Our failing educational system

You’re soooo nice, Ball. Gee, whiz. I graduated from the university with honors. I have a master’s plus. I did take and do just fine on the GRE (graduate school testing). I also once took and performed respectably on the LSAT.

I don’t consider myself overly bright. I did pass the teacher test the first time through with flying colors.

Maybe our push to get everyone on the U.S. to college is something we should reconsider. You are giving us “proof” that not everyone has high intelligence. If this is the case, is there any reason why everyone should pursue a rigorous academic course in life?

Perhaps there is something wrong with education that we are not considering. There are millions or more teachers in the U.S. It would be really nice if all teachers had high average or better intelligence (although human factors often play a greater role). Since statistically not everyone has high intelligence, I wonder how we can attract more of this talent into education?

Did we ever stop and ask if the job teachers are being asked to do is actually one that a single person CAN do with the resources that are provided? I haven’t heard that question asked. I know I can’t do my job as I believe it should be done with the hours in the day and the single aide that I am provided. So, I work pretty darn hard to do the difficult (do more than is humanly possible in the course of a school day).

WELL said, Anitya!!!

Ball, I feel your anger, and I do understand it, from the POV of a parent who watched their child experience reading failure in Gr. 1 at the hands of a kind teacher who did NOT have the tools to teach him, then watched him suffer a bully of a grade 2 teacher who didn’t like it that I wouldn’t play the ‘LD game’ since the private tutor who got him reading the summer before advised me NOT to do so…

BUT: this forum is NOT the place for teacher bashing!! The teachers here are NOT the ones you are against — the teachers here are suffering as much as the children, but instead of giving up and becoming union slaves or burnt out edu-crats, they are STILL TRYING to teach OUR CHILDREN…give it a rest and please keep the rants on the adult boards!!!

The average class size is 19.

When I went to school class sizes were much larger there were no teachers aides but math and reading score were much higher.

When I went to school teacher’s salaries were very low but their skill, dedication and work ethic was higher.

The proof is in the pudding. The fact is IQs are on the rise. The teachers today have potentially better students but school are failing and they are failing miserably. They do nothing to solve the problem. They only pass the buck by blaming students and parents.

We have a failing school system and it is up to the scool systme to own their responsibility, something they refuse to or are unable to do. All they offer is excuses but they seem at a loss when it comes to offering a solution. They can’t offer a solution because the refuse to see the problem or admit that the problem is their doing.

Where are these schools with class sizes of 19? In our district class sizes can be as many as 35-40, with NO teachers aide or any other support. Despite these large numbers and these so called underqualified teachers the students DO well. Or maybe we are just made to believe they are doing well. The majority of the students go on to college and manage to get good jobs. How has the school system failed them? If the poorly qualified teachers did not teach them then who did?

nt

When bureaucrats are trying to impress parents with how much they are doing, they give out statistics like “our teacher-student ratio is 1 to 18!” When they are crying for more money, they bleat “We have 35 students in a class!” BOTH of these can be true in the same system at the same time. You have to be very very careful about the numbers shell game. The teacher-student ratio is the *total* number of teachers divided by the number of students. However, the number of teachers includes a lot of people who aren’t in the classroom: the principal, the vice-principal, and the dean, just for starters. The librarian, who may be actually working, or who may (as in most of the schools I’ve seen) spend her life protecting the books from reaching the children’s hands. In some places, the nurse. Then the number of teachers also includes the special-ed teacher working with the five severely autistic kids, any one of whom would be a full-time job so they aren’t getting off easy either. And the shop teacher who has (by law) only 20 bench places. And the physics teacher who can’t attract more than 15 kids to senior physics because their basic math is so lousy. The end result is that you can have 1800 students and 100 teachers, giving a ratio of 1 to 18, but 50 of those teachers are not in the general ed classrooms, so the 50 general ed classes have 30 to 35 kids in them. I’ve been there and seen it often. Be careful when given statistics not to compare apples and oranges.

Comparing my district to what Victoria says matches. The class sizes here varily widely depending on grade and type of class. My youngest son is in a self contained LD class that has anywhere from 4-16 students (also used as a resource room that is why number varies) and at the high school level it not uncommon for some classes to have as many as 35 students. My daughter who is in 6th grade has 29 students in her class and no teachers aid.

Ball, test scores were not necessarily higher. There are a number of issues. Tests are normed every few years. So, scores are based on the norms.

Test scores are higher than they were when I attended school, by a lot. I started in the late 50’s, in a golden age. HA!

We learned the alphabet and the colors in K. We learned to read via Dick, Jane and Sally in grade one, several hundred words only. I never had writing instruction at any grade level until freshman English in college. We were assigned writing, a little, occasionally, but no one ever taught it.

Math is accelerated by at least two years since my day. Our content area text books in elementary grades are far more challenging to read. OUr kindergarten completes most of first grade curriculum to which I was exposed.

Test scores are not lower in the U.S.

In the late 60’s colleges, in response to Civil Rights, started open enrollments. They actively recruited poor and minority students who had never, as a population group, attended college. This group of students began in the very late 60’s to early 70’s to take the SAT for the first time. SAT scores (averages only) dropped as a result. Some of this drop has been recovered.

My parents and their cronies, as a group, were totally supportive of public education. Maybe they were not always thrilled with every teacher, but they did not make demands, there were no entitlement programs such as we have today. The LD kids got nothing. The ADHD kids were perpetually in trouble and usually dropped out of school. No one thought any slack should be cut a difficult to manage ADHD child because of behavior. Everyone expected kids to tow the line. Today there are a thousand excuses and we spend our times covering our butts from law suits.

I don’t say things used to be all right and today they are all wrong, but I will say that my parents and their generation seemed to view public education as a privilege that was to be appreciated, even when some of the teachers were less than ideal. Today, everybody wants to demand and tell us what we should be doing, where, when and how.

Far more people, in my view, have benefitted from a system that really is based on a factory model, than have ever been failed. We enjoy the world’s highest standard of living and probably the highest rate of college graduation in the world. Not bad for a country that does such an poor job at educating its youth.

Your picture of what public education was is probably not out of the LD perspective,but I can tell you it can be a far different world.

My husband,who was born in 1956,was regularly locked in a coat closet for being hyperactive and perpetually in trouble. Although he was expected to tow the line,when his Irish mother heard about this practice, she went down to the school to assert her own type of equal rights:-) The police was called, but not until mom got her licks in.

It is so much more complicated then it once was,yes I agree,education was considered a priviledge not a given. Teacher’s have a lot more demanded of them,they have a lot of things to make the job easier too. I wish I knew who came up with the worksheet idea,I would take them out and shoot them.

Everyone around the child took on a certain amount of responsibility to see that this child was raised with morals,ideals,and strategies. It is too bad in many ways that we can’t go back to a time where everyone had more respect for one another. I believe it would make things easier for teacher’s if they had the help of the family.

The requirement of ESE teacher’s in my area of Florida is very alarmingly inadequate. The demand for adequately trained teacher’s is growing faster then the supply. It is not an easy answer

All I know is that when I was a child (I am in my 40’s) we didn’t have homework in elementary school. My parents had it so easy…….their philosophy was benign neglect. Wouldn’t work in today’s elementary school world of science projects, book reports, presentations, and the like.

Beth

20 years ago math and reading scores were much higher. 60% of all teachers can not pass their state’s competentcy exams

Betrayed and Bewildered

After revealing the faulty mindset of the education theorists, Rochester cuts to the core issue: the deleterious effect their “pack pedagogy” has had on the quality of instruction in math, reading, language, grammar, social studies, and other content subjects. Children are betrayed by the resulting fuzzy math, whole language, crippled standards, and assessments made so vague as to be meaningless. Parents are bewildered.

Concerned parents who join curriculum “committees” are shepherded into the pack mentality of the education theorists. When they meet with educators to develop recommendations, they are rarely presented with all sides of an issue and are seldom informed of all relevant research. Parents who remain critical “end up being demonized as ‘right-wingers’ or troublemakers,” notes Rochester.

Every superintendent Rochester encountered assured him that his or her district had not followed the “pack pedagogy,” but Rochester shows the pack viewpoint prevails from one suburb to the next. The result is the “warfare” of the book’s title, with parents fighting back against the deterioration of academics, with skirmishes over reading or math, charter schools, and campaigns for tougher standards.

The heart of the conflict is over what happens in classrooms. Education theory calls on teachers to be “coaches” rather than the experts and instruction leaders known to earlier generations. Teachers are instilled with the anti-intellectual bias that pervades the schools of education where they learn their trade.

Lectures are frowned upon, notes Rochester, as conferring an unmerited higher status on teachers vis-a-vis their students. But that’s the point, he notes; the purpose of lectures is to convey the teacher’s superior knowledge.

“If you have nothing worth saying, then you should probably not be lecturing; in fact, you probably should not be paid to be at the front of the classroom or anywhere else in the room,” Rochester argues.

The anti-intellectual bias that overwhelms education schools, Rochester says, is leading to a “Socratic method without Socrates.” When parents object to the lack of content in their children’s classes, they “are blasted for appearing disrespectful toward such dedicated professionals.” Yet when assistant superintendents treat the same teachers as empty-headed children, telling them they “are behind the times and must change [toward progressive methods] for their own good, this is called ‘professional development.’”

When Rochester takes a closer look at the schools of education, where teachers learn their profession, he finds the mother lode of bad ideas in education. Their “institutional vapidity” and “focus on process rather than content” left him wondering, “Where’s the beef?” Indeed, Rochester suggests one reason education schools tend to attract lower-achieving students is the mindless coursework education majors must endure.

“To make the teaching profession respectable [and] to improve [K-12] education, get rid of the education major,” suggested one college president.

Class Warfare may be the best source yet for a thoughtful parent or school board member who wants to understand the causes and vast extent of today’s crisis in education.

Kevin Killion ([email protected]) is a director of the Illinois Loop, an education reform group in Illinois. Its Web site is http://www.illinoisloop.org.

For more information …

J. Martin Rochester’s Class Warfare: Besieged Schools, Bewildered Parents, Betrayed Kids and the Attack on Excellence

Don’t trust your school to treat your kids right.

Teaching = part time work with full time pay and you don’t even have to achieve state standards. They call it tenure and a good union negotiating a contract.

I have documented all my statements with with factual evidence.

If you want some anecdotal evidence all you need to do is talk to a college instructor who teaches freshman courses.

I have two friends one is a chemistry prof and a PhD and the other is a retired biology prof. They have wittnessed the steady decline of acedemic ability in freshman students. They chalk it up to poor teaching in K-12.

There are a lot of reasons for our failing educational system but when educators try to lay the blame on students and parent that is where I have to draw the line.

You may be lucky and you may have a good school system in your town. Others are not that fortunate.

One scumbag teacher on another thread tried to blame that on parents to by saying that they shouldn’t have moved to a town with a lousy school system. I wanted to reach through my computer and choke her.

These witches are public servants and lousy ones at that. I realize that you have to walk on eggshells when dealing with one on your child’s behalf as I am sure a lot of you know of incedences of reprisals against student who’s parents have “rocked the boat”

I am not interested in rocking the boat. I am more interested in making some educators walk the plank.

Author: Anitya
Date: 03-25-03 20:30

Quote from Anitya

Math is accelerated by at least two years since my day. Our content area text books in elementary grades are far more challenging to read. OUr kindergarten completes most of first grade curriculum to which I was exposed.

This is an example of flawed educational theory being put into. Math should not be accelerated at all. Children at 5, 6 and 7 are not ready for much more than adding and subtracting. Piaget proved that conclusively many yeras ago but some dim witted educator though it would be a good idea to defy science and logic.

quote: “Far more people, in my view, have benefitted from a system that really is based on a factory model, than have ever been failed. We enjoy the world’s highest standard of living and probably the highest rate of college graduation in the world. Not bad for a country that does such an poor job at educating its youth”.

We DO NOT have the world’s highest standard of living, not by a long shot. I’ll supply those fact if you would like.

I believe that the achievemnets Americans make are in spite of our educational system not because of it.

We do have a good colleges
Anitya wrote:
>
> Ball, test scores were not necessarily higher. There are a
> number of issues. Tests are normed every few years. So,
> scores are based on the norms.
>
> Test scores are higher than they were when I attended school,
> by a lot. I started in the late 50’s, in a golden age. HA!
>
> We learned the alphabet and the colors in K. We learned to
> read via Dick, Jane and Sally in grade one, several hundred
> words only. I never had writing instruction at any grade
> level until freshman English in college. We were assigned
> writing, a little, occasionally, but no one ever taught it.
>
> Math is accelerated by at least two years since my day. Our
> content area text books in elementary grades are far more
> challenging to read. OUr kindergarten completes most of
> first grade curriculum to which I was exposed.
>
> Test scores are not lower in the U.S.
>
> In the late 60’s colleges, in response to Civil Rights,
> started open enrollments. They actively recruited poor and
> minority students who had never, as a population group,
> attended college. This group of students began in the very
> late 60’s to early 70’s to take the SAT for the first time.
> SAT scores (averages only) dropped as a result. Some of this
> drop has been recovered.
>
> My parents and their cronies, as a group, were totally
> supportive of public education. Maybe they were not always
> thrilled with every teacher, but they did not make demands,
> there were no entitlement programs such as we have today.
> The LD kids got nothing. The ADHD kids were perpetually in
> trouble and usually dropped out of school. No one thought
> any slack should be cut a difficult to manage ADHD child
> because of behavior. Everyone expected kids to tow the
> line. Today there are a thousand excuses and we spend our
> times covering our butts from law suits.
>
> I don’t say things used to be all right and today they are
> all wrong, but I will say that my parents and their
> generation seemed to view public education as a privilege
> that was to be appreciated, even when some of the teachers
> were less than ideal. Today, everybody wants to demand and
> tell us what we should be doing, where, when and how.
>
> Far more people, in my view, have benefitted from a system
> that really is based on a factory model, than have ever been
> failed. We enjoy the world’s highest standard of living and
> probably the highest rate of college graduation in the
> world. Not bad for a country that does such an poor job at
> educating its youth.

well lots of anger, lots of valid points, but- hmm some of the diatribes- bitchy witchy midol etc, etc, sounds little personal- remember the business about getting more flies with honey than vinegar dahlink? My poor guy ( a v smart dyslexic fourth grader) had CRUMMY-ola teachers in K, 1st and 2nd grade(and where the heck do you want the good ones anyway if you get to choose!?)most definately “i teach for june and july material” however his 3rd and 4th grade teachers were FANTASTIC- and puleeze- unless you’ve every had the opportuniy to be at the front of a classroom (of any level) it is simply is not fair (or true) to say this is a six hour a day job?!
cheers

I am a little older than you. I had homework and book reports. But, I don’t think school was harder, more challenging or stronger academically. The system itself did not seem to care about the students who failed or couldn’t tow the line. It seemed to be more of an attitude that you have this free privilege or opportunity, you use or not.

I don’t know that everyone is cut out for the academic life, yet we seem to be insistent upon providing this for everyone and demanding that everyone thrive in this environment.

Try as we may, things really don’t change much. Education continues to really be a one size fits all, everyone on the same standards, at the same grade level and in the same classroom. The difference is now teachers are REQUIRED to make this work, whether or not the model is workable.

Do share with us the standard of living information that you have and remember that when you do, it should not be for a 500 sq. mile principality or nation of pretty homogeneous people who all own a piece of an oil well or some other money maker.

Find a country with our challenges that matches our standard of living and educational levels.

Frankly, I didn’t work that hard. I was pretty smart and didn’t do very much until at least high school. I perfected the art of reading a book in class while able to answer questions. My three children work harder than I did—and only one is LD. My youngest is in K and he is actually reading. He is through all the basic code, plus th, sh, ch, ck. I have worked with him at home but this is the same stuff they are doing at school. And he is only in the middle of his class. The expectation is that they will be reading by the end of K. (I will also tell you that it is abs. amazing to watch a normal child learn to read after teaching an LD child. My youngest has picked up with a minimal amount of effort what took my LD son years. It makes you realize what a handicap being LD really is.)

Public schools were never designed to be successful for everyone. Unfortunately, there are few adequately paying jobs that don’t require academic skills today. In another day, my son would have been one of those going out West to stake a claim on land. He would not have learned to read but many people did not. Hopefully, he would have found himself a wife who did!!!

I don’t think you realize how poorly public schools work for some kids until you have one that is a misfit. He is doing OK now but I worry about Middle school and beyond.

Beth

Beth,

I had been thinking the same thing about my youngest, who is in K. It is such an eye opener watching him just “get it”. My oldest is ADD and didn’t really make reading progess until mid 2nd grade when she began medication, and the middle one who is definately LD, well you know that song and dance.

You sound alot like me, by high school I could write a paper for my AP classes in morning study hall and still pull B’s. Never had the type of issues my children are facing. Sometimes it’s hard to relate.

There are alot of teachers who only teach to the middle. My daughters 1st grade teacher was like this and it was an awful year. That teacher just can’t relate to the children who are out of the box, and they got left behind. She blamed everything but herself She didn’t feel it was necessary to make any adjustments.

Hi Elizabeth,

As an adult with LD/ADHD, I feel Ball’s flames have no place on the adult boards either. I probably shouldn’t be responding as that just gives rise to what he does as another poster wisely stated. But because of your statement telling to Ball to keep the rants on the adults boards, I had to respond. I know you didn’t mean anything personally.

Since I have opened Pandora’s Box, let me state that I have a personal interest in this subject due to having a best friend who teaches 1st grade. I can assure you she does not work 6 hour days. Sixteen seems to be more like it.

I keep asking Ball why he is not rushing to get into the profession since he seems to think it is so easy. It’s not like the field requires a Phd. But he won’t answer the question.

In spite of my friend being close to burnout because of what I feel are absure demands and no she does not have any LDs whatsoever and is one of the most organized people I know, she hasn’t quit trying to be a good teacher. She has had several sleepless nights trying to figure out how to teach certain students.
You won’t see her on internet boards because she isn’t into computers like I am and between teaching and raising an 11 year old son, that takes up alot of her time.

There are bad apples in every wake of life but making blanket generalization is so unfair. I admit I don’t always practice what I preach but when I don’t, something happens that reminds me that I need to get back on track.

Anyway, I admire the parents and teachers on this board who are doing everything possible to make lives easier for kids with LD. You deserve the utmost admiration instead of being the subect of various rants.

PT

Thanks PT … it actually turned out to be a fairly interesting thread, and I’m glad to see I didn’t get flamed for my emotional response to Ball’s emotional post!

The thing is, I do agree with him about the faults in the SYSTEM…I just don’t believe those faults are the faults of the teachers alone! YES, bad teachers do contribute — but I think most teachers are as caught in the morass of educracy as our LD kids are…I asked him to go to the adult boards cuz I have occasionally looked at them, and it seemed a good place for ranting.

Don’t get me wrong, Ball — You DO have a point. But teachers already hear SO much negative stuff (like alot of LD kids!) that I get upset when we make blanket statements that might offend some of the helpful folks on this board.

Best to all,
Elizabeth

Canada, Norway, Germany, Finland, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Great Britian There are probably more.

Hi Elizabeth,

Gosh, it is hard not to be emotional about an issue like this. Actually, considering the subject, I thought your response was quite reasonable.

I probably need to make a distinction that I should have made initially. Ranting is fine as long so you don’t flame people in my opinion. So yes, you are correct in stating that the adult boards are good for that. But flames and unfair generalizations obviously have no place on any board.

I agree with you definitely that there are faults in the system but the teachers are as much caught up in them as the parents. My friend has to put up with so much BS, it is beyond belief.

Yes, there are bad teachers and I too, am not saying there aren’t. They need to be weeded out ASAP. But to equate that with essentially stating that all teachers are bad is just not fair.

You’re right about offending the helpful teachers on this board. Knowing what my friend puts up with, there is no way I would continue to visit these boards if I kept seeing posts like Balls. So again, thank you to the teachers that do.

PT

If so many places are so much better you have a wide variety of choices to choose from. If you are unsatified here you could always go to one of those places. Is there any group you respect as a whole or do you just dislike everyone?

SORRY…up here in Canada, we have it JUST AS BAD AS YOU DO…maybe worse! I have no FAPE, no IDEA, no 504 — I can have an IEP but I GET WHAT THEY GIVE ME…if my kid graduates illiterate, it is HIS problem and MY problem…not the school board’s or the government’s! I can’t sue, I can’t demand appropriate remediation — what they want to give me is WHAT I GET. And here in the GTA area of southern Ontario, our schools are about as well-run as most inner city areas of the USA…which is to say, under-funded, over-stressed, and NOT DOING THE JOB for about 50% of the population.

I really can’t relate. I try to appreciate how difficult it is for him but I just keep pushing him. He whines that nobody makes him work as hard as I do. But you know what, today he read Harry Potter to me. He is 10. We own the movie and we have read the book to him so he didn’t have to expend energy on comprehension. Still, I am most impressed, especially since he was the one who brought the book to me to read (I had told him to get a book).

And you are right, normal is so amazing after LD.

Beth

Our educational system is an outrage but I don’t think that’s because teachers can’t pass standardized tests.

It’s because too many parents, too many students, and too many teachers are unhappy with the educational system. Millions of people can’t be wrong.

Yet we have a HUGE system of schools in our country and as Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither will our educational system be made over in a short while. It will take time.

And it will also need us all to stop blaming each other. Teachers blame parents and parents blame teachers. We need to stop fixing the blame and start trying to fix the problems.

Class sizes are too large. Bad teachers can become much better ones with smaller class sizes.

Schools need to be democratized. Each school should have a parents’ council with real authority. School boards are outdated and they don’t work well.

Families should be able to choose which public school they wish to have their child attend. They should not be forced to attend the nearest public school if they don’t like that school for their child.

Schools need to be allowed to be different from each other. To have a different focus than the next school all the while still teaching the basics.

Even if teachers in Mass. could pass those tests, it would change nothing.

I disagree that the standard of living is higher in those named countries, though it is good. Great Britain is a classed society. The average worker makes (like engineers) makes much less than we do here. These countries are much smaller and far more homogeneous. They do not have poor third and fourth world immigrants streaming across their borders daily, accessing their welfare benefits and siphoning from the workers who pay taxes. However, clearly many immigrants are hardworking tax payers themselves.

We have many unusual issues in this fine country. Let’s take a look at their special education services. If you said “full inclusion” most of those countries would laugh you out of the room. Germany has a three-tiered high school system and special schools for the sped. students. Don’t look at me, this might be a great idea, but this country (with civil rights what they are) isn’t buying this right now.

n/t

Get a helmut!

Rome wasn’t built in a day but Nero nearly destroyed. Rome is a good analagy though because the Roman empire was a sick corupted travisty.

Incompetent teachers do not a good school system make.

Schools need to be held to the same standards as do the teachers.

A school should not be a democracy. It should have a strong administrator at the helm demanding excellence and that adminsitrator should be given some autonomy and not use state regulation as a cop out to why his school is failing.

A school should be a safe place for learning to take place.

Teacher’s should NEVER be tenured. They should be required to go through manditory training in the summer. They should face drug testing. They should be psychologically evaluated. Their licencing should be national. They should get raises based on performance not on how long they have had their job.

Teacher who can’t pass competency test should not be teachers.

None of the above is going on right now and our educational system is a farce.

Yeah and pork is the other white meat.

If you’re going to flame people about their supposed lack of academic proficiency, you should learn to spell first.

Actually, Anitya, the UN rated Canada as having the world’s highest standard of living in the early 90’s. Around a year ago the UN came out with its most recent ratings, and Canada had slipped slightly but was still #3; the two highest were Scandinavian countries, I forget which two.

The US has lost its advantage in standard of living by not having a medical system. The problems of the educational system are also not helping, and poverty and crime in the inner cities, which are very closely related to lack of access to medical care and education, are driving the US standard down.

Canada and the Scandinavian countries are also struggling with rising costs of medicine and with changing educational demands just the same as the US, but have taken different, and according to objective measures, apparently more successful, approaches to working on these problems.

Elizabeth — I am sure you have real problems, and I’ve taught in Ontario and I know what **&^^ those administrators can be. I certainly don’t want to belittle you or your problems. But I’ve also lived and taught near (not in, or I wouldn’t be here to talk to you) Washington DC. Believe me, it really can be a lot worse!
I attempted to teach (the verb is attempted, alas, not taught) in a Catholic school down there; this was a school of choice, where people paid money to get their kids out of the public schools and into a “better” situation. In this school, the average achievement level was half the grade level — ie the Grade 8 students averaged about Grade 4 achievement. And these were “normal”, NON LD kids, in a private school — just imagine the public school kids with fewer advantages. Some years later I tried once again, in a public high school in a suburb, supposedly having a selective science program; again, the students were years behind, the Grade 12 students having trouble with basic Grade 9 work — and this was the upper-level college-prep track. In that school, there were fist-fights every class that the cafeteria was open, and two or three police cars standing by outside to pick up the bloody offenders; Equal Opportunity — as many girls as boys. The last murder on the school property, a shooting, had happened two years previously. In both of these schools, I was hired on the basis that they wanted to get qualified teachers and improve their math and science standards; and then within a month I was called into the office and chewed out because I was focused only on academics (huh? High school science/math teacher attempting to raise level and test scores — what am I supposed to focus on?) Believe me, schools can crumble even worse than in Toronto.
If your kid was in the system there, he would get no special ed services in any of the schools in our area, because he would be achieving well above the average in his classes.

There’s another person who used to post on this board often. He was well-schooled in every rhetorical trick, and his posts were full of all sorts of warm and fuzzy connotations. He would come on all paternalistically and metaphorically pat you on the head and tell you there, there he has a wonderful solution to all your reading problems. Unfortunately, he was dead wrong. He wanted to go back to pure memorization, and any LD student who didn’t learn, he would give more warm and fuzzies and more memorization. When asked for specifics and proof, he would use his rhetorical tricks and be all paternalistic and avoid the questions. When confronted with specific logical arguments and detailed questions, he tried the same thing but finally became rather hysterical. But he rarely got flamed because he was so “nice” — alas the persona of the con artist, and alas again a persona that gets along well in today’s schools.

Now we have “ball” here, who is actually making many reasonable points. But he is arguing for logic using aggressive emotionalism, rather a contradiction in terms. He is asking for scientific proof but largely stating opinion (although I would like to read the book by Rochester that he is promoting, because it would seem to have some interesting things in it). He is looking for agreement and coming on as someone starting a fight. He is speaking to an audience of women, and making many irrelevant anti-woman comments. It’s hard to fathom his goals in shooting himself in the foot in this way, but if you try hard to ignore the vituperation, there are many points in his posts which are worth noting.

Beth,
I have to agree with this. I’ve been working part-time as a substitute aide in a class of second graders. A large majority of these children (and the school!) speak English as a second language. I have to say, I’m absolutely amazed by how well these children read and write in comparison to my 3rd grader. There is a HUGE difference in the rate of learning between LD and non-LD kids.

Victoria,

Can you Understand Normal Thought? It seems that you

You see you have nothing to bring to the table but if you Could Understand Normal Thought you would have something relevant to say but because you Can’t Understand Normal Thought you can only offer C type comments as opposed to A and B type comments.

So please feel free to correct my spelling if can find your answer key.

DO you have a book For Understanding Common Knowledge Off topic

Compare what you are paying in school taxes to the sysrem that have smaller class sizes. I bet you are paying about the same. Are you getting your Money’s worth?

My research has shown thet the average class size is 19.

Average means that we add up all the classes and then divide by that number. If I were attending today’s schools I probably would never have learned that.

The mean class size would be and average with the out lyers thrown out.

Victoria,

Would you like some cheese with that whine? Which reminds me of something, at the school that my stepson attended the teachers came in at 8am and left at 2:45pm. I felt really bad for those teachers because they had to wait until 4pm for happy hour.

Alot of them would sneak out earlier than that.

Victoria please tell us how many classes you teach a day.

Victor,

I didn’t know that stating facts was a debating trick.

This is not women bashing. Most women who post here are quite reasonable but the anti-male attitude of some here comes through loud and clear.

I think emotion and anger should be brought to this debate. Anger is a good thing.