Are your children in public school?
If they are, get them out now, before it’s too late.
Otherwise, this is what could happen:
They could be brainwashed.
Consider this short anecdote, becoming all too common these days:
It is traditional in Bruce’s family that parents are responsible for their children’s education. When Bruce was growing up, his father spent many hours explaining the ins and outs of history, politics, and culture. Bruce performs the same function, but it’s a different world than it was thirty years ago, and there are some glitches in the general plan.
A typical example is something that happened a few weeks ago while The Girl Who Feeds Me was studying for a history final. She was reviewing the unit about the causes of the French Revolution, and Bruce launched into a discussion of the role of the middle class and the effects of the famine of 1789. After about a minute, she demanded he stop, saying: “Dad! I don’t want to know the truth! I have to remember what our teacher told us!” — Conservative Cat
The Random Yak tells much the same story:
Yak the Younger refused to read a good science book I bought him until after the school year was over because he was afraid he would forget the things he needed to know for the test and give “more information than the teacher wants — and she won’t like that, she wants one-word answers.” — The Random Yak
Forget the truth, your children are being forced to memorize the state-approved dogma. It’s about time we realized that public education has been a complete failure at educating, and a complete success at dumbing down each successive generation. At this point the only way to improve American education is to get it out of the hands of the federal government.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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Karl Marx would love the popular moves among politicians in various state governments and the federal government to ban so-called "junk" food in schools, and to "put healthy food in" convenience stores and on the tables of those they define as poor. It's a very elitist and arrogant mindset that promotes this ideology, and it needs to be addressed.
Ultimately, the war supporters in Congress prevailed in the vote on the resolution. Still, the vote was significant because it places every member of Congress on the record as supporting or not supporting the unconstitutional, costly, violent occupation of a country that never attacked us. This vote should serve as an important reminder to the American people of where their representatives really stand when it comes to policing the world, empire building, and war.
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Jason
Jun 20, 2006
My web publishing and design teacher taught us to adhere to the HTML 3.2 standard.
She also didn’t know a lick of server side scripting and thought that you could send any e-mail from the server automatically (i.e. no user intervention required with their own e-mail client) with nothing but <form> and <input type=”hidden”> elements.
Once I learned what I now know in PHP, I had a revelation.
Fleeb
Jun 20, 2006
I suspect a lot of the problem involves the general stupidity of the people teaching our children. You’re basically getting your money’s worth; we pay educators very little for the work they do, and we do not hold them to high standards.
Michael Hampton
Jun 20, 2006
Very little? Find me an underpaid teacher. Go on, I’ll wait.
Matt
Jun 20, 2006
“Very little? Find me an underpaid teacher. Go on, I’ll wait.”
$36,000 little?
My school district was the lowest paid in the state when I went to high school. I had some unintelligent, unmotivated teachers, and I had some great teachers who went above and beyond their duties as educators. I was not “brainwashed,” and while I’m sure I didn’t learn every aspect of history their is to learn, or every aspect of any subject, I don’t think that any critical information was carefully omitted, or that any was invented for the purposes of the class.
Steve
Jun 20, 2006
I had a great history teacher 3 of my years in high school (Honors world history, AP US and AP European), who got paid a little over $80K/yr (LAUSD), sadly his problem is he didn’t have enough time to teach us everything he wanted to. It was an “Honors” class, which he took seriously, and even offered after school study hours where he would basically teach us everything he “wasn’t supposed to teach us”. He was a pretty staunch liberal, so things were skewed, but he told us from the beginning, so we at least knew.
Of course, I also had a really bad one one of my 4 years, who obviously felt they were getting shafted in pay (she only made ~$40K/yr, and was a “minority” of course she was prbly only 30, my other teacher was in his late 40’s). She was horrible, read straight out of the course book, didn’t seem to have a grasp on the history herself, and when questioned rarely knew the answer. She was obviously not a fan of history but got “stuck” teaching the class.
This was pretty much the case at my school one subject with one great teacher and one poor teacher. In the end I think the Honors/AP kids ended up ok because of the teachers who cared and loved teaching their subject (coincidentally, the only ones still there when my sister went, the others had all changed schools or no longer taught honors courses).
So while it comes down to money for them, looking at it from the students perspective, students who want to learn, the teacher needs to have some love for the subject and the desire to impart that love for the subject on their students. I love history, its probably one of the few things I enjoy learning about still, all because I had a great history teacher in high school. (I’m an engineer now, I had 2 great math teachers as well!)
Which is I think the difference between public and private, my friends that went to a private school (where I was part of a summer science program) had teachers that may not have had a teaching degree, but all had college degrees in the courses they taught and loved to teach the subject to kids.
Nigel Watt
Jun 20, 2006
I had some great teachers, but I also had a lot of horrible ones. I supposedly went to the 15th-best public high school in the nation. I’d hate to know what the 20th was like.
forstand
Jun 20, 2006
I graduated 3rd in my high school class of 1966 in a northern California town. I took all of the science and math where I was the top student. Upon graduation I attended the nearby community college in an engineering program. To my dismay I flunked calculus. My high school math program did not include pre-calculus like all of the other high schools did.
At our 10 year class reunion I accosted the former high school principal by asking him why the school’s math program was so bad that none, and I emphasised none, of its graduates ever went into science or engineering as we had problems with math.
He responded by saying that “we” discovered several years ago that we were teaching the wrong kind of math. I asked him what did he do about it. His reply? “I retired last year.” In other words he did not care.
This doubly pissed me off as I was now 1-A for the draft and had no political clout to avoid Vietnam. This man, through his incompetence and indifference, screwed up a lot of lives.
The Random Yak
Jun 20, 2006
The issue of paying teachers properly is critical – but the money is in the system. On average the administrators take a far, far bigger cut than they deserve, which is one reason no money remains for the teachers. Worse, the administration too often hamstrings teachers’ efforts at teaching, ordering them to emphasize “feelings” rather than facts – which leads to teacher burnout. I know from experience, there is little worse for a teacher’s motivation level than being forced to teach in an environment where the administration views students as so much cattle to move through the plant, rather than individuals needing to learn to succeed or be permitted to fail. The error lies primarily with administration and policy – not teachers (though bad administration often hires bad teachers because the administrators can’t stand the “troublemakers” who really want to teach).
Brandon
Jun 20, 2006
I totally agree with the article. I was blessed to be home schooled my entire life. When I was 15 , my parents encouraged me to start a company as part of my business math education…. I did and that’s helped me along in life quite a bit. I’m now a real estate agent and I feel i’m doing quite well with myself. Unfortunately most kids now adays are stuck with ‘just ok’ rather than whatever they can dream up. Its hard for educators to get kids to shoot for the stars when everything they do has to adhere to state standards and ‘conformity’.
Michael Hampton
Jun 20, 2006
Hm, let’s see if I can catch up in the comments a bit.
Matt, $36,000 is probably “little” in Boston, but in Vermont it’s quite livable, at least if you don’t yet have children.
Random Yak, welcome! Administration and policy is, of course, what we’re talking about. There’s no doubt that good teachers work in public schools; they start out not knowing any better, and by the time they’re tenured, they know what’s going on and either suck up and deal with it or have long since quit and gone to work for private schools…
Finally, Brandon, make sure to homeschool your own children — or at least send them to a good private school.
Renee Sanders
Jun 20, 2006
oh please, this is urban myth.
Ask most parents, and they will tell you they are very happy with their neighborhood schools.
I put three kids through public school, and only encountered 2 bad teachers.
One clearly was of the “brain-washing ilk”, and my husband totally took her down. We documented the fractured history and purely cooercive teaching and complained. The principle set her straight! If you have a problem, and haven’t dealt with it, who is REALLY to blame. Grow a Freaking Spine!
The other teacher was a terrible MATH teacher, and she somehow felt that she was working in a college, rather than K-12. Insisted that students could not ask her ANY questions about the material and had to take 3 specific steps prior to making an Appointment with her.
Guess what I did? Yep. Appointment with the Principle! Guess who is no longer teaching! Grow a freaking spine and stop whining! Got a problem? Do Something about it! GEEZE!
Michael Hampton
Jun 20, 2006
Urban reality is more like it.
You’re fortunate to live in a school district where the administrators are trying to provide a good education, rather than just good salaries for themselves. American education wouldn’t be much of a problem if your experience were the rule, rather than the exception.
As for most parents, of course they’re happy; they have no idea their children are getting an education which is mediocre at best, and destructive at worst.
Renee Sanders
Jun 20, 2006
“they have no idea their children are getting an education which is mediocre at best”
They have no idea, eh? And whose Freaking fault is that. I sure hear a lot about personal responsibility, but I am seeing a huge lack of it here! No idea? That is disgusting!
Shall I hold their hands and drag their lazy asses into the school? Huh? They just dump their kids, and forget about it? What a load of crap!
Oh, Boo-Hoo! The schools are bad. The teachers are bad. Whine, whine whine. What a bunch of impotent clap trap!
Michael Hampton
Jun 20, 2006
Oh yes, they just dump their kids and forget about it. The schools are bad, the teachers are bad, AND the parents are bad.
As for me, I already am doing something about it. What have you done here except to complain?
Scott Christman
Jun 20, 2006
In regards to teachers pay, they actually get a decent deal. After all they are only working 9 months out of the year. Plus they get other breaks along the way. If they are having an issue paying the bills then they can get another job for those 3 months that they have off, like the rest of us who work year round.
Also, I would like to say that I also went to public school, and I know I didn’t get the education that I deserved. They dumbed down the curriculum to the lowest common denominator. Luckily, I always had a natural curiosity to want to know more so I would hit the public library to research the subjects I was learning more in depth.
Parents think that their children are getting the best in education by putting their children into public schools, they trust that the government wants the best for the kids, when in fact the government wants the best for itself and no one left to question anything that they do.
wheatdogg
Jun 20, 2006
Anybody commenting here who is actually a teacher? If you were, you would not be making stupid remarks like this one:
In regards to teachers pay, they actually get a decent deal. After all they are only working 9 months out of the year. Plus they get other breaks along the way.
Good teachers, and by that I mean ones who actually take their work home with them and who spend their off-time prepping their lessons, categorically DO NOT work just M-F, 8-3, August – May. The concept that we teachers work only 9 months a year is patently nonsensical. We are at school 9 months a year, but many of us spend our summers either working at summer programs at school, coaching, or taking classes. In other words, we are still working 12 months, and many of us spend much more than 40 hours a week at our jobs during the regular school season. Oh, by the way, we don’t get overtime.
Furthermore, comparing a teacher’s job to another is not comparing apples to oranges. An elementary school teacher spends five days a week, 180 days a year dealing not just with your little darling, but with at least 20 other little darlings. Some of these kids might not speak English, be able to see, walk, speak or hear normally, be abused or at best ignored at home. Middle school teachers have to deal with 25 or more hormonal early teens who want to be adult but are still childish. They might have drug, alcohol or sex issues besides. High school teachers get 25 or more kids who feel they know everything and just want to either enter the adult world directly or enter college now.
Teachers do a lot more than just teach their subjects. Their charges are your children (assuming you have any). Saying they already get paid plenty to deal with 20-30 kids each day, a job many parents with just one kid can’t do worth beans, only reflects your clear misunderstanding of how tough a job good teaching is.
You want good, dedicated teachers, but expect them to work for beans. Sorry, folks, you can’t have it both ways.
wheatdogg
Jun 20, 2006
Ah, I forgot to clarify that MS and HS teachers have 25 or more kids in each class and have at least five classes a day. That’s 125 or more kids a day. Someone dealing with that many adolescents should get paid doubletime.
Anonymous
Jun 20, 2006
I can’t help but notice a lot of teachers complaining about their pay and that it is not enough considering what they do. Why did you get into teaching? You knew the pay wasn’t very good and the responsibilities that come with it, so why are you complaining? I don’t complain about my job because I knew what I had to do before I started. The fact is teachers have the same calendar as children, for 9 months they make $36,000 a year, if they worked year round teaching that’d equal $48,000 a year, hardly “beans”, thats pretty good, especially for one person, much less a teacher who is married and has a spouse that make as much as they do, and bam you’ve got a $60,000 a year household. Hardly “beans” at all… I supported myself on less than a teacher makes for quite awhile… don’t cry about something you brought on yourself.
Lenny Zimmermann
Jun 21, 2006
The facts for the argument in the original posting are somewhat non-relevant. Public or Private doesn’t really matter when it comes to tecahing methodology. In many cases what students will learn will be how to “take the test” for their classes. I don’t care if the government is involved or not, if you want to use that argument then you’ll have to address the fundamental teaching methodologies in use today.
Now there are still pleny of arguments against public education (many illustrated in the comments section here) but that teachers often grade based on what is in a particular book or on answers they “like” is in no way endemic to public schools.
Teacher
Jun 21, 2006
Thank you wheatdogg. Being a middle school teacher myself, you seem to be my only ally here.
There seems to be a lot of misconceptions about public education and the teaching profession. First of all, they are two completely separate things. Many teachers (including myself) disagree with the model of public education that the Bush administration has pushed down our throats. No Child Left Behind is nothing more than a way to shift blame away from the policy makers to the individual schools. Sure, I’m all for school accountability, but how well can a person do their job if both hands are tied behind his back? The US model is essentially to give students the basic information, never have them apply that information to real world purposes, and then test their knowledge in an all-important standardized test in April/May to assess how well the school has functioned. Sounds fine and dandy, but when to add in several key (and often overlooked) factors, it’s clear to see that the test doesn’t necessarily give an honest reflection. What comes out of this is a single number rating the school, which politicians love as it’s “black and white.” This to me, and many of my colleagues, is the primary problem with how education is handled today.
Now, the teaching profession has taken much of the heat stemming from NCLB. When the politicians discovered that their local schools were below the “acceptable” level, the first group they targeted were the teachers. Now, in the state that I’m teaching in, the requirements have drastically been increased and are practically updated yearly. Gone are the days of lifetime credentials. I strongly feel that the new teachers coming off of the assembly line represent the best group of teaching professionals the state has ever seen. Sure, there are always idiots in any profession, and I’m sure that each school will encounter the few staff members that are subpar, but for the most part, children in public education are being taught according to state guidelines and parent wishes.
Not to make this a rant, but the topic of parents brings up an important tangent. I teach math, a topic that I love and am very familiar with. Multiple times throughout the year I will be approached by parents wishing their students to be challenged further than what is normally customary. However, for some reason, when their students actually start becoming challenged, they reappear claiming poor teaching. Why do they believe this? Two things: their student has homework that takes them more than 10 minutes, and their student may start receiving less than perfect grades. Gee, what a concept: you actually start challenging a student and they have work and receive a B+ on the test. So my beef with this isn’t that the parents complain, it’s that they equate A’s as learning. A’s mean they did well on the work, but rarely signify actual understanding of the concept, especially on those damn multiple choice tests. I’m sure each and every one of you have taken a MC test, simply guessed, and received a satisfactory grade.
As stated by wheatdogg in his final comments, you can’t expect to have excellent teachers but pay them a minimal wage. Yet, somehow, that’s exactly how the public believes it should work. Ignorance on this topic honestly hurts us more than the few bad apples in the profession.
Jason McClain
Jun 25, 2006
Urban Reality is more like it.
Indeed.
I suggest anyone interested in this topic read The Underground History of schooling in the US. Free online. It was written by a two-time winning Teacher of the Year in New York. He feels the system is broken and can not be fixed.
I will leave aside all the solid libertarian and economic arguments against State sponsored schooling. No time.
Chriz
Jun 27, 2006
36k?! That’s some seriously crappy pay. Try living in Florida with that salary. average starting teacher salary is a little less than that. you can barely support yourself with that. I do know of some teachers that were making around 60k, but they had tought for 10+ years to get that.
Chriz
Jun 27, 2006
let me clarify.. crappy compared to what SHOULD be paid.
Dana
Jun 28, 2006
Teacher pay is about average for college graduates. I believe the average college graduate makes about 32,000, $1,000 less than I made my first year teaching. Teacher burn-out comes from being expected to comply with unrealistic standards while having limited control over your own classroom. Directives come from above (the district, the principal…now the federal government) and your job is to implement, whether it is working or not. Look at California…scripted lesson plans? Now there’s real possibility for a sense of professional accomplishment there.
wheat
Jun 28, 2006
Annymous said: Why did you get into teaching? You knew the pay wasn’t very good and the responsibilities that come with it, so why are you complaining? I don’t complain about my job because I knew what I had to do before I started.
Who said I was complaining about my job? I love my job. I’ve been doing it for 20+ years, so I either love it or I’m nuts. (The verdict is not in on that last possibility yet, though.) What I AM complaining about is Anonymous’ presumption that the pay we do get is sufficient and fair. Given our duties and responsibilities, and given that everyone from parents to politicians believes teachers can singlehandedly prevent the fall of civilization as we know it, the pay teachers receive is insulting. You want excellence in teaching, but you don’t want to pay good money for it. So, we should all be monks and nuns and take vows of poverty to be teachers?
Dana said: Teacher pay is about average for college graduates.
To an extent, you are correct. The statement is not true for math and science teachers, who typically are paid $5K to $10K less than their peers who enter private industry. That disparity is one reason why it’s hard to find math and science teachers. In addition, many teachers work in situations that do not reward excellence with bonuses and hefty raises, as might happen in the corporate world. Rather, teachers receive a uniform percentage increase each year (if they’re lucky), and are rewarded for earning their master’s and/or doctoral degrees. After several years, the teacher is making quite a bit less than his peer in the corporate world. I won’t even go into the comparative lack of promotion opportunities for teachers.
The comparatively low pay, few opportunities for career advancement and salary boosts, the paperwork, administrative hassles, parental meddling, unruly kids, etc., etc., drive most young teachers out of the profession forever by their fifth year. It’s hard to find experienced teachers.
Dana
Jun 30, 2006
A lot of people enter the teaching profession. Even more leave it. Private schools pay their teachers significantly less than public schools (about 70%, on average).
Also, comparisons with teacher pay are difficult. Yes, you can make more in the private sector, but can you make more working only 181 days out of the year? When statistics facor this variable in, the teaching profession is very competitve with many other professions. I haven’t read all of this, but it is an interesting study as it relates to teacher pay.
Is Teacher Pay “Adequate?”
Money is not the issue…we are spending more and getting less every year.
wheatdogg
Jul 03, 2006
I will admit that raising teacher salaries is not the only solution to the nation’s education “crisis,” but financial incentives could attract more qualified candidates than we get now.
While most people have at least one favorite teacher we remember fondly, for the most part people take teachers for granted. The assumption, shared by most education schools, is that a few education courses, a bachelor’s degree, a standardized test and state certification bestow upon any schmoe the credentials to be a teacher. Unlike premedical programs, which are deliberately designed to thin the herd well before the MCATs, preteacher programs are generally pretty easy on the students. There are exceptions, of course, but you could sleep through most public universities’ education classes and still get certified.
Suppose you raised the average beginning teacher’s pay to $40K, and promised a nice raise after 1-2 years of successful teaching. Perhaps more students would be interested in being teachers, to the point that ed schools might have to tighten the requirements up to thin the herd. Maybe student teachers, and the public in general would take teaching more seriously if there were a stampede for the ed schools’ programs.
Or forget about the pay level. Just make it harder to get certified. It might convince people that teaching is not for those “who can’t do” but for those who really want to work hard to become professionals, like doctors and lawyers.
Consider this thought. We spend years hanging around teachers when we are young. Familiarity breeds contempt, to the extent that everyone figures they know how to be better teachers or run the schools better, You don’t hear the same criticism and armchair management of doctors, nurses, accountants, engineers and lawyers.
For those of you who still insist that teachers are overpaid, or paid adequately, take a year’s unpaid leave from your regular job and work as a teacher somewhere, and walk in our mocassins for a while. If you can teach math, science or a foreign language, you’d be a shoo-in. Districts would get you emergency certification and put you in front of a room full of kids in no time flat.
Failing that, pick up a book written by a teacher about his or her teaching experiences. You might gain some insights into the difficulties of the profession.
GRAYWOLF
Jul 20, 2006
“In addition, many teachers work in situations that do not reward excellence with bonuses and hefty raises, as might happen in the corporate world. Rather, teachers receive a uniform percentage increase each year (if they’re lucky), and are rewarded for earning their master’s and/or doctoral degrees.”
Unions and government work…They don’t believe in merit raises. “That might encourage employees to go off script.”
Joann
Oct 29, 2007
I graduated from high school in 1986 but never learned a darn thing while I was in school. And because I had learning disabilities, I remained in Special Ed during most of my school career. While I felt more comfortable in Special Ed than I did in regular classes, the teachers I had never really taught me anything of value. All I got was “busy work,” the dumbed-down stuff you are given just to pass the time. In regular classes, I couldn’t keep up with the class or was able to understand the work that was being assigned to me because nobody ever bothered to offer me a professionally trained and certified tutor who could have worked with me and helped me to understand each assignment and keep up with the rest of the class. As a result, rather than being helped, I was often misunderstood and even punished for not doing my work or participating in class, so I started hating school and simply didn’t care about my future anymore. Other children teased me for being slow, and I felt like I was being blamed for being slow, as if it were my fault. I developed serious behavior problems as a result and became a bully both in school and in the neighborhoods where I lived (I moved around a lot when I was little, so I never got to grow up in just one neighborhood or attend just one school district). And when I finally did graduate, all I did was stay at home with my parents and never did anything useful with my life. I never went to college, I never had a job, I never went to a trading school, and I never lived on my own (I require living assistance because of my developmental disabilities). I simply didn’t care, and I still don’t even today, which is very unfortunate. I hated school, and even today, I still don’t trust our public school system. I probably never will, either. Had I been given the help I needed when I needed it most, and had I not been misunderstood, blamed, and punished for being slow and unable to keep up, I probably would have worked hard, studied hard, believed in my abilities, and made something of myself. But because I was ignored and expected to conform and go way beyond what I was capable of, and then punished for daring to be different and not being able to understand things like everybody else, I simply gave up and stopped caring. In fact, I only finished high school because my dad made me, even though I was already eighteen years old and no longer in need of parental guidance. I would have been perfectly happy being left alone to do my own thing, but I can’t because I am controlled by other and made into something I’m not all the time. Until I move in with a friend of mine and her new husband (which I hope will happen very soon), and because I am unable to live on my own or live in a home that cares for disabled adults (I have to be mentally disabled for this, which I am not), I will continue to have very little freedom in terms of becoming the adult that I am. Bottom line: Educate your children at home if you can, always believe in their abilities without being pushy or holding them back, and make them feel valued, respected, understood, and loved. And if you must send them off to school, but you catch them falling behind in class and/or getting into serious trouble, then get them the help they need right away before it’s too late. Don’t let them end up like me. Our world depends on them to help make it a better place to live. Some of my teachers actually did care about me and believed in my abilities, but again, I was too stubborn and hard-headed to listen or even care. I often thought they were misunderstanding me and pushing me too hard, so I resisted their efforts to help me succeed. I simply no longer trusted anyone because I had already been damaged by the system and from being sexually abused and controlled at home. I just wanted to be myself, and I’m still like that today. So, don’t let your children be brainwashed or ignored by the system, okay? There is way too much at stake here. Thanks, and God bless!