s/o queen for a day - how do you fix education?

[Deleted]

My head hurts from all this.

Not only did I say the military is not now 60% black, I'm saying it never was.

The problem with your logic is that it's seriously flawed. Because your father served in one unit on one military base in one branch that was 60% black, you are presuming that all of the military at the time was 60% black. It wasn't.

Because your husband feeeeels discriminated against because he's a white Christian in the south, you presume all white folks in the South are discriminated against. They aren't.

The fundamental flaw in your logic is that you presume that your experience is typical or average. The reality is far from it. If you can't look beyond what you've personally seen to find the reality of averages or do more study into what the world is like for other people in it, your opinions on the matter are rather naive and childish.

[Deleted]

so basically we should go back to serfdom.... that's what i've gathered

oh and who needs punctuation or capitalization

[basilosaurus]

Teachers don't need cars, clothing, or vacations.

Is anyone else getting a Brave New World vibe?

[Deleted]

Also, I don't understand this higher calling bullshit. In my experience, the teachers who behave as if they are undertaking some sort of holy quest make for the worst ones.

It's a profession, a career. That's all.

We aren't talking about pastors or missionaries or charity workers here.

[Deleted]

Teaching isn't a "higher calling".... most teachers I know went into because they've wanted to be a teacher since the 2nd grade and having the same breaks as your kids makes it very family friendly.

[MrsAxilla]

May 18, 2012 17:37:24 GMT -5 @bananafish said:

someone said money buys better teachers. i don't feel that the most expensive is the best quality in anything. advanced degrees may have value in many fields, but the most important quality i want in a good teacher and public servant is a giver's heart. such a thing can't be bought nor is encouraged by monetary rewards. elementary education is the most important in my opinion. i don't feel a college degree is really necessary to teach kids the basics. anyone who cares could fill this role.

Lol! We live in a capitalist society, you don't think money attracts talent? Lololol!


Were you homeschooled? I love my kid, but I am not qualified to teach him "the basics" beyond colors, numbers, letters, etc. It takes more than caring to get a child to learn fractions or human biology. I think you're confusing elementary education with preschool.

[heightsyankee]

So I assume your children will not attend school?

[Deleted]

May 18, 2012 17:59:37 GMT -5 @septimus said:

Teaching isn't a "higher calling".... most teachers I know went into because they've wanted to be a teacher since the 2nd grade and having the same breaks as your kids makes it very family friendly.

I know. I'm responding to banana's constant assertion that teachers should be willing to sleep in Pa's lean to with only a small lantern and one of Ma's day old biscuits to fill her belly just to get the opportunity to mold young minds.

[MrsAxilla]

May 18, 2012 18:02:33 GMT -5 @bananafish said:

i only have one degree but i feel qualified to teach up to at least 9th grade level if not 12th. maybe up around high school, the average american would want to tap some additional resources to supplement the home school. i took all the sciences for electives, so i couldnt' help my kid if their interest was in french history or something like that. i do feel confident, especially with the library and the internet, that i could do the research and educate myself and a child enough on any subject to get into college.

No you're not. You're delusional.

[Deleted]

banana-
Btwn DH and me we have 2 BAs 4 masters/professional degrees and we are not qualified to teach our children so that they two can go out and earn a BA and 2 post BA degrees too.

[basilosaurus]

This is amazing.

Hab, it's the ARMY, not the MILITARY. You can have take your facts and stuff and just agree to disagree, ok?

Here, I'll provide a little fact.
www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/WorkingPapers/WP32Adamshik.pdf

B/c it's a paper, the relevant point is the table on page 3. In 1985, the % of minorities who were officers was well under 10%. It was 25% enlisted. About 15 years later, officers had increased to roughly 20%, enlisted to just under 40%.

Is that what reverse discrimination looks like?

[teflep]

May 17, 2012 13:18:51 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

I'm not picking on you, your response is just very organized so I'm going to jump into the discussion here.

1) Making teaching as respected a profession as being a doctor or lawyer.

To do this, you have to make it harder to become a teacher. Which I actually support. That would be one of the reforms I would implement. Teachers would start with a much higher salary (say $70,000), but the profession would be much more exclusive. And the training would more closely resemble med or law school. So you would get a major in undergrad presumably in the area you wanted to teach in like English or History or whatever. Then you would take an admissions exam that was actually hard and apply to schools for the education theory classes and the schools would be actually selective.


2) Montessori for everyone--more hands on learning, maniplatives, self direction

Montessori doesn't work for everyone. PTS would be terrible in a montessori setting. Her self direction would be like, "Color, color, color, oooohhh is that glitter on the floor, THERE ARE BIRDS OUTSIDE!!! When is snack? I'm tired." Which is why I would get rid of school districts. Let schools have more control over their own curriculum and over the students they admit; let students have more control over the school they think they would do well at and where they want to do.

3) cut back siginificantly on the amount of testing

I'd just ditch the entire Federal Dept. of Ed. Shit just got real, right?

Funding would be a huge problem for this model, at least without significant changes. Oh, and unions. They'd be none too pleased with no districts and no fed. By schools means less power.

[Deleted]

::sigh::

I am biracial, black and white, btw.

And when discussing the racial make up of the military or even just the army, it's not a matter of adopting someone's opinion. It's a matter of research and the facts.

[BNL2]

May 18, 2012 18:28:21 GMT -5 @bananafish said:

May 18, 2012 17:49:16 GMT -5 @habbsies said:

My head hurts from all this.

Not only did I say the military is not now 60% black, I'm saying it never was.

The problem with your logic is that it's seriously flawed. Because your father served in one unit on one military base in one branch that was 60% black, you are presuming that all of the military at the time was 60% black. It wasn't.

Because your husband feeeeels discriminated against because he's a white Christian in the south, you presume all white folks in the South are discriminated against. They aren't.

The fundamental flaw in your logic is that you presume that your experience is typical or average. The reality is far from it. If you can't look beyond what you've personally seen to find the reality of averages or do more study into what the world is like for other people in it, your opinions on the matter are rather naive and childish.

you missed my response the second time as well. i said not the entire military, the army only. ok ok, perhaps i am mis-remembering the stats and maybe you never heard any stats at all. you don't have to adopt my beliefs and i don't have to adopt yours. it's ok to disagree. however, i don't see that our disagreement on this detail as indicative of a flaw in my logic. how can the source of my flawed logic be that i assume my experiences are typical when all that about being raised military was to point out that i know i was not raised typically. plus my mom came from another country. i'm mixed race. if some of you didn't know, mixed is bad to a lot of people. i've lived in several different countries. this is all very atypical.

i never said my husband felt discriminated against or that he is christian. who said he's christian? i have only stated my own opinions in my posts.

i'd like someone else from oklahoma, ks, tx or arkansas to say if they know what i mean about "whitey is the devil". it's an attitude that may not be familiar in other areas or may mean something else. i do not consider oklahoma as the South, like georgia and mississippi and those states. they have a different culture for sure. i pointed all that stuff out about living here in the bible belt to support the idea that perhaps my seriously different views come from seriously different local subculture.

I'll play with the crazy. I grew up in KS, live in OK. DH has lived in all the states you mentioned, and we know many people who have been stationed at Ft. Sill. I vehemently disagree with you. Racism is alive and well in these areas (even in the military). White Christian men still have the greatest advantages. Black people of all socioeconomic backgrounds have work ethic and people of all races are entitled. This area is much like the rest of the country. I have no idea what imaginary place you are living in, but it's definitely not the KS/OK/TX that most people know.

[Deleted]

If you are using flawed information to support a larger point, than the larger point is flawed. That's the reason I "attacked" your assertion.

And lord, we are not that petty. No one is going to boot you or visit your house or something equally stupid. But our mods don't interfere unless personal information or spam is posted so you'll need to put on your big girl panties and deal.

[whitewolf]

LOL. I concede I may have made up my facts, but you all are still completely wrong and I have total credibility! My discussion of the military was so successful that I should be listened to on the subject of education!

[whitewolf]

Don't worry, you loon. Sibil is in the South Pacific and is unlikely to be after you.

[MrsAxilla]

Sibil is our mod? Huh. No, she is not a psycho stalker. This post is not full of personal attacks against you, merely against your opinions and point of view. Yes, this board has a very high tolerance for those kinds of attacks. In fact, that's kind of the point. Youre definitely in the wrong place if you're looking for posters to call you an uncle fucker and refuse to support their positions.

[rugbywife]

Wait a second...I can't let my job teaching be my career? What? Why the hell not? It is a career, one that I work damn hard at.

And if you GENUINELY think that you can teach the 26 grade 8 students that I teach, day in and day out, and do it well...with absolutely no teacher training at all...well, that's just crazy talk. Teaching is more than just shovelling content into a kid's brain. Or 26 brains for that matter.

When people tell me that my job is easy I tell them that if they come and do my job for a month, all of it...the planning, the teaching, the marking, the extra-curriculars...oh, and they need to come do it during a busy month, like November, December, February, May or June...and if they do it for that month and they want to do it for 10 months a year, for 31 years...then they too can get the requisite experience and education and do it full time (if they can find a job - which is hard to do where I live in Ontario). But don't tell me my job is easy and worthy of a dorm bed and cafeteria food until you've done it.

I sure as f*ck don't know how to [personal info redacted] and I would never in a million years tell you your job is easy or that I could do it.

ETA: this was clearly intended for banana...

Modified to remove personal info at member's request.

[basilosaurus]

Wait, I made threatening statements somewhere?! What the ever loving fuck? The only threatening statements I've made today were at the commissary where I made the realization that the military is made up of 90% asian grannies abusing the produce.

[Deleted]

More importantly, (and FYI I am what you would call a "civil servant" as I am an attorney who works for local government) why do you keep acting like 70k is a beeelllllllion dollars and anyone who is a teacher shouldn't dare thinking of making anywhere neat that?

[mrslefty]

May 18, 2012 18:02:33 GMT -5 @bananafish said:

i only have one degree but i feel qualified to teach up to at least 9th grade level if not 12th. maybe up around high school, the average american would want to tap some additional resources to supplement the home school. i took all the sciences for electives, so i couldnt' help my kid if their interest was in french history or something like that. i do feel confident, especially with the library and the internet, that i could do the research and educate myself and a child enough on any subject to get into college.

I just spit beer on my phone. This cracks my shit up! Capital letters never hurt any one.

[rugbywife]

May 18, 2012 18:02:33 GMT -5 @bananafish said:

r

i'm interested in your views as an educator. are you against home schooling? if public schools were abolished, would you be a proponent of national standards to regulate home and private schooling? how do you think this impacts the relationship between parents and their children? what kinds of subjects or depth of study do you think should be standard across the nation? i think ability to read and knowing how to self-educate are the most essential. math is basic, like reading. the rest can be learned as needed.

I will preface this by saying that I live in Canada - our education system looks very different than the American system, in that from what I have heard, most Americans don't seem to think that the education system in the US is all that good. Most Canadians do not feel the same was and most comparisons to other industrialized countries show that we rank among the top 10 in the world. My opinions are based solely on my experience as an elementary teacher in Ontario for the past 11 years, as well as having a Masters of Education in Educational Administration. They are also based in my experience as a student. I attended Canadian, American, British, French and International systems, in a total of 5 different countries and 13 different schools (grades 1- 12). I attended public, semi-public and private schools. I was never completely homeschool however when I lived overseas my parents supplemented at home when they felt that the education I was receiving was inadequate (actually, they did that at home too!).

I am generally against homeschooling. I believe that people who opt for home schooling generally do so for reasons I don't agree with. I have seen a few cases of people pulling their children out of school for a couple of years to travel. Other than that, most of the cases involve people who tend to be fundamental in their religious views and do not want their children exposed to curriculum they don't agree with or, in some cases, students of other faiths. They would rather educate their children on their own because they believe that their values will be better taught at home than at school. The other situation where I see homeschooling is when a child is struggling at school either academically or behaviourally and the parent has not come to terms with the circumstances. Typically these situations do not end well because their child was struggling in the first place and the parents rarely have the skills needed to help the child advance. I have also (through my husband, who is also a teacher), seen a case where the 'home schooling' was actually a case of neglect and the child arrived at the end of grade 5, after being pulled from the house, not being able to read beyond barely a grade 1 level. Yes these are anecdotes. I am sure there are plenty of parents capable of homeschooling - those cases are simply not part of my knowledge base.

In my opinion homeschooling as a general practice would not be successful for many reasons. When children were schooled at home, centuries ago, they were being educated for very different purposes. One must also take into context the societal differences as well: children who were born into the farming families were taught only the skills needed to work on a farm. Children of the nobility class were not taught by their parents, they were taught by tutors within the court and they were taught knowledge simply for the purpose of 'knowing'. These historical realities permeated the existence of schooling for hundreds of years until the industrial revolution when the world changed (ha! wonder why they call it a revolution). Over the course of several decades the face of education changed, mostly because the nature of farming changed and the economic structure of the developed world evolved quickly (from a mostly primary based economy to a secondary sector based economy and later tertiary sector system)...

But I digress...whole books alone are written on this. Let's be honest: the world we live in does not allow for a workable system whereby the children are educated by their families alone. Within a community - perhaps, but to be fair, that's really what schools are now, they are institutions what exist within a community of people.

What do I think children need to learn? I think they need to learn to love learning and I think they need to learn how to learn effectively. I think they need to be literate in the 21st century, which requires both literacy and numeracy skills. But I also believe children need to be well rounded. They need to learn not only content but skills, such as problem solving, synthesis and evaluation skills. And they must learn to be socially conscious, aware of the world around them and the people within it, how they interact and affect those people and world, and the consequences of their actions.

There's my short answer.

ETA: And I am a grammar nut. I believe in using capital letters...even on your phone. And I believe that adjectives should never be used as adverbs. And that people should know when to use it's and when to use its.

[marie427]

May 18, 2012 20:26:24 GMT -5 @mjmksb04 said:

More importantly, (and FYI I am what you would call a "civil servant" as I am an attorney who works for local government) why do you keep acting like 70k is a beeelllllllion dollars and anyone who is a teacher shouldn't dare thinking of making anywhere neat that?

Isn't $70K like a zillion dollars in Oklahoma?

[curmudgeon]

bananafish said:

i am dismayed by the amount of shallowness and selfishness found in the people who have chosen to converse with me on this topic. if some of you never get out, know that it's not like this every where. in fact, the kids on Halo and Call of Duty chat are wayyyyyyy more profane but wayy less hipocritical and nitpicky. they'll just call you a gay unclefucker with no pretension to having a point or making any sort of logical argument and that's that. this place blows my mind.

So, wait, I'm confused. I thought you said you wanted people to acknowledge and reasonably rebut you arguments rather than make rash comments on your writing style. However, above you indicate that you prefer name-calling with no pretense of a logical argument. Which is it? I'm thinking you prefer the latter because there have been a large number of posts here that very diplomatically challenged your assertions, many with supporting information attached, that you failed to discuss. If there were any indication you knew what you were talking about then you would indeed bring a valuable perspective to the discussion, however going on with absurd "solutions" that you cannot back up with solid evidence and refusing to engage in reasonable debate when counterpoints are presented, well, it draws credibility from your opinions on education reform.

[BNL2]

May 18, 2012 21:38:50 GMT -5 marie427 said:

May 18, 2012 20:26:24 GMT -5 @mjmksb04 said:

More importantly, (and FYI I am what you would call a "civil servant" as I am an attorney who works for local government) why do you keep acting like 70k is a beeelllllllion dollars and anyone who is a teacher shouldn't dare thinking of making anywhere neat that?

Isn't $70K like a zillion dollars in Oklahoma?

LOL. Kind of. That's why they start their teacher's pay at 30k. The state doesn't want its teachers to get too uppity.

[eclaires]

Is "I hope your children never work for me" the new "I feel sorry for your husbands!!!!"?

[heightsyankee]

May 18, 2012 19:22:59 GMT -5 @bananafish said:

ok, thank you for the stats. i will concede that the 60% thing may not be correct. the point is still that my upbringing was atypical.

Wait. Now you say your upbringing was atypical, but were adamant that your life experience was the norm, leading you to all these convictions about the state of race relations in the South (I'm in TX, BTW)?

There is no arguing with this kind of crazy.

[heyjude]

- eliminate funding inequality
- require parental involvement
- no more out of area bussing; institute community schools
- limit union power or get rid of union altogether
- bring back art/music programs
- eliminate some standardized testing
- higher teacher salary; greater teacher training
- k-8 schools where possible
- kill off the baby boomers

[heyjude]

Clearly I didn't read everything before posting.

!!!!!

I don't think we need to worry about getting new blood. !!!!

(And banana, no, that's not a threat)