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Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Decades of liberal domination of teachers' colleges 
...and this is what we're left with:

The campaign to make high school more demanding seems to be picking up support from the people who have the biggest stake in the matter: the students themselves.

Almost nine in 10 students say they would work harder if their high school expected more of them, a survey finds. Less than one-third of students say their school sets high academic expectations, and most students favor ideas that might add some hassle to their life, such as more rigorous graduation standards and additional high-stakes testing.


If there could be a more damning indictment of the liberal education philosophy, I haven't seen it yet. Less than one third of students are actually challenged? 9 of 10 students are underwhelmed?

It's not surprising that students want their high school diplomas to actually mean something. What is surprising is that the undereducated educrats who suck at the govermnet teat to run our public schools are so far out of touch that they're catering the whole system to the lowest decile of the bell curve.

This has national security implications. Because our military is not made up of the kids who were in that lowest decile. Our military is made up of kids who are in the fat part of the curve up through the top. And if this population is undereducated, so is our military.

Our current crop of educrats need to be ruthlessly purged - starting with the schools of education. Our schools of education don't even challenge students at the college level. Our schools are populated with teachers who are well-meaning and hard working, and who wouldn't know 'challenging' if it bit them on the ass.


Splash, out

Jason

Comments:
I can directly relate to this...I graduated in 1994 from Kadena High School, Okinawa, Japan. I decided to go to Kent State University. My college freshman year I had to take an extra honors course in order to maintain my Honors Scholarship and I chose Spanish. I had taken 4 years in High School, so I imagined this would provide a bit of practice and maybe some challenge seeing as how it was a college honors course. Nope. The curriculum in college was the same I had used my JUNIOR year of HIGH SCHOOL. Imagine how disheartening that is! My school career was about evenly split between civilian and DoDD schools. There is a tremendous difference between the standards and expectations. And now that I am a parent, I can safely say that the system as a whole has degenerated further.
I can typically be described as more Republican than Democratic, but I'd have to admit that I agree with something I saw on the very Democratically-leaning TV show "West Wing". I agree that competition for the best teachers should be fierce; teachers (not administrators) should be paid in the 6-figures range; and that it should be free to all citizens just like our national security/defense is. I have no idea how to make that happen, but I think we need to start making some radical moves in that direction.
 
I enlisted in the Army in 1989 after I received a BS in education. I did this for two reasons. First I took a look at how much job security a teacher had upon entry and what they made. Until a teacher is tenured they can be fired at the whim of the administration. Unfortunately once tenure is granted it is pretty close to impossible to fire an under performing teacher especially since there is no way to quantify just how well a teacher performs (thank you teachers unions). The pay and benefits were very comparable between the location that I was offered a position and enlisting in the Army.

The second reason refers back to the difficulty of identifying and firing an under performing educator. In the military we are constantly expected to improve and doing so causes us to progress through our career. Teachers are not consistently monitored as to their progression, there is very little quality control. This lack of quality control extends to the product put out by our education system, in fact the system is unable to even look at the service they provide in a customer-oriented manner. The educators of today are wrapped up in the process of education rather than the product. Pedagogy is a key word bantered about by educators as if it is the most important aspect of what they do. Educators of today need to look at education in a manner that takes into consideration the consumer (parents and society as a whole), the product (an educated young person) and the process (what works best to produce a quality product). Instead they focus on a flawed version of the process, focusing on the lowest common denominator rather than challenging the majority.

There are many opportunities with better pay and less systematic frustrations for people who would make outstanding educators. Until this flawed system undergoes a major modification teaching will always be viewed as a job that just isn't worth pursuing.
 
You speak of the under-current of liberal philosophy sweeping through the public education system, and suggest that massive changes must be made to make it more challenging. Those who have commented on the site have basically agreed with this.

You all miss the crux of the issue. Public education is the problem, not the semantics of how its operated. The government operates a very real monopoly on pre-college educational institutions. (public schools) Because of this there is no market competition to encourage effectiveness or discourage bad performance.

There is no financial accountability; public schools dont declare bankrupty in the face of economic failure, politicians give them even more money.

Because profit and reward are not incentives for the existance of public schools (like effective businesses are), teachers and administrators have no motivation to do more than what is necesary to stay employed. A better product does not equate to any type of incentive. Unions and tenoir make it nearly impossible for labor competition to exist; after 4-6 years only a public beating or molestation will get a teacher fired.

Parents who are legally and morally responsable for the development of education and values in their children who have not reached the age of majority, are unable to exercise their rational judgement in choosing effective institutions of education because of this monopoly. If they choose to send their kids to private schools, they still have to subsidize the public schools.

Because public schools are an education monopoly forcibly subsidized by all tax-payers, the existance and success of alternative private education is tenuous at best. Any time there is closed entry into a market, something only caused by government favor or regulation, coercive monopolies are created which do not face the just forces of the market.

The problem is not a liberal philosophy in the operation of public schools...public schools ARE THE LIBERAL PHILOSOPHY.

I enjoy your military posts; I'm an E-4, 11B in the Midwest. SRP is in a week, Iraq or bust by November. Hooah.

"Who is John Galt?"
 
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