Education in America

[Mazmaz]

So I just watched Waiting for Superman last night which raised a lot of questions about issues with education in the US, and I'd love to get some input from the posters here.

The movie basically set the premise that kids aren't learning properly enough in grade school about the fundamentals of their subjects (mainly reading and math) and they are pushed through the system without the basic necessary adeptness in them, which causes all the problems in education further down the road.

The bad learning stems from shitty teachers. The problem is, American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the teacher's union which is a huge lobbying organization to the democrat party, has managed to secure huge rights for all teachers across the country.

The first noticeable right is that it is very easy for teachers to get tenure. This means that firing teachers is really really hard. The second is the fact that all teachers have to be paid the same. It doesn't matter if you're a good teacher or a shitty teacher, you all get paid the exact same amount.

These things of course create an atmosphere of "it doesn't matter if I'm a shitty teacher because I won't get fired and it won't affect my pay at all". The film also shows efforts of some to fix this problem. For example, in one district it was offered to the union that teachers should be given a choice of either making double salary with no tenure (making the average teacher salary a whopping $125k per year) or regular pay with tenure. The union found this offer so threatening that they didn't even put it to a vote.

So what do you guys think? Is teacher's union damaging kids' education and future by putting the rights of teachers ahead of the kids? Is there a completely different reason for the failing education system?

TL;DR teacher's union destroying kids' education and future? what do?

[Egon]

Take away federal funding, make it 100% state and local ran. Kill the unions, hire local parents.

[Tricen]

Public schools will never amount to anything more than large scale day cares. It's hard to say what you could do to change it. I think it would take a complete re-haul that no one wants to do right now. I seems like officials are just putting it off in hopes that our generation will fix it or something.

[Kerberoz]

There are dozens of reasons why American public education is shit:
- emphasis on memorize-and-forget
- no foreign language requirements to graduate
- no lessons on logic/critical thinking/recognizing fallacies/basic philosophy (which explains why we have so many religious people)
- standardized tests set the curriculum
- classes designed around the lowest common denominator
- emphasis on graduation %, which means passing students who should fail
- no uniforms in most districts, resulting in low morale
- high school students who still fuck up writing homophones aren't immediately placed in LD classes
- no competition to get into higher-tier schools
- schools forced to waste funds on tard daycare

[Apelila]

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ans...ong-point.html

This deconstructs that argument more than I can. The people who are trying to paint unions as bad almost always want to screw the hell out of the people who are unionized. A documentary that goes out of it's way to paint a specific group in a one sided manner is called 'propoganda'.

Waiting for Superman could and should have been an inspiring call for improvement in education, a call we desperately need to mobilize behind.
That’s why it is so shocking that the message was hijacked by a narrow agenda that undermines strong education. It is stuck in a framework that says that reform and leadership means doing things, like firing a bunch of people (Rhee) or “turning around” schools (Education Secretary Arne Duncan) despite the fact that there’s no research to suggest that these would have worked, and there’s now evidence to show that they haven’t.
Reform must be guided by community empowerment and strong evidence, not by ideological warriors or romanticized images of leaders acting like they’re doing something, anything. Waiting for Superman has ignored deep historical and systemic problems in education such as segregation, property-tax based funding formulas, centralized textbook production, lack of local autonomy and shared governance, de-professionalization, inadequate special education supports, differential discipline patterns, and the list goes on and on.
People seeing Waiting for Superman should be mobilized to improve education. They just need to be willing to think outside of the narrow box that the film-makers have constructed to define what needs to be done.

Tl;dr: Correlation does not equal causation. This movie presented one argument while ignoring other possible factors.

[Plow]

So I just watched Waiting for Superman last night which raised a lot of questions about issues with education in the US, and I'd love to get some input from the posters here.

The movie basically set the premise that kids aren't learning properly enough in grade school about the fundamentals of their subjects (mainly reading and math) and they are pushed through the system without the basic necessary adeptness in them, which causes all the problems in education further down the road.

The bad learning stems from shitty teachers. The problem is, American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the teacher's union which is a huge lobbying organization to the democrat party, has managed to secure huge rights for all teachers across the country.

The first noticeable right is that it is very easy for teachers to get tenure. This means that firing teachers is really really hard. The second is the fact that all teachers have to be paid the same. It doesn't matter if you're a good teacher or a shitty teacher, you all get paid the exact same amount.

These things of course create an atmosphere of "it doesn't matter if I'm a shitty teacher because I won't get fired and it won't affect my pay at all". The film also shows efforts of some to fix this problem. For example, in one district it was offered to the union that teachers should be given a choice of either making double salary with no tenure (making the average teacher salary a whopping $125k per year) or regular pay with tenure. The union found this offer so threatening that they didn't even put it to a vote.

So what do you guys think? Is teacher's union damaging kids' education and future by putting the rights of teachers ahead of the kids? Is there a completely different reason for the failing education system?

TL;DR teacher's union destroying kids' education and future? what do?

Not going to get into how dumb that really is, you just fell for anti-public schooling propaganda but...

The solution to shitty teachers is making teaching a desirable job. As long as you pay teachers the same as plumbers, 99.99999999% of people that are smart enough to do anything other than teaching are going to do something else.

[miokomioko]

- no foreign language requirements to graduate

It's pretty weak, but there are foreign language requirements in highschool.

- no uniforms in most districts, resulting in low morale

Huh? I don't get this. Uniforms increase student morale? Or... are you suggesting that uniforms put students in the "learning zone" psychologically?

Not to mention, uniforms are getting largely popular in districts all over the country because of school shootings. (fucking stupid)

[Altariel]

A few points come to mind immediately here. First, being a good teacher is a learned experience that is honed over time just like being a good doctor or a good lawyer. The assumption that there is a line that can be drawn between "good teacher" and "shitty teacher" that would be suddenly become apparent once you got rid of those pesky unions out of the way is ridiculous. In any career there will always be those who are better at their jobs. However how many of those that aren't the best would you think should be outright fired for being "shitty"? Some, probably not many. What complicates the situation even more is in many schools the best teachers tend to be paired up with the best students and vice versa (think Honors/Gifted/AP). How would you reasonably compare a veteran teacher in a class of high achievers against a first year teacher in a remedial course? Ultimately the hiring, retention and improvement of a teaching staff is an investment. Why would you want to rehire brand new teachers every year instead of making the teaching staff that you have better?

Second there is a huge myth around the idea of teacher tenure in the public schools. This idea stems at least in part from higher education where Professorships are awarded to those with proven track records of research and publishing. Tenure in that context is provided to grant the freedom to study unpopular questions or draw unbiased conclusions in their work. Tenure simply doesn't work the same way in the public schools. In lower education it refers to a system of due process is followed in removing teachers coupled with a defined career path that offers increasing rewards and opportunities as you progress through the years.

Finally it strikes me that many in the anti-union crowd would be the first to support squeezing every last penny from the education system. They would hire the least expensive teachers willing to teach in the largest class sizes possible removing any hope of the type of individualized attention that would be needed to stop the "passing off" of kids from grade to grade. Further more how much sense does it make if you believe in the public schools to try to do it on the cheap.

[Hatedregret]

Think he's leaning toward uniforms serving to prevent well off students from making the poorer ones feel outcast and depressed. I agree with Uniforms being capable of exactly this.

[Bethany]

The teachers and the unions are only small part of the problem. They are not now, nor have they ever been the sole reason that education is the way it currently is.

Politicians, budgetary cuts, complete lack of parental involvement; you name it and they all share part of the blame. Let's not forget, a majority of the students themselves settle for mediocrity instead of challenging themselves. You can be the best teacher in the world, yet you still will end up with children that go down that path of self destructive behavior.

Society is making it even acceptable for this type of thing to spread. Texting, Facebook, and Twitter all make it the norm to abbreviate your words & sentence structure. Most children today never practice proper spelling or grammar. Outside of a classroom, the world around them does't make them. Things that used to be a cornerstone of a proper education are thrown to the wayside.

I wrote a note the other day for my cousin. She is 12, but could not read what I had written to her. My penmanship is very legible, but the problem was the fact that it was in cursive. When I asked her how could she not know how to read it, she said she didn't remember how to write it either. Apparently they stopped teaching it in her elementary school years ago. I asked my aunt and she said that the teachers were told it was no longer needed. Due to budget cuts the board thought being able to type and use basic block print was now sufficient enough.

And here I thought that Mike Judge's comedy Idiocracy could never come to pass.

Our descendants are going to live in a world that has degenerated into a dystopia where advertising, commercialism, and cultural anti-intellectualism run rampant and dysgenic pressure has resulted in a uniformly stupid human society devoid of intellectual curiosity, social responsibility and coherent notions of justice and human rights. This future society will emphasize anti-intellectualism, popularity, sexual attraction, and hedonism.

Yeah I don't think that sort of thing can be solely blamed on some underpaid, under appreciated, under funded, outnumbered Teachers with unions.

[Zilong]

Look at the bright side, the chance of Machine Overlord Dystopian future decreases the dumber everyone gets!

[Bethany]

Look at the bright side, the chance of Machine Overlord Dystopian future decreases the dumber everyone gets!

lol <3

[miokomioko]

uniforms serving to prevent well off students from making the poorer ones feel outcast and depressed

Kids feel depressed and outcast because how they decided to dress? Shit, it's fashionable to wear shitty 99-cent 2nd-hand clothing these days. This is lol.

Every school I've known to make the switch over to uniforms have done it for one or more of three reasons:

1) to make trespassers (gunmen) more visually obvious
2) to eliminate gang-related colored clothing
3) to avoid offensive and/or inappropriate clothing

Anyways. American schools do suck ass, I'm just sayin' it's definitely not because of lack of foreign language classes or uniforms. Both those things exist in many public schools here.

[guartz]

No, no. An educated citizenry would challenge the political status quo too much.

[thetruepandagod]

It's pretty weak, but there are foreign language requirements in highschool.

Graduated highschool with no knowledge of a foreign language outside of what i learned from beaners in wood shop.
Graduated highschool with over a 60% truancy rate.
Graduated highschool with a .86 GPA.

In fact the only thing that almost stopped me from not graduating was a lack of community service hours which every student was required to have, i ended up having my friend give me 50 of his. Our schools are a fucking joke and it's depressing.

Kids feel depressed and outcast because how they decided to dress? Shit, it's fashionable to wear shitty 99-cent 2nd-hand clothing these days. This is lol.

Also back in a time when i was in private school and actually gave a damn about my education it was nice to have mandatory dress code simply for the fact it was one less thing to think about in the morning and notice during the day, and it all made us hate the school and group together in mutual hatred of their various rules instead of wandering off into our own cliques.

[Hatedregret]

You ever been too embarrassed to go to school because of your clothes? Ever had to fight every single fucking day just to get by? Been the minority? Saying something is lol because you can't see it is absolutely ridiculous.

I agree with every other thing you had to add about uniforms. I realize they're also major factors in why schools have been switching to uniforms more and more frequently, but there are a lot of students who deal with social pressure on a day to day basis and they don't need to feel like shit because their parents ended up not being worth a damn. Uniforms help tremendously in this regard. Everyone looks equal.

Does this have anything to do with why the latest generation is..... lacking? Not really. I think Bethany said what the problem is better than I could hope to.

[Anomander]

Graduated highschool with no knowledge of a foreign language outside of what i learned from beaners in wood shop.
Graduated highschool with over a 60% truancy rate.
Graduated highschool with a .86 GPA.

Not that I'm trying to stand up for our public education system (I wholeheartedly agree that it needs some changes) but at my public high school it was required to take at least 2 years of foreign language along with something else (I forget now) or 3 years of foreign language. Also, either of the last two things would have gotten you kicked out of my high school and sent to a continuation school. I guess that still counts as a high school though? I'm not exactly sure what you can earn at such a school.

[miokomioko]

Same, I was required to take 2 years of foreign language (spanish/french/german) in order to graduate.

Also, uniforms don't prevent kids from forming cliques.

[thetruepandagod]

Not that I'm trying to stand up for our public education system (I wholeheartedly agree that it needs some changes) but at my public high school it was required to take at least 2 years of foreign language along with something else (I forget now) or 3 years of foreign language. Also, either of the last two things would have gotten you kicked out of my high school and sent to a continuation school. I guess that still counts as a high school though? I'm not exactly sure what you can earn at such a school.

Pretty sure you can only get a G.E.D. from those schools.

Also, uniforms don't prevent kids from forming cliques.

It helps when you are in the type of school where the only colors you can wear at school without getting jumped are black and gray. But yea kids will still clique up ;\

[guartz]

state board of education and legislative branch decides what the foreign language requirements are in your local high school.