discouraged!

What this fucked up country wants are trained low level workers who can't think for themselves or make any trouble for the bosses...

Dog forbid students actually learned how to learn anymore...

[awoke_in_2003]

29. NCBL...

or, No Childs Behind Left- the Catholic church screwed the children literally, and NCLB is doing it figuratively.