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.
