Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Swoop on October 19, 2007, 07:30:09 AM
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Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.
linky (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/19/neducation119.xml)
Fewer than half of teenagers in England mastered the three Rs in their GCSEs this summer, official figures show.
The Government report in full (http://www.dfes.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000754/index.shtml)
Despite record levels of investment in education under Labour, almost 350,000 failed to gain five good GCSEs including the key subjects of English and mathematics – the Government's official benchmark of an acceptable education.
More than 113,600 teenagers – one in five – failed to get a single good GCSE.
A report published yesterday also showed that almost a quarter of boys did not earn any A* to C grades – leading to fresh fears over the gender gap in education.
Last night teachers claimed young people were being let down by a "flawed, exam-based" education system.
They warned that many pupils were being left on the scrapheap as they finish school with no useful qualifications.
It is almost as though it was a system designed to turn out worker drones and state dependent proles.....
(http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2002-8/48257/Swoop2.gif)
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If they can't read or write pass exams wouldn't that be the teachers fault?
lazs
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Why whenever a state employee performs their job poorly the blame everyone else.
"Last night teachers claimed young people were being let down by a "flawed, exam-based" education system."
Same Crap, diffrent country.
I have a colleague who’s wife is a teacher, we were discussing days off. She has worked part time for two years and earns 30 sick days a year, every holiday on the calendar, and two months off in the summer.
Meanwhile our kids are cuddlinghunkes when it comes to reading and righting.
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Teachers. Parents. Lack of gov funding (despite what the article says).
Possibly even something to do with popular culture.
The list of contributary factors could get quite long.....
Depends who you talk to. Of course, teachers unions are basically saying "it's not our fault." Parents of these numbnuts kids will also claim the same thing.
(http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2002-8/48257/Swoop2.gif)
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You're taking it too seriously Swoopy. It's just British humor.
:huh
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make the factors as long as you like but if you have a student for 8 hours a day every day for 12 years and you can't teach him to read and write and do simple math then...
your institution and your teachers are crap. I say "your" but I mean ours also.
Blame is what socialists do to take the heat off of their failed ideas.
lazs
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heh reminds of the song flagpole sitting by greenday
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Originally posted by JBA
Why whenever a state employee performs their job poorly the blame everyone else.
"Last night teachers claimed young people were being let down by a "flawed, exam-based" education system."
Same Crap, diffrent country.
I have a colleague who’s wife is a teacher, we were discussing days off. She has worked part time for two years and earns 30 sick days a year, every holiday on the calendar, and two months off in the summer.
Meanwhile our kids are cuddlinghunkes when it comes to reading and righting.
My mom was a teacher. She was underpaid, kept working with students well after the "end of the day" was always writing lesson plans or grading papers after coming home and cooking dinner and she often used her own money to buy supplies or books to enhance her class. Not to mention the time spent on PTA meetings, parent conferences........ Teaching is NOT a 9-5 job.
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mt... how was she "underpaid" except by her standards? What part time worker made as much?
in her part time job that was maybe 6 months a year.. she worked 8 hour days at that job... of those 8... she probly actually taught... maybe 5.. the rest was breaks... if you can't do the work in those breaks (correcting papers and such) then you are incompetent or.... the load is too great for the day.
I would say that they should stay at the school and finish the work on overtime. if the overtime gets to be too much then I would say... less classes per teacher but no time off... make em work full time like EVERY OTHER FRIGGING WORKER ON THE PLANET
lazs
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6 months of school? Maybe in lazs world.
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Im not a huge believer in the underpaid teachers claim.
Much for the same reasons Laz describes.
And it is obvious that throwing money at the problem isn't the answer.
Mainly because most of the money never reaches the areas where its needed most.
The children.
Don't know about the rest of the country but to a large extent here in jersey our education system is top heavy at the administrative level.
We actually have more school districts then we have municipalities.
If that isnt top heavy I dont know what is.
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Just as long as they don't start listening to country music.
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Originally posted by midnight Target
6 months of school? Maybe in lazs world.
I think the point is for the time they work they get paid plenty.
If you broke it down by the day how much they made for the days they spent teaching at school. And added to that all the days they get off in a years time.
You would find they would make quite a nice salary.
Now if you want to look at it for an entire 52 week year. Then, yea they don't get paid a lot
the point is they do not work a full year. Thus they don't get paid for a full year.
But they do get paid pretty good for the time they are there
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Laz, I used to think that way until my wife started teaching. I used to give her a hard tiem about here 'short work day' and all those days off she had. Until I sat down and looked at all the BS she has to deal with.
She teaches 2nd grade. Students arrive at 7:45, leave at 2:30. There is no 'overtime' pay for teachers, they are salary positions.
Sure she gets more holidays than me, but those days where the students are off that are listed as teacher workdays, are normally 8-10 hour days for the teachers. They have open meetings atleast once per month with the parents that start at 3:30 in the afternoon and run until 8:00 at night. She is constantly sent to pointless training siminars during the year. She always has a stack of papers to grade when she gets home. Ridiculous amounts of bureacratic paperwork to fill out for the school. They have changed the report cards here, you no longer get ABCDF, or a #, you get a Below-Basic, Basic, Proficient and it's not just the main subjects, you get those 'results' for all the subcatagories of the each subject. report cards are 3 pages long for 2nd graders. Also, my wife always has a stack of government paperwork to fill out for her student's parents. She works a low income school district and is always filling out paperwork for learning disabilities so that the parents can get an extra check from Uncle Sam. In addition to all the government BS, they also have a program at the Elementary school to help teach the parents what the students are learning so that the parents can help the kids at home.
One big problem she runs into is discipline. Most of her students don't get any at home, and the school cannot really do anything but suspend them and that does nothing but give them free time at home. She has a hard time getting the 'gaurdians' to take an active role with the students. Most are raised by Grandma or an Aunt because 'momma is always drunk, high or in jail, and they have no clue who daddy is'. Another problem she has is kids in 2nd grade that shouldn't be. The school district will not 'fail' a student without the parents agreement. She has 2nd graders that can't write their own name and don't know their ABC's past P.
I still give here a hard time about how 'easy' of a job she has, but I know that she does alot more work than the $30k/year she makes.
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Originally posted by Tiger
One big problem she runs into is discipline. Most of her students don't get any at home, and the school cannot really do anything but suspend them
There ya go.
Thats a HUGE part of the problem.
Back in my day I remember a teacher bouncing an eraser off one kids head because he wouldnt shut up in class.
He went home and complained to his parents about it and the end result was He got butt reddened and was grounded for a week by his parents for talking in class.
Back then if you got in trouble in school, or with another adult in the neighborhood even you didnt dare tell your parents about it.
If you did your parents first quetion almost without exeption was. "Well what did YOU do to deserve it?" Then your parents kicked your butt too.
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yep... 6 months a year if you count holidays and summer.
I would rather pay the teachers overtime that hear em whine.
What other job do you get to claim that you are working at home and have that be a reason to not work 6 months of the year?
If they are doing overtime then make em do it at work. then we will see just how long it really takes to grade those papers. I am willing to pay then overtime for work done at the school and justified... the overtime must be paid for over 40 hours a week and only after 2000 hrs a year are accumulated (sick time counts as does a few weeks vacation)
I am sick of them telling me how hard they work when no one is watching.
lets get it out in the open.. who knows how well they are doing? if we actually made em stay at the facility to do their overtime we could see who was doing a good job and who was not.
As it is... even the worst teacher can claim to be working 24 hours a day.
lazs
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Having young daugters that soon will go to school, things like these give me the chill...
If they are well educated before they are there, they are going to be bored.
If they are under the bar, they are ... under the bar.
Anyway, IMHO, a lot of a child's education comes (and should indeed) from the parents. When I was 5, I knew that London was in England, while an incredible number of U.S. Highschool graduates do not! HTF!!!!????
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Lazs, you've taken the right step in adopting an active role in the education of your granddaughter. Private schools offer a viable, yet much maligned alternative to the overburdened public school system.
I taught for 27 years in public schools. One of the biggest problems that we faced as educators was parental apathy. Many just don't give a damn. Try teaching the children of a parent who has such an attitude and you'll soon get an inkling of the sort of frustration that a dedicated teacher faces.
A surprisingly large number of teachers do NOT belong to the NEA or any other teachers' union. The NEA does NOT speak for me, especially on the political front. The NEA often throws up barriers against the adoption of meaningful and badly needed changes in the education system.
For much of my career I was fortunate enough to teach at a small rural district which was well funded by local taxes, voted in by a citizenry that believed steadfastly in the worth of their little school. It was killed off and forced into consolidation by the state's governor, Mike Huckabee, who believed that the state's educational system was top heavy with administration. Bigger is better, don't ya'll know?!
Dred, many of the problems of the American educational system lie in the gigantic size of its schools and districts. How much individual attention and discipline training can a teacher give a student in a school that is the size of a small town? In such a system, children with problems fall through the cracks.
Certainly, our schools share part of the blame for the decline in academic achievement. They have their share of deadbeat employees and superfluous and lightweight academic programs. Yet, Swoop was dead on when he said that the list of contributary factors was very long.
My friends, I earned my money; driving buses, breaking up fights, counseling troubled students, attending idiotic and redundant workshops, dealing with smart-ass parents and their punk kids, grading mountainous stacks of homework and tests, preparing my classes for state-sponsored written exams (Thank you SO much, governor Huckabee for the Benchmark), trying to catch students rumored to be fornicating on the school grounds, sponsoring clubs, running the clock at basketball games after hours during the school week and for end of season tournaments.
I've retired from public school teaching. Now I work trying to educate juvenile delinquents, where the problems are compounded. With my retirement check and my bi-weekly salary I'm finally earning enough to catch up on paying off debts that have been hanging over my head for years.
Yet, I'd rather take a beating from three irate Irishmen that listen to people who have never walked my path whining about teacher salaries.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Give up your high-paying jobs and spend a few years teaching if you want to find out what it's really all about.
Regards, Shuckins
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Originally posted by midnight Target
My mom was a teacher. She was underpaid, kept working with students well after the "end of the day" was always writing lesson plans or grading papers after coming home and cooking dinner and she often used her own money to buy supplies or books to enhance her class. Not to mention the time spent on PTA meetings, parent conferences........ Teaching is NOT a 9-5 job.
I've never met a teacher to ever worked anything close to straight school hours. Actually, I met one... and she hated people (not just children, all people in general) ~ I could never understand why she was a teacher.
Anyhow, teachers are incredible.
*edit* oh, and on top of teaching the kids, they end up managing the undisciplined ones who's parents don't give a crap about how their kids actually behave. Then they have to put up with all the crap the parents dish out when the administration doles out consequences for the crap the kids get in trouble for (trouble which wouldn't have taken place to begin with if the parents enforced or instilled any discipline)
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Just because I think she deserves it...
Mom never taught in a public school. She always felt as though she had more control over her students in a private (catholic) school. This also explains why I said she was underpaid. She had the reputation of being the toughest teacher in the school and noone talked back to her twice. She was recognized nationally as a top Elementary teacher. She passed away at age 58 and there were over 600 people at her funeral.
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Vouchers is the answer in the US and likely elsewhere schools are government run. Allowing a family (that couldn't financially otherwise) to choose a school that performs will raise the standard. Competition is good. Anyone who denies that is simply lazy and doesn't want to compete, imo.
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As long as "they" (teacher's unions and politicians) refuse to accept that just under 50% of the population are below average, our schools will continue to get worse. There MUST be stratification and targeted learning objectives that are based on actual abilities rather than arbitrary normative goals. Without these targeted objectives, slower kids become alienated and "graduate" with no practical skills, faster kids become bored, cynical, are held back, and "graduate" with a fraction of the abilities they are capable of, and the rich kids go to private schools and "graduate" with a significant educational advantage but no concept of how to deal with the common folk.
That's true in both the US and the UK.
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heheheheh shuckins said forrrrrrrrrrrnicating.
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Originally posted by JBA
Meanwhile our kids are cuddlinghunkes when it comes to reading and righting.
Please.. somebody... anybody tell me I am not the only one who laughed hysterically at the irony in this statement. :rofl
Tell me I'm not the only one who gets it.
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Originally posted by SteveBailey
Please.. somebody... anybody tell me I am not the only one who laughed hysterically at the irony in this statement. Tell me I'm not the only one who gets it.
:)
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Here, let me do my teacher thingy:
'cuddlinghunkes' should be spelled 'handsomehunkes'.
'Righting' should be spelled 'writing'.
Bwaahaahaahaahaa!>
Aahh me!
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Originally posted by Swoop
Last night teachers claimed young people were being let down by a "flawed, exam-based" education system.
Well, sure. Just quit giving any exams at all and the problem goes away.
Good solution; I'm not suprised it took teachers to find it and propose it though.
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Actually "Bwaahaahaahaahaa" is spelled with 9 a's.
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shukins...you may have noticed that I said that with vouchers rural schools would still probly be mostly public schools and that... rural public schools were not the horror that urban ones were.
That being said... you belonging to the NEA or not.. it is a powerful union that DOES represent most teachers and it is strongly against any choice and do nothing but pass blame and social engineering of our kids.. they vote liberal socialist as a block.
Earn your money? maybe. I would rather not take your word for it tho... or anyones on any job.. You admit that many teachers were a waste but.. the NEA won' t let us get rid of em.. in kalifornia... only one in 900 is ever fired.
Teachers are not more honest or better than everyone else.. they need to work 8 hours a day... if they can't finish their work in that time then stay over and finish.. they would get overtime when authorized.. If there is too much overtime then it will be easy to see why.. the teachers that can't do the job should be let go and... if all are having a hard time keeping up then the school year needs to be extended with shorter days (for the kids not the teachers).
I don't believe anyone regardless of profession who says that they are working thousands of free hours a year at home. I don't want that in any case.
let em do their work at the jobsite like everyone else.
As for "taking an interest" if you can't teach a kid basic reading and simple math in 12 years of having them most of their waking life... it is you who is to blame..
How bout you let us teach our kids morals and about life and you teach em to read? then we will know who to blame for what.
lazs
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There are many who seem to think their responsibility for the education of their offspring is served by only dumping the kid off in front of the school. This is not and never has been true. The responsibility for the kid is the parents job. Education is just one aspect. You cannot expect a teacher or school to housebreak, socialize, provide a moral base, feed, monitor health as well as educate the child. You might think this is not the case that people bring kids and dump them on the school grounds who are not even potty trained but it is true, I've seen it.
If you as a parent are not concerned enough to look over the kids work, grades, attendance and show up for parent teacher conferences, why would you think your kid gives any more of a damn about their education than you do? They will mimic the home environment they come from. The school has them for 6 to 7 hours a day about 5 of which is in class. The rest of the time is based on what kind of environment they live in. The school does not provide a stability in their lives, the home does.
One of the biggest advantages a private (catholic or other) school has is that the parents care about the education for their child. They demonstrate it in picking the school, being involved and making sure the kid does what they are supposed to do. That means they also support a structured and calm environment in the classroom and will not tolerate their kid creating a scene day in and day out several times a day. It's their money being used to educate their kid. Often parents seem to feel free is best simply because it costs them nothing out of pocket. They value the education for what they feel it cost them, nothing. The kid gets the message there too. It cost nothing and is worth nothing so there is no reason to do or learn anything.
Bottom line, if you think just having the kid in the building ends your responsibility for their education, the kid won't think they have to do anything more than that either. They will show as much care and concern about it as you do. If the parent does not care about their kids education, neither will the kid.
Basing an education on grades is one thing. There has been talk about basing teacher pay on "performance". If you are going to base the pay on one item, what do you think the teacher is going to concentrate on? If it's "passing the grade" do you think they would even think of holding a non performer back? If the teachers job is based on the exam grades, what do think they will do to keep their job? I can guarantee it won't be to hold kids to actual performance standards and lessons will look very much like the state standardized tests.
It's a shame you can't grade parents the same way.
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Who can argue that the parent/teacher relationship isn't symbiotic? They must work together to produce society sustaining organisms. Government should have no dictatorial role in this process, imo.
Time for the Cowboy game and I'm juiced. ;)
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Lazs, the amount of hours needed to grade papers and make corrections has to be experienced to be believed. Especially English essays and the like.
If I'm doing my job correctly, it takes at least two hours a night, and many nights much more. Often I didn't lay the last paper aside until 11:00 p.m. Weekend breaks were a horrendous joke. If I went out of town with the wife, I carried a stack of papers. If I was watching a football game with Dad, I watched it while grading papers. If I watched tv, I did so while grading papers.
After retiring, it took me two months to uncross my eyes and pry the pen from my fingers.
I agree with you that small private or public schools are the way to go. I've taught at both large and small schools, and I can state emphatically that "small" is the way to go. The statements made over the last 30 years that larger is more efficient are complete balderdash. Large size merely compounds the problems and makes them much harder to deal with.
More men are needed in education. The number is at an all time low. They are needed as role models, to provide discipline and muscle when needed, and to add backbone to a system that is often over-nurturing. The types who aren't easily hood-winked or "played" by miscreant students.
More rigor in the earliest years of a student's education is the greatest problem that needs to be addressed by today's schools. No child should be passed from the third grade until they have mastered the multiplication tables. I can't tell you the number of times I have received a new 7th grade class, fresh from our elementary system, and found that some of my charges can't do double-digit multiplication problems, or couldn't read beyond the third grade level.
That is an inexcusable failure of the elementary school system.
I support the voucher system for two reasons: it gives concerned parents an option other than the public schools; and it forces the public schools to reassess their failed approaches to education to keep from losing students, and thus, state money allotments for those students.
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mav and shuckins.. you want me to take more time in my kids education? then give em back more hours of the day.
You say that you can't do your work in 8 hours.. that it takes 2 hours to grade papers? Then close the school to students and 1500 and grade papers till 1700. work 8 hours a day for the entire year.
If you still can't get finished... work overtime or shorten the school day another hour.. if 5% of the teachers can't keep up.. get rid of em.
Are you saying that I should believe every teacher that says they are busting their butts working at home where no one can see em? laughable... I have known plenty of teachers... I have two cousins that are teachers and they are inneficient and lazy in everything else... why would they be any different as teachers.
I do not want to trust teachers any more than any other worker. You work overtime then it needs to be supervised or I don't believe it. You need to do it at the place you work. You don't need to shut down those expensive facilities half the year and then complain you have "no time" to do your work.
Work a real 8 hours like everyone else.
lazs
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Laz,
I've actually done that job as well as other jobs so I know what an 8 hour and a 10+ hour day is like. You won't believe me anyhow so there is not much point in telling you different. I've been there and done it I don't need anecdotes from relatives to tell me what it's like.
I do have a novel idea for you to try. Do you have a Bachelors degree? If so you might want to try teaching a bit yourself. Be a substitute teacher for a while. Once you get in a classroom and try it you might see things a bit differently. It will be teaching without all of the requirements of the job as you won't be making all the class lesson plans and won't be responsible for much grading. You'll still get a taste of what it's like. You can even try elementary school which would be easier than dealing with middle or high school.
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A very dear friend of mine, now departed, taught school in a small Kansas country town pre-WW2 and for a bit after.
They had the kids about 5 hours a day, tops; kids had farm chores to do you know. Real work for the family type stuff.
She always laughed later on when her daughter-in-law principal used to complain that nowadays they just didn't have the kids long enough to teach them what they needed to know.
Her comment was they managed to get very good proficiency in reading, writing and arithmetic in about 4 hours a day, with NO homework. The kids didn't have time for homework when they got up with the sun and went to bed when it got dark and had to do their chores.
It's all about priorities folks.
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Originally posted by SteveBailey
Please.. somebody... anybody tell me I am not the only one who laughed hysterically at the irony in this statement. :rofl
Tell me I'm not the only one who gets it.
:rofl :rofl :rofl :rofl :rofl :rofl
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Originally posted by Toad
A very dear friend of mine, now departed, taught school in a small Kansas country town pre-WW2 and for a bit after.
They had the kids about 5 hours a day, tops; kids had farm chores to do you know. Real work for the family type stuff.
She always laughed later on when her daughter-in-law principal used to complain that nowadays they just didn't have the kids long enough to teach them what they needed to know.
Her comment was they managed to get very good proficiency in reading, writing and arithmetic in about 4 hours a day, with NO homework. The kids didn't have time for homework when they got up with the sun and went to bed when it got dark and had to do their chores.
It's all about priorities folks.
Pretty much same with i.e. my grandparents, - and although I picked up more education then they eventually had at the age, - with twice or many times the time, - they would surprize me with their knowledge. And the basics were just fine.
Many people really want to have the school do a job for them, and often there is not much reward in preparing the child well, for the school will keep the speed of the slow ones. The better informed get bored.
So, I have 3 years before my older daughter starts school, and I'm already sweating. She even knows who the red Baron was and speaks German as well :D
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While there are certainly some exceptions to the rule I've had some personal bad experiences with teachers.
Dunno what you guys call it but when I was 16 I had a physics teacher who refused to answer my questions in class, he basically ignored me entirely. I complained to our 'form' teacher, he advised me he'd check it out but didn't really believe me. A week or so later I overhead a fellow student making the same complaint.
I confronted our form teacher on the spot, and his answer was basically 'what can we do, we can't get another physics teacher quickly so him teaching some of the class is better than none at all'. Well, turns out he was wrong. You see this physics teacher taught some wierd prettythang eastern physics notation, I self taught myself based on some american book I picked up (which was awesome). Turns out the NZ University Entrance exams were based on the american system. All but two of the class failed, me and another student.
I also had similar experiences with an english teacher. We were asked to write about significant experiences we'd had. I decided to write about a war exercise I participated in (I was in Air Cadets, we provided opposing forces to out territorials - who are kinda like the national guard - weekend warriors :) ). During that exercise I had about 6 hours sleep over 4 or 5 days. On the last day I was so physically exhausted I was hallucinating / dreaming while standing up. I was quite an experience. So I wrote about that, she failed me saying what I wrote was rubbish (fantasy), and inappropriate to write about 'war'.
These weren't the only two, but highlighted experiences I've had with teachers over the years. I will say I had some very good teachers as well, but the bad ones need to be weeded out.
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mav... that is all well and good.. so what is wrong with my suggestion? why not let em work 8 hours 52 weeks a year (minus 12 holidays and 2-4 weeks paid vacation a year and have short 4-5 hour school days FOR THE KIDS.
Why not pay overtime for any work that doesn't get done? Why the hell should I believe the teacher who says that they are killing themselves working... all of it out of sight and unsupervised? Why do they insist on working 24 hours a day 6 months of the year?
What good is a bunch of expensive facilities left vacant half the year???
And.. what is with all the blaming and whining?
"its the parents fault" "we don't have enough money" "the classes are too big"
BS... toad gives an example... In my case.. the catholic school I went to had 50-60 or so per class... my parents never helped me with my homework... if they did... and the nun found out... she would have failed us. Now all of a sudden.. the parents have to work full time (that is 52 weeks not half a year) and then.. come home and teach their kids????
If I were a teacher.... I would not work at home. I would be blaming the system that allowed the kids to stay home for months at a time not learning....no... forgeting everything I had taught them earlier.
You don't apprentice as a machinist say... by going at it 6 months a year.. Taking 3 months off or more to forget what you learned.
So far as I am concerned.. the teachers who claim they can't teach don't have a leg to stand on if they continue to advocate the current system.
They are either liars or incompetent.
I don't have a BS degree but... if it is the thing most teachers have then I see how it got it's initials.
lazs
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Silly question I gotta ask. What are the school dates in the US then?
Cos in Britain it's 6 weeks off over the summer, a 1 week half term break, 3 weeks off for xmas, another half term break, 2 weeks off at easter and another half term break.
14 weeks off in total, the rest are school days.
(http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2002-8/48257/Swoop2.gif)
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It varies but... about twice that ours are off if you count all the other holidays and the "teacher days" (no school)
also.. the kids are only in the class, being taught, about 4-5 actual hours a day. the teachers have hour long breaks and shorter ones between each class..
In every case.. kids leave a couple hours early (before the teachers).
lazs
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our hours are 9am til 4pm with around an hour and a half in breaks.
Least it was when I was at school.....um.....a while back.
(http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2002-8/48257/Swoop2.gif)