Ed , Sure, parents and grand-parents should volunteer at their kids schools...there they will learn how their kids / grandkids "Cut classes / don't show up at all / fight / go to school to say "present" right before leaving for the streets / say F...k you to their teachers / threaten and physically abuse the teachers / bring all kind of weapons ...and a lot more. I have 26+ years teaching. Is not the curriculum but what the kids are allowed to do. Why do you think each NYC schools have a permanent prescient besides the security officers? Do you remember the movie "The Principal"?
Good morning to all- Sylvia- With all due respect, your examples" MAY be true in certain situations and certain schools, but they were never true in any of the schools I taught at. I do truly believe the great majority of our public school kids are good kids. But the public schools are just a mirror of the communities they serve, and bad communities produce many- not all- bad kids. I taught in small rural schools and I taught in big city ghetto schools, and I never saw any of that sort of thing. Fights- yes, yes, and yes- mostly girl on girl fights, and those were the roughest kind to deal with. But the only weapons I ever saw on campus in any of my schools were in the little rural schools where the high school kids who could drive and brought their deer rifles in their pickup trucks because deer season was going on, and there would be a little daylight left after school let out. That was, of course, a long time ago. And to put forward your "examples" as being the standard of school environment everywhere, I feel is quite disingenuous. Our public school have to deal with a lot, and in general, a very good job is done by most schools- not all- but most. And I do remember the movie- The Principal- not such a very good movie, in my opinion- too melodramatic and inaccurate. you all be safe and keep well- Ed
Ed, I guess "I didn't / hear anything" during my decades as teacher. I taught in The Bronx and Harlem as well as in several rich areas of Westchester county, NY........and I didn't notice any difference about the students' behavior. See, when people knows there are not consequences for wrong behavior they give "freedom to de imagination". I was a Prof. of Spanish; if you wish I can also tell you in said language what the students said / did. Enjoy.
Good morning to all- Silvia- I do not question your work experiences. What you heard, I accept that you heard. But I do hope that you will also accept that what I heard and saw and experienced is also valid. I can not accept that what you experienced is representative of all public schools and public school kids. I know for a fact that there are bad kids in every school- just as there are bad people in every community. But to put all kids and all schools in the same light as apparently what you experienced is not accurate. I still stand by my belief- most public school kids are good kids. And while I am not fluent in Spanish, I expect that I could figure out shortly what was being said. low language is the same in all languages, although Spanish is a very good language for cursing, I have heard. you all be safe and keep well- Ed
I think that's why Gatto pointed out that they're not so much schools as reformatories and training areas: https://www.naturalchild.org/articles/guest/john_gatto.html Gatto was a right-wing libertarian who quit teaching after 26 years and a New York State Teacher of the Year award because he could no longer stomach what they were doing to kids. His first published work on the matter came in the form of a resignation letter he submitted to the WSJ (I think): https://www.educationrevolution.org/blog/i-quit-i-think/ I'm on the fence in this case: I value the idea of education as part of self-cultivation (hence, e ducere or "to lead out (of the darkness)"), an idea that we took from both the ancient Greeks and Chinese, but also the need for hierarchy, quantification, standardization, etc., which very much describes our world. I think it also has to do with my background: I've a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering and finance but my graduate degree is in literature, which is also why I spent years teaching in univerity. Thus, we want our kids to receive an education that's part of being human but also one that's part of being a worker and consumer. Gatto emphasized the former and industrialists like Carnegie and Rockefeller emphasized the latter. In my case, how do we have both without compromising either?
Sorry if I yak too much about this, but a liberal and classical education is very important for me, and throughout my life I've emphasized this at least for myself. That's why even though I joke around about pop entertainment in some threads in others I implicitly show that emphasis: I have around 5,000 books in my personal library, mostly hardbacks of canonical world literature which I've read and taught in uni, from Shakespeare to Greek plays to Dante to Murasaki Shikibu to Marx to Freud, as well as large numbers of (Western and Eastern) classical and world music and cinema. This might explain why once in a while I would refer to Frost, Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, Hobbes, and others in my post. However, I also value quantification, standardization, and even the scientific method: hence, my references to global warming, ecological collapse, peak oil, ideas like economic order quantities, profit maximization, and so on. If any, it was that bachelor's degree (which also included many units of not only economics and management but even core courses in theology, history, and philosophy) that allowed me to earn and to afford that library, if not a liberal education. My point is that people are essentially both: human and economic animals, not to mention biological. So, how we see that in light of the title thread that the education system is making kids stupid? Decades ago, E.D. Hirsch wrote a book entitled Cultural Literacy, and he pointed out that even though they received mostly a primary school education Civil War soldiers wrote some of the most eloquent letters to their family. And with a modern public school education the Black Panthers were highly inspired by what they studied, including the Declaration of Independence, and like Malcolm X, borrowed heavily from thinkers ranging from Plato to Marx. Much later, Hirsch reported that by the 1980s the average student could barely say anything about the American Revolution, the Civil War, and both world wars, and many U.S. adults could barely say anything about the Vietnam war. Now, we have jokes about people on the street unable to even identify their home state on a map, as well as studies showing that many U.S. college graduates have difficulty doing business tasks like determining supplies given rate of consumption or discounting. What happened? I think the problem is part of late capitalism, a point where most people are in the service industry due to advanced education, and are immersed in so much pop entertainment they are less interested in a classical education or will never experience it. In addition, schools that are supposed to counter this have been taken over by the equivalent of Taylorism. What to do about this? That's a good question. Gatto wanted to encourage more parents to promote home or at least community schooling, and to have a more active role in raising their children. But how does that happen in a late capitalist ethos, where the drive is to earn more and then find happiness in that by buying lots of "nice things"?
Good morning to all- Ralf- I find your thoughts very cogent and important. From my life spend in the "ed biz" I have come to realize that our standardized educational system can not provide every student's needs- not fully. For instance, all of my literature classes that I taught- and learned from, I'd like to add- could not make a single student "liberally" educated. By this, I mean the student must WANT to read more and learn more and understand more from a writer. All I can do as a teacher is present the writer, and then the student must decide whether he/she is important enough to chase farther down the road And this further chase must be done by the student- no teacher can hand a writer to a student and have it be a full understanding. And although I hated having to assign letter grades, regardless of the student's grade level, in our culture, there must be indications of '"progress" and achievement, even though for a lot of subjects, that's not a really accurate way of measuring things. And trying to assign blame for the current lack of "common knowledge" well, Brother, I expect there's some blame to go around to everyone who comes in contact with students. but, I will say this, if we depend on the schools- any schools- to teach students EVERYTHING, then we're going to be in trouble. I enjoy reading your words. good day to all- Ed
Ed Marsh, Ed...is not what I heard but what I saw / heard / experienced. I accept your experiences but is time people see what / where the real problem is / starts.
Good morning to all- Silvia- For the great majority of kids in public school who are problems to other kids, teachers, and themselves, the problem starts as soon as the child is born and how the child spends the first four years of her/his life. We have kids who come to school with no knowledge of anything but abuse. There are many kids who have learned that "normal" conversation is a shout, and "normal" language is full of vulgarity and abuse. We have many kids who come to school who have never seen a book before and don't know how to hold one- or why to hold one. The problem for most kids who have/are trouble in school is not the school- it's where they are coming from. And let's be honest, we can't do much about how kids spend their first four years. All we as teachers can do is take the kids where they are and try to get them a bit farther down the road toward a decent life and some thinking and understanding skills. Blaming the schools for all student bad behavior is not productive nor accurate. it's not the schools that are at fault in the great majority of cases. And Silvia, i am sorry your school work experiences were so bad and unhappy. good day to all- Ed
Yes indeed. I do think that everyone knows that a comedian doesn’t have to be factual, just funny. In the case of Pavlov and his dogs, the irony is that here we have a person calling the dogs stupid for “answering” the bell whilst he is doing the exact same thing.
The problems spoken of here are, of course, not represented in ALL schools in the United States. No one is suggesting anything of the kind. There does appear to be major problems in MOST schools in the country, however, since this is represented in the abysmal state of education in the United States, overall. Sure, there are things that these problems can be attributed to, such as the declining state of the American family, uncontrolled immigration, and an unwillingness or inability to maintain any sense of control, but these are all things that the teacher's unions are in favor of, so there's no help there.
I think that if any of us walked into schools today, none of us would have a frame of reference for what goes on there. These are not the same institutions any of us taught at or attended. Much of it is driven by out-of-control school boards--not the states--who are driven by a national association (which recently colluded with the White House to have the FBI label dissenting parents as Domestic Terrorists.)
Good evening to all- Mr. Brunner- could you explain what you mean by "dissenting parents"? That is a term I am not familiar with. And how did the national association "collude" with the White House? good evening to all- Ed
Good evening to all- Mr. Anderson- With all due respect, you don't know what you are talking about. No teacher's union is "in favor" of these things as you claim. And I dispute your claim of "Most" schools having extreme problems and the state of our public education system as being "abysmal". The public schools are an easy target for people who want to bluster and blow about things they really don't know much about. I have no time no respect for such people. good evening to all.- Ed
I think it would be better if children learned a trade, instead of attending any public school in the usa. The public school system resulted in losing the cures of all diseases, and promoting more disease in all of the students , and their parents going willing along ....