Are Teachers Unions To Blame For Failing Schools?

[Lethn]

Quote from peilthetraveler:

You are listening to too much liberal propaganda. 10 times? really? The state of CA alone is predicted to spend 97 billion dollars on education this year...and thats with the CUTS!!! CA is 1 state out of 49. The wars cost maybe 100-200 billion (do not confuse the cost of wars with the cost of maintaining military. We would spend 100s of billions just to maintain even if we were not at war.

here is a link to show you how much CA spends just on K-12 (57 billion)

http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/StateAgencyBudgets/6010/agency.html

the other 40 billion goes to Higher education for CA.

Its not the governments job to prepare you for school. Its the parents. But the parents arent home to teach the kids about what what they should be doing in school and helping them with their homework. The parents are busy working 2 jobs so they can give the kids a big house, ipods, cell phones,computers and x-boxs. I dont know how many times I hear parents say "I want to give my kids all the things i never had" which is part of the problem. Give kids everything they want completely destroys their incentive to do any work, not to mention it distracts them from doing homework. If you give children no toys, they will find enjoyment in their school work. But who finds enjoyment in reading or math, when you can watch the latest jonas brothers program, or play your X-box while listening to your ipod?

There is more than enough money in education. If anything, it should be cut by 50% at least. All you need in a classroom is a desk, a book, pencil, paper and direction. Thats all the materials you need to learn, but thats only half of what you NEED to learn. You need the drive and only parents can really give the kids that by not corrupting them with distractions.

ooooo Liberal propaganda! I got burned so badly by a neo-con who thinks all their enemies are liberals even though there are only Democrats and Republicans in office ooooooooooooooo!

It was just my own estimate, I doubt it's correct since I'm shit at math. If there was so much money in education I'll tell you now we'd all be seeing our children learn from high-end computers and we wouldn't have teachers going on strike over pay or having schools shut down because the government can't afford to keep them open and need to close so they can make larger schools which are supposedly more efficient.

I don't think we need schools at all, in fact, I think the entire education system is a pile of bullshit. What we need are skilled and I mean SKILLED people who have experience in industries actually teaching things to our children rather than hiring some random dumbass to shove propaganda down a childs throat as they read from a fucking textbook.

 

[Scataphagos]

Quote from jem:

In addition to the problems mentioned earlier -- as the father of 4 kids... I see a big problem in the way resources are allocated.

Particularly skilled teachers.

The commies who run the schools want to mix all the kids together for PC and self esteem reasons.

The teachers will tell you it that is a lousy way to educate.

Sad commentary. The "real, competitive" world does not reward "feel good"... only ability. That should be taught in schools early-on. If you want a good job, above average earnings and "the good things in life", you have to demonstrate you deserve them...

 

[nutmeg]

Imo, kids like school. Yes, we have the occasionally apprehension of when they are being bullied or don't fit in but these are solvable situations.

Teachers like to teach and in general like kids.

So what's the problem?

We have the want to's and the wannbe theres.

Kids have the same excuses to the material that they used for generations, don't like it, not relevant, don't like the teacher, etc but now after 100 of years of progress/experience we have failing schools.

On a side note, mixing up the kids via political correctness is a tough situation. We can't have all the dummies together, reason being - they breed other dummies. We have to mainstream them.

In the short term, pro union or not, if you value your kids education you move to the burbs, hence we have many disabled kids (physically and emotionally) moving to the burbs where there are services.

 

[jem]

Quote from nutmeg:

Imo, kids like school. Yes, we have the occasionally apprehension of when they are being bullied or don't fit in but these are solvable situations.

Teachers like to teach and in general like kids.

So what's the problem?

We have the want to's and the wannbe theres.

Kids have the same excuses to the material that they used for generations, don't like it, not relevant, don't like the teacher, etc but now after 100 of years of progress/experience we have failing schools.

On a side note, mixing up the kids via political correctness is a tough situation. We can't have all the dummies together, reason being - they breed other dummies. We have to mainstream them.

In the short term, pro union or not, if you value your kids education you move to the burbs, hence we have many disabled kids (physically and emotionally) moving to the burbs where there are services.

we come to exact opposite conclusion.

if the dummies don't want to be dummies or be perceived as dummies by exams which may be "biased" towards english let them do the homework and or learn english. lets not deprive the kids who have potential. Those kids with potential need to be challenged so we can compete with other countries otherwise the dummies will have no place to work and no social benefits to draw upon when the are older.

 

[OPTIONAL777]

Are you talking about dummies that don't know the difference between cite and site?

Oh, and English is always capitalized when referring to the English language...only dummies wouldn't know that...

Quote from jem:

we come to exact opposite conclusion.

if the dummies don't want to be dummies or be perceived as dummies by exams which may be "biased" towards english let them do the homework and or learn english. lets not deprive the kids who have potential. Those kids with potential need to be challenged so we can compete with other countries otherwise the dummies will have no place to work and no social benefits to draw upon when the are older.

 

[jem]

Quote from OPTIONAL777:

Are you talking about dummies that don't know the difference between cite and site?

Oh, and English is always capitalized when referring to the English language...only dummies wouldn't know that...

only people who are idle enough to prefer form over content would even make such a reference

This is the internet people type quickly. High bandwidth communication requires lack of formality...

for instance...

u r a loser.

 

[OPTIONAL777]

You have neither form nor content...

Quote from jem:

only people who are idle enough to prefer form over content would even make such a reference

This is the internet people type quickly. High bandwidth communication requires lack of formality...

for instance...

u r a loser.

 

[RangeBar]

Quote from Lethn:

We spend almost ten times as much on wars than we do on education and healthcare, we hire incompetent teachers and doctors, we have an economy that is based entirely on debt and over-spending and the education system itself is largely teaching academic bullshit to children that is gradually making generations stupider and stupider.

Blaming the unions is just a typical piece of neo-con propaganda bullshit designed to cover up the fact that the government as a whole has completely failed children everywhere, this isn't just a problem in the U.S it is in all western countries.

You are 100% correct on many points in this post. However, you are 100% WRONG when you claimed that 'the gov't has completely failed children everywhere'.

Our children are doing just fine. Do you want robots: get a Japanese or Chinese child. Do you want thinkers: find somebody raised in the American PUBLIC education system. It is total bullshit that 'our' gov't is failing American children. Stop accepting that bs and start looking at the facts. The first fact to consider is that, less than 1% of the working population EVER need to solve for x: they just need to be able to read and write.

The US has a literacy rate of 98%: find a better percentage in history or currently and I'll listen to the naysayers.

 

[FanOfFridays]

Quote from RangeBar:
The US has a literacy rate of 98%: find a better percentage in history or currently and I'll listen to the naysayers.

It seems like we wouldn't disagree about everything, but the above is absolutely untrue. You think that 98% of U.S. kids are functionally literate? I can guarantee you that that's not the case. Here in Canada, the crisis in literacy is an open secret. Post secondary instructors are in disbelief at the lack of basic writing and reading skills in the kids that the high school system has seen fit to graduate. A part of the problem is the PC (Politically Correct) police movement of the Nineties which still persists. Remember? When it was 'unfair' and 'discriminatory' to grade a kid because it might hurt her 'self esteem'? Remember the movement for high schools where there's no marking? Do you know what a Bell Curve is?

Have you not noticed anything about these boards? Most of the participants here are a product of the American school system. The spelling and grammar here is atrocious. Many of them have serious literacy problems and I can assure you that they've never read a book by choice in their lives, and not at all after 'graduating' high school. Confused thinking leaves clues in the manner in which it's expressed. Disorganized thought and disorganized writing often go hand in hand.

More generally, though, the problem is that (Western) kids aren't held to the same academic standards as kids from different cultures. You clearly haven't spent much time on a good University campus lately. If you had, you'd know that it's the United Nations, with North American born-and-bred badly underrepresented on a per capita basis.

I do agree that it isn't necessarily the federal government that has failed kids. I kind of like the idea of abolishing the Department of Education, and leaving things in the hands of the States.

Let's just keep the facts in front of us. U.S. and Canadian students are being failed somewhere along the way and there is a massive crisis of literacy in North America

 

[achilles28]

The answer?

Private system, public vouture. Funded at the State Level.

Incentivize results. Let teachers sink or swim based on their own performance.

Let innovative schools/methodology fail or flourish based on RESULTS.