Public schools...

[ATX_Shawn]

Okay so when I was a kid, I didn't really like school, but that was because I was a kid. Now I am nearing 30, and I still don't like schools. I'm an 80's baby so my youth was spent outside drinking out of water hoses and getting dirty. We said the pledge, I got my ass whooped if I acted up, and not every hyper kid has ADHD (they're kids dammit!). Anyway I digress. This was the time just before (or during) the beginning of the transition in America into what we know schools as today. Institutions that infringe on our children's basic civil liberties, don't educate children and simply teach tests, promote the pussification of soon to be soldiers and men by encouraging an everyone wins mentality, don't let kids play dodge ball because it is too violent, tell lies to our children in history class. but again I digress.

I do not know the specifics behind why we continue to send our children to these schools, but we do, and its rediculous. I firmly believe a nation wide reform and/or boycott of federally funded public schools is absolutely necessary. Otherwise our government will soon be filled with children educated and indoctrinated in this system.

Why am I ranting?
Michelle Malkin: Eye Scans in FL Schools ‘Disturbing’ Sign of Larger Trend | Fox News Insider

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local...c4bbcc-84c4-11e2-98a3-b3db6b9ac586_story.html

This is just one of many examples.. A quick google search would find any number of ridiculous crimes against society committed by our public school system.

 

[oldguy]

Home school or private school if you want a kid to think for themselves while we may have some good teachers the system is messed up geared to turn out little socialist and place them in socialist/communist institutions of "higher" learning.

 

[M. Sage]

Public schools suck. I'm a few years older than ATX_Shawn, and our experiences and opinions sound pretty similar.

 

[FrEaK_aCcIdEnT]

I'm 32 and completely agree with ATX_Shawn. I remember being on my bike up to 5 miles from home. I remember playing "guns". I remember climbing to the top of a specific tree in our yard. Something has to be done. Home school would be ideal, but isn't financially possible for us. I wish they would remove school district taxes from home owners if they don't have kids or their kids are not in the public education system. There is a lot of opportunity for reform.

 

[RandomHero]

i graduated in 2002. school was still school even 10 years ago. when i was there you had teachers that embarassed you if you were acting an idiot or made you look stupid or did something to you if you fell asleep in class. hell, my auto shop teacher would drop sockets onto guys heads if you fell asleep under a car.

i blame social media. everyone has a voice and can reach out to thousands in seconds if they feel wronged, and even if they are idiots, they have a hive of idiots behind them.

 

[breakingcontact]

So if/when you all have kids...send them to private schools or home school them.

I'm about Shawns age. Raised in the country. We had a gun safety class complete with guns in PE class. But we can't just talk about the good old days and how it used to be.

In college I extensively studied how the socialists from the 1920s and 1930s laid the groundwork to change society by changing the schools. It's deliberate. Our response needs to be organized and deliberate.

 

[35Remington]

As someone on the inside of a public school building, I wish parents would stop blaming me and my colleagues for their kids' lack of perseverance and morals, and do the hard work of family building long before they make it to my door.

There are certainly things we teachers can improve upon, but the door swings both ways.

 

[ATX_Shawn]

hell, my auto shop teacher would drop sockets onto guys heads if you fell asleep under a car.

Thats hilarious.

 

[GrandpaOf18]

As someone on the inside of a public school building, I wish parents would stop blaming me and my colleagues for their kids' lack of perseverance and morals, and do the hard work of family building long before they make it to my door.

There are certainly things we teachers can improve upon, but the door swings both ways.

You are right, but if we teach our kids to love right and hate wrong, love good and hate evil, and that Morals are from God, than to many in the school systems power structures, we are just teaching our kids to hate.

No offense intended, but did your school have CSCOPE, and did your school teach from it? If so, then on social or economic issues, I'm afraid that it was teaching against what some of us have taught our kids at home.

And maybe not at your school, but at several schools around the country, even in Texas, teaching kids that Bush/Republicans bad.... Obama/Democrats good, again is not what they need to learn. Not even in the reverse. It may have not been a lesson, with testing as such, but....

And by all means, We (as parents) should make sure that we teach our kids to never talk about guns, much less play army, cowboys and indians, or cops and robbers.

Again, your school may be different, but if so, it's not the norm.

 

[ATX_Shawn]

As someone on the inside of a public school building, I wish parents would stop blaming me and my colleagues for their kids' lack of perseverance and morals, and do the hard work of family building long before they make it to my door.

There are certainly things we teachers can improve upon, but the door swings both ways.

While I agree with you in regards to parents parenting... my issue isn't with teachers. IMO Teachers are genuinely good people and I have the utmost respect for most teachers.. but like soldiers they are being told what to do and how to do it.. They are given approved curriculums to teach and are often restricted in how to teach for any number of reasons. My issues are mostly with the school administrators, school boards, etc..

 

[rsayloriii]

As someone on the inside of a public school building, I wish parents would stop blaming me and my colleagues for their kids' lack of perseverance and morals, and do the hard work of family building long before they make it to my door.

There are certainly things we teachers can improve upon, but the door swings both ways.

+1 ... there are certainly bad apples everywhere, but I know that the people I work directly with think like us ... these test are bad, these kids need personal responsibility, guns are inanimate objects (its the idiot behind the trigger), etc.

 

[matefrio]

4 kids and work more trying to unteach my kids what they've learned there than I should in the moral ways of things.

I think skills learned in school are outdated and should be changed to real life.

Learn a business plan, return on investments, project planning, working as a team and how to be persuasive. Creative thinking, salesmanship, home and business financial budgeting, ethics and yes even a bit of cooking and cleaning skills for all groups.

Push more responsibility to the kids in how the school is run from lunch menus to some if not most of the rules of the school and how discipline is managed.

Have "tracks" that let the academic follow their path and more vocational or business minded kids follow their paths as well.

Allow waivers for everyone to attend the school of their choice and let schools who can't attract students die.

Academics who decide what to teach our kids are out of whack though college.

 

[rsayloriii]

While I agree with you in regards to parents parenting... my issue isn't with teachers. IMO Teachers are genuinely good people and I have the utmost respect for most teachers.. but like soldiers they are being told what to do and how to do it.. They are given approved curriculums to teach and are often restricted in how to teach for any number of reasons. My issues are mostly with the school administrators, school boards, etc..

Most of the issues I see (and I work primarily with those with "issues") is the lack of parents parenting. Either they have nothing to do with their child, or they're busy making excuses for their child's behavior.

While I have nothing to do with the curriculum given, I have had no problem speaking my mind if it's something I disagree with. I try to give these kids enough so that they can make decisions on their own ... whether we view them as "right or wrong", that's how they learn.

 

[biglucky]

I am new to this having kids thing.. When my soon to be high school stepdaughter informed me that she didn't know what the Third Reich was I almost fell out of my chair....

 

[matefrio]

I am new to this having kids thing.. When my soon to be high school stepdaughter informed me that she didn't know what the Third Reich was I almost fell out of my chair....

Third Reich you're out? :-)

 

[ATX_Shawn]

Most of the issues I see (and I work primarily with those with "issues") is the lack of parents parenting. Either they have nothing to do with their child, or they're busy making excuses for their child's behavior.

While I have nothing to do with the curriculum given, I have had no problem speaking my mind if it's something I disagree with. I try to give these kids enough so that they can make decisions on their own ... whether we view them as "right or wrong", that's how they learn.

Parenting IS an issue and a contributor to issues with schools. Many parents use school as a day care. I think this also contributes to why most schools are fenced in and often resemble prisons.

And please forgive my ignorance, I am not intimately familiar with the in's and out's of running schools, but what resources or options, as a teacher, do you have when you are told to teach a test, or told to teach or not teach something and you disagree? Why are teachers not given more flexibility? Whats with standardized testing? Does it all revolve around money?

haha sorry don't mean to put you on the spot.

 

[Southpaw]

I am new to this having kids thing.. When my soon to be high school stepdaughter informed me that she didn't know what the Third Reich was I almost fell out of my chair....

But are you sure that was the curriculum or a teenage girl not really paying attention in History class?
I could see them not going in depth about the Third Reich, I don't agree, but I could see them doing it,
but I am sure they didn't miss the opportunity to teach about the Holocaust and I just can't see that being talk about without mentioning the Third Reich.

 

[biglucky]

But are you sure that was the curriculum or a teenage girl not really paying attention in History class?
I could see them not going in depth about the Third Reich, I don't agree, but I could see them doing it,
but I am sure they didn't miss the opportunity to teach about the Holocaust and I just can't see that being talk about without mentioning the Third Reich.

If it is the latter then we have another problem, because she gets better grades in history than most things... The craziness was that this came up when doing an assignment for a project and presentation for her English class about the Holocaust. It was obvious she had gotten through 8th grade without any kind of history class that covered WW2 at all. Painfully obvious... It just floored me, I read all 1300ish pages of Rise and Fall of the Third Reich on a family road trip when I was in 6th grade. Now it is all ipods and ipads and dvd's on those trips..

 

[Southpaw]

If it is the latter then we have another problem, because she gets better grades in history than most things... The craziness was that this came up when doing an assignment for a project and presentation for her English class about the Holocaust. It was obvious she had gotten through 8th grade without any kind of history class that covered WW2 at all. Painfully obvious... It just floored me, I read all 1300ish pages of Rise and Fall of the Third Reich on a family road trip when I was in 6th grade. Now it is all ipods and ipads and dvd's on those trips..

WOW!! I'm amazed too. Sorry to hear that it happened that way.

 

[rsayloriii]

Parenting IS an issue and a contributor to issues with schools. Many parents use school as a day care. I think this also contributes to why most schools are fenced in and often resemble prisons.

And please forgive my ignorance, I am not intimately familiar with the in's and out's of running schools, but what resources or options, as a teacher, do you have when you are told to teach a test, or told to teach or not teach something and you disagree? Why are teachers not given more flexibility? Whats with standardized testing? Does it all revolve around money?

haha sorry don't mean to put you on the spot.

Thankfully, it seems like we are heading towards the right direction with standardized tests ... the legislature has axed cscope, AND, IIRC, they've cut down on the number of standardized tests needed to graduate from ~15 to like 5.

As far as standardized tests, that's totally up to the state and we don't get to see them ahead of time. Closest we ever get are previous tests ... and they've switched tests in the past couple of years, so there's not much data to refer to. For other tests, it's up to the teachers and their team (other teachers in the school that teach the same subject) to create the tests.

Now, as a Para and not the actual teacher, I have a little more leeway with what I can get away with saying, but I stated before, those around me, including the actual teachers, have similar views, but beyond those I work directly with day in day out, I can't say for sure.