<p>Yes. Parents in other countries prize education and intelligence way more than here. This country was founded by entrepreneurs primarily. I mean, thats the foundation of the American Dream. I’m gonna make it after all! Make some money, get fast cars, and get lots of women! We have to change the foundation, the culture of America before education system can truly be revamped. I think there is hope though, the simple fact that there ARE parents here and elsewhere that care about education for their kids. You should be proud to have raised great kids! I for one will make sure to teach my kids that saying I had before:</p>
<p>“They can take your money, house, and possessions, but no one can take your education or what you’ve learned from you. No one.” </p>
<p>Education is truly the way out of any difficult situation. For those who think their kids are athletic enough to make the national teams…well, I wish you luck, but STILL have education as a back up. After all, your kid has to be damn LUCKY to get in and make sure he/she doesn’t injure himself/herself. Education is the best thing to happen to humanity.</p>
<p>“However, I believe the root of the problem lies in the parents of students. A nurturing educational environment must start at home. Read to children when they are young so they are interested in learning to read as they get older (though a problem does arise with the high rates of adult illiteracy…), get them interested in learning, and most of all, allow your children to realize that education is cool and don’t let the other children get to them in middle/high school.”</p>
<p>I think some parents that do these things when their kids are young still don’t make an impact on them. Some just get into 8th or 9th grade (or somewhere in that range) and are fine with doing the bare minimum needed to get out of high school even if they were interested in reading and stuff when they were little kids.</p>
well, they may or may not be better, but in most Western European and many Asian countries parents have at least signed up for the job rather than having it thrust upon them by an accidental pregnancy. The problems with education in this country span all the way from conception through parenting, teachers, schools, higher education, attitudes about intelligence, race relations, political correctness. It is truly multi-factorial.</p>
<p>northeastmom - I am not a physician and I am not referring to private physicians at all. In the hospital setting you have many people who see/manage patients who are not paid very much at all but who are highly accountable and responsible for patient care and outcome. Think about lab techs, CT/MRI techs, nutritionists, physical therapists, etc. I work in a hospital, we are not turning anyone away without the state coming after us and without losing our licenses. Private doctors are another story but you would be suprised by the regulations that surround acceptance of patients. If you want to be part of HMO “X” you are not turning away any of their patients without losing your contract. If you want to receive Medicare funding, you are not turning away their patients either or you will not be able to see any other Medicare clients. Treatment options is an interesting comment because healthcare has developed many “standards of practice” based on analysis of current research and effectiveness. Most providers are held to these standards of practice by their HMOs, and/or to protect themselves legally from malpractice suits. There might be a different pill or option to choose but most MDs and treatment providers cannot stray too far from standards of care without risk. The point I would like to make here is that physicians and healthcare financiers (HMOs, for example) get together and decide - what is the current best method of treating x, y, z. This was generated by a desire to curtail finances but it has also helped keep older physicians and providers current with efficacy in treatment. I have often thought that education was ripe for similar assessment of efficacy in school structure, teaching methods, curriculum development, etc. I don’t want to get into an argument about best practices in medicine - that is a huge area of discussion. I just wanted to point out that we do not treat patients based on local or historic practices - treatment must be current, they are reviewed consistently, etc.</p>
<p>As for time, I wish I had some extra hours to take on other means of supplementing my income. You presume that your pay is lower than healthcare providers and that we do not need to supplement our incomes. I bet you would be surprised, education for education, hour for hour, responsibility for responsibility with starting pay, merit raises and especially benefits compared with those of teachers. My pay is based on being here and completing a certain level of patient care/productivity whether I stay 10 hours or 8. I do not have weeks off with my children, or summers and I cannot retire at 55 because I have put in a certain number of years - that type of benefit is rare in hospitals. I admire teachers and see them as other service providers who have many “customers” but I don’t think it would hurt for some teachers to follow me around for a day and compare education, pay, and responsibilities/accountability. (I have a professional doctorate in my field, and many healthcare providers have at least a master’s plus licensure in their fields). In our community, teachers make significantly more money than most healthcare providers and have significantly better benefits hour to hour. If you are comparing teachers and physicians I think that is different although, frankly, I think I could make a case for many physicians to come up a bit short hour for hour in pay at least.</p>
<p>This is so true. But poor parenting is not the monopoly of poor, uneducated parents. In our k-12 school, the most vociferous advocates of no homework, kindergarten as socializing time rather than learning time tended to be middle class parents. The thread about a judge wanting a teacher to redo a recommendation also show that some parents, no matter what their level of education and social status, can behave quite unethically and pass on their lack of standards to their children. That thread reminded me irresistibly of the Blair Hornstine case.</p>
<p>I like the idea of 1st grade, but your surprise made me think that I would support this for 2nd grade as well. I think that’s a pretty fair expectation. I know that I learned all of my times tables by the middle of 2nd grade and my dad told me he learned them the summer between 1st and 2nd. So I guess the end of 2nd grade is more realistic of an expectation.</p>
<p>Point is, expectations should be high for kids.</p>
<p>I honestly was shocked by the expectations in the NCLB act. Seriously… kids in other countries go through much more rigorous curriculums and our kids shouldn’t go through anything easier.</p>
<p>I addressed this concern in the rest of that post. The problem that most of these students ran into (myself included, I came from an extremely nurturing environment, reading at age 4) is the stagnation period in of learning old material middle school (which includes 8th grade). </p>
<p>Now what I think a better issue to bring up with that quote is the problem with adult illiteracy in the country. Many low-income parents can not read to their children and to help nip the problem of children not having a nuturing educational environment at home would be to work on the problem of adult illiteracy now! Offer free seminars to teach adults truely wanting to learn how to read with flexible hours. I believe if the child actively sees their parents trying to do something truely hard and challenging, like learn how to read as an adult, it will help the lower-income population gain an interest in their own education and be a snow-ball effect of sorts. I know this is very idealized and hinges on the adults wanting/having time to take on such an effort as learning to read, but it would do a lot for this country as a whole if there was a way it could work out.</p>
<p>Reeze:</p>
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<p>Yes. It should, however, when do you expect teachers to be able to fit times tables into the 1st/2nd grade curriculum when that is designated time for learning to add/subtract/write/etc.? Without a standard pre-school education in the US I feel it is unfair to expect students to gain all of these skills on top of learning multiplication tables at such a young age. If a parent wants to go above and beyond and teach a student times tables during this time, they are more than welcome to try in my mind. However, it is hard to do so in the classroom environment of a homogenous 1st/2nd grade class with vastly different pre-school (or lack there-of) backgrounds.</p>
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<p>You have missed the point of previous posters, in the United States, all students both gifted, ‘average’ and those with developmental problems are held to the same standards. In most countries around the world, those with developmental problems are put into a different ‘pool’ you may say and held to their own standards that are more reasonable than that of a student without said disabilities. This gets to the heart of the problem with the NCLB Act in its current state, you can not hold students of all different abilities to the same standards (whether they are rigorous or not).</p>
<p>“Teachers unions aren’t just pro-teacher, they’re anti-student.”</p>
<p>As a teacher and a building rep for our teacher’s association I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth. My colleagues among the building reps in our association are as dedicated to their students as any group of teachers I have ever been associated with.</p>
<p>In response to the earlier post from the person in the health care field. They commented about teachers who complained they had to meet with parents before or after school. It saddens me to hear that. Meeting with parents is a part of our profession. I will say this earlier this week I had a morning conference scheduled with a parent who no-showed for the fifth time this year. Perhaps the number of no shows by a single parent is an anomoly but I have lost count of the number of times parents have insisted on coming in for a conference only to no-show or show up extremely late.</p>
<p>I don’t think the problem is just the parents, but I think the catalyst for change will have to come from parents. Like the old adage says ‘if you aren’t part of the solution, you are part of the problem’.</p>
<p>Simply not true on the tertiary level. Worth reading the article in The Economist, 27 October 2005 or the paper published by Aghion and Hewitt, excerpted below:</p>
<p>We may have a loosey goosey primary and secondary public school system, but we dominate the world in tertiary education investment, private and publicly funded.</p>
<p>Rileydog, You make some very good points. I am not in the teaching profession, and never have been. I still maintain that a physician, or other healthcare specialist (psychologist, physical therapist etc.) can get rid of a non-compliant patient. One does not have to refuse to treat somone in a healthcare plan. One can simply refer them to another specialist or back to the primary healthcare physician if treatment is not working. It is more difficult for a teacher to explain that a student is not learning, and therefore requires an evaluation. Schools often wait for the child to fail and then they often move at a snail’s pace.</p>
<p>I agree with you about summers and pensions, and those are the wonderful perks of teaching for the public schools. Our family does not have these benifits either.</p>
<p>“”“Teachers unions aren’t just pro-teacher, they’re anti-student.”</p>
<p>As a teacher and a building rep for our teacher’s association I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth. My colleagues among the building reps in our association are as dedicated to their students as any group of teachers I have ever been associated with."</p>
<p>Wharfrat, rather than assure us, why don’t you explain what you think the unions should DO to change the current system. So far, all I’ve read is that the cause of the current failure starts with the parents. However, if the parents have the ultimate responsibility, one could question why they would not have the ultimate choice in how the education is given. Of course, we all know that the parents do not have such choice. Unless, they accept to pay more, they have to pay their taxes and have to send their schools to the “system.” Along the way, the concept of consumers has vanished, as well as the fact that teachers ARE paid to provide education. </p>
<p>But back, to the original question. Since you are convinced that the union shoudl be further developed, why don’y you share with us how much time you spend “building” the organization and how much time on matters that make the school better or the students better. </p>
<p>Lastly, how do feel on making the unions dues voluntary?"</p>
<p>Cheers, the comparison between tertiary education and elementary and secondary education is interesting. Despite the fact that a different sampling of the population (22-45 versus 25-64) may yield a different result, we should also note that students in the tertiary system do have … choices. Could that play a role?</p>
<p>Yeah I was referring to primary/secondary education. And thanks for bringing tertiary education up. Yes, in college/grad school education we have a lot of places beat but that is because of our strong focus on research/MONEY to spend/new-fangled technology. Also it’s ironic that our college education is more accessible to American students who are typically (please don’t misjudge this as a blanket statement!) less prepared than the international students who come here and have to pay full tuition. Honestly, in terms of education, America is great in tertiary, not great for secondary/primary. The way other countries teach students/educate students must be working. </p>
<p>Moral: come to america for grad school not K-12.</p>
<p><quote>“Teachers unions aren’t just pro-teacher, they’re anti-student.”</quote></p>
<p>This is sooooo true… Anytime there is more money allocated for education (whether its intended target is building improvements, more books, or retaining programs), the powerful teachers union lobbies that the money will go to hiring more (dues paying) educators – always. And it doesn’t matter to the teachers union if the new educators ever are in a classroom – it’s ok with them if they reside in the district office’s ivory tower. All the union cares about is having more numbers to pay their dues.</p>