Sunday, October 14, 2012

A wee little rant

Make a freaking choice, people. 

America is lagging behind the majority of the developed and developing world in terms of educating our children. This is because we are more interested in coddling, fawning over, and awarding mediocrity in our offspring instead of challenging them, making them learn, study, and work, or pushing them in any way.

Early education is done in the least interesting and effective manner possible and students are passed from grade to grade without mastery of essential skills (I think school grades should be run according to the pirate code, "Him what falls behind, is left behind." and attaching age to grade needs to die).

We are turning out ignorant but confident idiots who are incapable of dealing with their own finances, the challenges of college and adult life, and who think glancing at the second page of a Google search should qualify as exhaustive research. Scholastic dishonesty is rampant, and some parents want it overlooked, but only in their own children. Football stadiums are prioritized over textbooks and school libraries are languishing un-staffed, and under-stocked.

Despite these obvious problems, many parents handicap teachers at every turn, making it impossible for them to challenge students or have reasonably high expectations. Most teachers that actually demands excellence of students can anticipate complaints from parents and school administration pressure to tone it down. As if that were not enough of a recipe for failure— then you have the clever policy of attaching teacher incentives to student testing results and thereby guarantee that the lazy, little dimwits are only ever going to be taught to a test because parents cannot be relied on to offer anything other than excuses for their children's ignorance and indolence, leaving teachers no support or recourse to deal with the disrespectful, inattentive, privilege-expecting laggards they are tasked with instructing. 
Oh, and don't get me started on class rooms, just check out this link.
We really need to get our act together people.

3 comments:

lime said...

you have hit upon some of the problems with which i agree. another MAJOR issue is the over emphasis on testing mandated by NCLB in order for schools to make this absurd thing called adequate yearly progress. it all sounds very nice until you understand what it actually requires. every student in every school to be proficient on these tests. perhaps in a closed system with students who all fall from the top of the bell curve down to the end on the side above average but you're not gogin to have a severely autistic child pass some absurd standardized test. you're also not going to have some immigrant kid who just moved to the US and doesnt even speak english pass either. doesn't mean the immigrant is unintelligent but how well would you do on a test given in mandarin chinese? yeah.

so we have curricula being absolutely gutted to make time to for test prep, which is really just "this is how the test works, this is how you pass it." and this is because if a school doesn't make AYP for so many years they lose funding and students can transfer elsewhere. it's an absurd system. and as you've pointed out...it's not the students fault if they fail...it's the teachers'....as far as the government is concerned. it doesn't matter if the kids who fail come form homes where there is no supervision, no expectation that they do homework, no consequences for poor behavior in school, perhaps not enough money to buy food so the kids are hungry, and the list goes on.

and then there are charter schools. let me tell you, people think they are so much better...but guess what, they get higher ratings because like private schools, they don't have to admit anyone they don't want...but public schools do. and let me tell you, i have seen some charter school curricula...and it sucked.

yeah, don't start me...oops...too late.

Anonymous said...

whats you're point?

Logophile said...

Lime~ Thank you!

Cooper~ GAH!