It's either the system or the student.

There have been numerous threads about our education system and just as many about teenagers who can't make change for a transaction. Frankly I'm tired of hearing about it.

The education system produces the failures of our youth. Isn't it time to give them some slack instead of gloating about how good we are with fractions or making change and realizing these are different times?

The education system has changed from when we were in school. It no longer educates the student but rather tries to indoctrinate them. Basic skills such as Reading and Arithmetic should be more than enough to get todays youth on their way to a productive life. All i have is a high school diploma and I've done pretty well for myself. In fact, I will even go so far as to brag that I consider myself smarter than a lot of people with degrees. Being out in the real World teaches one more than what one would learn in a classroom.

How about giving our youth the same opportunity we had growing up. Some will surely fail but many will go on and succeed.

There is one big difference between now and when we all went to school.

We were taught how to think, which allowed us to find a successful path in life.

Today’s youth are taught what to think.

There is a big difference.

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View from down under

In 2001 gave several an opportunity. They, on average, were 1/2 hour late 75% of the time. The ones that showed up were by and large pretty good!

In 1974, hired 24. First day fired 21, they wouldn't follow simple instructions! Of the 3 that I kept, all 3 stayed until college started in the fall. One of those worked for me the next three summers after that. I still see him around, at the 4 or 5 businesses he bought or started! that 12% very good and 4% fantastic from that sample 48 years ago. I really think it's down from that, but I would be happy with those numbers. (Everybody can't be the boss, but everybody needs to follow simple instructions!)

Ivan

My daughter teaches English Lit to juniors and seniors in high school. She asked them recently to write their signatures on a piece of paper. Every student except one printed their name! They had no idea how to sign their name in cursive. She told them if they couldn't write in cursive, they should at least develop a signature. Several replied, "What for?".

Well, guess it depends on where you look for them. My association with younger generations has been primarily thru the military. The volunteers we are getting today are, on the whole, rather amazing. These young man and women do this nation proud - their attitude, intelligence, fortitude, determination and overall military bearing are are truly exemplary. Admittedly, being a volunteers, they do not represent a cross section of our society but rather the ones that want to achieve some goal. And it maybe unfair to compare them to their contemporaries who have another value system. So, l guess I’m saying there’s still “hope”, all is not lost just yet.

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"Your other right........."

Education in Australia went through a review a few years ago. We have gone "back to basics". Bigger efforts in grammar and literacy skills. Yes, we still get a bit of a left-leaning system but that's just the price you pay for a free public school education.

I think we’ll see a return to people making an X on their car loan and mortgage papers.

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I told you not to use Lifebuoy

I firmly believe that I Q of said people is the factor that should be considered.

Sorry but current situation regarding todays young folks failures are due to lack of or poor parents. Then add what they get drilled into their heads at school, Wa La!! we have what we have. nuf sed.

Being a retired teacher, 33 years in a vocational field, the biggest change I saw was parents slowly quit working with teachers to meet goals of their children. Instead of helping meet education goals, teachers were now blamed for all in regards to the students, not only educational but all aspects of life. My view for what it is worth.

For all I hear about how our schools indoctrinate students instead of teach them, it helps to remember that schools are under local control. School districts have boards that are elected locally, and they are the ones who decide on the funding, the curriculum, the books, the policies, the teachers, the administrators and the rest of the bits and pieces that go into making a school system work.

If our kids are getting indoctrinated in school, then perhaps we need to consider just exactly WHO is doing the indoctrinating, and who decides on what they are being indoctrinated in before we bring out the pitchforks and torches.

For all that I am a member of an "older" generation, I completely agree with those kids! Why bother learning two different forms of writing the same language??? Generally I have found that people who lament the lack of ability of today's youth to write cursive can't come up with a good reason why they should.

It is not the schools "JOB" to make sure your kid gets an education. The old saw, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink, comes to mind. The school provides the setting and the information, if you do not instill any desire or reason to learn the kid will not learn.

The school is also not there to teach kids social manners, morals, and values. They are not supposed to be government funded daycare centers either.

I will say that both the parents and schools system should do more to teach kids how to actually think, reason and apply

A computer or a human completely full of information is totally useless unless the information held can be applied in a useful manner. While a calculator will give the correct answer to a mathematical problem, that is only useful if the user is able to correctly form that mathematical problem. Teaching a kid how leverage works is a waste of time with out teaching them how to apply that leverage and how to adapt that principle to various uses.

Both my step daughters are straight A students. But, I struggle constantly with getting them to actually think about and apply what they have learned. But, then that is my JOB

As to signatures, even with computerized documents, there are many items that still require an actual signature, not a typed name. Geeze, they can still use the mouse, what more do they want?

One of the problems in the US schools is that appropriate teaching methods keep changing. [All inspired by someone's Doctoral Dissertation which may not withstand scientific testing.] I've lost count of the number of "new maths" that have come and gone. As an example, memorizing multiplication tables (times tables to us fossils) seem to be akin to child abuse.

Too many parents are using the schools as a daycare center. Between the high divorce rate and the high rate of illegitimacy fatherlessness has become the norm. On another board one member said his schoolteacher wife noted that the teenage girls she encountered were intimately acquainted with the welfare forms, another told me she found for many of her female students "homework" is really housework-they're the maid, the cook, the babysitter, school is a respite from their dreary and unpleasant home lives. Then there's drug use. A young man graduates from high school, the most he can find is some low paying/no benefits job-probably not even full time. He has to keep living "at home", that leads to "the painful prolongation of adolescence."

A few years ago a friend of mine was/is the High School Rifle team coach. He had one student trying out and not doing very well. The coach worked with him and instilled "You will get out of your practice what you put into it". The young man did listen, and did work hard and succeeded, not only on the rifle team, but in his other studies. Another teacher came to the coach and told him how the young man "turned around" and was doing very well.

It takes a teacher that cares to instill the right attitude.

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H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244

Proper education starts at the home first with morals and basic common sense.Teacher's should be teaching subjects only and not ideologies .Meanwhile home teaching should continue until they are old enough to leave the home.Anything else is harmful to the child.

We also had no "Tools" to help us get the correct answers until the higher grades
where we might be handed a slide rule.

How smart are today's kids ??

Wait a minute, my unit is still charging.

I wonder if there is a realization that most of the people running and working in the education system are our generations or the previous generations children.

These are not truly mutually exclusive conditions.
Yes, the state of public education is a crime scene that has made me do a complete U turn on the merits of homeschooling and other alternative education concepts.

Meanwhile, the product of the public education system will not work past its arrogance to realize they "do not know what they do not know" ... a critical first step in changing that condition.

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it just needs more voltage

Yes ... they are largely the segment of our generation that "ate it with a spoon".
I have one such individual to observe at distance.
Mine was a life of critical thinking and rejection of the propaganda I was fed. His was a life of acceptance of all doctrine.
He thinks Antifa has a noble function in our society.
He is a councilor in a school system, perpetuating the problem.
I no longer feel so bad about the line drive he took to the snot box in little league.

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it just needs more voltage

I've worked in public schools for almost 20 years now. There's plenty to say on the topic but if you think that schools are just indoctrination centers they are not. Turn off the news and go visit a school.

Go see just how checked out the modern student is. The majority could care less about anything other than their phones, social circle, sports etc. They are held to almost no standards and mommy and daddy come in to defend their little boopsie no matter how guilty or deficient their child is.

****** parents tend to make ****** kids.

Looking back, telling us what to think was alive a well in the British education system of the 1970s, at least in my high school.

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Release the Kraken

My Father was one of those "rare birds." He was an extremely popular history teacher. First faculty member inducted into my alma mater's Hall of Fame. He chaired the social studies department of the very large high school I attended. He retired "early" after almost 40 years of teaching because he was increasingly disenchanted with the quality of students passing through his classroom. He attributed it to "school no longer being considered the child's job." (Their first priority)

Too many kids, he explained, were working late at the mall on weekdays (usually to pay for their car), no longer having dinner with the family around the kitchen table most nights, overburdened with extracurricular activities, and not demonstrating the curiosity so essential to exploring learning (possibly due to too little sleep). He believed that kids, and families, should consider school as a child's full-time responsibility, their job, and act accordingly. The family had to value education or the kid was doomed to mediocrity.

There are so many more distractions today than when my Dad retired it'd make his head swim. All the things he thought distracted from concentrating on education have become more numerous and pervasive.

We strive to ensure our son considers school his number one job - he's entering his sophomore year of high school next week. He does work but only on Saturday nights at a local bar & grill as a short-order cook and food prep. He loves his job and takes it seriously. And he makes it to Sunday School and Church the next morning.

For the last month he also leaves the house at 6:30AM for cross-country practice, comes home for a shower and a quick bite, and gets to marching band rehearsal by 9:00 where he stays until after 4:00PM. Busy kid; and school doesn't start until next Wednesday.

I occasionally lament about how my "idyllic" childhood is simply not available for my son. Then the reality sets in that virtually nothing about my "perfect" childhood would, or could, prepare my son for his own future. He's working on a cursive signature because he has to endorse his paychecks - my wife and I used to use cursive as code when we didn't want him to read something. Still works but we don't hold many secrets anymore - and he types faster than me and I'm pretty good.

Bottom line is we've been fortunate to raise an outstanding young man because we've ordered things so he knows his biggest, and virtually only, responsibility is his education. Once he's completed all necessary steps to doing more than required for making grades, and actually learning something, he gets to go on to something else (like confounded video gaming). He's not as curious about as many things as I'd ideally like but compared to his classmates he's an explorer.

Education, it seems to me, is a bit like medical care. If you don't manage it, and allow someone else to, you get what you get. If you gain a little understanding, take charge guiding and managing the process, the results are sure to be more satisfactory.

Bryan

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Ordnung muss sein
SWHF #789

Maybe he has Drain Bamage.

Ivan

It was my choice, not to acquire a formal education, but instead I chose to attend the ‘school of hard knocks’.

I’ve given this thread serious thought, as to what a school teacher should teach.

The biased opinions of our members appall me. In my opinion, it’s a school teacher's duty, to teach anything they possibly can to help their student succeed in anything worthwhile, that’s essential to that student, and our society. If school teachers aren’t being paid to teach their students, what are they being paid to do?

In comparison, I was held accountable for my decisions, and actions while working at my job, and lives literally depended on them.

For the people of any society that choose to live as our animals do. I believe that they will again be livings in caves or burrows again.

I don’t consider being taught the addition, subtraction, and multiplication tables abuse. Furthermore, I’ll still be able to calculate, if my calculator is lost or out of commission.

If our societies’, intellect continues to digress, I predict that using X for a signature will be in vogue again.

Chubbo

in the 1990's and in my 40's I went back to school (Community College) and was asked if I would consider tutoring others because of my math skills. I was shocked to find that the students I was given did not understand even basic math. I had one that could only multiply by using a chart and another that used needing a tutor as an excuse than immediately dropped out when given one. These were high school graduates in a Community College satting

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Sceva
OGCA SWCA NRA

Saw a few kids transition from Catholic schools to public.
The result was a fairly uniform equivalent of seeing Ferraris put onto a demolition derby to make them as worthless as the Smart four two's already in progress.
All that grace, beauty and power mercilessly flogged into model freaks of the latest cause.
The ones who were able to remain in the alternative catholic system turned out far better.

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it just needs more voltage

perhaps ... was a grizzly compound fracture resulting in a trail of extra green grass in the outfield.

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it just needs more voltage

I believe public schools are a result of the public they directly serve. Our school produces lots of kids that score very high on the SATs and the national averages. But then our community engages in and supports our schools and teachers. Daughter #1 will be a senior this year, she has gotten all As except for 1 B. She is ranked about 30 out of 96. Daughter #2 will be a junior and has never gotten anything but As and she is tied for #1 with 17 others in her class of about 85. I know several of the teachers, we have had bon fires at our place for kids and sometimes a teacher or 2 will show up for a bit.

Both the girls and a bunch of others got fired up by the band teacher about having a Jazz band. They all went to school a hour early to practice, then, they started playing in the hall way at lunch time one a week. They had their first paying gig this summer and did outstanding.

If the people engage their kids, schools and teachers and have a community people want to live and work in the public school system works.

There is a very small public school about 50 miles north of here with a well off benefactor, if a kid goes there 3 years and graduated he pays their tuition at a state university as long as they keep passing grades.

If it's intentional and witnessed it's legal in PA, at least for wills.

I believe it’s the system and the kid. But I also think it’s the parents. While I’ve lost a lot of respect for our educational system it starts at home. Kids are not as respectful or focused as we were. In my day if a teacher contacted mom & dad . I was in big trouble. Now days the parents defend the kid and become confrontational with the teacher. It’s crazy.

No one was gloating about possessing fifth grade math skills. The point of the thread was that a grown man was doing a job for which he was not qualified (albeit a simple job), he made no effort to remedy the situation, and his employer made allowances for it rather than train him to be better at his job.

I did a lot of writing in my previous career. Much easier and faster to print.

Had a supervisor that needed our signature on some new procedures that were being implemented. He said he couldn't read my writing. I called him a moron saying that it is my signature and is accepted on loans and mortgages. Never heard a peep out of him since.

More likely it will be biometrics

Again I should mention that I believe that common sense along with real life experiences will get you further in life than a high IQ.

Reminds me of a woman screaming at her school board that they weren't teaching her child values. Yep, if I didn't see it I wouldn't have believed people were that stupid.

Best teachers I had were ones that treated everyone fairly in the classroom. The worst teacher I had was one who berated me in front of everyone because I wasn't anything like my older brother who preceded me by 2 years.

Don't know how things work now but parents and teachers got together in the early to middle grades when I was in school. Nowadays it seems that ones only recourse if with the school board but I'm guessing.

The teachers that I had in the 50's and 60's would never have put up with the garbage going on today.

I believe a lot of teachers have the students education in the forefront but all too often we hear of the physical confrontations that occur between teacher and student. That begins at home and is why there's a need for police/security being present in so many schools

It's a shame you feel offended. First off I bet that no one buying blinds is as technical as you were. Secondly I doubt that any window is perfect from top to bottom as far as measurements go making perfection impossible.

As an example a normal person goes to Home Depot and says they need blinds for a 36" window. Knowing that windows aren't perfect from top to bottom the employee will usually take off roughly a 1/4" from both sides of a 36" blind to allow for any difference in the windows construction. I'm sure a math degree isn't a requirement to work at Lowes or Home Depot.

Time to move on...

It all started when they took the ruler out of the teachers hand and let the kids misbehave in the class room, without punishment or at least sent home for a week or expelled from school to repeat the class the next year.

We hated to have to go to summer school to fix up our short comings but
I don't even know if they even do this thing, now?

Now the teachers just want to pass the kids and let the next teacher try
to teach them, if they are willing.
A lot of kids go to school now, just to receive a lunch !!

I always thought my cursive writing was pretty good, but I still got a lot of questions from staff about it. Luckily because of my regular duties I could print very clearly and fairly fast and the questions stopped. I could print three levels of characters in the space on a legal pad and they were perfectly legible.

"The teachers that I had in the 50's and 60's would never have put up with the garbage going on today."

I think I had the same teachers....And still have the 'memories'.

They also had the support of the parents and administration.

There are still some great kids in school attaining a quality education...I know quite a few. One will only get out what one puts into an endeavor.

The teachers I had wouldn't be permitted to work in the system today...Or they would be prosecuted for abuse....Mom and Dad too.

It's the system AND the student...

Kids don't care about school. Their only concern is to have a party and be on social media.

The parents have dropped the ball. Mom yells at the teacher because they got too much homework and can't facebook enough. Dad doesn't even bother to attend the parent teacher conference.

Parents used to belong to the PTA. Hardly anybody does that any more.

The school system is totally out of control. They indoctrinate the kids. MANY teachers are flaming liberals. No one there to provide an opposing view.

The curriculum is dumbed down. Can't have little Johnny's brain stuffed with too much stuff. Cursive is a good example. Life skills are not taught anymore, and Mommy doesn't want to bother. She's on facebook too.

Kids are allowed to carry a cellphone at all times. They are caught and sent to the "office" and the next day they are i class on facebook again....and again....

Kids are not allowed to fail. They are put thru from grade to grade even if they didn't pass. The administrators are afraid to confront little Johnny's mom.

I realize there are a alot of generalizations here. Obviously, not all apply all the time. But, too many DO apply, way too often. My wife is a teacher and my son is a hiring manager. I believe what they tell me, and its based on what they see.

Back in the day I knew a few boys in my classes that were real *****. But back then we had the draft. Funny thing was that those idiots all turned out pretty well after they came back from the army.

If the school can make your kid a liberal, why can't the make them put away their phone and behave?

If the school makes one of my kids a liberal, it is because I turned over a kid that they could turn in to a liberal and I did nothing about it while it was happening.

One of my daughters once remarked about how the US had done some horrible things. I asked her just which nation had been perfect in their beginning, The Norse and the Vikings, the British with their colonies, the French or as she is also German I reminded her of their history. Then asked her thoughts on all the good America has done the world. Ending 2 world wars, sending food and money all over the world. Young men giving their very lives for the freedom of others.

Another time it was the treatment of immigrants and the poor. I said we are doing pretty well and life is good for use, we should take in a poor immigrant family and they could share their rooms with the children and we could make the family room into a bedroom for the parents. Of course their clothing, allowances and phones would be shared with them and we would have to buy cheaper food to feed everyone. So far the subject has not came up again.

You are their primary teacher. You set the stage.

If your young and not a bit liberal you don't have a heart.
If your old and a liberal you don't have a brain.

In the public schools that my family and I attended, the school superintendent, considered themselves, lord and master of all their students, and went to any means to prove, and ensure it.

School teachers can greatly promote, or totally squelch a student’s academic endeavors. That is a broad, candid statement. For an example; I was given two full credits to teach classes in industrial arts in our high school. I had 14 full credits, with only 12 needed to graduate from high school. Because of a controversy with the school superintendent, I was informed that he wouldn’t sign my graduation certificate, and he didn’t. Officially, I didn’t graduate from high school. Many years later It was proven that that same superintendent was unqualified for his position, and dismissed; What ones of us thousands of students legally graduated?

A school teacher plays an important role in a student’s life, be it good or bad.

Chubbo

After a bit of reflection, I realize that one of the current failings in the schools is relating what's being taught to the real world. As an example, when we first encountered the Pythagorean Theorum, the teacher showed us how it can be used in surveying and other uses. Machinists make quite a bit of use of it.....or at least used to.

Moving forward to the end of the last century, I needed to place a corner fence post in a spot I couldn't see from the first post. So, I recruited a daughter's boyfriend as flag man. After we'd got our angle and reference point, He asked me what we were doing. I explained. Comment by an honor grad of the local schools: "You mean there's a practical use for trig?"

Most kids that fail to perform and learn in school do so from a lack of engagement from their parent(s).

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Live long and prosper