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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (175498)	11/7/2011 11:36:00 AM
From: koan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542023

<<<<<<<<But when the parents cannot or won't teach the kids then it is up to society>>>>> <<<Huh? In Finland both parents generally work. If both parents are working I think it a stretch to say they have the time at night to teach their kids - WHEN the kids don't have homework.>> Work or not, educated parents educate their kids. It is a well established fact. The mom's read to their kids, there are usually books lyng all over the house. At dinner, the parents have substantive discussions with their kids. Margaret Mead said she id so well becasue every night at the dinner table they had a substantive discussion. In my house I was teaching the kids day and night. I followed the kids primary education to make sure they had good teachers. I taught them fractions during a vacation one year. I see at the many jobs I have worked at, that most peope do not discuss substantive issues. I spent years working on the Alaska pipline working, my way through college and met a lot of southern pipline workers: pipe layers, welders, carpenters, etc. In four years I never had one substantive discussion. They talk about hunting, fishing, cars, women and not much else. I never had a discussion about existentialism, social or hard science or general philosophy. <<This country - especially those in the education industry - have gotten complacent and whenever even a hint of a suggestion is made that we need to look at education a little differently, they cry out that it is society or it is the parents. ANYTHING but the education system. Well there are a lot of great teachers out there and a lot of good school systems - and a lot that is ripe for improvement. >> And who is to say who the good teachers are? The uneducated right wing? They complain because many of their kids fail and they cannot accept the fact it is their fault, not the teachers. Both of my kids went mostly to public schools, were both straight A students and one went to UC Berkely and Loyola law school and married a PHD scientist, and the other is a scientist who went to the University of Oregon. Most of my friends kids did just as well and NONE of my friends talk about bad teachers defeating their kids. As mentioned, the only people blaming the teachers I have found, are those people whose kids did not do so well, because they do not want to face the fact it is their fault, not the teachers!!!!!!

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (175498)	11/7/2011 1:49:47 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 542023

"This country - especially those in the education industry - have gotten complacent " You've got to be kidding. This is the "no child left behind" country. We are anything but complacent. We ARE often stupid and over reactive, and tend to leap in to "solving" problems based on little evidence. Many people glom on to stupid untested ideas, but that is hardly productive. Real change is happening all over the country. There is actually so much change it's hard to keep up with it all. What would be nice is to be able to document what change is working, and for which students.