Recently in Education Category

Our children.

Now that I am a parent, I pay more attention to parenting news. And I have learned that a lot of parents are morons, or at least, misguided. Times have certainly changed since I was a child in the 1970's - and not always for the better.

On one hand, parents are becoming very involved in their children's lives, often making decisions for them (ie babying them) through college. On the other hand, parents have a lot more money and businesses are stepping up to get a share of that. One result is a lot of spoiled kids with very high impressions of their own importance and abilities - false impressions that wont mean much to tough competition from India and China. Another result is that kids are lazier and heavier than ever before.

But dont try to being any of this up. Bringing up parenting is as emotional as picking a side in the Israeli-Palestinian debate.

It is always a pleasure to hear other people say something you agree with (and already talked about), which is the case with this article on school reform.

My previous argument revolved around tenure for K-12 and the inability of principals to actually manage a school because they are not allowed to hire or fire. I dont care if it is lead by a Democrat or a Republican but I hope someone will lead real, not rhetorical, change in our ailing school system. Our kids need science and math, not prayer, if we ever hope to compete economically.

There are times when the system is so entrenched and so lousy, incremental changes will never bring about improvements. Major structural changes are your only hope of improvement, painful as it is to do.

Speaking of entrenched and lousy, I just listened to a news story about the mayor of Los Angeles and his struggle to improve the LA Unified school system.

Forget the debate about intelligent design or sex education. The problem with public schools is the business structure of schools. If you dont change the structure of schools, the results will never change. And changing the structure will take a huge amount of political power because you will have to fight the teachers unions and the tax payers.

During the past two elections, the President yelped about supporting a religious-based education system but while he waits around for vouchers, a parallel education system is already well under way. As the public education system collapses due to lack of funding, the private school system is flourishing. The Haves have never had a better education system and they are doing it with their own money and tons of it.

The same people that go to great lengths to avoid paying a dime of taxes are eagerly forking over $20k a year per child to create a second, totally separate education system. We are talking TONS of money going to spoil a few precious kids while the majority of our citizens go without.

Do you remember that TV show, Survivor? All these people living on an island with nothing to eat but rice and whatever they could catch. They all lost weight. After 40 days of the all-rice diet, that Richard Hatch guy lost a ton of weight. He went from fat to healthy looking.

Why did those people lose weight? They lost weight because they had no choice; they simply had no food to eat. No pork rinds, ice cream, soda, crackers or candy. The external environment forced them to eat less.

What is harder to do? Lose weight because some external force is keeping you from eating or using willpower to force yourself to eat less? If you look at America's ever expanding waistline, I think we can agree that willpower doesnt work so good.

Today I read this great article about our education system. Why do international kids outperform Americans? Because they work harder.

I HIGHLY recommend reading this article. The author hits the problems right on the head.

For once, blame the student

By Patrick Welsh

Wed Mar 8, 7:08 AM ET

Failure in the classroom is often tied to lack of funding, poor teachers or other ills. Here's a thought: Maybe it's the failed work ethic of todays kids. That's what I'm seeing in my school. Until reformers see this reality, little will change.

As one would expect, the middle-class American kids usually had higher SAT verbal scores than did their immigrant classmates, many of whom had only been speaking English for a few years.

What many of the American kids I taught did not have was the motivation, self-discipline or work ethic of the foreign-born kids.

Politicians and education bureaucrats can talk all they want about reform, but until the work ethic of U.S. students changes, until they are willing to put in the time and effort to master their subjects, little will change.

read it

Unlike the author, I blame the parents not the kids. Kids will do whatever is easiest. It is the parents job to force their children to do what is in their best interest. I think this process used to be called "parenting." Today it seems like every parent wants to be their kids best friend, something that used to happen only with divorced parents.

The education system is just another symptom of a larger problem: our wealth and our lack of willpower is causing us to lose touch with reality. A reality in which the world gets smaller and more competitive every year. I think this trend will continue but not for long. On the bright side, things will right themselves again when competition from Asia forces us to live on that all-rice diet whether we want to or not.

A confident white principal from the Suburbs thinks he is going to turn a troubled school around by getting the (mostly Black) teachers to teach harder. "All these kids need for discipline is better lessons." My arse. I am astonished to see that even principals blame the teachers. There may be a lot of bad teachers in the country but i can guarantee you that there are more bad parents.

Principal Struggles to Fix Inner-city School

The News Hour with Jm Lehrer

A principal in Virginia's Turn Around Specialist Program faces extreme challenges trying to reform an inner-city school in Richmond on the state's warning list.