How Learning Died in America

[RKMBrown]

Texas is low overall because it has a massive influx of Hispanic immigration, legal and illegal, where they came from poverty stricken families with little to no education. 40% of Texans are Hispanic. Half of that is from first generation immigrants. The scores are bad cause they don't have families with math and science backgrounds. But they work hard and try hard. They will come around.

 

[daveman]

Texas is low overall because it has a massive influx of Hispanic immigration, legal and illegal, where they came from poverty stricken families with little to no education. 40% of Texans are Hispanic. Half of that is from first generation immigrants.

Hey! No fair throwing facts and logic into the middle of an emotion progressive hategasm!

 

[whitehall]

I assume that the electronic virus will spread through the world but we should be aware that the natural curiosity inherent in the young mind has been satisfied with video games rather than books. In another couple of decades the American novel will be gone, replaced with increasingly sophisticated short term reality figures on a screen.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Progressive Education did it. It is the reason why American students fail in international competition.

.

Since education in this country is mostly run at the state level, your theory should be supported by ample evidence that the most conservative states in this country are doing a better job educating their children than are the most liberal states.

Is that supported by any evidence? ,

I'll be explicit. Is that supported by any evidence that is not anecdotal and/or cherry picked?

Education is mostly run at the state level = LOL

 

[initforme]

My kids got a great education at the public school where we live. They were very well prepared for college and are now doing very well at their chosen professions. There was no indoctrination and the teachers were part of the union and they were paid a decent wage and if you ask me are underpaid considering the problems they have to deal with (which are created by the parents). I never understood the blatant attack on teachers. Yes there are some bad ones, but this is the case in ALL professions. The vast majority are good to very good and if a kid is struggling it is nothing but more rhetoric to blame them. As far as homeschooling, that's fine if that's what you want. I have no problem with it. But I wanted my kids to have the healthy interaction with friends during the day. I also wanted them involved in extracurricular which they were. All this mumbo jumbo schools are terrible teachers are evil and all the rest is a pile of bunk. Yes lets cut school funding, and give the savings to corporations right?

 

[editec]

Our educational system is flawed structurally.

And if you compare those nations where kids are excelling to the USA's system you'll immediately SEE where that structural flaw, is, too.

But since most people on this board don't really know how our ED system is structured, all that is meaningless to them.

Instead they whine about things they know nothing about.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Our educational system is flawed structurally.

And if you compare those nations where kids are excelling to the USA's system you'll immediately SEE where that structural flaw, is, too.

But since most people on this board don't really know how our ED system is structured, all that is meaningless to them.

Instead they whine about things they know nothing about.

Well....so good to have an expert like you here!

I suppose you'd agree, then, that it was the ascension of Liberal educrats that did us in.


It was, after all, their altering the motive of one unified nation, with a unified people, into the fragmented 'multicultural' farrago we have today.

'Social Justice' rather than education.



1. Earlier American presidents, Republicans and Democrats alike, agreed on two basic goals: teach the newcomers English and make them Americans. The clear aim was to strengthen our national identity--to reinforce the unum in e pluribus unum--by assimilating the new arrivals into American civilization. Anti-Americanization - Society and Culture - AEI



2. Before the Left took over the Democrat Party, even liberals understood and objected.

Arthur Schlesinger, jr.:
” The attack on the common American identity is the culmination of the cult of ethnicity. That attack was mounted in the first instance by European Americans of non-British origin (“unmeltable ethnics”) against the British foundations of American culture; then, latterly and massively, by Americans of non-European origin against the European foundations of that culture.”
Untitled Document

 

[initforme]

"

1. Earlier American presidents, Republicans and Democrats alike, agreed on two basic goals: teach the newcomers English and make them Americans. The clear aim was to strengthen our national identity--to reinforce the unum in e pluribus unum--by assimilating the new arrivals into American civilization."


While I see your point, I also see that diversity always strengthens a nation. One set of ideals hurts a society. As far as education, we base everything on test scores. Yet we tell our teachers NOT to teach to the test. Can't have it both ways. Let teachers see exactly what kind of problems and how many of each are on the test and let them spend their whole year on only those items. Then test. Everyone is crying about higher standards. Now the common core comes out. But that's no good.
If you want the absolute brightest minds and best people teaching, then you will have to find a way to pull them out of their private sector higher paying fields and encourage them to teach by paying them comparable. If not, in a free market, those people are going to go make a ton of more money. They can see their chance of advancement economically are zero to none as a teacher. Then they ask themselves why would they fight all the problems to days kids bring for that kind of pay?

 

[PoliticalChic]

"

1. Earlier American presidents, Republicans and Democrats alike, agreed on two basic goals: teach the newcomers English and make them Americans. The clear aim was to strengthen our national identity--to reinforce the unum in e pluribus unum--by assimilating the new arrivals into American civilization."


While I see your point, I also see that diversity always strengthens a nation. One set of ideals hurts a society. As far as education, we base everything on test scores. Yet we tell our teachers NOT to teach to the test. Can't have it both ways. Let teachers see exactly what kind of problems and how many of each are on the test and let them spend their whole year on only those items. Then test. Everyone is crying about higher standards. Now the common core comes out. But that's no good.
If you want the absolute brightest minds and best people teaching, then you will have to find a way to pull them out of their private sector higher paying fields and encourage them to teach by paying them comparable. If not, in a free market, those people are going to go make a ton of more money. They can see their chance of advancement economically are zero to none as a teacher. Then they ask themselves why would they fight all the problems to days kids bring for that kind of pay?

1. "...diversity always strengthens a nation. One set of ideals hurts a society."
Nonsense.


2. "... we base everything on test scores. Yet we tell our teachers NOT to teach to the test."
No we don't.

Reform is a tripod, with the following as its supports: a). standards, b). assessment, and c). incentives.
a. Standards must be subject by subject, and grade by grade.
b. Tests . “Teaching to the test” is deplored in education circles, although that complaint is easily answered: if the test faithfully mirrors the skills and knowledge set out in the standards, then preparing one’s pupils to ace such a test is an honorable mission!
c. Accountability, based on the incentives that are provided for performance. And the sanctions for nonperformance, with a system that fairly
From “Troublemaker,” by Chester E. Finn, Jr. Former Assistant Secretary of Education under President Reagan.



3. " If not, in a free market, those people are going to go make a ton of more money. They can see their chance of advancement economically are zero to none as a teacher. Then they ask themselves why would they fight all the problems to days kids bring for that kind of pay?"
Vouchers.

 

[initforme]

So you don't appreciate diversity of cultures? I'm perplexed. You seem smarter than that.
As far as vouchers, I'm fine with that. But hold those schools to the same testing and same EXACT standards and accept ALL who apply especially those who disrupt learning. Then compare.

 

[psikeyhackr]

It was alive?!?!

When?

 

[PoliticalChic]

So you don't appreciate diversity of cultures? I'm perplexed. You seem smarter than that.
As far as vouchers, I'm fine with that. But hold those schools to the same testing and same EXACT standards and accept ALL who apply especially those who disrupt learning. Then compare.

1. "So you don't appreciate diversity of cultures?"
Be clear.
That is the function of family....not of government schools.


2. "I'm perplexed. You seem smarter than that."
More clarity: I'm somewhere between you and smart.

 

[RKMBrown]

so you don't appreciate diversity of cultures? I'm perplexed. You seem smarter than that.
As far as vouchers, i'm fine with that. But hold those schools to the same testing and same exact standards and accept all who apply especially those who disrupt learning. Then compare.

1. "so you don't appreciate diversity of cultures?"
be clear.
That is the function of family....not of government schools.


2. "i'm perplexed. You seem smarter than that."
more clarity: I'm somewhere between you and smart.

rofl

 

[daveman]

So you don't appreciate diversity of cultures?

The people who celebrate diversity seem to share a universal dislike for one culture: the American one.

By all means, please come to this country and bring the best parts of your culture for all to enjoy. But when you come here, assimilate. Don't make your neighborhood just like your old country, and DON'T insist we hide away our culture because you don't like it.

 

[regent]

If learning died in America, when was it alive and well? What was America's greatest decade of learining, and why?

 

[StanB]

I think it is the balance between freedom and control..

You want kids to learn the hard way like most Asian schools do, then a stricter education system needs to be in place.

Our kids here are easily praised and given too much choices as to how they want to learn.

 

[Moonglow]

All learning does not occur in school. If you do not take the time to educate your children outside of class then your child will never learn.

 

[jon_berzerk]

the lighter side of education

enjoy

38 Test Answers That Are 100% Wrong But Totally Genius At The Same Time | Distractify

 

[NoNukes]

Progressive Education did it. It is the reason why American students fail in international competition.

Education writer Sol Stern explains the reason: 'Progressive Education,' the style inappropriately categorized as education, yet the dominant style in government schools.
It is no wonder that America is faring poorly in educating children, but it is a wonder that the public allows it!





1. " ... PS 87, the famous New York City public school my sons attended from 1987 to 1997.... on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. My wife and I were delighted when our older son was admitted to the school. It had just been ranked byParents magazine as one of the country’s ten best elementary schools—public or private—and the New York Times profiled it as one of the few city schools that middle-class parents still clamored to get their kids into. PS 87 had a reputation for adhering to the “progressive education” ...

a. ... instead of sitting in rows facing the teacher, as I did when I attended the New York City public schools, the children in the early grades sat in circles on a rug and often worked together in groups. I was told that this was the “open classroom” reform, introduced in the 1970s.... I soon received a crash course in educational progressivism.

2. ... the school’s teachers were trained at such citadels of progressive education as Columbia University’s Teachers College and the Bank Street College of Education, where they learned to repeat pleasant-sounding slogans like “teach the child, not the text” and were told that all children are “natural learners.”






3. PS 87 had no coherent, grade-by-grade curriculum. Thus, my son’s third-grade teacher decided on his own to devote months of classroom time to a project on Japanese culture, which included building a Japanese garden. Each day, when my son came home from school, I asked him what he had learned in math. Each day, he happily said the same thing: “We are building the Japanese garden.”

4. .... expressed our concern to the teacher about the lack of direct instruction of mathematical procedures, but he reassured us that constructing the Japanese garden required “real-life” math skills and that there was nothing to worry about. But I worried a lot, and even more so when my son moved up to fourth grade.
His new teacher assigned even more “real-life” math problems, including one that asked students to calculate how many Arawaks were killed by Christopher Columbus in 1492 during his conquest of Hispaniola.







5. PS 87’s children were taught almost nothing about such foundational subjects as the American Revolution, the framing of the Constitution, and the Civil War. I can still vividly recall a conversation with my younger son and several of his classmates when they were in the fourth grade. ... asked what, if anything, they knew about the famous Union commander for whom their school was named. They gave me blank stares.

6. More disturbing was what PS 87’s principal said when I informed him of my conversation with my son and his classmates. “It’s important to learn about the Civil War,” he granted, “but it’s more important to learn how to learn about the Civil War. The state of knowledge is constantly changing, so we have to give children the tools to be able to research these things and, of course, to think critically.”

a. [Progressive educrats] had abandoned common sense in favor of progressive education fads, backed by no evidence, which did more harm than good.


[One can see the results daily in the posts of Leftist members: they believe what they have been told to believe whether there is any evidence for said beliefs, or even when evidence to the contrary is provided. Very progressive!]





7. “The unacceptable failure of our schools has occurred not because our teachers are inept but chiefly because they are compelled to teach a fragmented curriculum based on faulty education theories.”
This didn’t happen by chance or because of professional incompetence, according to Hirsch. Rather it was intended, quite deliberately, by the schools of education. It wasn’t that professors of education favored the wrong curriculum, but that they stood for no curriculum at all. Citing romantic theories of child development going back to Rousseau, the progressives argued that, with just a little assistance from teachers, children would figure it out as they went along. That’s because students were capable of “constructing their own knowledge.”
The Redemption of E. D. Hirsch by Sol Stern - City Journal



The icon of Progressive Education is communist John Dewey.....some coincidence, huh?


With the evidence available, and it continues to pile up year after year, concerned citizens cannot believe that the dismal result is accidental.

Progressives are determined to doom this nation.

I taught at PS 87 for a while and found it to be an excellent school. The students were well informed, for the most part intelligent, and were excited about learning. My fellow teachers were very devoted to efucation and not just teaching because it was a job. The atmosphere at the school was very conducive for education, and the students fared well. There were many challenging programs there got teachers. I taught emotionally disturbed children, gifted children, and hearing paired children where a person stood off to the side and signed what I was saying to the children.

I previously had been teaching secondary school at the High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts, and I had a very good reputation. PS 87 heard about me and recruited me. They convinced me to switch to primary school where my talents might be more appreciated.

My memories of the school are beautiful, and stick with me. I often wonder what happened to many of my students, because they were do sharp, and a pleasure to teach. I am sure that many of them went on to do well.

 

[editec]

Every loony idea the Liberal/Progressives have foisted on the American people has been a dismal failure.

Truth.......

Oh come on now, you're smarter than the above statement indicates.


Universal education (a progressive idea) has been a dismal failure?