Great Depression of 2016

[newfoundland]

With all due respect, throwing money at the problem alone, is not the solution. Discipline and high standards of behaviour cascade from the head down. Some of the best heads I know came out of the private sector to take on the challenge of large, urban struggling schools. They did this because they knew they had the vision and ability to transform these schools into happy thriving communities where hard work and achievement were celebrated and rewarded. They also believed in the right of all children to have the best education that the country can possibly provide. At first, things were very tough. Graffiti scrawled over newly painted walls, library books vandalised etc. One teacher said she replanted a rose bush 14 times and each time it was torn up. On the 15th time she asked the toughest, roughest boy in the school to help her replant it. It was never touched again.

This is about winning hearts and minds. Inviting parents into the schools, involving them. Running after school literacy and numeracy classes for parents who may have missed out on their own education. Asking them in to talk to the pupils about their lives, interests, hobbies, jobs. It's about respect and recognising that the least of us has something to say that is worth listening to, and not about judging people by their backgrounds.
If people don't like the system, or what is happening to it, then get out there and help change it, because we all can, in some small way stop this rot and improve the situation for everyone.

 

[Bluebonnet]

With all due respect, throwing money at the problem alone, is not the solution. Discipline and high standards of behaviour cascade from the head down. Some of the best heads I know came out of the private sector to take on the challenge of large, urban struggling schools. They did this because they knew they had the vision and ability to transform these schools into happy thriving communities where hard work and achievement were celebrated and rewarded. They also believed in the right of all children to have the best education that the country can possibly provide. At first, things were very tough. Graffiti scrawled over newly painted walls, library books vandalised etc. One teacher said she replanted a rose bush 14 times and each time it was torn up. On the 15th time she asked the toughest, roughest boy in the school to help her replant it. It was never touched again.

This is about winning hearts and minds. Inviting parents into the schools, involving them. Running after school literacy and numeracy classes for parents who may have missed out on their own education. Asking them in to talk to the pupils about their lives, interests, hobbies, jobs. It's about respect and recognising that the least of us has something to say that is worth listening to, and not about judging people by their backgrounds.
If people don't like the system, or what is happening to it, then get out there and help change it, because we all can, in some small way stop this rot and improve the situation for everyone.

Winning hearts and minds? You can lead a horse to water but you can not make it drink. The job of schools is to teach. It is the job of the parents to discipline, but it boils down to children raising children.

The parents do not care and I feel not an ounce of sympathy for them or their savage social misfit offspring. They should not be accepted, tolerated or coddled.

Why waste good money and effort on people that have no self determination or pride? Why not spend that money on the kids who do want to learn, but can not because their teachers are reduced to spending the class dealing with degenerate gang culture and being forced to attempt to play the role of parent instead of teacher.

I have sympathy for the children who want to learn but are stuck wading through the quagmire of filth that is our broken public school system.

I long for the old days, where social pressure stopped most of the idiots and it was socially acceptable to beat the living daylights out of unfit parents and force them to get their act together or go to jail for child abuse and neglect.

Now, no one bats an eyelash.

Everyone wants to play the 'fun' parent or use their children as bartering chips in divorce or relationship fights given the number of out of wedlock births or using them for a government welfare paycheck.

I have no interest in helping those who are unwilling to help themselves. My attention and monetary efforts go to those homeschooling their children or good private schools and projects that have proven results.

I know I'm not the only one who is completely fed up with how things are being run these days.

I appreciate your opinion on the matter, as different areas have different battles to fight, but having lived first hand through what passes for education these days, I honestly feel that we need to salvage what ever we can and just let the users fend for themselves.

I'm tired of watching good kids suffer without anyone speaking up for them, while they have to sit back and watch losers get special privileges to award their bad behavior.

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

Our government does not want local involvement in schools. Thats the whole point behind Common Core. The fed mandating what can an cant happen in every school in the country. The mandated rules would never fly if the locals had any say. No way 4th grade porn, anti-religion books an learning to sympathize with pedophiles would have ever passed any local level standard... The stuff they are teaching elementary school kids now I cant even post on this site cause it would get me banned....


Even if we managed to fix what is going on today in schools we still have the base problem with our school system structure to deal with. We are not teaching kids how to learn an grow, we are teaching them that their place is to follow orders of the people above them an to be happy with that place in life... We are training worker drones, not thinking people...

 

[newfoundland]

If you have the time to spare please watch the youtube videos from a tv programme called Educating Yorkshire. They are only short clips but so inspirational. The school is a large high school in an area with many social problems. There is poverty and social deprivation and historically a lack of employment in the area. The pupils are from a very mixed community and could easily be heading for disaster. Happily for them they have fallen into the clutches of the most dedicated staff I have ever seen. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I have.

 

[frenchblackcopper]

My wife has worked in the school system for 20 years as an aide.She has a college degree in early childhood,used to run a daycare for over 12 years until the state paperwork was so overwhelming.For several years she was an aid in one section of the school system that had kids that were one step away from going to prison because they had been in trouble with the law so many times. Many of those kids came from single parent homes.The parents who do try to eek out a living on their own sacrafices time with their kids because of working so much.I have helped my daughter many nites for hours on end with her biology and chemistry homework.We do things as a family like camping or going away on weekend mini vacations.We live in the second largest county in our state size wise,but our total population is about 100,000 for our county. Compare that to Cook county just 90 miles north with about 7 million.
Our school locally has about 65 kids each year that graduates. The high school and grade school principals both are quick to stop problems before they escalate.About 95% is white so not much racial issues.No gangs either. But there is still kids that only attend school because it's a state law to do so. They just put in the time and drop out at age 16. These are the kids who tries drugs.And many keep using them.Odds are they will never hold a full time job and getting a GED anymore is not acceptable when filling out a job application as the equalivalant of a High School diploma.This group of kids will become "The Jerry Springer Society"
The drive to do good in school comes at home.There is two ways to make a living as I've told my daughter,either by using your back,or by using your brains.And I've also told her as she gets older and thinks back to those times she thought me and her mom was being mean because we gave her a curfew,or told her no to going out with some guys,or going to a wild party,that she will realize her mom and dad are the "Best Friends" she will ever have in her lifetime.

 

[Bluebonnet]

My wife has worked in the school system for 20 years as an aide.She has a college degree in early childhood,used to run a daycare for over 12 years until the state paperwork was so overwhelming.For several years she was an aid in one section of the school system that had kids that were one step away from going to prison because they had been in trouble with the law so many times. Many of those kids came from single parent homes.The parents who do try to eek out a living on their own sacrafices time with their kids because of working so much.I have helped my daughter many nites for hours on end with her biology and chemistry homework.We do things as a family like camping or going away on weekend mini vacations.We live in the second largest county in our state size wise,but our total population is about 100,000 for our county. Compare that to Cook county just 90 miles north with about 7 million.
Our school locally has about 65 kids each year that graduates. The high school and grade school principals both are quick to stop problems before they escalate.About 95% is white so not much racial issues.No gangs either. But there is still kids that only attend school because it's a state law to do so. They just put in the time and drop out at age 16. These are the kids who tries drugs.And many keep using them.Odds are they will never hold a full time job and getting a GED anymore is not acceptable when filling out a job application as the equalivalant of a High School diploma.This group of kids will become "The Jerry Springer Society"
The drive to do good in school comes at home.There is two ways to make a living as I've told my daughter,either by using your back,or by using your brains.And I've also told her as she gets older and thinks back to those times she thought me and her mom was being mean because we gave her a curfew,or told her no to going out with some guys,or going to a wild party,that she will realize her mom and dad are the "Best Friends" she will ever have in her lifetime.

I went through a system where the juvenile detention centers were so full, that they could not accept any more kids and so we were forced to tolerate them.

Women like your wife are greatly appreciated by students who want to learn and I'm sure she must love her work, because heaven knows we do not pay our teachers enough or provide them with enough job security.

Using your brains is nice, but not when you have to get into insane debt for a college degree. That gets us into debt and then we have to slave away paying it off.

Men used to be able to provide for a large family with a single paycheck and it is because employers did not have a cheap workforce to exploit. Now, we have immigrants taking jobs that should be going to Americans, not foreigners. Feminism has encouraged women to go out and work and women have been exploited as cheap labor as a direct result. Our system is so unbalanced and the school system being broken is just one example of why we need to get back to what works.

I'm not saying that women should not be able to work, but I do believe that a man should have no worries about being able to provide for a family and that women should not have to work because it is impossible to survive otherwise. Ladies were meant to stay with the children and that is just how nature intended for it to be.

What we have now is not acceptable and it is not working.

Both parents being forced to work and then have only a few hours, when they are tired out from working all day, to spend with their children is robbing their children and compounding the problem.


Our government should not be the substitute parent of our children.

 

[Bluebonnet]

If you have the time to spare please watch the youtube videos from a tv programme called Educating Yorkshire. They are only short clips but so inspirational. The school is a large high school in an area with many social problems. There is poverty and social deprivation and historically a lack of employment in the area. The pupils are from a very mixed community and could easily be heading for disaster. Happily for them they have fallen into the clutches of the most dedicated staff I have ever seen. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I have.

Why is a school having to solve social problems?

Why are we still pretending like 'diversity' is a good thing? Diversity is harmful to individuals by forcing them to adhere to standards that are unrealistic for them. It is not fair to any of the students to force them to learn under those circumstances.

Cramming children together from different backgrounds and cultures and expecting them to be held to the education standard of others is cruel.

That is like taking different varieties of a species, say chickens for example, and expecting them to fair well under the same conditions. It does not make any sense when you do it to plants and animals and it makes even less sense when you do it to children, an extremely vulnerable population.

Aside from social dysfunction, if you take a kid and hold them to standards they can not meet and then blame that kid for failing, that should be considered child abuse. That is no different from an abusive spouse telling their partner to perform more tasks than they can achieve by a certain time limit and then punishing them because they fail to live up to their unrealistic standard. It is mentally, emotionally and if you are in one of those kinds of schools, likely physically abusive too.

I absolutely do not expect a diverse group of students to perform well under the same circumstances, it is not natural and it is unrealistic.

It is not that children need more attention or any of that, it is that they need to be taught at a pace and by methods that they can comprehend. Education should be catered to the students, but that can not work in diverse classrooms.

It is like taking children who speak Italian, French, German, Spanish and English and putting them in a class and teaching them in only one of those languages and expecting all of the students to comprehend the lesson because many words are mutually intelligible between those languages.

It is unreasonable to expect any result other than failure to be the outcome.

 

[oldrooster]

My wife has worked in the school system for 20 years as an aide.She has a college degree in early childhood,used to run a daycare for over 12 years until the state paperwork was so overwhelming.For several years she was an aid in one section of the school system that had kids that were one step away from going to prison because they had been in trouble with the law so many times. Many of those kids came from single parent homes.The parents who do try to eek out a living on their own sacrafices time with their kids because of working so much.I have helped my daughter many nites for hours on end with her biology and chemistry homework.We do things as a family like camping or going away on weekend mini vacations.We live in the second largest county in our state size wise,but our total population is about 100,000 for our county. Compare that to Cook county just 90 miles north with about 7 million.
Our school locally has about 65 kids each year that graduates. The high school and grade school principals both are quick to stop problems before they escalate.About 95% is white so not much racial issues.No gangs either. But there is still kids that only attend school because it's a state law to do so. They just put in the time and drop out at age 16. These are the kids who tries drugs.And many keep using them.Odds are they will never hold a full time job and getting a GED anymore is not acceptable when filling out a job application as the equalivalant of a High School diploma.This group of kids will become "The Jerry Springer Society"
The drive to do good in school comes at home.There is two ways to make a living as I've told my daughter,either by using your back,or by using your brains.And I've also told her as she gets older and thinks back to those times she thought me and her mom was being mean because we gave her a curfew,or told her no to going out with some guys,or going to a wild party,that she will realize her mom and dad are the "Best Friends" she will ever have in her lifetime.

My cousin had a friend whom was a grade behind him in school. The boy had multiple health problems and missed lots of school as a result always with a doctor's note. He kept up with his work the best he could and always passed his classes. During his Jr. year (my cousin's SR. year) the boy was expelled or suspended (not sure on the details but he was thrown out of school) for missing too much on the last week of school. He and his parents went in and saw the administrators to see what summer school and make up tests/homework was needed in order to graduate on time the next year. they told them sorry your son has to repeat his jr. year and then go a fifth year for his sr year. A friend told them that they thought it was hog wash and told them how to find out how to get a GED and told them to look at the local Jr College (private Christan school) and whom to talk to there. They knew the boy was getting the shaft from the local school and the GED in that area (even 25 years ago) was considered almost as useless as just saying your a drop out and leave it at that. They saw the right person, signed the boy out of high school, got the GED test done The high school fought the dropping out, the boy trying to get his GED and each step the parents where advised whom to speak to by their friend to fight the school off. Finally when the boy got his test results back that he passed they went to enroll him in the Jr college (knowing an AS degree no one cared what kind of diploma you got GED or high school) they school system heard and made a threat to sue them in court for a large sum of money. The party advising them told them what person to talk to at the college and the college went to bat for them and threatened to sue the school system for blocking the student from enrolling in their school and have their lawyer file on the student's families behalf for harrasment among other things and they had more funds to fight in courts than the local system had so the school system had to back off.

 

[newfoundland]

Diversity, I think is a good thing. If we grow up among children from a diverse range of backgrounds and ethnicities, we learn to appreciate both the similarities and the differences. We learn mutual respect and trust, all of which, in time may lead to a happier safer world. We should have the highest expectations of both behaviour and achievement for all our children, to settle for any less would be a complete abandonment of the ideal of equality of opportunity. All these young people are going out into the same world, they must all be prepared similarly otherwise some will be seriously disadvantaged. I think it would be very wrong to exclude pupils from the mainstream curriculum because it might be in some way cruel or unfair to expect them to participate alongside their peers. This would be consigning them to the dustbin of society for no other reason than they are from a poor/immigrant or socially deprived background. A thing that would never happen here and I hope never happens where you are. Education is the great leveller, and America is the great meritocracy.

 

[Bluebonnet]

Diversity, I think is a good thing. If we grow up among children from a diverse range of backgrounds and ethnicities, we learn to appreciate both the similarities and the differences. We learn mutual respect and trust, all of which, in time may lead to a happier safer world. We should have the highest expectations of both behaviour and achievement for all our children, to settle for any less would be a complete abandonment of the ideal of equality of opportunity. All these young people are going out into the same world, they must all be prepared similarly otherwise some will be seriously disadvantaged. I think it would be very wrong to exclude pupils from the mainstream curriculum because it might be in some way cruel or unfair to expect them to participate alongside their peers. This would be consigning them to the dustbin of society for no other reason than they are from a poor/immigrant or socially deprived background. A thing that would never happen here and I hope never happens where you are. Education is the great leveller, and America is the great meritocracy.

We are so polar opposite on this issue. I will say I like the idea of believing in everyone and hoping they can do their best, but wishing and reality are two different things. I agree that some kids need help, but the schools can not and should not provide that help at the expense of the majority of the students.

Nature is not an even playing field and some are more competitive than others and thus more likely to succeed. I believe that catering to the lowest common denominator is harmful in the sense that it makes your average person feel like they can achieve less academically and those with the capability to learn more advanced subjects are being held down because their teachers are busy having to cater to the students who do not want to be there or just can not grasp the material.

It stunts our societal achievements, as demonstrated with America's academic decline which has led to us being less competitive than those from other nations in terms of all manner of occupations.

America was founded under the concept that you get what you work for and earn, not what is handed to you because of your ethnic background.

There is nothing equal or progressive about holding those capable of achieving great things back to cater to the less capable.

Education is not what we have going on in our schools. Now, we have gang culture, teachers having relationships with the students, faculty that is not fit to be teaching students, insufficient funding due to delinquents destroying materials that are expected to be reused among other things, rampant bullying, drug use and sex among the students and any curriculum that might encourage vital skills like home economics, music, P.E. and other essential curriculum has been cut back or cut out entirely due to budget cuts and other issues.

It is utterly ridiculous to cater to the least intelligent in the hopes they will learn, while holding the capable back.

Why should we tolerate things that are limiting to the majority? Tolerance has to be taught. It is a completely politically correct concept that has damaged our nation, because being forced together and calling it tolerance is not true tolerance at all and only serves to further resentment. I think it is quite possibly the most socially damaging concept in existence.