Education - more practical?

[Kane]

[Hyperion]

There's a huge disparity between even neighboring districts. I taught for a few weeks (as a pre-service teacher - so prior to student teaching) in an urban school where half of the kids would show up high. I'm not exaggerating. It was considered a 'good day' to have kids show up to school high because they often didn't attend on a regular schedule. Student absences are a pain in the arse. It's part of our job description to take care of any discrepancies that result from the infrequent illness or extended vacation, but if a kid is absent 6 days every month, how do you really communicate anything to him or her?

It sounds really juvenile, but I incorporated food into my lessons just to get these students motivated to do anything.

[Dennis]

[Professor]

[Professor]

I believe that Menson hit the problem on the head. A child that WANTS to learn, will learn. Regardless of the method used. I disliked drama class in HS. It was interactive. It was "fun" (for some). It was carefree. And I still hated every minute of it. On the other hand, I loved calculus. It was hard. It required a lot of sitting though lectures on theory. I also loved history, which was ALL lectures. Sure, I'll grant that some methods are better than others, but if I kid wants to learn, they will learn.

The problem is a Catch 22. Children are not taught at home that an education is important. They don't receive any support for homework outiside school. Why? Because they didn't receive an education (most times) and don't appreciate the importance of one. So, their kids don't become educated. And grow up into parents that don't support education for their kids. It's a cycle.

There are 2 ways to break it. You can convince parents to care. But, that ain't gonna happen. If anyone has any good ideas to convince parents to care about their kids education, I'm all ears. Heck, I just had some meetings with a lady who is heading up a program for a charter school where they will feed needy kids a dinner meal, since it's often that lunch is the only meal the kids eat all day.

Or, you can completely remove parents from the equation. Have kids come to school for 7:30am. Provide breakfast. Go to classes from 8am-3pm, 30 minutes for lunch. From 3-5pm, you have homework time and perhaps some extra-curricular activities. Also use this time to counsel kids and help them with any problems they have. No summers off - school year 'round. They are off roughly the same number of days as us adults, with perhaps a week of vacation (the week differs by school) every 6 months for vacations or whatever.

In other words, completely remove parents from the equation. If kids aren't attending school at all, then send school employees to their houses to find out why.

This might not work for older kids who are already trained to hate school. But, for a kindergartener, it would start them off on the right foot. Then, after a generation of this, we would have a whole new crop of parents who care about an education and then pass that on to their kids.

I see no other way out of this cycle.

[Divinity11]

Well, I just typed out a drawn-out response for the solution to public education, and took too long, apparently, since I had to re-log in to post it, and I lost it all. Stupid servers.

Nutshell: Turn all charter schools into publically-funded military academies. These academies would have a modified curriculum which is a hybrid between the JROTC program and AVID, forcusing more on self-respect, determination, self-esteem, and organizational skills.

Public schools test scores automatically improve since the bottom-feeders are removed and sent to the military academies. A student can "earn their way" back into a public school if their instructors at the military academy deem them worthy.

*Sorry, this is way less detailed than what I originally tried to post.

[Dennis]

[Professor]

[The Comrade]

[Dennis]