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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (55084)	9/12/1999 6:53:00 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

When I was teaching I found, and my wife finds too, that generally volunteers are more trouble than they're worth. They have to be planned for and scheduled in, they take time to train to do the job right, and then they show up when it's convenient. There are exceptions, but IMO usually volunteers don't wind up adding to the education of the kids. The exception are people who will just come let children read to them. But most adults want more action than that, they want to "help" the children (usually in ways directly counter to the way the teacher is teaching), and it's hard to schedule because you can't have a child missing a math lesson because that's when the volunteer wants to show up to listen to them read. Good idea in theory, hard to make work effectively in practice. Support people are most helpful when they can work with the needy children and let the teacher get on with the class without having to stop every 30 seconds to deal with a behavior problem. (And you can't send them to the office; there are no resources to take care of them there, and anyhow the law requires that they be mainstreamed.) Personal discipline and responsibility are the cornerstone of education. Our children are being raised without them. And our test scores show it. Okay, time for me to get off my soapbox!