Thread: education rant!

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I don't see one thing causing problems in school, I see many.

Broken marriages result in kids not having as much supervision....no clear vision of the parents roles in raising kids....maybe no desire to repeat the life they see their parents leading...the availability of drugs to very young kids, causing personality problems and also early damage that will never be overcome....obscession with things such as video games,which detract from coming home and having an urgency to do assignments....kids support groups in school more concerned with social distractions than focusing on their reason for being there....and on and on.

To me there are a couple things that help. A stable and normal home life. Encouragement from parents to look ahead to the future. Sit down to dinner with the TV off! This will result in a lot of face time to talk about life..values...the future...the importance of some things in finding happiness... and so on. Encouraging the kids to pursue a field that includes an interest they are passionate about. Other activities such as sports, which will keep them too busy to get into mischief, out of boredom. And lastly...pray that your kids have some sort of motivation. If they are not driven to do anything, all of the schooling really doesn't mean much. On the other hand...a kid who is really motivated about something will find a way to succeed, even without the diploma!

Hey, hey hey! You ought to try to TEACH these kids! I taught mostly upper level college courses but was required to cycle through teaching Freshman every so often. Although I had to work very hard to get a B in Spanish in H.S. all the rest was very easy for me but I can recall playing basketball for an hour in Gym, another hour at lunchtime and then practice for close to three hours after school and then come home, eat and fall asleep at 7 PM! Our English Lit book was large enough to place a copy of the latest Hot Rod Magazine inside so as to keep up with the latest flathead roadster as well as pass English! I could go on an on about this problem but I will say that my academic career suffered because I insisted on giving Standardized Tests at the end of courses and I have heard every excuse in the universe why that was not needed. As far as the SOL tests are concerned they are at least better than the situation before where H.S. teachers would teach whatever they wanted and there was very little common material across different schools. I think the main problem is that H.S. teachers are the folks who cannot go further themselves than their education courses. In my experience I use jokes, stories, plenty of equations, plenty of old test examples, poems about the equations, chants and a lot of movement during class (moving target!); generally I get good ratings on the "Johnny Carson Entertainment Teaching Evaluations". Did you know that mostly teaching evaluations are used to measure student unhappiness with the course? I make sure I call on students and ask them "what did I just say?" I do it in a humorous polite way but I constantly pepper them again and again so they follow the discussion. Did you know that Math levels have been reduced in science majors? I have fun and I know from jobs students get that I am doing the right thing but boy it is work! I had one student who just would not write lab reports and I informed him I would just not pass him unless he wrote the reports. A year later he came back to visit and we laughed together because his paying job now is to WRITE up the procedures in his company for federal reports! The problems are:

1. lack of support by parents.
2. TV
3. H.S. teachers who may not know the facts themselves!
4. An unbalance toward sports, hey I love sports but you need to read too!
5. Lack of appreciation for good teachers by institutions.
6. Did I forget Drugs?

However the bottom line is that folks with exceptional aptitudes will still make good; it is the next teir down that could be improved with good teaching that is being lost. The problem of educating Johnny/Jane Average or Below Average takes a LOT of work and talented teachers but it can be done if teachers were trained to be enthusiasctically competent, but then there is another problem. One Professor of Education said that H.S. students are mostly surging hormones so how do you keep that under control? I was very lucky to have a wise Science Teacher because I was constantly in trouble for some mischief and he sent me into the equipment closet with orders to clean it up and organize it. But I learned more from all the gadgets in the closet than from the book AND I was in the closet out of trouble; I owe him a lot!

I agree with Bob, why don't we see more emphasis on the TRADES, a lot of students who could make good in the trades and actually earn more are seduced into spending time trying to get a B.S. that they may not use and which will prevent them from fulfilling their true aptitude in a trade.

This is a very complex problem but believe me teaching to the standard tests as in SOLs is still better than some teacher wasting a whole year on some special pet topic so that in the end the students are not really prepared to go on. I recently brought a H.S. student from a D to a B in Senior Math in a two hours session by just showing him to leaf ahead in the book and not to get bogged down in nomenclature, just learn "how to do it". Sadly many math courses get bogged down in nomenclature and fail to develop the inner activity of the brain in the procedures, perhaps because the teachers are underpaid, undertalented and wrongly trained not to recognize how to get the gears turning in students heads, etc. etc. Hey teaching is hard work but I enjoy it!

My conscience is clear because I have really tried to emphasise good teaching but I have a number of career scars because I insisted on testing. You would not believe all the reasons I have heard why testing is not necessary. Fortunately I visited my old department four years after retirement and was pleased that they are still using the style of testing that I insisted on and in fact I overheard one of the new teachers bitching about these "standards" but hey, in education the graduates are the product you turn out!

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder