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Fr3shjive
09-27-2010, 07:17 PM
President Obama said on the "Today" show Monday morning that American students attend school a month less than kids in other countries -- contending that the school-year gap puts them at a competitive disadvantage in the global economy. "The idea of a longer school year, I think, makes sense," he said, when asked if kids should go to school year-round.

The president also said that though per-student spending has gone up in the country, student performance has gone down, which shows that "money without reform will not fix the problem." He urged teachers unions not to resist his administration's reforms, which include evaluation of teachers based on their students' test performance and an emphasis on independent charter schools.

Obama has pushed for a longer school year before.

"We can no longer afford an academic calendar designed when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home plowing the land at the end of each day," Obama said last year. "That calendar may have once made sense, but today, it puts us at a competitive disadvantage. Our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea. That is no way to prepare them for a 21st-century economy."

He joked then that the idea was not popular with his two school-age daughters. Obama also said that his daughters, Sasha and Malia, would not be able to obtain the same quality of instruction at D.C. public schools (which are known for their low test scores and high dropout rates) that they get at Sidwell Friends School. Advocates of education reform have called out the first family in the past for sending the girls to private school

BlackSand
09-27-2010, 07:22 PM
Well, if he does what he says, ill give him credit. But more than likely, it will just end up with more government in the schools.

I am surprised he mentioned charter schools though.

Icymudpuppy
09-27-2010, 07:23 PM
South Korea sends it's poorly performing 7th graders to trade apprenticeships, not to highschool.

We could save a ton of money by doing the same.

BlackTerrel
09-27-2010, 07:26 PM
South Korea sends it's poorly performing 7th graders to trade apprenticeships, not to highschool.

We could save a ton of money by doing the same.

This I agree with.

Not everyone should go to college and our economy could use more people skilled in trades.

forsmant
09-27-2010, 07:32 PM
Not everyone needs to go to college. The problem with education is the assumption that all kids should be successful. Some kids are stupid. Firing a teacher for not being able to get a dumbass to preform is kinda ridiculous. Kids need to be held back and separated into like abilities. Well rounded education is for the birds. Learn something useful.

newyearsrevolution08
09-27-2010, 07:39 PM
Some people are built to or happy to be blue collar, I love it myself however also love white collar jobs as well.

Some like less responsibility and with that usually comes lower wage BUT if you are happy and living then who gives a shit if you went to college or not.

my worry with obama and his pretty school package is the following


add more time to kids being in those seats = more money generated

make teachers accountable VERSUS complaining about the public mandated b.s that they are teaching our kids

allowing teachers to NEVER get fired no matter how shitty they are.


Want to fix this

remove the unions that do nothing except allow shitty teachers to continue teachers and instead pay the teachers who are worth a damn MORE MONEY!


Since it is public education and paid for by us there needs to be accountability and ZERO unions should be allowed. There shouldn't be the ability to know you can't get fired due to having tenure or whatever the damn word is.

I didn't go to college and I learned real good, yessum hehe

want to fix our education system

remove public education and bring it back to each city/town to take care and finance THEIR kids. If a parent can't afford it then guess what, you hope someone pays for it for you, charities or donations versus simply taking it from tax payers to make sure your kid gets a below average education.

BlackSand
09-27-2010, 07:40 PM
I agree with Forsmant. You have to separate kids by abilities. Or better yet, advance the use of technology. Use 'intelligent' software that pushes individual students to the edge of their abilities in each subject. And pushes them in the subjects they are worst at. And rewards them when they do well with the subjects they enjoy. I think technology like that would actually be fairly simple in this day and age. And plus, students get better performance reviews. And after 12 years of being pushed in all areas, and learning at each individuals ideal pace, students know what theyre best at, and what they enjoy, thus making picking a career or a major an easier decision.


Of course, I might live in fantasy land. I cant tell.

QueenB4Liberty
09-27-2010, 07:41 PM
Not everyone needs to go to college. The problem with education is the assumption that all kids should be successful. Some kids are stupid. Firing a teacher for not being able to get a dumbass to preform is kinda ridiculous. Kids need to be held back and separated into like abilities. Well rounded education is for the birds. Learn something useful.

FTW Travis, I totally agree. But I wouldn't say if a student doesn't perform it makes him/her dumb. He could just not be interested in the subject being taught, which is normal. I don't understand why kids are forced to learn things they hate. That went horribly for me with reading fiction novels.

forsmant
09-27-2010, 07:45 PM
Whatever happened to guilds and trade apprenticeships that started with 12 year olds? Kids should be allowed to work again. Learning shouldn't be a bout taking tests. It should be about doing something. I think kids would b e much more apt to learn if they saw that knowledge put to use. Elementary should be all about reading writing and arithmetic. Throw in some civic facts about how our government works and simple day to day math. Forget it. My ideas are too radical. High school is mainly for learning about socializing anyway.

forsmant
09-27-2010, 07:46 PM
FTW Travis, I totally agree. But I wouldn't say if a student doesn't perform it makes him/her dumb. He could just not be interested in the subject being taught, which is normal. I don't understand why kids are forced to learn things they hate. That went horribly for me with reading fiction novels.

I suppose you should learn the three R's even if you hate them. ;)

newyearsrevolution08
09-27-2010, 07:48 PM
Whatever happened to guilds and trade apprenticeships that started with 12 year olds? Kids should be allowed to work again. Learning shouldn't be a bout taking tests. It should be about doing something. I think kids would b e much more apt to learn if they saw that knowledge put to use. Elementary should be all about reading writing and arithmetic. Throw in some civic facts about how our government works and simple day to day math. Forget it. My ideas are too radical. High school is mainly for learning about socializing anyway.

agreed

right now my son wants to be a game tester, he is bloody amazing at online games especially for his age. Why would he need to go to anything dealing with something unrelated to what he wants to do?

as far as government and other classes, most are bullshit anyways and don't actually teach our kids anything correct however they teach them to disagree with US the parents and how the government odds are is here to "help us".

I'm just scared that as they get more and more into education pretty soon our political enemies might even be the next generation.

QueenB4Liberty
09-27-2010, 07:48 PM
lol at my high school they started offering all these courses to learn crafts, I know we had welding when I was there. But my sister had a class on floral arrangements, as bizarre as that sounds she worked at Kroger's selling flowers for a few years and became quite good at making arrangements. But I don't see a problem with kids actually working if they want to.

QueenB4Liberty
09-27-2010, 07:49 PM
I'm just scared that as they get more and more into education pretty soon our political enemies might even be the next generation.

I think that's been there plan for awhile now.

Kylie
09-27-2010, 07:57 PM
That is the plan as far as I can tell.


I love the idea of a public school that everyone can attend, and I don't mind paying for even the children whose parents cannot truly afford to send them there. What I don't like is what we have now. It doesn't work. It's not teaching the children what they really need in life, but is allowing all kinds of shit that we don't want in their everyday life to occur.

Rothbardian Girl
09-27-2010, 07:59 PM
I am very intrigued by the German school system; we learned about it in German class. It sounds like a much better model for education, because it doesn't force uninterested kids into the same classes as the ones who actually want to learn about a particular subject. The examinations there are much tougher, but it would serve to weed out the kids who seriously don't try at anything. More hours/months in school won't solve anything; most students tune the teachers out by May anyway, and kids nowadays have a ton of after-school activities. I personally would never want to go to school in July because that is when my golf season starts to kick into high gear.

More info about the German school system if you're interested:
Click here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_school_system)

Sola_Fide
09-27-2010, 08:13 PM
Guys...lets be realistic. The State schools exist to socialize and brainwash children. They are evil. Obama didn't say anything new.

Bruno
09-27-2010, 08:49 PM
Guys...lets be realistic. The State schools exist to socialize and brainwash children. They are evil. Obama didn't say anything new.

threadwinner


I am very intrigued by the German school system; we learned about it in German class. It sounds like a much better model for education, because it doesn't force uninterested kids into the same classes as the ones who actually want to learn about a particular subject. The examinations there are much tougher, but it would serve to weed out the kids who seriously don't try at anything. More hours/months in school won't solve anything; most students tune the teachers out by May anyway, and kids nowadays have a ton of after-school activities. I personally would never want to go to school in July because that is when my golf season starts to kick into high gear.

More info about the German school system if you're interested:
Click here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_school_system)

I spent a year as an exchange student in a Gymnasium after taking two years of German in high school. One thing that really stuck out for me was there were zero true/false, fill-in-the-blank, and multiple-choice tests. It was all essay. You had to know the material and be able to represent it in a clear, logical, manner.

One drawback was getting pigeonholed into trade school if you performed poorly pre-6th grade or so, which meant you wouldn't likely go on to higher education. From what I understood, it was hard to change paths later if you wanted to.

By sixth grade, my host sister was taking English (which was required for six years) and also Latin, which was mandatory for two years.

Standing Like A Rock
09-27-2010, 09:02 PM
Why would more time in spent in school help? You don't actually learn anything useful for a job in grades K-12. Primary school is basically day-care and learning basic life skills like reading, writing and arithmetic. High school is just an indicator to colleges about what kind of student you are.

College students, who are actually leaning information relevant to a job are in school WAY less during the year than kids in K-12. What does Mr. Obama have to say to that?

Koz
09-27-2010, 09:14 PM
Basically what I am hearing is the Federal Government knows best and they will dictate what is going to happen. No, I don't think I like this any better than no child left behind.

Carl Corey
09-27-2010, 09:49 PM
South Korea sends it's poorly performing 7th graders to trade apprenticeships, not to highschool.

We could save a ton of money by doing the same.
Several European nations do the same, it's definitely a system that could be explored. If you think about it it doesn't make sense to put someone with an IQ of 120 and an IQ of 80 into the same classroom as the 120 IQ guy is gonna be bored, and the 80 IQ guy is going to be way out of his league. It's comparable to putting a 110 pound guy on the football team, it'd be a miserable situation for everyone involved.

As IQ is around 80% genetic Obama's ideas about an extra month of school aren't going to work. The human mind is probably best compared to an elastic, you can stretch a small elastic to be the size of a large elastic, but the moment you release the pressure it'll snap back to its normal size. The whole concept of education creating more intelligent and capable citizens is a socialist lie. Mainstream science has long caught up to the genetic model, but the liberal media still broadcasts 1920 communist propaganda about how education is going to transcend the population to the next level, and we all know how that faerie tale ended.

Fr3shjive
09-27-2010, 10:12 PM
So Obama says that the schools don't need more money, encourages teacher evaluations and encourages the idea of INDEPENDENT charter schools and you say he's being big government?!

I'm not saying he is going to follow through with any of these ideas but they all sound like reasonable solutions to our education problems but you guys are ridiculing him.

I know we're all supposed to hate the guy but lets not let our partisan hatred for Obama get in the way of recognizing that he actually had some good ideas.

Vessol
09-27-2010, 10:14 PM
Good ideas aren't relative to the discussion. There are a lot of good ideas out there, but in practice any related to giving the State more power over education will only fuck it up more. The only way to fix education is to get the government out of it completely.

ElCount
09-27-2010, 10:58 PM
As anti-statists, even if we agree that children need to be in school longer, the solution shouldn't ever be to have that decision handed down from the government. As someone mentioned earlier the public school system is one of indoctrination.

As for unions, there is no doubt that they are a problem. There was actually a child predator who taught at my high school, transferred from another high school for having an affair with an underage girl. They couldn't even fire him, the best they could do was transfer him. He ended up at my high school where he was the coach of the girl's basketball team, volleyball team, and softball team. Neat eh?

newyearsrevolution08
09-27-2010, 11:18 PM
So Obama says that the schools don't need more money, encourages teacher evaluations and encourages the idea of INDEPENDENT charter schools and you say he's being big government?!

I'm not saying he is going to follow through with any of these ideas but they all sound like reasonable solutions to our education problems but you guys are ridiculing him.

I know we're all supposed to hate the guy but lets not let our partisan hatred for Obama get in the way of recognizing that he actually had some good ideas.

if you can't tell he is trying to win some hearts over before elections

all of a sudden he signs off on small business loans bill then pitching this save the kids education idea

he will say whatever he needs to in hopes of getting some pull since his current ratings are in the shitter.

apparently to some (including yourself) it must be working in some fashion.

kahless
09-27-2010, 11:48 PM
He only has good ideas if you believe government is solution. I look at parts of this thread in total disbelief and really do not understand why some people are here. Conservatives, myself and Ron Paul included have been for eliminating the Department of Education. We do not need our children in indoctrination schools any longer than what they already are.

Encourage homeschooling and exempt people from school tax if you send your child to private school or home school. In fact if you do not have children you should not be forced to pay for school taxes at all. This country is putting people out of their homes including the elderly because of outrageous school taxes. Leave these decisions to local jurisdications.

You like Obama's school policies, then fine. Don't force your view and his shit on the rest of us or my children. Contribute to your own dam private school system that has all the bells and whistles you want it to have. You pay for it then.

silverhandorder
09-28-2010, 12:13 AM
Someone mentioned that 80% of us is determined by genes. There are a lot of neurologists that think 80% is determined by our environment. I am not defending socialism in case some one took it the wrong way.

I recommend listening to Stefan Moleneux's Bomb in the Brain series.

Sola_Fide
09-28-2010, 12:32 AM
He only has good ideas if you believe government is solution. I look at parts of this thread in total disbelief and really do not understand why some people are here. Conservatives, myself and Ron Paul included have been for eliminating the Department of Education. We do not need our children in indoctrination schools any longer than what they already are.

Encourage homeschooling and exempt people from school tax if you send your child to private school or home school. In fact if you do not have children you should not be forced to pay for school taxes at all. This country is putting people out of their homes including the elderly because of outrageous school taxes. Leave these decisions to local jurisdications.

You like Obama's school policies, then fine. Don't force your view and his shit on the rest of us or my children. Contribute to your own dam private school system that has all the bells and whistles you want it to have. You pay for it then.



I'm with you. As people who love Liberty, there is no room for the idea of State schools. The public school system is the first real chance that Statists have to create the slaves of the next generation. I take this issue as one of the non-negotiables of the Liberty movement.

puppetmaster
09-28-2010, 12:52 AM
i'm with you. As people who love liberty, there is no room for the idea of state schools. The public school system is the first real chance that statists have to create the slaves of the next generation. I take this issue as one of the non-negotiables of the liberty movement.


+1000

jsu718
09-28-2010, 06:52 AM
The push for charter schools is simply because they don't offer the same kinds of contracts to teachers and tenure style situations that will allow them to keep their jobs with a sub-par teaching performance. It's basically and end-around to deal with the unions. They are still state funded and still teach kids in exactly the same way (most times) and still have the same administrative overhead costs if not more. The union situation needs to be dealt with directly and NCLB does nothing other than add more paperwork and costs to it.

Yes, public schools are intentionally designed to brainwash children. They are also designed to make cookie cutter graduates that don't think any more than they have to in order to work low wage jobs. Those that get out with a decent education and proper problem solving skills are the exception rather than the rule and parents concerned with their kids education will deal with that themselves. Texas just moved to a 4x4 system, 4 years each of english, math, science, and civics in high school, which is further away from allowing for specialization even in the junior and senior years which is what the other world systems do that absolutely blow us out of the water, but you do have to remember that when you see test scores comparing countries most others don't test all of their students at the high school level but rather only those that are into the university track like Japan and Germany's systems make pretty obvious.

There have not been any studies that have definitively put IQ anywhere outside of a 50/50 nature/nurture split over the years, but some have speculated in both directions. There is always something to be said for exposure to learning materials growing up in the home which happens a lot more with intelligent parents... and there are plenty of studies that show the huge impact it makes on IQ tests. IQ as a trait is a load of BS though and hopefully people don't put too much stock into that as something set in stone from youth or birth or even high school graduation.

And even being a public school teacher with a masters degree dealing with such, I still push for home schooling or at the very least returning ALL control of the schools to the local level so parents have an actual say in their child's education and not the one hundreds of miles away from them.

NYgs23
09-28-2010, 02:53 PM
So Obama's solution for poor student performance is to not throw more money at the problem but to imprison children for one month longer? And how, pray tell, does he plan to PAY for that extra month?????

My solution for poor student performance is to say, "Fuck student performance" and free the children. Kids don't need to be in the schools more. They need to be in the schools less. In fact, they need to be out of the schools entirely because the schools peddle the precise opposite of education: ignorance, apathy, collectivism, conformity, blind obedience to authority, and 12+ years of child abuse. Obama wants more time allocated for systematic child abuse. How sensible.

Acala
09-28-2010, 03:51 PM
HOLY S*&T PEOPLE!

THE LAST, I mean the absolute LAST thing government should be involved in is education.

The public schools have two areas in which they excel: crushing the natural desire to learn in children and inculcating resigned obedience to government authority. Everything else they do they SUCK at.

The cost is staggering because of waste.

The curriculum is totally non-responsive to the needs of the market and the desires of the customers.

They are flash points for the clash of different social, moral, and religious values.

They teach propaganda as fact.

They are tools of the state used to perpetuate and glorify the state.

They are bad in almost every way I can think of.

About the only thing good about them is they teach some kids to rebel and figure out how to avoid authority.

Government at every level should be prohibited by the Constitution from having anything whatsoever to do with education.

phill4paul
09-28-2010, 04:04 PM
"We can no longer afford an academic calendar designed when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home plowing the land at the end of each day,"

And why Obama is this no longer a nation of farmers. Would that be a bad thing? Perhaps to a government that does not believe in self-sustenance.

Why Obama would you like for a longer school day. So that the government will spend more time with children than their parents?

After all. You have already engineered an economy in which it takes two incomes to be solvent thereby diminishing the time that a family has to bond with each other.

Sorry. Not buying it. FUCK OFF!

phill4paul
09-28-2010, 04:07 PM
HOLY S*&T PEOPLE!

THE LAST, I mean the absolute LAST thing government should be involved in is education.

The public schools have two areas in which they excel: crushing the natural desire to learn in children and inculcating resigned obedience to government authority. Everything else they do they SUCK at.

The cost is staggering because of waste.

The curriculum is totally non-responsive to the needs of the market and the desires of the customers.

They are flash points for the clash of different social, moral, and religious values.

They teach propaganda as fact.

They are tools of the state used to perpetuate and glorify the state.

They are bad in almost every way I can think of.

About the only thing good about them is they teach some kids to rebel and figure out how to avoid authority.

Government at every level should be prohibited by the Constitution from having anything whatsoever to do with education.

^^^ This.

Then the last. Bolded. Which it is. The power is NOT enumerated.

Anti Federalist
09-28-2010, 04:37 PM
Guys...lets be realistic. The State schools exist to socialize and brainwash children. They are evil. Obama didn't say anything new.

Second Bruno's threadwinner comment.

Anti Federalist
09-28-2010, 04:45 PM
The public schools have two areas in which they excel: crushing the natural desire to learn in children and inculcating resigned obedience to government authority. Everything else they do they SUCK at.

Government at every level should be prohibited by the Constitution from having anything whatsoever to do with education.

Oh weeping Jesus that ^^^^^ +100000000

That is what they are designed to do and they do an excellent job at it.

That's just one of the reasons why I'm a "conspiracy theorist".

Most people think government sucks because they look at things from a common sense perspective. Therefore government "missteps" can be chalked up to institutional foolishness and greedy, stupid, drunk politicians.

But when you look at it from "increase it's power, enslave the masses, razor wire the death camps" angle, government displays a ruthless, clockwork, precise success level. They know exactly what they are doing and they are goddamn good at it.

From that angle, gun and drug running out of the White House, targeted assassinations of US citizens, 9/11 and all the rest of it, starts making a lot more sense.

Back on topic, was just reading a comment about literature by Stephen King (yah, I know, the irony) that cited a study that showed once having left high school 49 percent never pick up another book again. That's over a twenty year period.

College grads, even worse, 52 percent.

NYgs23
09-28-2010, 04:51 PM
...was just reading a comment about literature by Stephen King (yah, I know, the irony) that cited a study that showed once having left high school 49 percent never pick up another book again. That's over a twenty year period.

College grads, even worse, 52 percent.

This is not surprising, given that forcing people to read literature on the threat of an exam is hardly going to make them love literature more. I loved to read as a child but after majoring in literature in college, it took me three years to pick up a book again. I still don't like it as much as I used to.

Anti Federalist
09-28-2010, 04:57 PM
This is not surprising, given that forcing people to read literature on the threat of an exam is hardly going to make them love literature more. I loved to read as a child but after majoring in literature in college, it took me three years to pick up a book again. I still don't like it as much as I used to.

You're about the millionth person I've heard that from.

No way to more quickly kill the love of reading than 12 or 16 years or more in the education gulag. Don't want anybody cracking open dangerous or subversive books or documents now do we?

I have never regretted quitting at 16 and getting the hell out.

Legend1104
09-28-2010, 05:30 PM
I said it once and I'll say it again. I am a teacher and being in front of these students all day, day in and day out, I have learned a lot about the school system. The problem goes so much deeper than most people think. It is true that a few bad teachers, unions, government bureaucrats making decisions about education that have never taught and don't even know the real problems are some of the reasons, but there is something much deeper at fault. By the way, Unions for teachers are not as strong everywhere as you might think. Unions in MS where I live is almost none existant. The thing is, even if you removed all of these factors, our schools would still fail. As long as we live in a welfare state our schools will fail. Most people in America these days believes that they are entitled to something. When it comes to education, most students have the idea that they will just be handed an education and that they do not have to work for it. It is so sad being a teacher to see the utter laziness of most of my students. None of them want to work for it anymore. Then to make it worse parents, the government, administrators, college education professors, and the American public in general just look for other reasons for student failure than students. They say the teacher has failed. I have been told in college by my education professors that if a student fails, it is the teachers fault. The idea that a teacher should be rated or judged based on a students success is insane because I have seen great teachers get low performing students and be called a bad teacher because they couldn't perform a miracle. Then they say that the schools have failed. It is true that there are bad teachers and schools, but when the entire nation fails then you know that is not the big answer. No one is willing to point the finger at the real problem. No one respects an education anymore. It is seen as a right. Therefore, all the student should have to do is just sit there and it will be feed to them. I once had about 40 kids failing my class; mostly due to just not turning in work (in most cases the work was done in class and turned in the next day). My principle took me into her office and said that if that many students were failing, then I was doing something wrong. When I explained that it was due mainly to homework, she told me not to give any homework anymore because, "once a student leaves school they are not going to do anything except play games, talk on the phone, etc." I agree with those that think the government should get out of the education business, but I do not agree that charter schools or private schools are the answer because it is not the material or the format that is the problem, but rather society as a whole. Get rid of the welfare society that we live in, make people actually pay for their childrens education, make it much harder, and stop making it manditory to go to school and I gurantee that we will change our failing education system.

phill4paul
09-28-2010, 05:49 PM
You're about the millionth person I've heard that from.

No way to more quickly kill the love of reading than 12 or 16 years or more in the education gulag. Don't want anybody cracking open dangerous or subversive books or documents now do we?

I have never regretted quitting at 16 and getting the hell out.

I was lucky enough to attend a private school in 8th and 9th grades. Went to public at 10th. So yeah pretty much quit it myself when I found it lacking and got a job.

phill4paul
09-28-2010, 05:51 PM
I said it once and I'll say it again. I am a teacher and being in front of these students all day, day in and day out, I have learned a lot about the school system. The problem goes so much deeper than most people think. It is true that a few bad teachers, unions, government bureaucrats making decisions about education that have never taught and don't even know the real problems are some of the reasons, but there is something much deeper at fault. By the way, Unions for teachers are not as strong everywhere as you might think. Unions in MS where I live is almost none existant. The thing is, even if you removed all of these factors, our schools would still fail. As long as we live in a welfare state our schools will fail. Most people in America these days believes that they are entitled to something. When it comes to education, most students have the idea that they will just be handed an education and that they do not have to work for it. It is so sad being a teacher to see the utter laziness of most of my students. None of them want to work for it anymore. Then to make it worse parents, the government, administrators, college education professors, and the American public in general just look for other reasons for student failure than students. They say the teacher has failed. I have been told in college by my education professors that if a student fails, it is the teachers fault. The idea that a teacher should be rated or judged based on a students success is insane because I have seen great teachers get low performing students and be called a bad teacher because they couldn't perform a miracle. Then they say that the schools have failed. It is true that there are bad teachers and schools, but when the entire nation fails then you know that is not the big answer. No one is willing to point the finger at the real problem. No one respects an education anymore. It is seen as a right. Therefore, all the student should have to do is just sit there and it will be feed to them. I once had about 40 kids failing my class; mostly due to just not turning in work (in most cases the work was done in class and turned in the next day). My principle took me into her office and said that if that many students were failing, then I was doing something wrong. When I explained that it was due mainly to homework, she told me not to give any homework anymore because, "once a student leaves school they are not going to do anything except play games, talk on the phone, etc." I agree with those that think the government should get out of the education business, but I do not agree that charter schools or private schools are the answer because it is not the material or the format that is the problem, but rather society as a whole. Get rid of the welfare society that we live in, make people actually pay for their childrens education, make it much harder, and stop making it manditory to go to school and I gurantee that we will change our failing education system.

tldr. lack of paras. yawn. no wonder.

osan
09-28-2010, 06:14 PM
President Obama said on the "Today" show Monday morning that American students attend school a month less than kids in other countries -- contending that the school-year gap puts them at a competitive disadvantage in the global economy. "The idea of a longer school year, I think, makes sense," he said, when asked if kids should go to school year-round.

The president also said that though per-student spending has gone up in the country, student performance has gone down, which shows that "money without reform will not fix the problem." He urged teachers unions not to resist his administration's reforms, which include evaluation of teachers based on their students' test performance and an emphasis on independent charter schools.

Obama has pushed for a longer school year before.

"We can no longer afford an academic calendar designed when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home plowing the land at the end of each day," Obama said last year. "That calendar may have once made sense, but today, it puts us at a competitive disadvantage. Our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea. That is no way to prepare them for a 21st-century economy."

He joked then that the idea was not popular with his two school-age daughters. Obama also said that his daughters, Sasha and Malia, would not be able to obtain the same quality of instruction at D.C. public schools (which are known for their low test scores and high dropout rates) that they get at Sidwell Friends School. Advocates of education reform have called out the first family in the past for sending the girls to private school

A steaming pile of bull. First of all, kids do NOT need more time in school. Let us not even talk about dismantling the public schools - how about we make them effectual in the delivery of training and maybe even some actual education?

Either Obama is an ignoramus or is in on the school game - evaluating teachers based on how their students do on their standardized test scores is about the worst possible measure that could be taken. Standardized testing is useful for nothing it claims to accomplish. There is no such thing as a "standard education" If people had even a remote understanding of what education is, vis-a-vis training they would understand what a sham this is. But they do not, nor are they interested in finding out - keeps life comfy-convenient for them.

If parents had any sense they would pull their children out of the public schools and do something else with them. Anything is better than that, including drowning them in the toilet.

T assert that Obama is talking sense here is utterly ludicrous. He's talking shit, per his usual.

Legend1104
09-28-2010, 06:24 PM
tldr. lack of paras. yawn. no wonder.

Sorry. We can't all wrap up our opinions about the goliath of a problem that is the education system in one incoherent sentence like yourself. By the way dude, you don't have to read it. No point being rude.

osan
09-28-2010, 07:04 PM
I agree with Forsmant. You have to separate kids by abilities. Or better yet, advance the use of technology. Use 'intelligent' software that pushes individual students to the edge of their abilities in each subject. And pushes them in the subjects they are worst at. And rewards them when they do well with the subjects they enjoy. I think technology like that would actually be fairly simple in this day and age. And plus, students get better performance reviews. And after 12 years of being pushed in all areas, and learning at each individuals ideal pace, students know what theyre best at, and what they enjoy, thus making picking a career or a major an easier decision.


Of course, I might live in fantasy land. I cant tell.

You are engaging in "one size fits all" thinking, which is a very common error.

Kids are not clone square-pegs to be hammered into the state's round holes. Real education is very time consuming, but an eminently worthwhile pursuit. The purpose of education is to help the pupil discover the world and thereby discover his interests and strengths, after which training may then be undertaken pursuant to those talents and interests with the goal of turning those into skill. What nominally sane parent does not want their child to become a happy and skillful adult? Happy and useful living - useful to oneself and to others - are these not laudable goals for one's life? Do parents want their children to grow up bored, angry, miserable, and ignorant? None I know do. Yet this is precisely what our public schools do to our children. They bore them to near-death for twelve years! Standard testing, scoring, grading - categorize them, set them in competition with each other so there is never ending, albeit tacit, tension everywhere and at all times. The litany of crimes - and I mean real felonious acts - committed against our children is so frighteningly long that few have the nerve to consider it carefully. It is far easier to choose to believe that everything is as it ought to be. We deserve what we get - but do the kids deserve it?

Not all children are good at math. Not all need to be. Not all are outstanding in language skills - that deficiency is more problematic, but can be corrected in the proper environment. Not all children are strongly oriented toward "science". So what is up with all this force that is applied against them to have so much of this or that? The old 4-Rs are ALL the common education that children need and not a whit more. Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic, Rhetoric. With these skills developed, our children would be capable of doing anything they would choose to apply themselves to. The rest, all the fancy training, can come a bit later and ought to align with the student's expressed interests. The whole philosophy of a "well rounded education" is a demonstrated failure. First, who says a "well rounded" education is a requirement to be a good and valuable person or to live a happy life? And who gets to determine what it means to be "well rounded"? This is all BULLSHIT - noise - hand waving - smoke and mirrors - NONSENSE.

Do you realize that the average country bumpkin child in 1850 who got through to the 6th or maybe even 8th grade in a one-room schoolhouse generally held a command of the spoken and written English language that most ADULTS today could not hope to demonstrate even if their lives depended on it? We have schools chocked full of computers and all manner of other costly items, yet our children can barely string more than three words together in a coherent sentence. This we call "progress"? Good education? "Education" at all? Heaven help us - we are SO doomed.

This shit needs to stop. Yesterday. People need to extract their children from the public schools and do something else. How about... oh, I dunno... one room school houses where there is one teacher and no more than a dozen students of varying ages? How about teaching those children the 4Rs such that by the time they get through 8th grade they would be able to speak and reason circles around anyone in these forums you care to name, with one hand ties behind their backs? How about cutting the shit with all this cookie cutter nonsense and let the children decide what OTHER elements of learning they wish to pursue? How about letting those who want to paint paint. Those who want to do scientific research should marinade themselves in it. Musicians should play on. Linguists linguificate :) - and so on.

How about high school, if we even kept them, a training ground where children who have mastered the basics of living and who have discovered things that interest them go to pursue and expand upon those interests such that when they emerge four years later they would put to shame 98% of the people our colleges graduate this day?

There are so many structural and philosophical improvements that could and SHOULD be implemented for the sake of our posterity that I almost do not know where to begin. Education could be such a fabulous experience for children and we make it a horror for them. And the saddest thing is that we generally appear to be so very proud of that fact - incontrovertible proof that most people don't have so much as the vaguest clue about what education is. Pathetic.

Oh, and for those who think the rest of the world is so superior to us in this respect, I will cheerily disabuse you of that notion. Most of the rest of the world is in very much the same boat as we, only many other nations put a far prettier face on the results. But it is the same rotten result at the bottom of it.

Cheers.

Sola_Fide
09-28-2010, 07:12 PM
Best book I read about education and public schools. Rushdoony was a homeschool pioneer in America and Christian scholar. He testified as an authority on homeschooling against the State indoctrinators many times:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51dJb-9UnvL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

phill4paul
09-28-2010, 07:24 PM
Sorry. We can't all wrap up our opinions about the goliath of a problem that is the education system in one incoherent sentence like yourself. By the way dude, you don't have to read it. No point being rude.

Not being rude. Just pointing out the WALL OF TEXT writing method that you decided to post in. Break it up. Paragraphs are your friend when trying to keep a readers attention.
You lost mine.

jsu718
09-28-2010, 07:44 PM
Sorry. We can't all wrap up our opinions about the goliath of a problem that is the education system in one incoherent sentence like yourself. By the way dude, you don't have to read it. No point being rude.

Don't worry... those of us that read it agree with you.