Obama actually making some sense on education

[osan]

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]

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]

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]

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:

 

[phill4paul]

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]

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.