Be advised that texts you’ll get from official institutions are to be seen as sales pitches at best. They let sound everything very nicely, while the reality is most likely different. The South African schooling systems used to be very strict (for Whites, some of the Blacks burnt down schools, so that many other Blacks didn’t have access to public education). At least it equiped people with some skills useful at the job market. Today they call their policy “outcomes based education” something that may work with grownups that have basic skills and knowledge already, while in training.
That’s an important point. They may not push the parent away, but they give parents an excuse not to educate their children properly, since the school is looking after that.
Think a bit. Parents have more credibility and authority then any teacher to a child, with other words knowledge can be transposed much more efficient, by daddy then by auntie teacher.
I wonder how many of the mental, moral and social problems relate to the fact that nowadays children and youth attend school more then 10 years of their forming life.
All of the people I’ve met who used drugs talk about the boredom and hopelessness they experienced in public school as their motivation for starting using them in the first place.
Now sure I’ve heard about rich bored kids who burn out their brains in rebellion against their overarching parents, but I’ve never met one.
Funny, now that you say it. almost ALL drug related activities are done by youngsters were their is some school system. Kids on farms may nip from Grandpas homemade booze, but that’s about it.
Public schools deprive kids from natural authority figures (i.e. parents). Nay, they are even designed not to have your older brother around (who will emulate daddy, while he’s absent). Then take all these subsidized incredibly stupid and left wing academics around. Now it’s actually a miracle that not more kids end up in the Rehab clinique.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t these things that children should learn from their parents or on their own?”
Yes, and I firmly believe this should be so. When I am done getting my degree in language teaching, I am moving to another country where their style of teaching will be more appropriate to my own conception. I’m learning Japanese on my own and consider moving there to teach. I know, they are heavily taxed, but I’ll pick the hellhole I prefer: at least most of their students care enough (from what I heard in legends (hehe) and from a couple friends who went there and worked in different types of schools).
The main problem we have with this point though is that most teachers (and the government likes this) believe that they are on very special mission to save children from incompetent parents, even if it is againts their will. Telling them that parents have the right not to educate children the way they (teachers) see fit has them infuriated. Add to that the fact that children have the undeniable right to go to school (up ‘till age 16-18 -can’t remember) and you get class climates where you are tempted to take parents’ place in order to bring back a bare minimum of decency and learning. It would be much better and easier for everyone if this was not the case and schools could just throw out or refuse access to schools to children who can’t behave, like any other private enterprise should be allowed to remove individuals from its property.
“How can anyone put a grade on one’s ability to think objectively.”
I know of no way to do this. This is bullshit, but then again the law states that every single teacher in both private and public schools has to teach and grade in this way else he gets fines, fired and/or his teaching licence gets revoked. I don’t want to work in this environment. Also, many people in my class tell me to not complain and just follow the program because it is the law and that I have to follow it because I’ll be teaching here. I tell them I’ll work in another country then they either tell me that I’m an idealist or that I’m a traitor (because I was educated by the government of Quebec and am thus in its debt- wathever that means).
Vicious circle. Children driven to drug use through their experiences at school. These kids get caught up in the War on Drugs and either end up in rehab or in jail for several years for a victimless crime. Rinse and repeat for the next generation. Where does it end?
Or to cure ignorance. When I was in high school, because I had no more requirements to fill, I got stuck as an aide to a teacher in my last semester. She said that one day to her last class of the day. I was seriously holding back fits of laughter. If I recall that correctly, my class (her first class of the day for half the week) got the same lecture. I dunno why I didn’t have the good sense to just walk out of the classroom. Same with the time she said public schools work.
Undeniable right? It’s more like “go to school or else.” I’ll be shocked and amazed if homeschooling is even allowed in ten years in any state based on the direction this country is going in (unless Ron Paul or by some miracle whoever the LP and/or the Constitution Party put up get elected.)
You’re joking, right? Please tell me you’re joking.
edit: And when I say students have an “undeniable right” to go to school, I of course mean that the law grants them such rights. I do not concode with this system that forces parents to educate their children in ways they may not want to.
I’m affraid it’s really nothing uncommon in socialist countries, I’m from Poland and I hear stuff like that all the time.
There’s been a wave of emigration recently (about 2 million people), and every time this is mentioned you hear someone say “they should only be allowed to leave after they had paid for their free education!”.
We were also given a class at my Uni during which they explained this new program. We were told, among other things:
-That teaching knowledge is useless and that everything that is taught must be a competency that has to be immediately reusable or else students will just forget and learn nothing.
-That failing students is bad (it is forbidden by the grading system at the primary level- the lowest grade being “D”) because it is a way for teacher to take revenge on bad students and that said students are more likely to drop out of school due to demotivation. The goal of this reform is openly told too: to reduce drop out rates and hand out an higher number of diploma.
-When told that this new program and evaluation criterias are dumbing down “education”, we are told that students are doing better in ways which we were not taught previously to look for (i.e: students may not be able to spell words or use proper grammar, but they are motivated anough to write a 200 words essay in secondary 5 (Grade 11) ). To tell a student about his mistakes has now to be done using silk gloves or not at all if possible. Instead, we should look for points and meaning in a mess. They call this holistic.
You know, with this I can actually agree.
Over here schools go to the other extreme, they force students to memorize mountains of abstarct knowledhe, which they are unable to apply later on.
Here’s a thought for you: Stephen King expressed the essence of public schools in The Shining, when describing the Overlook Hotel. He wrote, “This inhuman place makes human monsters.”
Ugh… this should not be allowed. I would absolutely be against this if it happened in my school.
Here is what schools should be like. Feel free to disagree, or to add to my list:
small
privately owned (not owned by the state) or homeschooling
lets the child think and decide for themselves
does not limit the liberty of the child. This includes forcing the child to go to school.
does not use grades
does not force the child to do extra work outside of the school (this includes homework) unless the child is willing to do it.
lets the child have fun.
encourages the child to learn. lets the child choose what they wish to learn, but also shows the child the different things that can be taught. Tries to teach the things the child will probably need to know.
The education is unbiased, or provides different and opposing viewpoints when biased
This is making me dissatisfied. I know what I want to learn and how I can learn it. I just don’t want to be forced to attend the public school[:S].
Also, this year they removed the only economics class from the whole curriculum that was on the old program (yes, it taught Keynes’, but at least they got to learn what words like offer and demand meant-in a way-) to replace it with a class called :
Modern World: A class in which students will learn (told by the director of the ministry of education of Quebec) : population growth, environmental concerns and solutions, wealth redistribution, tension and conflicts, and theories of world government.
And again: This is not fabricated and is purely genuine. Some meaning may be lost due to translation, but I made it as accurate as possible.
@Purplemage: See, this is what you would like your school to be like, but if they were all like this by law we would have the same problem we have right now.
If you agree that schools should be free to make up every single rule they wish as long as they are stated in a contract parents have the right to sign or not, and if you agree that no law should force parents to educate their children in a way or in another, then I agree that your type of school may work for some people, but I would still doubt that a free market of schools would go that way due to the tendency to standardization where most people would like to know the people they hire had certain specific classes of certain subjects and were also graded.
So, according to the logic in this class you mentioned, why even bother going to school? Gaining knowledge is ideally the point, but if the governments of major countries keep mucking it up (or establish a system where it’s only an illusion that gaining knowledge is the point,) why bother?
If a student has to try very hard to fail, won’t that REDUCE THEIR MOTIVATION TO WORK? I feel sorry for you Canadians. I thought the schools were bad here, but that just blows my mind.
If thousands of functionally illiterate students have diplomas, that would reduce their worth.
And they probably laugh nervously before saying it, too. And a 200 word essay in grade 11 is pathetic. Maybe as an in-class exercise or BRIEF report, but not as a major assignment.
Why don’t they just call it “The Joys of Socialism”? That would say just as much as the title and description AND give people a better idea of what to expect.
If people know what to expect, then they can raise objections. A government that consistently told its subjects the truth would not survive a year. How long do you think that a politician could escape Mussolini’s fate if he admitted that he was running a protection racket?
Well its English as a second language, but back in my “old days” (like 6 years ago) we were to produce a 500 words or so text.
Also, did I forget to say that I am to NOT teach grammar rules overtly? They are supposed to incorporate them by listening to me speaking and talking to one another. During my last internship I corrected exams on which students did not even write their name properly and others on which students used color highlighters to write instead of a pen or pencil. I was told this was “o.k” and to focus on finding positive points rather than judging the negative ones. I also helped grade 9 students to discover how to use a dictionary or read time on a clock.