Bad teachers didn't cause our educational problems in this country

[Klukie]

Lack of parenting did (and no child left behind has made the problem worse). I will say up front that I am a stay at home mom and this post is in no way meant to piss off parents who both work while raising kids. I fully recognize that there are parents who can handle both responsibilities quite well but those parents need to also recognize that many people cannot. I really believe the root of our educational problem began with both parents choosing or having to go to work.

Our kids need us and it is our job to know our children and to shape them into good responsible people but I have to say that from where I sit that doesn't seem to be happening. I am one of the few moms in my neighborhood that does stay home with the kiddies and I also am the mom that usually has a yard full of neighborhood kids. I know the name of every child in the neighborhood and I know who their parents are. I pay attention when my children are playing with others and I correct them fairly when they are misbehaving. I can't say the same for many of the parents who are both working. From what I have witnessed, many of them are just oblivious to behaviors of their children. They seemed overwhelmed and as a result the children aren't being shaped. Boundaries are not being set and discipline goes to the wayside. These are the children that are being sent to our very under payed teachers to deal with.


I volunteer in my children's school every week and in doing so I have had a great opportunity to view my children in their educational setting. I am able to assess their strengths and weaknesses and in turn assist the teacher in making sure that they do their best. I am also able to view what teachers have to deal with on a daily basis and I would recommend to any parent to take a peek from the inside. I have witnessed many parents who attack the teacher because they refuse to believe that their children are doing something wrong. Instead of listening to the teachers advice they will turn it around and act as if the teacher is bad. I have witnessed it over and over again and now the teacher blame game is gaining traction. Our teachers are not the problem.....we are.

[TwilightGardener]

1. It's not really a question of parents being able to handle both sets of responsibilities--

they simply have to work to pay the bills and put food on the table. Staying home is a luxury many can't afford. And I say that as a mom who has stayed at home for years, off and on.

[KittyWampus]

3. True, but on the other hand, staying at home is an option that many can and do afford.

If every family that COULD afford to have a parent stay home did just that, there'd be many more work opportunities to go around and wages would increase.

It's an issue that exists on a societal and individual level.

But it's also an issue that touches on many people's lives in a very personal level. So it requires a great deal of sensitivity.

[kiva]

11. The term used to be "a living wage" when unions and

reform groups proposed it 100+ years ago, the notion that a man should be able to make enough money so that his wife could stay home and his children could attend school instead of working. Like many reforms it had a cutting edge in that it discriminated against women who worked, implying that women worked for 'pin money' and ignoring single women, widows, and other women who had to work to support themselves and others.

It is a touchy issue, and it don't know if it's possible to deal with it in a way that doesn't divide us.

[Klukie]

4. Yeah..I know people can't afford it

and I think maybe we need to recognize the importance of a parent in the household before we could ever begin to change our priorities as a society. I know so many moms who hate having to leave their kids to go to work and it breaks my heart for them....We need to change the fact that many people need two incomes to feed their families.

[seabeyond]

8. what a lot of lower paying wage homes need to sit down and figure is IF going to work is really

bringing in enough money to make it worth while.

my very young niece was looking ot go back to work. when we took the costs of her going back to work, with amount she could earn, a couple hundred dollars a month was not even close to the worth of the tired, frustrated, hassled choice of going to work.

it would be good for couple to consider all the costs of going to work

[RaleighNCDUer]

16. The destruction of the middle class.

At one time 'middle class' meant one wage earner making enough to support a family. There were problems with students in lower class families - due to both parents having to work at sub-par jobs, or one working while the other looked for work - but that has migrated up into the middle class where two wage earners are NEEDED to support a family. IOW, a significant part of the middle class has been reduced to lower-middle or below, resulting in the same problems that were once the province of the 'underclass'.

[seabeyond]

22. so true. this really bothers me in the lack of comprehension how much this will hurt ALL of us

the rich and the poor.... that the middle get from both sides, derision maybe?

if the greater numbers in the school classes had a strong middle and one stay at home parent, then those that dont have that benefit.... from a larger number that can be a part of class/school/village.

this is not a one finger pointing thing at the parent

i know a single mom with two little ones years ago.... but kicked ass, with no support from hubby. not dead beat, but immature, hadn't grown up, nice enough guy. i watched this too young woman work ass off. and not get perfect, but did a damn good job

really, that part of the post needs to go to the poster that just saw the criticism.

so many societal shifts have created a HUGE experiment with our children.

[KittyWampus]

2. Agreed, though your post probably won't be popular. But it's not just babies/toddlers needing

the nourishment and cultivation that comes from a family member.

SAH Moms AND Dads need networks where they can get together with others and not be isolated. They need support systems.

And women need to make equal wages so if Dad wants to stay at home for X many years, it's economically more viable.

Lastly, Americans need to assess what is really most important to their lives. Is a 3000 sq foot home with that massive master suite really necessary? And that weekend house in the Hamptons? And that Playstation?

[seabeyond]

5. "Our teachers are not the problem.....we are." yup. nt

[Kievan Rus]

6. That and it's cool to be ignorant these days

[seabeyond]

10. i agree, but that is out of the home too. since babies, we embraced education

ignorant was never cool, always frowned on and wasnt respected at all. in our house, being clever, witty, thinking, ..... embracing academics, knowledge, reading, thinking has always been so much a part of the life.

comes from the home

[City Lights]

15. Yup. And too many hero-worship athletes and sneer at intellectuals.

And the hero-worshiping and sneering starts at a young age.

[Tansy_Gold]

7. Well, aren't you special

Forgive me, Klukie, but as one of those mothers who "had" to work when her children were pre-school, I have to take exception to what comes across as a blanket condemnation of parents (and you probable meant "parents" to mean "mothers") who don't stay home to raise the kiddies.

No one ever blames fathers for going off to the office or the plant every day. That's still seen as the man's job -- THE job. So why don't you blame the fathers who come home from work and plot themselves in front of the TV to watch the NCAA play-offs and leave mom, who also has a day job, to do the dishes, bathe the kids, and then get herself ready for the next day at the office?

Why not blame the fathers who take off and leave Mom to raise two small children on a minimum wage job and maybe, if she's lucky, find the spare change to take the absentee dad to court for child support so she can give up the part-time week-end job?

Why not blame the greedy-ass corporations that made health insurance so expensive that Dad's employer is now expecting him to contribute $300 a month to the premium and now Mom has to go out and get a part-time job to make up the difference?

Why not blame the greedy-ass wealthy pukes who resist time and time again any raising of property taxes so ALL schools are fully funded and poor kids don't have to work jobs to afford their second-hand football uniforms?

Why not blame the government regulations that have changed education from a learning experience to a testing experience, where kids who have never learned how to learn, who don't have books at home, who don't have a computer at home, are boxed into the mold demanded by the corporations and sometimes they just don't fit?

Why not blame the poverty that sends some kids to school hungry and sick and scared and abused?

Oh, no, you'd rather blame parents -- read that, working mothers, those selfish greedy bitches -- because you yourself are so special and are doing the "right" thing.

Just to pile on the anecdotes -- I worked, and my husband and I raised two pretty darn good kids. One's an engineer with a major manufacturing company in the northeast, and one is a speech pathologist in an urban (and generally poor) school district on the east coast. One is married to a nurse, the other to a teacher. Both spouses had working mothers, too. And both my kids have 5-year-old sons who are bright and happy and well-adjusted and healthy.

You're special. You're lucky. You get to choose to stay home and take care of the kids -- yours and the neighbors' -- and have someone else who picks up the tab. Not every mother is that lucky. And the ones who aren't don't deserve your scorn.

This isn't a snark at you as a person, Klukie, but it is a challenge to your attitude and your post. There are a lot of fine people who came from essentially fatherless homes or father-only families or from families where both parents work.

That our teachers are also unfairly blamed for the "failures" of our schools is correct; I will agree with you on that. But that working mothers are the root of the problem, no, I won't agree. Not at all.



Tansy Gold

[Klukie]

12. I don't give a crap who stays home with them....

man or woman but I do think that someone ought to be raising them...... and I did state that their are people that are quite capable of handling it all. BTW I waited ten years to have my kids until I got into a position where I could stay home and my husband doesn't pick up the tab..he works to support the family we built together.

[Tansy_Gold]

19. He picks up the tab

I don't care how you want to phrase it, but he works the paid job and brings home the cash that pays the bills.

I'm not saying you don't work -- you do, and your work is every bit as "valuable" as his.

I'm just saying that you've made a choice and you're lucky to have the wherewithal to live with that choice. Others aren't so lucky. I've seen a helluva lot of families fall apart due to circumstances beyond their control -- a father killed by a drunk driver, a young mother of four dead at 35 from aggressive breast cancer -- and I don't like it when people lump them together because SOME parents (working or not) don't do a good job of parenting.

TG

[seabeyond]

23. no, it isnt pick up the tab. and you use that choice of wordage to project your less than positive

image. to pretend otherwise is to, well, pretend.

i am not even gonna take the time to list out the wrong in your thinking.

so much of the discussion has been left out by your closed minded dismisal and conclusion you draw.

but

you are wrong.

[Klukie]

14. One other thing...

I am not that much of a feminist to admit that those babies lived in my womb and I produced the milk in my boobies and dammit I want to nurture them.

[Tansy_Gold]

25. You go right ahead and with my blessing, even if you don't want it

But it's your choice, and you're very lucky to be able to make it.

Many of us aren't/weren't so lucky, and I have friends who WERE lucky enough to be stay at home moms and their kids still ended up dropping out of school, in jail, or literally dead on the streets.

If anyone is projecting, it's you -- you think your position is the right one and you think everyone should do as you and that if everyone did so, all would be right with the world. All I'm saying is that what's right for you and what's POSSIBLE for you is not only not necessarily right or possible for everyone else, but it may not have the results you anticipate.

I AM a feminist, and I believe all people of all genders ought to have the right to make their own choices to the best of their abilities. You -- and your husband -- are lucky enough to be able to make the choice of having children and your staying home to care for and nurture them. That's fine, and more power to you if that's what you want and apparently it is. But that alone isn't enough to guarantee that your kids or anyone else's will turn out great.

That isn't the choice for everyone, nor is it possible for everyone, nor is it right for everyone.

I don't expect you to agree with me, or anyone else to agree with me. But I'm not asking you to do as I do, only that you not expect everyone else to do as you do.



Tansy Gold

[Klukie]

27. I think you apply way too much luck to the issue.

and if it is all luck that affords people the ability to be able to stay home or not then maybe as a society we need to do what it takes to change the bad luck. You are right about it being a choice for some but I know plenty who would love to stay home and can't. We need to change that.

[jaksavage]

9. Absolutely correct.

My two years teaching high school were...depressing.

[ParkieDem]

13. You make a great point.

I read somewhere recently about the "9/91" factor: From birth to age 19, children spend 9% of their time in school, and 91% of their time elsewhere. To think that higher standards for teachers, incentive payments for teachers, NCLB, or any major federal program for education is going to improve outcomes is just fantasy.

Our policies don't need to focus on schools, they need to focus on families and making it easier for adults to spend time monitoring and playing with their kids.

This isn't a solution, but I have seen a greater trend (at least in my area) of middle-class, thirtysomething mothers electing to stay at home more and more. Many mothers are finding that, when you factor in the cost of daycare, gas for the commute to work, and other expenses associated with having a job, it really doesn't make much sense to work outside the home unless you're commanding a pretty high salary. I hope this trend (not the high costs, but parents electing to stay home) continues.

[The2ndWheel]

17. Parents are middlemen

With too many variables. Every child should be born in a lab. They should be raised in a professional, federal, educational institution. All kids start out on the same foot. Nobody has any monetary advantage over anyone else. You can go work with kids, you just can't have them. The parent/child bond is too emotional.

That allows adults to be adults in an adult world. That allows greater society the freedom needed to shape the child into what it needs in the future. That allows children to exist in a equal environment.

Do it Brave New World style. There isn't much choice anymore.

[Captain Hilts]

18. Yes/No. The teaching field has lost a lot of its talent pool now that women can go into other jobs.

It used to be that teaching and nursing were all there was for women to do. That's not the case any more.

[AnneD]

20. Your observations are spot on....

I was a single working mom. My daughter was always my bottom line. I earned less money working in a public school as a Nurse than working in a hospital when she was young. I worked weekends at the hospital when she was with her dad to make up the difference. I always knew her friends and insist on meeting the parents, esp if she was to be in a sleepover. I recognized her talent and ear for music and nurtured it. I frequently backed teachers and saw them more as a team mate than an enemy.

I moved from elementary to middles school and at the time when teachers and parents need to pull together-it isn't happening. Teachers are bearing the brunt of blame for students when their parents are a no show. You know, when I was in the delivery room, I remember delivering my daughter but I don't remember seeing have of these kids that I am suppose to be responsible for. Now don't get me wrong, I bend over back wards to help these parents. But when I go out of my way and parents can't bother-that is when I get pissed.

Thank goodness I am almost ready to retire. I have had enough.

[mopinko]

21. there was no golden age when children were loved and nurtured and taught

there has always been a wide distribution of parenting "quality" that ran from kids who ran the streets and came from big families where there was little individual attention to kids who were only children of upper middle class families where they had full time attention from a dedicated parent. kids who were beaten and horrendously abused, kids who were coddled, kids who did several hours of chores before school, kids who didn't have enough to eat.
teachers have always had to teach the children that are before them. i agree that nclb was a horrendous waste, and a ridiculous framework built in lake wobeggon, where all the children are above average. the standard really should be how much the child and teacher achieved together, how much a child moves in a year.

as far as your position of having someone full time with kids, i think the real loss is multigenerational families. from levittown to vaudeville comedians, the most maligned of women has been the mother-in-law. funny that we so cherish the grandma and revile the MIL. but the american "ideal" of go it alone has fractured the extended family in favor of the nuclear family.

but again, there never was a golden age of fantastic parenting. it always has been and always will be a teacher's job to teach children in the real world where they come with gifts and deficits of all sorts. children will need to have relationships with teachers, and the good ones will make a difference in their kids life. i guess one thing we have no tests for is heart.

(and i apologize right now that this is sort of drive by post. i will only be around for a little while.)

[eridani]

24. Many Western European countries pay parents for time off--both sexes

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0106.mencimer.html

Remember the bad old days when Congress and the White House were at war over the Family and Medical Leave Act? It seems like ancient history now, that day in 1990 when George Bush vetoed the bill, arguing that business couldn't possibly afford to allow workers 12 weeks of unpaid leave after the birth of a child or to care for aging parents. The family leave act was a critical piece of legislation for women, 50 percent of whom were already in the workforce. Federal law had barred pregnancy discrimination, but it didn't mean much if women could still be fired or forced to quit after actually giving birth. But during the debate, Bush's press secretary, Marlin Fitzwater, neatly summed up the Republican approach to dealing with such touchy work and family problems. If your job didn't offer maternity leave or let you attend to your dying mother, the solution was simple: "Look for other jobs," Fitzwater said.

The family leave act would languish another three years, as conservatives and right-wing pro-family groups argued that it would only encourage more women to abandon their God-given roles as mothers and seek the monetary rewards of the workplace. Opponents characterized the bill as an attempt by women to have their pursuit of pin money subsidized by the taxpayer. Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) dubbed the act "another example of yuppie empowerment."

In 1993, 10 years after the bill was originally introduced, Bill Clinton made it the first piece of legislation he signed as president. Since then, 20 million Americans have taken advantage of the law, and the economy, far from being dragged down, experienced the largest boom in U.S. history. Yet the family leave act was the first and last successful attempt in the past decade to drag this country into the modern era where the majority of women are in the paid workforce.

Nearly every national initiative since then has been met with similar resistance, as conservatives have both refused to pay for measures that might ease the strain of working families and insisted that any efforts that "encouraged" women with children to work were detrimental to the traditional family. As Richard Lowry explained last month in the conservative National Review, "Working moms are at the center of a variety of cultural ills."

But if conservatives had hoped that withholding public support for working mothers would bring back June Cleaver, they were badly mistaken. Instead, a growing number of American women have found another way around the problem: They've stopped having children.

<snip>

Those like my sister, stuck in the middle, could try the Marlin Fitzwater approach, and instead of finding different jobs, they could find a different country. Sweden would be a good choice. In the early 1980s, the country was facing a labor shortage and declining fertility rates. Rather than try coercive measures to increase birth rates (like banning abortion or restricting women's educational options) or massive immigration, Sweden chose to make the workplace more accommodating for parents. Swedish women are now guaranteed a year of paid leave after having a baby, the right to work six-hour days with full benefits until their child is in grade school, and subsidized child care.

Sweden's birth rate went from 1.7 in 1980 to 1.9 by 1996, even as the rest of Europe's was declining. Women and children were the clear winners. In Sweden, college-educated women now have almost the same workforce participation rates as men and close parity in earnings, even as more women (and men!) stay home during their children's early years than in the U.S. But relocating to Sweden seems a little unworkable. So here's another solution to help speed change a bit: Let's make the baby boycott official.

If politicians want babies to kiss on the campaign trail, they're going to have to ante up, starting with part-time jobs with full benefits, tax equity, paid maternity leave, Social Security benefits for stay-at-home parents, and subsidized child-care centers---with well-paid teachers. Even more important, they'll have to finally admit that the minivan does not qualify as a child-care center, and make the school day match the work day---complete with PE, music, sports, and other enriching activities on site.

[ieoeja]

26. You skipped step 1 in the process: what problems?

You didn't say one thing about the classroom today that I did not witness growing up. And I was born in 1962.

I am astounded by the amount of work my kid is being asked to do today. As human knowledge expands our kids end up having to learn more and more.

In the 1750s King George III appointed a new Magistrate to head up the highest court in the American colonies. John Adams achieved fame through his public battle against this Magistrate's efforts to close down the public school system in the colonies. The Magistrate used all the same arguments today's Rightists use about the schools failing.

Decades later, when everybody was safely in their graves, private correspondence between the Magistrate and cabinet members revealed their true motive: public education was working *too* well. They recognized that educated people would want to make decisions for themselves rather than listening to "their betters".

Given that the core principle of the American Right is that workers should let their bosses decide everything, that citizens should let the wealthy class run the country, and that the American Right is leading the attack on public education, then it isn't all that far-fetched to think their true motives are exactly the same: to limit education and create more sheeple.

The only major problem with American education is that you are falling for Rightist propaganda.

[Tansy_Gold]

28. Thank you.

And I was born in 1948.

GMTA



TG

[Klukie]

30. So we aren't behind in math and science compared to other countries?

We don't have problems with dropout rates? Teachers don't have to deal with problems that were never theirs to deal with in the past? I didn't discuss problems because I figured that we all recognized that there are problems. Didn't a bunch of teachers get fired recently somewhere? Parents need to start to own their share of responsibility in the educational process.

[seabeyond]

31. again, i will put it on the parents.

drop out rate? really, where does that come from.

i agree with the poster in that there is not an issue with education. the opportunity is there if a student choses to take advantage of what is being given. i agree with the poster that the academics are beyond what we did in our time. people talk about the lack of education. but what i see my kids doing today, and the grades they do it, they are doing way more and much earlier than our generation did.

it is a matter of whether the environment at home is conducive to the child having the desire to be successful

which goes along with your theory.

[etherealtruth]

33. Does the district your children attend have these problems?

"Ours" does not have a large problem with these issues. Are your children behind in math and science .... mine are not. My 11th grader is ranked third in her class (of 359), she is taking both organic and bio chemistry at a state university this summer .... she is doing things with calculus I didn't even consider until I was in my second year of college. My eighth grader does not do quite as well .... probably that pesky degenerative eye disease he has. (The eldest graduated in the top 5% of his class of ~300). All are viewed by society in general as attractive charming people (I point out that this is simply the convergence of genetics and societal norms). Should I mention I'm a single working mother.

Instead of patting myself on the back I am grateful that I have had the opportunity to keep my children sheltered and nourished .... that we are able to live in a safe neighborhood. I am grateful that I was able to attend a good university. I am grateful for "good" genes.

The problems in our education system are largely found in our inner cities and poor rural areas ... these problems have been around since the beginnings of public education. The problems are with the disadvantages many children have throughout their childhoods.

As a society we all share part of the blame .... there are sh*tty teachers out there .... there are sh*tty parents out there ... sadly, there are parents that may not have adequate intellect .... there are kids that are just plain @ss-holes .... there always will be, its the nature of dealing with humans.

The problems are cultural (in the US there is a general current of anti-intellectualism) and socio-economic .... parents desperately trying to keep their children adequately fed, sheltered and physically safe really don't have the same concerns as you.

I am not nearly as self congratulatory as you ... I am grateful that I have had the opportunities I have had (and have been able to share with my children). Luck has a lot to do with it.

edit: I should have spell checked prior to posting

[ieoeja]

36. Which country are we behind in math and science as measured by ...

... real-world accomplishments (not grades)?

Richard Feynmann, head of the computer staff at Los Alamos during the creation of the Bomb, was invited to Brazil sometime thereafter. He was astonished to find high school students using the same Physics text books that US students did not use until college. And they were scoring just as well on the standard tests.

Why, Feynmann thought, were there few Brazilian physicists of note? So he devised new tests which he gave to a group of Brazilian high school and college students, and to a group of US college students.

The US college students scored pretty much the same on his tests as they had on the standardized tests. The Brazilian students, both high school and college, failed miserably. Many of the Brazilian students made it obvious why when they complained that they had not been taught any of those problems in their classes.

Neither had the US college students. But neither were they exposed to the standardized test problems before taking those tests. The colleges in the US were teaching their students physics. The high schools and colleges in Brazil were teaching their students the test. All they had to do was memorize the answers without ever having to know what those answers meant.

So show me some evidence of the US falling behind in math and scientific real-world accomplishments, and I might listen to you. Until then, maybe you should ask yourself why, if our education is so terrible, we are STILL dominating the fucking world?

The answer to that last is called "liberal education". Something the Rightists wish to destroy and have spent inordinate amount of time and money propagandizing against to the point where even all our liberal politicians don't even challenge it any more.

[proud2BlibKansan]

29. I understand your point but I am not going to point my finger at any working parents.

I have seen just as much bad parenting from parents who stay home with their kids. I don't think the changes we see in our kids is due to parents working as much as us moving more and more away from a child centered society.

[Dr Morbius]

32. There's another direction the finger of blame should point.

Maybe the schools could be improved. Government has done a fairly poor job of being consistent. Generally, I think the problem is more often the institutions and their insistence on micromanaging the teaching process than the teachers, but without doubt also, some teachers could stand to be replaced.

Certainly, America's parents often fail to take responsibility for the education of their children, preferring to blame teachers when the teachers are unable to do it alone - go figure.

But no one ever seems to want to place any responsibility on the kids! And the way I see it, we absolutely need to teach our kids that they have a responsibility to get a decent education. To work hard in school, to maintain focus, to be willing to ask for and accept assistance when they need it but try to learn independently when they can. I see public education as a three-legged stool; the school, the parents, and the child has to hold up their end for the process to be successful. If the school does a poor job, or if the parent fails to become involved, or the kid just doesn't care - any of these three possibilities will cause the child to grow up ignorant.

And watch Bill O'Reilly on Fox.

Yes! Hold the schools accountable. And hold the parents accountable. But let's hold the kids accountable too. Good life lesson for 'em.

[Fire1]

35. It all goes back to 'values' and values come from home. n/t

[Naturalist111]

34. Bullseye!!! The fact of the matter is good parents have to battle

bad parents day in and day out. You have to constantly be the bad parent in your child's eyes because Johnny's parents let him do this or that. I can only imagine what the teachers go through. There is however bad teachers also. The good ol boys club. Not everyone on this board can totally agree on things, it is the same in the education system. Bullying, favoritism etc. I could go on and on.

[NotThisTime]

37. There are plenty of SAH parents who are lousy parents... doesn't matter if you work or not, it's

your expectations from your child. There's no alternative than to live up to them and be a productive member of society. I can be my child's best friend, best advocate, but I mean what I say, and they both know it. As good as I can make their lives I can make them hell if they don't behave. They go to school to learn and be respectful. However, bullying is a problem, some bad teachers are a problem, the administration is a HUGE problem, lousy curriculum is a problem, teaching to the lowest common denominator is a problem... and the list goes on. Kids should be expected to work to their potential, but god forbid we do that.

[Taitertots]

38. Who are all these people choosing to have children they are marginally able to care for?

So many people seem intent on pushing themselves into these situations where they are unable to provide for their children. Then they complain as if teachers are the reason their children are not well educated. A school should be only a small part of a child's learning experience.

They complain as if poverty was thrust upon them, while intentionally taking on enormous financial burdens.