The sorry state of 'murrican education.

[Freeky]

It's insane, and I hate the fact that nobody can do this shit anymore.



Other than that, though, I completely agree that the education system needs to be changed, and also that its likely to never be, and that is in itself frustrating and rage inducing.

[Juana]

I'm pretty good at explaining things to people so they can understand them. I'm a very good public speaker. I like talking. I have always had it in the back of my mind that I would like to teach someday. But you what? FUCK that shit. Not in 'murrica. Not when the best teacher I had, a simple guy from Chicago who taught me the WONDER that is a star and how they work, blew his heart into tiny pieces with a .44. Not when I've seen spineless administrators cower behind a bureaucracy so massive it can pay its superintendent $250,000 a year but can't afford textbooks and other materials for US government class. Not when some kid gets bullied, and despite the parents and teachers talking and talking and FUCKING TALKING, and the kid kills himself and the districts settlement ensures the story doesn't reach the papers.

You forgot the administrators themselves, who are just as bad as the parents and hold the teachers at their mercy. I watched as my old high school fell apart under the hand of a new principal because of his policies (one of my biggest beefs with the NCLB act is that it punishes just teachers and not administrators when schools fail). The principal forced my high school debate coach, who was also an English teacher, to pass ~70% of her senior class one year (them not passing the class is the purest, most awful example of laziness I have ever, ever seen because it wasn't hard).

See that's exactly why I think school boards are useless (well, not to politicians, they're VERY useful to The Man). So my though has often been, get in at the ground level, try to give some kids a chance as early as possible, or even in High School and do for some of them what a few teachers did for me: Be honest, teach me something of value, teach me HOW to learn.

But the steady erosion of my patience, wits, and mental stability is something I can see from here. I might get a handful of students a year if I'm lucky. And they'll probably only realize what was going on years and years later. Meanwhile, I do not take people's bullshit lightly (parents) unless I'm getting seriously paid. And even then, I'm not good at hiding my hatred for idiocy.

So what if you only get a few a year and they don't realize things for a while? At least you got to someone in some way, and it's better than nothing.
Work in a district with a union and learn to hide your hatred for idiocy until you have tenure. Then, as long as you aren't showing your kids R rated movies without a permission slip, they can't touch you.

Refusing to teach when you can do it well is definitely being part of the problem, imo. Somebody has to be that Chicago teacher, after all.

Education is fucked because we elect politicians that promise to fuck it.

Reality does not line up with conservatism very well, so the obvious thing to do is ignore reality.  This is more easily accomplished with an ignorant population.

THIS. Politicians have absolutely no place in education. They have no idea how a classroom works and no understanding of the process of teaching, and so they need to keep their goddamn noses out of it.

[Doktor Howl]

Yes, but there is a limit to the kind of knowledge necessary using that tool. It's one tool and one used too heavily, IMO.
Very basic math, basic letters and such.

Balls.  It isn't used at all, any more.  Kids are now taught using change, so they recognize the shape and not the concept, making them very good WalMart clerks and dick all else.

Also, the first two years of physics is nothing but memorization.  Same thing with most of trigonometry, chemistry, and biology.

[Suu]

All that stuff you listed, is why I want to be a teacher.

I want to be that teacher that tells the parents to shove it, because I'm not a babysitter.

I want to be that teacher that moves minds as mine was moved. I want to be Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds.

I want to be that teacher that the kids talk about when they go home, the one that comes into history class wearing full costume. I'd get laughed at, but I'd get their little fucking attentions, now won't I?


Teachers today have no fucking drive because, well, they have nothing to strive for. They have shitty pay, shitty benefits, and shitty students day in and day out. Reform is going to begin from within, not from anything passing through Washington. We've seen the wonders that NCLB did, after all.

And where it's not the teachers, it's the parents. The results of the Special Snowflake Generation rearing their offspring to be even more spoiled and disillusioned. Unfortunately, parental reform sounds like eugenics, and we can't talk about such things, so, blame it on the schools. That system you pay taxes for to babysit your sprogs while you sit at home and collect UI while your SO works 3 jobs to make ends meet in this economy.

I often feel like my parents were a dime a dozen. Not only were they still married, but I had all the homework help I needed, and they would make sure I got it to the best of their abilities with their own backgrounds in English and Chemistry. And when my parents weren't home, I helped my brother and sister. It just seemed like the right thing to do. That sort of family interaction seems even more rare now, unfortunately, as parents are working longer hours.

There are still good parents, good students, and good teachers in this country, but the bad just continues to outweigh the good.

[Freeky]

Yes, but there is a limit to the kind of knowledge necessary using that tool. It's one tool and one used too heavily, IMO.
Very basic math, basic letters and such.

But its usefulness ceases very quickly and does not offer any lasting value beyond what it contains. By a certain grade lever students should already have those skills locked down and move on to things that require application of concepts. I was taught using rote memorization in the 8th grade. For phonetics.

It has value, perhaps what you quoted was not formed as well as it should have been.

Rote memorizing really does have limits to usefulness.  Phonetics should be taught in third grade at the latest, and if I remember correctly you said that your teacher taught you them because you were all seriously lacking in that department.

[Doktor Howl]

Rote memorizing really does have limits to usefulness.

RUBBISH!

9/10ths of education is like 9/10ths of anything else.  It's fucking WORK.  Better to get the little hothouse flowers accustomed to that now.

Also, how can you possibly teach cell division, without requiring memorization?

[Luna]

Memorization is part of education, however, so is learning to fucking THINK.

Your average history class is all memorization.  Vomit back lists of dates, events, and names, but there's no understanding of WHY shit happened.

[Freeky]

When I was little, I wanted to be a teacher.  I learned later that I have absolutely no patience with people who can't keep up with me, and teaching is one thing that absolutely requires patience in order to be effective at it.  

[Freeky]

Rote memorizing really does have limits to usefulness.

RUBBISH!

9/10ths of education is like 9/10ths of anything else.  It's fucking WORK.  Better to get the little hothouse flowers accustomed to that now.

Also, how can you possibly teach cell division, without requiring memorization?

I don't know, because I don't think I learned it.

ETA: I was referring more to critical thinking and classes where answers are mutable.  You couldn't rote memorize what X author was talking about in Y novel with Z metaphors, after all.  But now that I'm thinking about it, most things worth knowing are based off of formulas, so yeah, you're right.

[Salty]

Yes, but there is a limit to the kind of knowledge necessary using that tool. It's one tool and one used too heavily, IMO.
Very basic math, basic letters and such.

Balls.  It isn't used at all, any more.  Kids are now taught using change, so they recognize the shape and not the concept, making them very good WalMart clerks and dick all else.

Also, the first two years of physics is nothing but memorization.  Same thing with most of trigonometry, chemistry, and biology.

Perhaps my own under-education is getting the best of me here. I will endeavor to re-assess my opinion on this matter.

Freeky: The entire school went through that process. Sometime later they introduced the exit exams for high school students, all of which I failed but was not required to pass since nearly 75% of the students who took it throughout the district failed it. This was a last ditch effort to get students competent enough to fill out job applications. The district did not seem to be of the mind that this failure was their own to begin with.

[Doktor Howl]

Every high school graduate should have at LEAST the following under his/her belt:

Algebra & geometry.  MINIMUM.
Statistics.
Physics.
Chemistry.
Biology.
American history, at least the basics, 1600-present.
20th century European history.
4 years of English, to include speech and essay writing.
Civics, to include the US constitution.
Literary study (Twain, Mencken, Kipling, etc)
Basic mechanics and electrical knowledge.

Electives added to round it out.

Anything less means you do not have an educated citizen, and 90% of the above is memorization.

[Freeky]

Freeky: The entire school went through that process. Sometime later they introduced the exit exams for high school students, all of which I failed but was not required to pass since nearly 75% of the students who took it throughout the district failed it. This was a last ditch effort to get students competent enough to fill out job applications. The district did not seem to be of the mind that this failure was their own to begin with.

Damn.

[Freeky]

Every high school graduate should have at LEAST the following under his/her belt:

Algebra & geometry.  MINIMUM.
Statistics.
Physics.
Chemistry.
Biology.
American history, at least the basics, 1600-present.
20th century European history.
4 years of English, to include speech and essay writing.
Civics, to include the US constitution.
Literary study (Twain, Mencken, Kipling, etc)
Basic mechanics and electrical knowledge.

Electives added to round it out.

Anything less means you do not have an educated citizen, and 90% of the above is memorization.

I would have failed your school.  When I left highschool, I had a decent grasp of 15% of that. <-- at my education

[Juana]

See, I'd argue that half the problem now is teaching to the fucking test. That takes up huge amounts of time, especially at the elementary school levels. I asked my mother once how much of her day was teaching kids how to pass standardized tests and she said it was something like 80%. How are you supposed to teach a kid to think if you're wrapped up in teaching them to pass a test?

Memorization is part of education, however, so is learning to fucking THINK.

Your average history class is all memorization.  Vomit back lists of dates, events, and names, but there's no understanding of WHY shit happened.

Which is a fucking shame because that shit's exciting, and exactly why I want to teach history.

[Suu]

Memorization is part of education, however, so is learning to fucking THINK.

Your average history class is all memorization.  Vomit back lists of dates, events, and names, but there's no understanding of WHY shit happened.

Thank you, NCLB, for those fucking tests.