» posted on Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012 at 5:46 am by Andy D
Guest Post: The Goal of Education
The following is aguest post submitted by Pack04. Pack is a regular reader and commenter here.
“‘The goals of No Child Left Behind were the right ones. Standards and accountability, those are the right goals,’ Obama said. But he said educators shouldn’t have to ‘teach to the test,’ and said the new benchmarks will incorporate other factors for measuring school and teacher achievement. ” -AP
School and teacher achievement???? What about a child’s achievement??? Just because you go to the best school does not mean you are a genius, nor does going to the worst school mean you are an idiot. If you set school and teacher achievement on standards as your benchmarks of course they will teach to the test. And if you think teachers cheating on tests now is bad wait till you tie salary increases to student’s test results as the President’s Race to the Top program wants to do.
My wife is a teacher. She has some dumb students in a class. She also has kids that score low on tests and have low grades in the class because they are LAZY. They have no want or care to do well. They are smart; they can do the work, they just don’t. There is no accountability on students. How can a teacher be expected to teach a child that just does not care? Some kids are blessed with intelligence, some are not. You just can’t teach what is not there. If we could, then why do we set the bar so low? Let’s push and try and educate everybody to be a Steven Hawking! We don’t because you can’t make somebody a genius that is not one. So why do we feel the need to get everybody to read at their grade level? Plus by doing that you set up the thought that hey I am where I need to be, I don’t need to be better than that. Teachers see who meets their grade level and then spend less time with them. Less time pushing them, teaching them more, all so they can meet this random line in the sand for the dumb kids.
Perhaps if our leaders actually had a backbone and enforced rules things would change. When No Child Left Behind passed in early 2000′s states looked at it and said it is going to be hard to make it, but if we look like we are trying, they will not take money away from us. They won’t let the poor kids lose their chance. Guess what? They were right!!!!
The President allowed these exemptions because he did not like the law and Congress would not do as he said and fix it. So he just breaks the law and does whatever he wants.
That is not a leader. That does not teach the correct lesson, this does not teach those kids that are lazy to do what they need to do to succeed. It teaches if something is too hard and you don’t like it, don’t do it.
Now I would blame Congress for not working on this but supposedly the Senate had a BIPARTISAN deal worked out last year but the President did not like it so they dropped it. He is a president not a dictator. He does not get what he wants all the time. Grow a spine, Congress, take back your power.
filed under education · guest blog | 3 comments
Gerrit said:
Feb 22, 12 at 1:53 pmHaving gone through the regular state-run school network in my native Belgium, where I was the sole autistic/depressed child in class (there were no special schools at the time where you are surrounded by peers and with teachers qualified to deal with special needs children — I now do speeches in universities in front of teachers to advise them on how to deal with autistic children in class — ideally separate schools for special needs children would exist, but this is off-topic) education is something that gave a lot of food for thought throughout my life, as it was a very hard time for me.
Personally I see several things that need to change and I believe this is not country-bound but topic-bound.
1) Education should be for free and accessible to all, state-funded, with abolition (or nationalisation, as you wish) of private schools. This would make sure a good education is accessible for everyone who wishes to achieve a degree, regardless of the financial or social background of the family you grow up in. One network for all, with the state funding everything. Why? Because I think education is very important, and thus everyone should have access to it ; regardless of backgrounds. Everyone should also have access to the same level of education, a child born of poor parents should not be less educated than a child born from rich parents. Make the same standard of education available to everyone, and try to encourage as many as possible to join in by making it free for all. I do think education is important enough for the government to fund this entirely, including universities.
2) Education should be available for all, and optional for all. I am against the duty to learn and obligatory learning. If someone is not motivated, it is better to not enforce him to attend classes. I have seen with own eyes too often to what this leads: bored youngsters causing mayhem and disturbing the classes, thereby slowing down the teacher and those who are motivated to study. Not every profession requires a degree, so it is not like someone not motivated to study is doomed to end up living on an unemployment benefit. Make education available and accessible to all, but don’t enforce it. The right to be educated should also include the right to abstain from using this right.
3) Within the one state-operated network, create special schools or at least separate classes within schools for special needs children: autistics, the Deaf, the Blind, … I experienced myself how demotivating it is when you are the different one in a regular class. The bullying leaves marks, and further triggers the desire for isolation. Being surrounded by peers and with teachers who know how to motivate special needs children, is the only solution for this problem.
4) Do not restrict the classes to just memorising and tests, but encourage thinking for yourself and self development. This includes abolition of uniforms, limiting theoretic subjects, and replacing them with education on for example politics, different cultures, history, philosophy, … where there is no simple true or false answer but where students are encouraged to think, analyse, develop their own personality and opinions. In addition, if one chooses to study for example maths, drop geography and biology halfway secondary school and replace it with more hours of the chosen subjects (eg mathematics, or to use a different subject: languages)
5) A school is a place to learn. It is not a church. It is not a sports club. It is not a theatre. Subjects such as religion, sports and arts have no place in schools. These belong to the private life of the students who can, if they wish, voluntarely study music, join a theater, join a sports team, attend prayer services of the chosen religion. Maximum the school can provide leaflets and info on existing prayer houses, sports clubs, arts societies and such. But don’t enforce such things. Enforcing will only make it feel obligatory. Interest in sports, arts, religion, etc has to come spontaneously and once that point is achieved, the student will dedicate a lot of time to it.. not because he has to but because he WANTS to.
6) Media and the news should have their place within schools. It has no point teaching theories and history when the current events are not covered. I would also allow room to have the different political ideologies be studied and analysed from a neutral point of view, without encouraging one ideology or party over another. Although I guess this could be part of the earlier named “shaping personality and thinking for oneself”
7) One has to apply some testing system to award degrees, but a simple “passed” or “failed” will do. To reduce the competitive element and focus on studying rather than make it a race for high scores, replace the scores (eg 70% or 80% on an exam) by a simple passing or failing. This is already in use in primary schools in some countries and is done to assure there is no race for high scores and reduce pressure on the students, which I can only encourage.
Pack04 said:
Feb 23, 12 at 9:17 amOh yeah I left one group out.
Parents. They are an important part of the equation. To not hold them responsible for their children is wrong.
My father taught at an elementary school that would be considered low performing. At parent teacher might only 2 or 3 parents would show up. Then he went to a high performing school. He would have 30 parents show up for 23 students.
The same is true for my wife. Her regular students have very few parents show up or communicate with her. She never hears the end of it with her AP students’ parents.
Our politicians seem to not want to hold parents accountable I guess because they are scared of them and don’t want to invade their lives too much.
Wait that can’t be true because they do that in most other aspects of life.
Gerrit said:
Feb 29, 12 at 5:40 amI don’t know why you want to insist in separating low performance from high performance, but there can be a multitude of possible reasons for a child underperforming. Do you realise that “gifted” children with a high IQ are amongst those with the highest chance for low performances and failure at schools? The classes go too slow for them, are not challenging enough, or they feel alienated from their co-students, with drop-outs before graduation or underperforming as a result. Some children may struggle with their health, for example children with autism or ADHD (I have autism myself and can only say school was hell for me). Some others may just not have the same intellectual capacities as the average child, but to use the tag “dumb” is a bit inappropriate IMO.
To blame parents for bad results is a bit looking beyond the issue. It can be true in some cases and obviously parents play a very large role in the growing up of their children. However, if the child has an ill health, falls in a problematic category such as those with low or high IQ, … there is not much they can do. There’s only so much they can do when a child is underperforming, and in some cases it is something beyond the control of parents. As long as schools are not adapting to different profiles of pupils, there’ll always be underperformers. Parents may play a role in it in some cases, in many cases however they’re powerless and feeling desperate. I can assure you my parents suffered a lot because of the problems I experienced during my school days (and it wasn’t worth it when I look at it retrospectively)
To show up at parents-teacher nights doesn’t mean they are necessarily more interested in their child’s education than those who don’t show up. Teachers are not all-knowing, dogmatic preachers. Just because you don’t consider to meet a teacher necessary doesn’t mean you don’t care about your child. Frankly, I (this is of course irrelevant since I don’t want children, but anyways…) would encourage kids to drop out of school as soon as they can as the system is currently focussed on conformity rather than creative thinking and personal development. Until the whole system is largely reformed, I would say that –specific professions where a degree is necessary, eg doctors, lawyers excluded– a degree is not much more than a piece of paper. It doesn’t say anything about the capacity of a child. The educational system needs to be reformed, until then I’d say a lot of people waste their time in schools.