Education - Page 5 - Political Forum

notahack · #41 (**permalink**) 04-28-2008, 05:56 PM

I won't jump back into the Asian thing because i've seen how factory workers live in China and what they tolerate, and the repetitive jobs they do.........ugghh

Anyway, some good stuff in this thread about education but some basic building blocks are adding and subtracting as well as reading. Part of reading is also the use of a Dictionary. Today, spellcheck is the norm and many folks don't realize that spell check can be wrong, I guess it is just how the wind blew, blue, bleu??

Even bowling has gone high tech. You no longer need to add scores in your head especially with spares and strikes. What about cash registers? When I'm at a store, and it comes to, for example, $5.25. if i give a cashier a ten and then say, hey wait, i have a quarter, they get confused because the register says to return $4.75 to me. it's gotten to the point that i must accept the change and then hand back 4 dollar bills and 4 quarters and request a $5 bill....no kidding.

It's disconcerting to me that we don't challenge the minds of kids today by keeping math included as part of the "price of playing" like with bowling.

Spelling and proper grammar are a lost art as well...............Hey,who you going to the mall with?

TeaSea · #42 (**permalink**) 04-29-2008, 01:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Way

TeaSea,

While I tend to agree with you, this really isn't all that practical, at least given the current situation. There are not enough teachers as it is, raising standards now would decrease the already too low number. In the short-term, I believe we'd be better served by increasing overall funding for textbooks, school buildings, extracurriculars, etc. Increasing pay, as you call for, would also be highly beneficial as that would presumably increase the overall number of individuals pursuing teaching careers which would eventually (say, in a decade or so) allow us to raise standards/training requirements.

The problem now is underfunding, particularly in impovershed areas. In many places schools are funded largely by local property taxes, meaning that if you live in a rich area with high property taxes you'll end up going to a well-funded school but if you live in a poor area with low property taxes you'll go to a poorly funded school; party of the vicious cycle of poverty. In my opinion, the US would be much better served by nationalizing school funding; all schools should be funded entirely at the national level according to the number of students they have. Any legislation to this effect would, of course, need to be more sophisticated than that with allowances for differential funding under certain circumstances, but the general direction should be equal funding. Equal and better funding would go a long ways towards solving the problems of the US' primary and secondary education.

Yep. It's impractical and very expensive. But invading and occupying Iraq was impractical and expensive and that didn't stop us.
And what I'm talking about is a REAL threat to national security, not just a trumped up one.
The thing about higher (MUCH higher) standards and correspondingly higher pay for teachers is this: we have a huge deficit in the quality of science and math education in primary and secondary schools, and this is directly attributable to our scarcity of really good teachers in those fields. Most college grads with interests/talents in those fields and the potential to be excellent teachers turn away from the option of becoming teachers because they can get far better pay in almost any other career in science or engineering.

KADSta12 · #43 (**permalink**) 05-12-2008, 12:19 PM

The education system has become very laid back in recent years. Teachers are becoming more like friends instead of people to answer to. In some ways this is good for students, but does this friendship generate as much as a teacher how is strict would.

Teachers can be friends as long as they know that they're getting their students to give their all.

Svante · #44 (**permalink**) 05-12-2008, 12:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KADSta12

The education system has become very laid back in recent years. Teachers are becoming more like friends instead of people to answer to. In some ways this is good for students, but does this friendship generate as much as a teacher how is strict would.

Teachers can be friends as long as they know that they're getting their students to give their all.

i dont agree wit h this.i dont think teachers are frieunds.i think b ig problem i s parents dont go to meetings or participer in school.parents dont know what is happenning with school.