I pay scrupulous attention to what my daughter learns in school. I keep tabs on textbooks, homework assignments, skills requirements, curricular objectives and the like. The problem, I believe, is that my non-Mom brain is having trouble keeping my Mom…

As an engineer, all this works to my advantage: no competition for future employment by any up-and-comers.

#91, GaijinBob – Ha! You wish. Your competition is logging on to his computer in Estonia right now.

It was a class on how to evaluate students.

One thing that stuck out is how the professor emphasized that students should be tested on whether or not they can demonstrate the unserstanding of certain concepts over whether or not they happen to come up with the correct answer. (Partial credit vs. all-or-nothing.)

That was the last education class I ever took.

How many people here advocate the teaching of creationism or “intelligent design” in school? And if you do, how is that any different than fuzzy math?

Unfortunately perhaps, I still have a little too much Hillbilly in my blood. (And don’t tell Rose but actually my Pa was from Texas and I reckon I got some of that in my blood as well) When these people start spitting lie-laced, emotional venom my way I get so angry that ugly does not even begin to describe it. Fortunately, my Ma got me out of the public school system at an earlier age but I never could manage college.

When I amaze my students by calculating grade percentages in my head, you know something is very very wrong.

Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Mexico scored lower than the United States.

But hey, at least we got Mexico beat! Woo-hoo!

On a more serious note, Miss Ladybug raises a valid point about parental involvement: you can’t just leave it to the schools anymore to teach your kids, it’s got to be hands-on at home, too.

The pathetic state of public education is the result of a perfect storm of negative influences:

- Teachers’ unions that are nothing more than fund-raising organizations for the Democrat party;

- A Democrat party that rewards its fund-raisers by blocking any attempts to break their virtual monopoly on public education;

- “Teachers” who can’t teach, because what they themselves are learning in their own training is more and more of a multi-culti, PC, “feel good” brew that is poisonous to the intellect;

- School administrations that run scared of the kids, because the threat of litigation makes it impossible for anyone at the school to discipline them – so they resort to things like drugs to to “correct” behavior that used to be called, “Being a boy”;

- School administrations and teachers’ unions that are more interested in cloaking their failures by playing games with educational standards than in reversing the slide; and

- An increasing breakdown of the traditional family, leading to more and more unruly kids showing up at school to play “Lord of the Flies” in the classroom.

Upshot: kids who get it from all sides, who recognize that the public “system” is a bad joke, whose parents don’t give a damn, and who accordingly don’t give a damn themselves.

Shoveling money at the problem isn’t the answer; it’s been tried repeatedly. I’d like to see a supplemental study showing how much different countries spend per child on education, cross-referenced to the students’ performance. I’d be willing to wager that the USA comes in near the top on the money-spent side (and we already know where we come out on the performance end).

How to solve these interconnected problems is like trying to untie Gordian’s Knot. What’s needed is the equivalent of a scholastic Alexander the Great to just cleave the thing in two… but where is he?

On December 5th, 2007 at 8:47 am, Dave from Flint said:
Our kids may not be able to read & write, but they sure feel good about themselves.

Reading and writing is sooo overrated…