I would say the public schools, in general with a few exceptions, are a generation behind where they should be. Bureaucracies exist to protect themselves, not serve people. So the kids end up sacrificed, which of course is the kids' fault. You know - they didn't study hard enough. Or whatever.
I actually fell for the con of go to college, get a degree, get a good job. It didn't happen, so went to work for myself. I ended up owning a taxi for five years, and it was party-time - I had a blast.
I was surprised when I got out of college. The top jobs were reserved for graduates of "elite" universities, and if you weren't part of the Old Boys' Network you didn't stand a chance of promotion.
Now it's gotten worse. In fact, it's getting close to chaos in some parts of the country. Educating immigrant kids who came here on the top of trains, who don't speak English and are probably angry and depressed after being uprooted from their homes? No wonder so many people have pulled their kids out of public schools and moved to rural areas.
I'd rather fish for my dinner and live in a trailer than send my kids to many public schools. And I don't blame the teachers. I blame a corrupt, backward system that pretends to care about the kids but wants only money and power.
"The purpose of art is to wake you up" - Ezra Pound
4 comments:
Oh, you're damned right the teachers can be blamed! Most are fuggin union slobs and socialists. Those are the "good ones". The bad ones are feminists, lesbians, or other disturbed f-knuckles that should be mopping floors.
Why if it were up to me, every second teacher would be rounded up, shot and then pissed on as a warning to the others. I have two of them on the out-law side of the family and neither of them is fit to shine shoes in a whore house.
In connection with my work I've had the "pleasure" of attending a couple of conventions of the National Education Association. A bigger group of dimwitted, malformed, misinformed mediocrities you could not imagine congregating in one place.
A few years ago, I found this book from 1909, 'How to Study and Teaching How to Study'. The author's premise is that kids already have the ability to study but can use a bit a help formalizing it, starting about 3rd grade. His factors of studying are pretty straight forward.
I realized one thing after reading that book. The one thing "education" doesn't teach students is how to do their job, i.e., study. Apparently, it is something kids are suppose to pick up in a kind of survival of the fittest situation. And the "smart" kids are the ones who get "it" faster or better.
Doubt it, google up "How to Study" and see what you get for advice from school websites.
As for the divergent thinking mentioned in the video. I read another book from 1886 about setting up a school that trained both the mind and the hand. The book had a lot of discussion about the fact schools only train students to output their knowledge via language when they also have manual creation via hands. That book mentioned research that is similar to what is now called divergent thinking. They found that 5 yr olds did better on tests requiring "creative" thinking than kids at 8 or 9 after they'd been "educated".
Sadly, none of the problems being discussed about schools are new. Not much has changed in the last 120 years.
JKB, what is the title and auhtor of that 1886 book?
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