Political Crossfire Forums

As an educator I'm constantly amazed at the lack of progress in education reform. Obviously there are some very generic statements to which we can all agree on principle that benefit students:

- More competent, devoted, and intelligent teachers. Less babysitters.
- More funding for technology. Less waste on oversight, tests, and admins.

But in particular, I'm amazed at how the 19th century model has retained its presence. We still rely on the age-determined factory method. We still only really offer "regular" or "advanced" options instead of clumping students by not only ability but by what learning style helps them the most.

Where is the practicality? I believe computer science should be the "fifth" core subject. We rely on computers. Might as well prepare our future citizens with skills that will put them ahead in competition. I also believe that starting in junior year, students should have to take practical classes like personal finance. Or technical writing.

Education is the perfect subject to point towards when i like to apply the philosophy of freedom,... so whats the question?

Currently we dont have an educational system, its a system of schooling. This system crams everyone into a little box, assigns stand up sit down kneel material for 15,000 hours to produce obedient workers and debt slaves. Creativity is patronized while parroting bullet points is rewarded. All the while the glorious days of [add country here] is romanced about just after the unwavering official pledge to the waving cloth on a pole.

The answer is education -- the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life.

The answer is not schooling. No where in that definition is there any hint of a structured system. It has everything to do with the individual/common group seeking original discovery with ones self or others and building on that with addition experiences. There are no boundaries for the human mind and there isnt a system to push the boundaries either. Each case is different and systems are meant to be the chute. If one has a hunger for micro biology before they can even spell the word. Whos to say thats not the path of curriculum they should have available to them? Do they have to endure 13 years of salutes to someday have the opportunity to go into $200K of debt to sniff the higher level text books of micro biology? Of course not, but the latter is considered normal, and we cant have any weirdos running around knowing shit.

The School system works for kids that want to learn, however, for those that don't, it goes back to the household, and not everyone can be afforded decent parents that care.

I remember talking with a norwegian friend, and he told me that through much of their grades the students progress with the same teacher, something like that would be brilliant as it lets the teachers form a lasting relationship with the students and become parental figures. The teacher will eventually begin to understand how each individual student learns and cater to his or her needs...I'd say doing something like this would go a VERY long way. Teachers need more time with their students, and this might even have an efect of making the teachers better teachers because when it's someone that you care about you WILL naturally put in the effort.

It also gives the students familiarity with the learning place, shuffling the deck of cards each school year diminishes the microcosm of a community that forms inside the classroom, and it throws away all the relationships that were established the year before. Seriously this can work with robots, but not humans. When I had my best attendance in school it was when I knew there were friends waiting for me inside the classroom each day, and I was a flipping HORRIBLE student who skipped school often.

But yea, the classroom needs to feel less sterile and more like a family/community, and the teachers need to become parental figures for those that do not have decent parents, and for that to happen they need to progress through the echelons with the same students. I will also say this might need to do away with conventional notions of holding a student back, I'd say throwing away all of a students friends for his inability to learn as fast as others is more akin to flogging him to read harder than to give him more time, and I was held back once, its pretty shaming/traumatic for a child. It didn't make want me to learn harder it made me want to kill myself, hooray for traumatizing children for their impediments?

We know that personalized education is the best thing. But it's also resource intensive. How can we get as many people in the population to be educated with limited resources?

Our wonderful governor Jindal had passed this school voucher program to help students in failing schools get into better ones and it was ruled unconstitutional. That is yet ANOTHER thing he has done that a federal judge has ruled as such.

This man needs to go.

No, not at all. It's not what you do, it's how you do it. Just like its not what you say, it's how you say it. You can have the most noble goal in the world, but if you use illegal means to obtain it, you've done wrong. The ends don't justify the means.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/11 ... itutional/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ ... story.html

It used tax dollars to send kids to private schools. That is clearly against the law.

I think the entire idea of a lecture is just awful.

seems to me there are plenty of teachers - its just that the percentage of those teachers who are actually skilled and talented educators is too low - and there is a clear distinction between educator and babysitter, as others have noted

however part of this is is the responsibility of the student, and their parents

if kids dont want to learn, or arent interested in a given subject, you can present it to them a thousand different ways and it will never sink in

i say we offer a set of core, life skills that be mandatory; including reading/writing, basic math, technological skills, and personal finance. once the student demonstrates a proficiency in all of these areas, they may graduate - regardless of age. no need to keep clogging up the classrooms.

IF students express interest - or demonstrate aptitude for a given subject - then they may sign up to take classes on that (art history, western civ, chem, bio, etc)

so that the teachers who majored in these fields may address an interested audience and transfer that knowledge to them