A Rochester, Minnesota's public school teacher e-mails entire school district to organize against the Tea Party there. Does this make YOU laugh, too? Public school teachers are seriously some of the dumbest humans in the world. Yes, there are some good ones, but they are rapidly becoming a minute percentage. And YOU KNOW IT.A good friend of mine took offense. Yes, his wife is a public school teacher and is one of the nicest people in the world. I certainly meant nothing towards her (or him) at all and I am doubly sorry that my comment gave him any displeasure, that was certainly NEVER my intention. I need to clear that up, if I may.
Quickly on my point of posting that, because I sometimes make the mistake of not realizing that y'all do not exist solely in my head. That teacher, instead of sending out a bulk e-mail trying to protect her job and push back against folks that are trying to KEEP THEIR OWN DAMN MONEY, should have instead been performing a task to make her better at her job, for which she is paid BY THAT TAX MONEY. You see, that teacher sent out an e-mail on a system paid for by those folks protesting government waste of tax money. Wonder how much time and government resources were wasted by that teacher in an effort to keep wasting TAX MONEY?
Anyhoo, I am a product of public schools (never went to private school) and can think of only a very few teachers I had that were bad teachers. Such is no longer the case in my opinion. Of course, there simply MUST be some good ones now and obviously I need to make that disclaimer while railing on public schools. I thought that was implied by my rant stating that good teachers were in the minority now, but I was mistaken.
Here are my thoughts and solutions on public schools. Shut them down. Do it now. They are irreparably broken and NOTHING is going to change as long as the local folks are not running the show in our local schools. We have had a thirty year trial period of allowing the federal government to run them and set teaching policy and curriculum in them. Our kids are getting DUMBER.
How can we do that? No damn clue. But, it needs to be done in my opinion. The way that I come to that conclusion is I have eyes, ears, and a functioning brain. When something doesn't work, you do not simply increase funding for it hoping that it will get better.
Currently, the state of Mississippi spends over 60% of our budget on "education." Since I do not speak MORON, I cannot come up with a dollar amount that is actually spent on schools, but I do know something that should chill your blood. In a conversation with a school board member in Starkville, I learned that the ratio of students on the "free lunch program" affects your performance standings, and he was BRAGGING ON IT. Since I cannot find the actual formula for determining how much that does affect your performance rank, let's just make some wild-ass statement and let the chips fall where they may. And understand that school board member is PART OF THE PROBLEM.
Let's say for instance that you have a school district where 100% of the kids get a "free lunch" and another one that has ZERO "free lunch" students. Are we to believe that if the 100% school has a grade average of 2.0 and the 0% school has a grade average 4.0 that these schools are comparable? That is simply silly.
And in a huge leap of assumption let me offer my opinion on why that is, too. Because of the failure of the social engineering that dingbats try on every situation.
However, if we were to try legitimate social engineering with no regard to the methods, we could be successful. Let me explain that.
Assume no limits on methods to achieve success. If you have a small child, then you know that there are ways to make them do anything that you want them to do. And you can make them do anything if you are willing to employ any tactic to get them to perform the desired task. "Child, I want you to complete your homework every day immediately upon arriving at home from school." If the child does not complete that task as commanded, you beat said child with a knotted plow rope every day without fail. That child will quickly learn to perform the task demanded, when demanded. Seems harsh, but it is effective. Dial it back as the child learns from the behavior modification.
If you want parents to attend parent-teacher meetings and they fail to do so, simply remove their child from the public school system. Do not hesitate to do so. If the child doesn't turn in homework, remove the child from the school system. Will we do that? Of course not, performance is no longer the goal in public school, it is a wrong-headed social experiment now.
What my statements on anything are intended to do is to start the debate, hopefully with people that disagree with my ideas. Usually, I am pretty good at doing that, too. Wonder why? Because my statements put everything on the table as far as solving problems. There are no sacred cows in problem solving for me.
Sidebar: If you want to end the use of crystal methamphetamine, execute a couple of users of meth. I PROMISE that usage shall drop exponentially. Bet me.
Do you want to end poverty? The answer is to end paying people to be "poor." Cut them off. Do you want to end producing stupid children that wind up as stupid adults? Then schools should quit trying to achieve perfect social equality and focus on teaching instead. The fact is this: if you are born into the Kennedy Klan, you are going to be wealthy. If you are born into a poverty stricken family with zero availability of a quality education, you are going to continue to be poor. Currently, our public school system is the plantation owner in achieving that, the only thing missing is cotton to be picked.
One of things that makes me the angriest about current school philosophy is the idiotic debate about class size. Let's accept the premise that the smaller the class, the better the teaching. What is the end result of that mentality? What would be best if you accept that one premise? Well, best would be 1:1 if you do not continue to take that premise to the infinite stupidity of one million (or more) teachers for each student. If you say 1:1 is the best, then hire enough teachers to have that one teacher for every student. Build each student a classroom. Do you see how ridiculous that is? Such is the same with limiting a classroom to 20 or 25 students. It is ALL about the EFFECTIVENESS of the teacher.
In case you forgot, Tom Brokaw came down to Mississippi in 2006, visited Georgetown and interviewed the locals in and around Lanier High School. The subsequent report filed by Brokaw was some of the dumbest shit I have ever had the misfortune to read. No, I did not watch the program, I read the transcript instead.
One more thing. YES!!! For the love of G_d, there are some great public school teachers out there that want nothing more than to impart knowledge to kids, ANY KIDS, but those teachers are in the minority now. The way that we can tell they are the minority is that the teachers that are competent and concerned cannot stand up, get with the community leaders (that are not morons), and take the schools back from the leeches that are sucking the system dry. The very reason that those good teachers cannot do that is that they will be removed from the system and the percentage of good teachers shall drop even further. Good teachers simply want the chance to reach ONE student. The good teachers want to be able to look at a former student, that has cured cancer or something, and say, "I taught that person third grade English, and I made a difference." Those good teachers WANT to be a success at what THEY do. Just like all the other competent folks working in any field.
If there is one thing that I have come to realize in my lifetime is that the competent folks in any profession are totally outnumbered by the incompetent folks in that profession. Such is ALWAYS the case in any field. Get used to it, that metric is certainly not going to move in the right direction UNTIL we draw a line in the sand and guard it with our lives.
Please take the time to comment or click one of the 'Share/Save' buttons. DO IT NOW!
10 comments:
Paul, I was in the company of my sister and my sister-in-law last week when I mentioned that I thought public education should be "history", because public schools don't produce a marketable product (i.e., a graduate!) I do think the rural schools in Oklahoma do a much better job than those located in the urban areas do.
Anyway, you can imagine how popular I was when you consider that they're both retired public school teachers. :)
Staci, I have seen the very same things in the schools far removed from urban areas, however the urban schools have a far greater impact on government policy because of their size. I ran face to face with that when a teacher told me that my fourth grade son needed to be taught about safe sex. That threw me for a loop because I never needed any instruction on safe sex once I was taught about the human body and how it worked.
I guess that philosophy is really a dying concept and I mourn that loss, too.
I could write five million words on this topic, too, but instead I want to just scrub out the whole thing and start over.
In Okieland, the top 10 appropriations by the legislature (FY09) counted up as 59.58% (40.5 percent of that goes to common education, over 16% to higher education, and the remainder to VoTech. Health/Mental Health/Substance Abuse get 16%. Human Services gets 9%. DOT gets 3% (that's why all the damn bridges are falling down) and at the bottom of the pile is public safety (12%, and that's for corrections, juveniles, and DPS, which includes Homeland Security).
I've always wondered why education gets so much money; I mean, if they're doing such a good job with their funds, and providing kids with opportunities to succeed, wouldn't it be safe to say that the prison population would go down? Instead it rises year after year...
Oh and another thing - education here gets all the profits from the lottery, on top of the legislative appropriations....
I already covered in previous comments, my educational background. Bottom line, I'm a product of the public school system, primarily from Iowa and Colorado, for the most part pre-Federal Dept of Education, and the beginning of dumbed-down, "outcome-based, touchy-feely" social engineering crap.
We spend more money per pupil today, than in my day; and we get a lesser result academically. In DC, where the national average spent per pupil is highest, so too, is the drop out and failure rate.
Anywhere that school administrators -- aided and abetted by the more fundamentalist members of the cancerous teachers' union -- are primarily wedded to libtard social engineering over basic education, quality has steadily declined, and the growth of a dumbed-down dependency class is in full bloom.
And most of the places in the country, where economic decline and unemployment are highest, are right where this is so.
Yes, there are good teachers who are forced to be members of a union they loathe; and there are teachers who try to buck the system for the benefit of their students, and because those teachers haven't forgotten what ethics and accountability mean.
BUT...Paul is essentially right here. And this is no overnight fix; the libtard philosophy must be squelched. First at the ballot box; then in the schools. It'll take a generation to clean up the dependency, the dumbed-down 'slavery', and the lower standards that epitomize Leftist ideology.
Teach a man to fish, he can feed himself; teach a man to sit on his ass and get food stamps from a libtard, while telling him he can't make it on his own without libtard help, and he's useless.
Voters can clean this up. But voters have to start locally, and continue to the federal level, election cycle after cycle. There is no resting on our laurels, where and when we win. Libtards are a cancer to America and freedom. The battle goes on.
Staci, in Louisiana we spend only about 36% of State Revenues on public education. We have a bunch of money left over.
That is why our roads are #1.
Why are you under the impression that the gov't schools are supposed to make the kiddies smarter?
If gov't is about control, then why would it aim to "educate" its charges (slaves) to the point where they recognize the true nefarious purpose of said gov't.
Survival 101, don't commit suicide directly or indirectly by setting up a situation that will result in your eventual destruction.
A "smart" and self empowered populous is the last thing any kind gov't wants, for the obvious reason that they'll realize that if you don't need it(gov't) then why have it. (you can setup private defense forces, use private companies to build roads, etc...self empowered populous...ie..personal initiative...ie..self organizing communities)
Roderick
One of my neighbors gave up teaching gave up teaching 30 years ago (and took up farming with her husband) because she objected to a new system called the "Goal System" which was based on a book written by a teacher in the Soviet Union.
Maybe public schools are the problem but the real problem is that the teachers' unions have been taken over by commies.
Roderick, I agree with everything that you are thinking. That is why I said in order for us to have a school system, we must shut the one we have now DOWN and start over at the local level. It would be twenty times the individual work for us, but we would produce a product that is infinitely better. Again, it will never happen because it would require those very few of us that are competent, to add still more to our plate. There are only 24 hours in a day, and you have to have sex sometime.
Patrick, the fact that some people join unions just stumps me. If a company sets itself up as a union shop, wouldn't that tell the potential employee that the company only wants to trade with their labor as a group? That seems to me that situation would hurt the individual more. Who (in their right mind) would want another person to go to the boss to ask for a raise for him or her? That is madness to me.
Roderick, I agree with everything that you are thinking. That is why I said in order for us to have a school system, we must shut the one we have now DOWN and start over at the local level. It would be twenty times the individual work for us, but we would produce a product that is infinitely better. Again, it will never happen because it would require those very few of us that are competent, to add still more to our plate. There are only 24 hours in a day, and you have to have sex sometime.
Patrick, the fact that some people join unions just stumps me. If a company sets itself up as a union shop, wouldn't that tell the potential employee that the company only wants to trade with their labor as a group? That seems to me that situation would hurt the individual more. Who (in their right mind) would want another person to go to the boss to ask for a raise for him or her? That is madness to me.
Post a Comment