Chicflat Loc: Tulsa, Ok,

When I pointed out to my granddaughter once that it is the teacher's job to teach and the student's job to learn, she became angry with me. Her mother defended her daughter's attitude. i think intentional and willful lack of effort comes into play here.

Chicflat Loc: Tulsa, Ok,

Another point. Have you noticed the disappearance of the adverb from American English? I think all social systems and values are largely correlate with their milieu: if your mindset is steeped in ignorance, especially if there is a refusal to make corrections, your will get an educational component that sustains that attitude, but not because teachers don't teach.

Quinn 4

What? You read like something that a college person would write who has a PhD in what is none. Would not known what a 13 old kid is, ever if the kid came up and kick you in the ass.

drmike99 Loc: Fairfield Connecticut

Thanks for the headsup Shellback. Seems Huey's entry is verbatim from that 4 year old internet misinformation entry. Has snopes.com got an entry on this story?

BusterCrabbe Loc: Montreal

Really? You shouldn't bet and this isn't the place for your divisive political comments. The world has had enough of this sort of trash talking and it is wearing thin. There are a lot of teachers on both sides of the political fence that work very, very hard.

andesbill

I checked this out on Snopes and truth or fiction. It remains unproven.
As for the other responders, critical thinking is required in NYS schools.

What I saw as a NYC schoolteacher, was the misunderstood dichotomy between teaching and learning. Just because I taught something, didn’t mean that the students learned it.
To really learn, they would have to come to class nearly every day, listen, take notes, and do their HW. They needed parents who could help them at home as I had, growing up in the 50’s and early 60’s. Forget it!
In my 9th grade Bio class, I taught on a 9th grade level. Their text books were ugly, with bluish illustrations and very boring. They were on a 7th grade reading level. My students came to me with a 4th grade reading level.
We had a day care center in the school for the children of the students.
About 1/3 of my students suffered from asthma.
We were doomed from the start.

Tex-s

As a public school educator of almost 30 years, I can assure you the trouble in American public school classrooms is multi-tiered, and almost all of the tiers of trouble can be traced back to the federal government and the left's insane demand for equality of outcome rather than quality of opportunity and quality of individual outcomes. As an example, I'll cite my own high school education and college experience with that of my daughter exactly 30 years later (1987 vs. 2017). I graduated in class of 250, my daughter in a class of 16. My class had about 30 students take an applied chemistry class and that class was RIGOROUS, meaning tons of complex math, manual computation of acid dissociation constants, manual computation of the heat lost to the calorimeter, and various other complex subject matter. Fewer still took the applied Physics class, and fewer still Biology II or Chem II or Phys II. Of those students who took the upper level stuff, about 90% attended 4 year universities and earned degrees in STEM fields (Math, Chemistry (my major), Physics, veterinary, law, pre-med, etc.) The others also graduated 4 year universities, but with degrees in music, seminary, literature, or performing arts. There were NONE who floundered at college or dropped out.

Fast forward 30 years, and public school (we do all we can to add content) have almost NO ability to differentiate courses and course selection for students. For my daughter's class that meant all 16 took chemistry, physics, algebra II, geometry, and either Biology II or Pre-calculus, and all of them had to pass all of those to earn the 'advanced' diploma and keep the school system rated highly. On paper, having more kids taking those classes is a liberal bonanza. (More kids of all types taking 'upper level' classes!!!) The problem is this, though. The curriculum is so watered down to assure a high passing rate (no child left behind) that those who go to University for STEM majors almost always drop out, change majors, or have to retake courses because of their inadequate high school preparation. My own daughter, child of a Chemistry major, and a highly able student opted out of a STEM major in college after a bad encounter with mismanaged dyslexia accommodations and a really challenging Chemistry course. To her, the struggle was far in excess of the potential payoff down the road.

So we have a system that nominally prepares all students to attend a community collage and nothing more. Public schooling is effectively 'pre-comotology' or ''pre-laborer'. Add to that the incessant attacks against smaller systems through theft of tax revenue and funding formulas that encourage consolidation, and you have a system moving ever more towards a system of indoctrination instead of education. If I were in Congress, I would introduce legislation to rename the Dept. of Education to the the Department of Indoctrination, just for the publicity it would garner. The move to private schools in my state has far more to do with maintaining autonomy over curriculum, educating students of faith, teaching actual history and offering ACTUAL preparation for rigorous college coursework. It has very little to do with class, cash, or race.

And these are just the systemic problems. As others have noted, in an attempt to be more 'diverse' history books now spend inordinate amounts of time and space on persons of ethnic specificity that achieved virtually ANY degree of notoriety at the expense of teaching, oh say, about Andew Jackson and the 'war' to not create a federal bank. Or maybe, it's the Griswold v Connecticut case, the original fabrication of the mythical 'penumbra' that gets omitted. Or maybe it's just the actual text of the Constitution that is deemed optional. I mean, just why would a good little drone need to worry about the Constitution when nanny state government is all set to make all your 'decisions' for you.....

Deep breath.

goofybruce

[quote=Huey Driver][quote=Hassie]Huey Driver -
Don't know where you got your history from but Dutch van Kirk died on July 28th, 2014.
This might have happened, but it wasn't last week.
He was a very humble man according to what I have read about him.
He was from Northumberland, PA which is about 18 miles from my home in Mifflinburg.[/quo

It was sent to me but considering our education system and what it is today it counds like it could have haoppened. Exactly when really doesn't matter does it?[/quote]

Yes it DOES matter. If you are going to pass off something as "factual," then the facts ALL must be correct. Simply passing on something "that was sent to me," is how "fake news" gets started and why we have such a uneducated and gullible segment of our society -- which seems to be growing every day. It is also how politicians and wanna-be politicians get their point across. In this case, the lack of education of the teachers in public schools

A simple fact-check would have alerted you to question the sender or at least question yourself on the motives of the sender.

2Dragons Loc: The Back of Beyond

Amen. I think you covered the ongoing systemic problem in our education/indoctrination system quite well. I'm sure there's even more to it that other educators have observed in their particular locations. Sad, just sad. I was a fairly mediocre C+ (70s) student back in the 1960s, but I think today I would be elevated to A- (90s) with the way kids are taught and marked. It just bewilders me that parents are OK with how and what their children are being taught today. No penmanship. As well as a means of communication, it was a discipline. No recognizable history classes. A marking system that makes the system and teachers look good, but does precious little for the students unless they are self-motivators. I have a nephew who is beggaring himself to put his two children through private schools because the town school system is geared to 70% foreign/illegal students who speak little English and the remaining 30% of students are either bored because their learning is being detained, detoured, and/or derailed by lack of English skills on the part of the majority of the students.

Bridges Loc: Memphis, Charleston SC, now Nazareth PA

[quote=Huey Driver]No wonder kids can't learn

Young people cannot learn from history anymore because history is no longer taught as a required subject in public high schools.


Theodore " Dutch " J. Van Kirk was the navigator on the "Enola Gay" when it dropped the bomb at Hiroshima , Japan, and is the last surviving member of the crew. This really happened.


Dutch was asked to speak at a grammar school this past week. The young teacher introduced him by saying the speaker was a veteran of World War Eleven (as in WW II). Dutch stood up and walked out of the school without saying a word. End of story.

George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". He also said, "A child educated only at school is an uneducated child".

While I agree history is an essential subject in school, a child should learn to balance a checkbook by owning one. How about opening an account with 25.00 or 50.00 and explain their allowance will be deposited into the account each week and it would be up to them to keep their own finances straight. It goes without saying they would need instruction from a parent. An over drown account would mean allowance stoppage until not only the penalty was paid off, but the seed money of 25 to 50 dollars was back in the account as well. If the child didn't have a regular job, money could be earned by doing chores at home. It is easy to blame the system for our uneducated children, but how many of us take even a modest interest in educating our children in life experiences? Shame on the declining educational system in this country and shame on us for not doing our part as well!

traderjohn Loc: New York City

You should put your money where your mouth is. YOU should voluntarily give to the school. Show them what the other party is all about.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

Also the current crop of teachers are clueless about history prior to Clinton.
It amazes me about them. I had a college American history class and the kid teaching it was clueless. She made some inane statement as if it were fact. I raised my hand stated she was wrong. She asked how did I know. I said because I was there and personally observed what she was messing up.

andesbill

Your political bent is distorting your understanding of events.
In the so called Great America days, their was a two-tiered system. Racism automatically assigned students of color, new immigrants, and non English speaking students to a general diploma course with little or no path to an academic diploma. Whites, especially upper class whites got most of the money.

Starting in the late 60’s there was a revolt of the “out groups” who demanded a better education for their kids. Whites, especially the wealthy left the public schools in droves for segregated private schools. The whites in power reduced public school spending, or at the least reduced the increases necessary to maintain the infrastructure, and attract quality staff.
Minority groups erred in forcing out non academic classes.
The unions (those bastards), demanded health care and pensions (in lieu of raises, mind you); and insisted that the Principals and board members prove that the teacher deserved to be fired, before getting rid of her. This is after a 3-5 year probation period when a teacher could be fired easily. Incompetent teachers that made it through their probation are the fault of incompetent Principals, not Unions.
I taught for 38 years, including 5 years in private schools. Here is the real deal.
The system is a mess.

In the failing public schools too many students are truant, too many cut classes, too many are late to school, &/or late to class. Each student that comes late to class takes up teacher time to deal with his attendance, wait while she sits down, etc. Multiply that by 5-10 or so latecomers & you can’t get much done.

Don’t let them come to class? Where do you put them? Who watches them? What are they learning? Contact parents? Who can do that for a hundred or more students each day? If their parents cared and could do something about it, would they be late in the first place?
Many of the latecomers (yes many) have to babysit younger siblings, or take them to school before coming to school themselves. If there are 2 parents, both parents are working.
Who watches to see that the kids come to school prepared? Did HW? Studied? Eaten breakfast, or dinner the night before?
The board of Ed is desperate to find a way to teach them that works, so they try different experiments, without examining results before going on to the next idea.
None of the above is the fault of liberals or conservatives. And it doesn’t matter whose fault it is. It just needs to be fixed. For all students, not just one specific group.

Believe me, liberal/conservative politics never made it into the classroom. It was all about how many passed the test for the bureaucrats, and the teaching the subject for us teachers.
Most of us teachers tried, and tried very hard. Most of the chairpersons, and higher ups worked their butts off as well.

I knew the attendance teacher in one school (over 4000 students). After 20 years at the job he was a basket case. I thought his job was easy until he told me stories of abuse, incest, rape, violence. How can we expect those kids to perform well at school?

I’m a smart person. I spent hundreds of hours over the years trying to come up with a practical way to help the students.
I still can’t think of one.
But I’ll tell you this. Charter schools, like private schools isn’t it. That’s just the cowards way of peeling off the best leaving the rest to rot. If we do that, our society will collapse. Too few students will have access to good jobs (like today’s world only more like Brave New World). SS and Medicare will collapse.
It would help if schools added back shop classes, art & music & everyday gym. We need to give students a choice of careers and stop pushing them into an academic career, while at the same time making sure that every student has an equal opportunity from day 1 through graduation.
Doing this will require an investment in the billions to retrofit schools with shop rooms, teachers, etc.
And then, how do you explain to parents that taking those classes is the best way for those students to lead a good prosperous life, especially since in order to become licensed in many areas you need to get into a Union whose leaders want to maintain exclusivity, in many cases by keeping out minorities.
Anyhow, you don’t get to complain unless you have a practical idea that solves the above mentioned problems.

2Dragons Loc: The Back of Beyond

We have some top-notch Technical School alternatives to high school and the student enrollment has been steadily declining because the students today are being brainwashed into thinking that they're nobody unless you have a college degree. Well, guess what folks, we have a scarcity of well trained tradesmen today. Ask anyone who has tried to get an electrician, plumber, carpenter or mechanic. I've had carpentry work done by so-called professionals recently that I could have done better myself. I've had painters do work for me that I could have done a more acceptable job. They don't even bother sanding before painting woodwork today. So, we DO need more students whose talent can be recognized early in Shop classes, mechanical drawing classes, sheet metal classes, etc. My father was a finish carpenter and I worked with him as a kid on weekends and summers. I know how things should be done, not some of the haphazard, sloppy work that I've seen. It is all a matter of being trained properly and given a sense of pride in your work. I talked to a "carpenter" who was doing some work for me and he told me he couldn't hit a nail square on the head anymore because all he used was a nailgun. Hmmmmmm......

daltonp Loc: Columbus, Ohio

High school teacher here. Andesbill is dead on. And today's students will not take off their earbuds and put away their phones long enough to learn anything. We get no support from administration because the parents get whatever they want and they want to call them all day during class. The state of Ohio has tied out hands regarding discipline by tying it to the standardized test scores. Discipline lowers your scores. Also, all the practical classes were done away with to fire teachers to pay for the tests. The tests are mandated, but not free. IMHO they prove nothing about the abilities of the students or the teachers.