While Arizona might have a particular reputaion because of some of our wonderful political characters, the things that has pleasantly surprised me is education. I think it is built around two things. Transparency. Student test scores and school rankings are available online. That is invaluable for parents. The other is charter schools. They have forced public schools to change. I was really surprised when our daughter was ready to go to high school and we chose the public school for her. That school has changed incredibly in the last four years under a new principal. Last week we went to a counselling session with our daughter. She, us and the counselor laid out a general plan for her four years there and where she will be when she finishes.

I asked and they said that by pestering parents they can end up with 80% of one or both parents coming to those sessions. The idea is that kids do a lot better if the parents are involved in their education. I do not remember that happening when I was in high school in Idaho. I called an old friend who is a retired teacher from there and she confirmed that there is no similar effort in Idaho.

So a general question. Where have people been involved in their kids education planning? What states?

The only time I got calls from the school was to tell me one of my kids did something wrong, which happened quite a bit. Like the time my daughter stuck a pencil into the lock of the door and broke it off, they could not get in when the bell rang and she went to the VP's office and I was called. The VP said he was suspending her for one day, OK, then my daughter said a classmate had done the same thing a few weeks before and everybody laughed. OK, is this true? yes but, he was an 'A' student and on the Honor roll something my daughter did not care to work at. So I asked my daughter how she felt about this, and she said it all depends on what I was going to do, I said sense you have a day off, what is your friend doing tomorrow? and followed with you want to go now or do you need to get things from home first. The VP said, "is that your idea of punishment?" I said, "is this your idea of Justice?". My daughter and I left for her friends house, and decided she would just take Friday off to and make it a 4 day weekend.

The thing that impressed me the most was the schools ability to not make it through an entire week after the first two without some kind of Day off, teachers conference, holiday, teachers holiday, kids holiday, afternoon tea, just because day. Its true, one year, September through June they had 2 weeks of school where they went full time all day every day, the first two weeks, after that something happened every week through June. Its a wonder that any of them learned anything.

Let me add, I don't think that this is the fault of teachers, but administrators, its a top heavy system and the ones that do the teaching keep getting the short end of the stick. They have the pay system backwards, Good teachers should be paid the most, sub standard teachers less and with the goal to get better, administrators should get much less, their job is not nearly as important, School superintendents should be paid nothing. It should be an elected possession that pays nothing. We have it all assbackwords, we give football players a free ride, all expenses paid, yet the good student gets a life time bill for his student loans. We pay PHD types who head departments big paydays to have there graduate students teach their class. We will pay for this in the long run and in some cases were already paying for it.

Something is wrong with the whole system and the grades of our students bare this out, look at other countries in English, Math, Science, History and American kids are way down the list in every category. Yet at a time when we need to get kids back on the right track in education we have congress state and federal, governors and all cutting education because its to expensive. This will be known in history as the DUMBING DOWN OF AMERICA.

Welcome to the real class warfare.

Sorry got off track a bit, but I have had this milling around in my head for a while.

River

Thanks for getting off track. Education is a concern of me because I have kids. Also because I would like to see the 21st century be the American century and it is tough seeing that without developing all of the human abilities we have.

It amazes me a parent has to "go to school", even indirectly to tutor their child at home.

Teachers need to teach. Should be easier today then the 50's with cyber stuff.

A problem is teachers are given "scripts" today by "education central control"

and they are NOT allowed to practice their profession, "teach".

In my O.C. neighborhood their are reports of parents volunteering in a class room

intentionally mis guiding their child's competition. Add to that the extreme parent cliques today that punish the child at Little League, school, or whatever if that child's parents failed to meet the cut.

Let teachers teach. Don't let parents volunteer in a class with one of their children.

Stop pursuing test scores and start pursuing critical thinking.

Treat disciplinary problem students like the Irvine 11. Don't let them disrupt "it" for the rest.

Moi

And if the children of illegals are afraid to go to school. You will just have a more ignorant population of illegal. Duh-Uh!

Agreed, teaching to a test is not teaching. schools need to let and insist that teachers go back to the basics, English, math, science, geography, history, Yes it is important that a student knows where Cleavland is and who he was.

When I was in the service I would make bets on naming all the states with there capitals, or name the presidents in order. Bonus for the VP's. I did that and made money at it until some guy named the popes in order. Today most kids can't tell you who the president is or who the last one was. If you ask them where or what D.C. is they would most likely say a rock group. Jay Leno has gone on the street and asked people to name a country that starts with 'U'. and they can't come up with an answer.

Yes Teachers need to be allowed to teach.

River

moi621 (imported) wrote: Mon Oct 03, 2011 1:49 pm It amazes me a parent has to "go to school", even indirectly to tutor their child at home.

Teachers need to teach. Should be easier today then the 50's with cyber stuff.

A problem is teachers are given "scripts" today by "education central control"

and they are NOT allowed to practice their profession, "teach".

!

In this case, it wasn't to go to school to tutor them at home, but so parent(s) and the kid together lay out of plan of where the kid would be at the end of high school. That can be anywhere from really strong on college prep to a regular education to strong on the trades.

Again in this case, I didn't get the sense that the teachers were monitored to be sure they kept to script. What they want to avoid is one teacher who gives all As and one who gives a range of grades. The point is that your GPA should not depend on random teacher selection. They also monitor student test scores. But again I get the feeling it is to see what is going on if one teacher produces really high results and one teacher produces really dismal results. To the best of my knowledge, that has only led to one teacher being let go and my guess is that he should not have been a teacher in the first place. Now I can buy that there were subtler movements going on, but I don't thing those can be all bad.

I helped my niece do homeschooling for a couple/three years and the "yearly plan" was a beast.

We had to lay out the subjects for each year, the goals for that subject and then get the books and all the materials.

I spent four hours for a dozen Saturday mornings reading the history book we bought chapter by chapter and going through questions at the end so that I could ask my niece to read and answer them. Then I had to score them and write some form of what she got right or wrong. That was work. It wasn't a cheap cheesy history book either. It was a very good text used in Freshman college courses. My niece is a bright girl and handled all that history.

That was one subject. I did the science from a prepared course that we bought because that was so much simpler than doing it from scratch. I'm really brilliant at science but not when you break it down and teach it. Teaching is a different set of skills than conducting science experiments.

We did one Shakespeare play a year for three years. Macbeth ain't easy studied scene by scene. Romeo and Juliet isn't as spectacular when you have to read four times in one week and answer questions on who did what and why.

So parents can go to school for a meeting to plan their kid's education. It's less than an hour.

OH Fuck do I ever have a thing or 2 to say about the public highschool education across North-America.

It fucking Sucks!!!

1.Same material gets regurgitated over and over again

2.teacher's don't think outside the box

3.course syllabus never gets fully completed, often leading to poor fulfillment of prerequisites for university.

4.Programs get undercut(for example they got rid of calculus as an entry in our district.Fucking Calculus!, How can you go without calculus

in engineering?)

5.Too much emphasis on bullshit courses

6.You still leave high-school without knowing how to use basic excel,word and power-point functions.Furthermore it staggers me how

warped language arts is taught in the classrooms.

Often Universities expect you to know how to write different essay formats, list citations properly and know how to write technical reports.

Reality check, we don't need to fucking act out a play of Macbeth.

Sorry!!!......, in the real world 90% of the time your employer expects you to write in simple english how to effectively carry out daily reports, written manuals,documentations,

etc.... (list goes on)

The three C's of good technical writing are:

Clear

Concise

Complete

In highschool they don't teach you how to Keep it simple.

Cause out there in the real work-force you have to explain yourself to people who have no idea what your talking about

This is my rant about the high-school education system.

I was a straight A high-school student who failed miserably first year doing it the University way(0.89 GPA go figure!)

My biggest mistake was to take highschool seriously

Is it no wonder why so many students don't give a shit about attending or simply drop out only to complete their GED's at a later stage in life?

Please tell me

Am I crazy or what?!

Yes and No, you are correct that they don't teach what is needed or teach a well rounded education in high school, as much as I hate to say this, Shakespeare is just as important as learning a foreign language or higher math and they have cut all of them. You may not think Shakespeare should be taught but what if your interest is to be a writer? My oldest son loved Shakespeare in high school and for Xmas one year he asked me and I gave him the complete works of Shakespeare which he still has. Today he writes poetry and is working on a novel, he does not care about math or science other then the Latin names for plants as he is really into gardening in a big way.

You see its not the job of the high schools to just teach higher math but to teach everything, to expose you to all of it, if only in a small way. The problem lies in the funds and laws governing what is taught in K-12 and it does not prepare you for higher education as it should. In this country they have you teaching to a test and nothing more. I don't know how it is in Canada on languages but here in the US they don't even teach English (being sarcastic) in Germany every kid must learn three languages, German, English and one other, its that way over most of Europe.

So yes, you are right that HS does not teach what is needed, on every level not just math and science. And today with the costs of higher ed, unless you have a fully paid scholarship for University, Jr College is the way to go.

River

Community colleges are the way to go.Very hands-on learning!!!!!!!!!

Problems I find from big universities:

1.too many students, like as if it wasn't enough to cram 1000 or more in one giant lecture room.

(you betcha there will be problems such as the sheer impossibility to ask questions when other students have doubts of their own,

plus it's easy for others to distract you.I mean soo many freshmen dick around the first 2 terms.)

2.LABS!!!.....What is with the fucking growing trend of hiring foreign Teacher assistants eh?.....

For starter's it's difficult to understand them let alone they go off into tangents when comunicating.

3. Very little lab-time.It's all theory they teach you at a big university.

4.So your getting lectured huh?......

What if the course is nothing but a prerecorded video?!!!.....Makes you wonder is the course worth the bang for your buck or are they ripping you off

big time?. Mght as well learn it straight from your txt book or online on your own.

5. Your treated as a number

6. Useless humanitarian courses that need to be taken before entering a faculty.

I don't need history for a fucking chemistry course!

7.The sheer ignorance of proffesors baffles me.

Face it, they're not educators and they don't have to teach. "Teach" is such a abstract word for them.

Let's just read word by word from the txt book and follow txt book examples.

Oh yeah, we'll skip all the "substance" and different angles at approaching problem sets.

8. Messed up timetables. Hooray I got that awesome 2 courses only on friday.And I end early at 2pm

WTF!!!!........An additional course at 8pm!!

Now bear in mind I take full responsibility over immature decisions that I did and there's no doubt it's what made me fail my first yr at a big university.

Howewer I still can't help but wonder do Universities set you up for failure?

If so to what extent?