Public Schools are not supposed to be about making kids free thinkers (primarily). Ice has it right in that it is towards such a diverse and large group of people. How would that ever be an attainable goal?

I think we are living in a country where parents have forgotten their role as teachers. I think most parents think teachings stops at some point and then it becomes the problem of the State. Public Schools are not going to mold kids into free-thinkers on their own. It takes discipline and other lessons from the hands of the parents to accompany that. Teachers in schools are there to facilitate the learning process. The previous post is right in that it takes a parents (or some sort of involved adult's) involvement with their child to ensure a healthy and educated mind. This is really the key that is missing today in many situations.

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"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."
Isaac Asimov

My point exactly. That is why as a parent it is your responsibility to turn the child into a free-thinker, not the school's.

This would be great if parents would actually try to teach their kids, but today the family to a child is just more people who you happen to live with. Most kids only have one parent. By the time they get home from school that parent it usually gone, so where are they going to learn to be free-thinkers? Naturally it will be from school where they have friends. Those few who actually have two good parents are taught differnt values in school and tend to forget what they were taught at home when they hit age thirteen. The fact is that the government can't force parents to teach their children but they can force their teachers.

This is purely speculative from both of our viewpoints, but I would agree here.

"Force" teachers to do what? Make kids learn or even care about learning? The purpose of a teacher is to facilitate the learning process. This means a child has got to be actively involved in it on their own accord already. The means by which they get this attitude (strict parenting, active involvement through learning activities by parents, etc.) aside, it has got to be present in some form in order for a teacher-student situation to be effective. The teacher can not enforce a set of values and discipline into a class of 25 and teach them the material all in the same juggling act.

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"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."
Isaac Asimov

Perfectly true and that is why your responsibility as a parent is to facilitate the teaching process by giving her/him disciplined children to work with.

Really?

I never knew that.

Most kids need a mother and a father to be born - if either parent is absent the other parent ought to make sure they are involved. My children had four parents.

Mountain Mike I don't need to quote your post to tell you that you have the problem down exactly.
Did you notice that the children in Japan were wearing uniforms.
We have a problem very similar to yours here. One suggestion has been to separate the boys and girls into separate schools.
We also only have primary schools to grade 7 then high school grades 8 to 12. This needs to be changed as well to the three school system to take the younger ones out of the influence of the older ones. But I firmly believe in segregated schools and school uniforms. Mine went to an all boys school, they don't have problems socialising because they had social functions with their sister school but it was not on a daily basis. With all the sexuality in kids today, I can see that as the only solution and then of course, parenting classes for the idiot parents.

I remember reading a funny little Calvin and Hobbes comic when I was a kid that stuck with me for a long time. In fact, I'm sure in one of my myriad collection books of them it is lying around still. It asks Calvin what year some event took place and Calvin responds with the correct year. After that, he comments after the answer "I have memorized what I see as a useless fact. I have gained nothing from this semester except learning how to successfully manipulate the system" or something to that effect, then makes some quirky comment to end off the strip. In many ways I see this as quite the foretelling of the education system to come.

Teachers are so worried about getting kids to pass these tests so that they might keep their jobs, that actual teaching and grasping of the concepts takes a backseat to rote memorizing of select portions of the subject.

__________________
"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."
Isaac Asimov

Ah, here it is. Enjoy.

__________________
"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."
Isaac Asimov