Why don't people take the education of our children more seriously?

Question

Everyone seems, on the surface, to agree that education is important for our children... but why does it always stop there?

As soon as the question of raising taxes to fund education comes up, that attitude is all but forgotten. Nationally teachers make very little money compared to other professionals with a 4 year degree. If we paid an adequate salary, would the caliber of teacher increase as fewer people are turned away from the profession by economic factors? Class sizes are constantly getting larger, so our children receive less personal attention. Shouldn't current textbooks with accurate information be a necessity? The long term benefits for our children, and our country, seem to more than justify a small increase in taxes. How about once a month everyone gives up one of their $4.00 visits to Starbucks and we put that money where it will do some good!

So... get rid of the unions and suddenly the teachers are magically better, and large class sizes no longer matter, and old books with out-dated information will no longer hinder our kids in getting a real education?

Answer 1

It's so interesting to be able to read a sensible discussion on something like this, and to see that the problems you guys identify in the US are the same in the UK. There's some big changes going on at the moment, and I believe our government is going to try out some US ideas about keeping kids in school.

Our state [public] schools have a very rigorous curriculum that prevents much of what a teacher might do to adjust subjects and lessons to meet the needs of their class. This does not exist so much in our private schools, who are freer to teach to achieve results.

A problem I see that no-one mentioned yet is the disinclination of so many children to actually learn. You can take a horse to water, but you can't make it drink and all that. School is viewed as a chore and an inconvenience by so many children (well probably all, but some of us just got on with it), whereas in other parts of the World (I'm going to use Ghana as an example, as I read an article last weekend about a private school there) education and learning is viewed as your only chance of success - if you have your education you can achieve anything, no matter how poor you are. Apparently quite a few London families with West African heritage are sending their teenagers back to Ghana to receive their education (at a cost of £1,200 or $2,400 p.a.) as they're not progressing here due to gangs, alcohol, and other distractions. And it's working.

The benefits culture here mitigates the need for personal success in the eyes of so many with low aspirations too - the state will pick up the pieces and give you a house and money. That frustrates me immensely, because it diminishes the need to work hard and so some people simply don't.

In the UK we also have what borders on obsession with treating people equally. I'm not talking about the avoidance of discrimination against groups (of any kind) here, but the fact that sports days are being cancelled because if you have races someone has to lose. And we can't have anyone losing in case it damages their self-esteem. Talk about raising a generation of people ill-equipped to deal with the frustrations and realities of life. Kids that are potentially 'winners' who would take a great psychological boost from performing well are being denied that chance. It's easy to visualise that with sports, but applies equally to really smart kids who are held back in class because streaming is discontinued due to it's inherent 'elitism'. It doesn't make sense to teach vastly different abilities the same material - some are definitely going to struggle and some are going to be so bored.

I feel that teachers have a very difficult job, and that a lot of it can attributed to government targets, and meddling if you like, that cause them to focus on paperwork at the expense of teaching. The idea of 'privatisation' of education as in business might work, if only to remove central control of schools and restore local culpability and a focus on actual teaching not test results for 7 year olds.

Answer 2

Throwing money at the problem has proven to lower the quality of our children's education, not raise it.
The educating of children should be a local affair, not a national one. If we made our school systems smaller, and controled them on a local level, we might be able to effect an improvement, as it is, we have national regulations that have to be met, and just as teaching for the test doesn't work,neither does meeting the National Education standards, which have lowered expectations so that everyone can succeed.
Even if parents want to be involved, you find out very early as a parent that you have NO voice. What you want your child to learn doesn't matter, and if you don't like it, your only option is private school.
Teachers have a union that protects them from accountability to the parents, and the only ones that can be gotten rid of are those who are involved in child molestation, and even then it is very difficult.
I see no reason why I should pay even more taxes to support this very broken system.
I have had all of my kids in public schools, and they didn't teach them, instead, I got fundraiser after fundraiser, and notes telling me that we had to have yet another IEP so that they could tell me why they were failing, once again, to teach my children. If only I would be a good parent and put my son on drugs, everything would be allright. Obviously, it was my fault that they couldn't teach him.
My son now works and supports himself, he is not in jail, he is not on drugs, and he is not the criminal that the school system told me that I was creating by deciding not to drug him, he passed the GED and now has his equivelency diploma, and he did this after being warehoused by the school system for 10 years. They didn't even attempt to teach him anything.

Please don't tell me that I need to be glad to send more good money after bad. It's just not true.

As to class size getting too big, When I was a child, my first, second and third grade classes all had 70 kids in them. We were taught by one Nun, and in addition to the large size of those classes, we had 2 grade levels in each classroom. The same Nun taught both.
Somehow, we all learned. We all had work to do, and we did it. The name of the school was Guardian Angel day school in Toledo Ohio. You can check the size and makeup of the classes during the school years of 1957-1960 and see if what I'm telling you is accurate.
Now if a class is composed of 20 kids, it is too much, and they have aids to help. In addition, the kids don't have the same teacher, without a break all day, as we did. That system worked, this one doesn't.

Answer 3

Maybe we should take the government out of the equation and make the schools privatized and let competition make the system better and more efficient.

I am sorry but throwing money at the problem does not help. Look at DC it has the highest amount of money spent per student and also has the highest dropout rate.

Parents should have a choice where to send there kids and by doing so also have the ability to change their school in order to force the school to meet the parents standard and to make it so teachers are held accountable to the parents just cut out the middle man of government.

Answer 4

FINALLY !!! someone with a crazier list than my daughters 96 pencils for 3rd grade only American yellow #2 pencils. Oh, and 3 / 500 sheet packs of colored copy paper (not bold). The 7 composition books, and the 7 packs of 250 count writing paper. and we beat you on the glue sticks, the teacher requested 30 sticks. I truly believe these are a snack food. My son needed 15 for Kindergarten. I DO NOT CARE IF I CAN GET WAL MART SPECIALS, EITHER THE TEACHERS NEED TO WALK OUT AND DEMAND SCHOOLS PROVIDE FOR THEIR CLASS BECAUSE PARENTS SHOULD NOT HAVE TO IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. And oh the poor .......... they got free backpacks in town. But by the 1st day of school, many of them have lost or destroyed what was given to them. We partnered with three other churches and adopted a grade and bought supplies directly for the classroom. Their grade list is very reasonable, just a couple things from the parents. And the teachers sent home a list of stuff they should have at home (hopefully the parents would buy this).

Answer 5

Reality is, kids are getting more and more intrested in technology. Such as computers IM texting, even as much as the spell check on the computer has made them lazy. I am not sure if adults are realizing the importance of our youth. Why right now they may be annoying kids who are lazy, but they hold our future, and to do so, they need to be properly educated. When you go to shoprite, you might notice that the teen cashiers cant even count the change right. I also feel that teachers dont feel the need to teach. The just have their eye on the pay check!. honestly i dont think people care. You make an excellent point, and i couldnt agree more.!

Answer 6

tell your boss you want a raise before you have earned it, and after he bumps up your pay then you'll show how good you can be, let us know how it turns out.

at a teachers union rally in d.c. one of the women was shouting about teachers pay when asked she admitted that she was making $80,000 a year FOR 3 MONTHS that 120,000 a year if she worked year round, plus benefits and retirement, and every federal holiday off, and unless shes caught sleeping with a student she has tenure and can't be fired,

as for fixing education by dumping more money into it that's what we have been doing for the last 30-40 years and it hasn't fixed the problem, there is loads of waist full spending going on in the public school system trim the fat and see how much money is left over,

state schools are given $12,000 a year or more per student from the federal government, my high school had 2000 students, that's an annual budget of $24 million not counting sports revenue fund raisers and donations, you tell me another business in America that has a 24 million budget and turns our a 25% failure rate,

Answer 7

To the teachers or whomever some of these folks are who constantly badmouth the parents....

You blame the lack of parental involvement, and then complain that the parents are always looking over your shoulder and criticizing you- sorry, it can't go both ways.

You blame the parents for raising children who are disinterested in learning- well what about the enthusiastic, bright minded kindergarteners we sent you years ago? You drugged them and tested them and bored and politically corrected them into oblivion. You give them detentions for hugging (most recent stupidity I've read of) and then when they lose interest in the mindless drivel they are handed, while listening to teachers whine about how overworked and underpaid they are (and that is what moms get to whine about-get it? Only the moms) then when all that occurs and they are disheartened and couldn't give a d*&^ about school, you tell them they don't appreciate anything.

You complain that you don't get paid enough. Well take a look at someone other than yourself. How about the accountant working 14 hrs. a day at a corporation for $70,000. They go in on weekends, take work home. What about the clerk at Walmart, who works a factory job 8 or more hours a day, then makes dinner and goes to work at Wally World in the evening. What about the police officer who runs the risk of dying every doggone time they stop a car. What about the residents paying through the teeth for malpractise insurance, running on 2 or less hrs. of sleep on a shift of 48 hrs. and making far less than a first year teacher.
You are not the only people who work for a living. Get over it!

You complain that the students are disrespectful and undisciplined. Then you talk about the parents like dogs, preach to parents about exactly how they can discipline their kids at home. Fight like a rabid dog to keep prayer and any mention of God out of the schools due to separation of church and state which doesn't even exist in the constitution. Tell them that when they are miserable with cramps or a headache they will get suspended if they take an aspirin, take away their fine arts programs due to funding--while adding to the administrative layers, tell them they can't play tag on the playground and then they need to sit still and prep for another standardized test-----well guess what? I would be disrespectful and undisciplined if I had had my value system ripped from under me and been micromanaged by a system talking out of both sides of its mouth.

You can only throw money down bottomless pits so long before you run out.

Education is important. The first thing our kids need to learn is why they are on this earth in the first place and then they need to learn everything they can. They need to soak up knowledge like little sponges so they can learn to think and reason and innovate. And for just that reason---I will pay my taxes and you can waste them any way you like---but I will educate my own children because I want them to change the world!!! So someone said we should be more involved------So be it!

Answer 8

Investment in education is a sign of an enlightened society, and societies that make a significant investment in it seem to enjoy greater prosperity and quality of life. The US is a culture that invests in education, but that investment has been reduced, and the strategies for it have been misguided and shortsighted.

Decisions for education should be as localized as possible, because that creates community ownership. Federal government should have little say in what education looks like, they should just provide incentives for strategies that work and funding for those communities that struggle to find the best answers for their own education issues. Best practices will spread throughout the country and education will improve as a result. This will make communities more cohesive and prosperous in the long run.

Answer 9

The public educational system in America took a steep downhill plunge right after Jimmy Carter created the Department of Education. Once the Federal Government began to stick its nose into public education, we went from the envy of the world to worse than some third world countries.

We need to abolish the Department of Education and turn the reins back to the State and Local Governments where that control belongs.

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Answer 10

Teachers make good money for working at a part time job. The unions are to blame for the fall of the education system..get rid of the unions, hold the teachers accountable, and hold the education system responsible for their lousy fiscal policy.