How can we go about fixing education?

Question

I think we all know what the the stakes are here, I also believe that we all care for our children and their future. I cannot help but notice the shortcomings our education system allows to exist and multiply.

I know there are numerous people who point the finger at teachers, administrators, politicians and parents. What is your take on the problems and how can we go about fixing them? Parents,Teachers, Administrators, Politicians and taxpayers, please chime in!

Answer 1

I strongly believe that education starts at home. As a former elementary teacher I can tell you first hand that those students whose parents were involved always did better than those students whose parents were not involved. Getting parents more involved is only one piece of the puzzle, though.

I think we also need more funding. If teachers were paid better, the profession might attract a different set of candidates. More funding would mean more up-to-date text books, better overall materials, more field trips, and room for the arts (which is VERY important). Again, this is just another piece.

There is not a single solution out there, but rather a conglomeration of things that could make our education system better.

Answer 2

The original idea for public education was to relieve the parents from having to deal with the education of their children thus leaving the way clear for them to participate in the "Industrial Revolution".

What the people who started the idea wanted was to mass produce a population that would all know about the same thing and be able to work in a factory.

The problem in education today is that we are trying to produce a population that all know the same thing and can work, if not in a factory then a place of business where they will not question authority.

Who is the problem? The people (all of us) who allow this to happen. The 'shortcomings' that the educational system allow to multiply are sometimes intentional. If you educate a population that can think, create, and question then you will have a population of people who will take over the world from those who run it now and you will have a population that will not follow blindly.

Once you educate a person he will not follow blindly.

We have managed to take everything that is meaningful out of our schools. We took the Ten Commandments out and told the kids it was all right. But do we really expect a child to know that it is wrong to steal if there is nothing to tell him that it is. Can we expect a child not to kill when there is nothing around that tells him this is wrong? Can we ask a child to grow up and be proud of his country when we don't even allow him to pledge his alliance to his country's flag? Can we expect teachers to teach when we tell them they can not punish the student? There are consequences for bad behavior in the real world but not in our schools.

To teach you should be taught how to teach. Our teachers go through college and never learn about the 'art' of teaching. Let's start there. Then let's educate the Administrators on how to help the teachers instead of binding the teacher's hands. How about educating the Politician on what educations really means. And last but not least, because this should probably be first, how about curtailing the influence that the Union has on our politicians, teachers, and administrators.

Let's just get back to the basics....teach - to impart knowledge of or skill in; give instruction

Answer 3

1. Get everyone to recognize that if you want to have a world-class education system than you must pay for it.

2. Raise the salary of teachers and other education professionals enough so that you can require teachers to have a master's in education to obtain a teaching certificate and so that you retain teachers.

3. Devote time and energy (and money) to having VALID and RELIABLE assessments of what students are learning and not this standardized test crap that is coming out now.

4. Devote time, energy, and money to prenatal care and health care for young children.

5. Question everything but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Answer 4

i think alot is due to parents. kids are often a reflection of there parents. also parents are never on the teachers side so when the children do something wrong they cant even get there parents to dicapline them.
and the teachers arn't aloud to do anything anymore. they can hrdly even shout at kids without being sued. the worst that can happen now is ur expelled, but with the laid back, could't care less attitude going on this doesn't worry kidz in the slightest. they just look at it as an extra holiday
bring back the cane! thats what i say (and this is coming from a school child not an adult. that shows how desprate i am!!!)

Answer 5

I believe it is the end users that drive the process. Industries in this country are quite content with the quality of education. They have as many CEOs and other top executives as they need. Scientific research is more cheaply done overseas so math and science are fine on a basic level.

Semi-literate drones work the machines just fine and are more easily controlled. The military can train the under-educated to shoot and kill as long as their hand-eye coordination skills are sharp. But Nintendo can do that quite well.

You must ask yourself who would stand to gain if ALL of America's children were given a top notch education and who would stand to lose. This will tell you who really controls the purse strings and therefore the country.

How do we change this?

Find a way to dethrone the current military/industrial complex that drives the policies of this country. It will take a concerted effort by a substantial number of people who are both educated and motivated. We must elect leaders without depending on the media to tell us who is best. The media is a tool of the complex.

Answer 6

A note to americans about your post: wonderful. You have very efffectively described the educational system with a direct link to society. I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one who feels that way.

The education system isn't broken.....yet, but it is in very bad shape. All of society expects us teachers to fix everything just because we are teachers. It's the unreachable and uninvolved parents who complain the most when their child doesn't do well. Where were they from the beginning?

I'm expected to perform miracles and teach without books or resources. I'm supposed to have my ESL students speak English without teaching grammar or vocabulary - "They'll just pick it up". Right. I'm expected to help a child who has difficulty accepting rejection from her peers by counselling and offering solutions, but the kid still wants to be friends with those who reject her.

No wonder we are tired, burned out, impatient at home and in the classroom.The upside for me is that get a fantastic salary for 4 to 5 hours of work each day.

As I said, it isn't broken, but it isn't getting fixed , either..

Answer 7

Well think about this....we treat others how to treat us.....why not teach teachers HOW to teach? Not enough children are taught to read early enough.....and I have found that today's children do NOT have the advantage that I did. I read at the age of 11 over 2200 words per minute with incredible recall. These days I find it lucky to find a fifth grader who can even follow a text book..... at the age of 12 i was reading nearly 2400 words per minute...reading faster with impeccable recall faster than my speed reading teacher hence i NEVER had nor needed speed reading. Where you might question this, I did read as many as 8 books per day ...and this took in myriad subjects.
Teachers are solw today, they are NOT educated enough to understand and I find pretty much across the board that they are narrow with thier neurosis, past histories of ability, weak at that, and their own religions getting in the way.
So...you want children to learn? Find a teacher who HAS learned, who HAS an ability to be enthusiuastic about what and who they are teaching. i stand fast on this......I know fifth graders who are faster than their teachers can keep up with. i felt really sorry for my own children...fortunately they are OUT of the sickeningly pathetic American school districts..and have purued thier own lives stimulated emotionally and psychologically and it was NOT by their teachers but by ME. You may not like my answer, but I find this to be true. Oh one more thing. make sure that the poorer children have food..at least at school..and damnit it is time for teachers to speak up when they see signs of abuse....for they for the most part do not as they are afraid of becmiong involved....
Well when you are a teacher you ARE involved. think about this, yo may not agree with all f this and yes I was a gifted child....most arent I admit, but hell at least give them a chance. Without a chance while young, you are looking at a society that is doomed. i rest my case here but ONLy for now.

Answer 8

Well, I myself am a student but i believe there is bunches of room left for improvement in our schools. I think the students should get a break every now and again but also be punished when neccesary. Also when a crime is commited there should be fair trials but if convicted the person should do the time decided on.
Thanks, AF

Answer 9

Education is not broken and never was broken.

The societal social and family structures are what are changing and breaking, and everybody expects educators to compensate for that. Sorry.

WHEN will people wake up to the fact that schools are a DIRECT reflection of the community they serve? Want to see a high-performing school? Then go to a wealthier community in which more parents have college degrees. Want to see a low-performing school? Then go to a lower-income, blue-collar neighborhood where most parents have only high school diplomas. This is a FACT. So does this suggest that the children of less-educated folks are generally less-motivated students? Probably.

Just because I have a teaching certificate doesn't mean I am Jesus Christ who can reach:

-a latch-key kid living in the slums surrounded by drugs who's momma doesn't value education and has a new man at the house every night.

- a spoiled child who has a 5-7 day a week after-school job, plays serious sports, has no chores and has his own car to cruise around in, and who refuses to study anything because he has no motivation to learn - everything else just comes easy to him so why work at school?

Come on now, folks need to get real!

Teachers are teachers and not counselors, police-officers, nurses, janitors, test score data entry clerks for national reporting purposes, social workers or politicians.

Honest to God, I almost fell on the floor laughing when I read a news article a few months ago in which some idiotic senator from a northern state proposed to congress that school teachers also be required to take gun-safety courses to become certified gun-carriers so they can "man the schools' safety". Unbelievable. Why not just cough up an addition $30k and hire a guard? I'm NOT carrying a gun at school. I refuse. And I am NOT going to sit on a witness stand and have to fight to defend myself if I should accidentally incur an accident with a gun at school.

Don't get me wrong, I'm an excellent teacher, have a graduate degree, have won teaching awards and have had many successful and high-achieving students. But it makes me so incredibly angry when teachers are expected to control a child's outcomes when the home-life IS where most of a child's values are instilled. I find it to nowadays be a pattern that the children who suffer the most and need the most help often have "unreachable" and very "uninvolved" parents. Parents need to be parents - NOT their children's' friends. And society needs to realize that money is not everything ... I know of many families in which the parents commute far to make those extra bucks in order to "keep up with the Jones'", return late home at night quite tired and unfortunately nobody has the energy to monitor or inspire their children academically. The values nowadays are on money and consumerism, not education.

Society will get more out of education WHEN society chooses to truly value education, but I am not so sure that is as true today as it was some 40 years ago.

There are those who say we ought to follow the Japanese model ... but the reality of it is, teenage suicide rate in Japan is the very highest in the world, so great are the pressures to perform.

It really saddens me to say this, but I have to admit that I would not loosely encourage anybody nowadays to go into the teaching profession. I've got 7 years of university education, work 10-12 hour days and sometimes Saturdays (non-union state so they may require you to do it without pay for events), 50% my preparation periods have been taken away for required meetings, I am expected to explain every failure with the new accountability systems (but I have 150 students because I do not teach core classes and I can barely keep track of them!), the respect for the profession isn't what it used to be, I am required for my performance evaluation to attend numerous extra-curricular (after-school) events, I get a 25-minute lunch that is NOT duty-free, I am not allowed to ever lose my temper or say anything which may be misconstrued or perceived as not being politically correct, I am always supposed to be motivating everybody, I am on stage from the moment I step onto the school grounds until I leave (often without a bathroom break because we are supposed to be in our rooms when students are present or monitoring the halls between classes!). What to do? Yes, I am overwhelmed.

A lot of people want to throw out our public education and change to the voucher system. Go ahead. Good luck. The next thing you know, there will be lawsuits because of instructional inequality between schools and folks will claim "tracking" and "elitism". Furthermore, just because a school is private does not by any means imply it is better than public schools. I have seen many students transfer from private to public who were instructionally a good year behind (which amazes me because private schools have this nifty privilege of accepting only the most well-behaved, academically-oriented students they want, whereas public schools get every Tom, Dick and Harry and yet we often exceed private school performance).

Do you realize that many new teachers, even with graduate degrees, are paid so little that they can't even afford to get their own apartments? Even after completing college and landing a job they have to share an apartment because the pay is relatively low? In many states, the starting pay is only $25k. This is very, very sad. In contrast, I know of students with engineering degrees, fresh out of college who earn $50k from the get-go, and they are not necessarily the brightest cookies in the jar. So as we can see, society pays for what it values, and although it "claims" to value education, it really does not.

Do I sound negative? Well, I'm not a negative teacher, but I am definitely literally sick and tired of being under constant scrutiny and attack by government, the media, the public and by those who would never dare to even walk 1 week in my shoes.

I could go on and on, ad naseum, because there is so much more to comment, but I will do you a favor and quit.

Answer 10

bring in help from another country thats education is tops and get their advice for starts and take what ideas they have and put them to work. we have been trying on our owen for to long