A different (but realistic) perspective on life...

[davidsymons53]

I have two daughters, a daughter-in-law and a son-in-law who are teachers in Ontario. All of them have very strong and negative sentiments on how the education system has evolved into a warm, fuzzy "daycare center".

It is refreshing to hear that Bill Gates holds a similar opinion.

Bill Gates gave a speech at a High School about
eleven (11) things they did not and will not learn in school.


He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings
created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and
how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

Rule 1 : Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2 : The world doesn't care about your self-esteem.
The world will expect you to accomplish something
BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3 : You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school.
You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4 : If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss

Rule 5 : Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity.
Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping:
They called it opportunity.

Rule 6 : If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault,
so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7 : Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring
as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills,
cleaning your clothes and listening to you
talk about how cool you thought you were:


So before you save the rain forest
from the parasites of your parent's generation,
try delousing the closet in your own room..

Rule 8 : Your school may have done away with winners and losers,
but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades
and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer.
*This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9 : Life is not divided into semesters.
You don't get summers off and very few employers
are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF.
*Do that on your own time.

Rule 10 : Television is NOT real life.
In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11 : Be nice to nerds.
Chances are you'll end up working for one...

IMHO, YMMV. David

[hamjam]

http://preview.tinyurl.com/37bezwp see here
But they are certainly worthwhile comments

"I have two daughters, a daughter-in-law and a son-in-law who are teachers in Ontario. All of them have very strong and negative sentiments on how the education system has evolved into a warm, fuzzy "daycare center"."

so what is their sentiments? I have mine and I would be willing to buy the first round of fizzy drinks as we discuss it. .....although it might turn into a rant by me
Jim

[natemoen]

If parents are not going to discipline their children then at least the schools need to be able to, BUT it is not the schools job!

[davidsymons53]

http://preview.tinyurl.com/37bezwp see here
But they are certainly worthwhile comments

"I have two daughters, a daughter-in-law and a son-in-law who are teachers in Ontario. All of them have very strong and negative sentiments on how the education system has evolved into a warm, fuzzy "daycare center"."

so what is their sentiments? I have mine and I would be willing to buy the first round of fizzy drinks as we discuss it. .....although it might turn into a rant by me
Jim

They totally disagree with the education system!!!

My older girl teaches high school. There too many kids coming into grade 9 reading at a grade two or grade three level, because they can't be held back (failed) until they can read. Three years ago they implemented a new policy forbidding teachers from giving a zero or even a 50% of the earned mark for late assignments. She has also worked in "credit recovery". Even there the "students" are allowed to skip up to ten days per semester (some skip up to half) with no consequences. She can't even keep them after school to enforce their co-operation to try to compete tasks.

My daughter-in-law has had a six foot two inch father of a grade three student, that was bullying classmates in class, screaming at her an inch from her face, because she had called their home to inform them of their daughter's behavior.

When I was in school the teachers were in charge of all of the behavior in school. I worried less about getting into trouble at school and more about my father finding out I was in trouble at school! Now the schools are run buy the student, aided and abetted by some of the parents.

[davidsymons53]

If parents are not going to discipline their children then at least the schools need to be able to, BUT it is not the schools job!

I agree! Not only are the teachers forbidden from any form of discipline, if they even try to with hold-marks some parents storm the school to defend their little reprobates.

[LoserShoes]

Don't know how old you guys are, but this kind of stuff is said in some form or other by every generation. Just accept the fact that some will make in spite of all the obstacles that are put in the way and some will not in spite of all the help and handholding that others will give them. The education system is more of a set of filters then behavior modification. There is no way to predict the results of any system until it completes, and then its pretty much too late.

I guess the bottom line is there is no "one size fits all" educational system.

A Message from the BabyBoom
Steve

[Douglas Money]

When my children especially my son were in school, I noticed that the teachers and principal were used to kids doing things wrong and not getting disciplined. When it was my son, I told the principal that I would deal with his behavior at home and that any discipline she felt needed to be administered at school was appreciated by me. In a very short time, she came to appreciate that I was disciplining him at home. He has turned out to be a very good man at his 27 years of age. If we had both, parent and teacher, not worked together, I am sure the outcome may not have been so good.

[crazy steve]

Schools, particularly public schools, are nothing more than a 'business' whose purported task is to 'educate' our children. Like any business, some are run well but most aren't. Given the restrictions most of them operate under, it's a miracle they work as well as they do in many cases. Keep in mind that it's not their job to furnish a 'moral compass' or teach wrong from right, merely to give them the tools to understand/do certain things. The real 'life lessons' have to be taught at home, and IMO a parents' main job isn't to 'protect' their children so much as to limit the damage of bad decisions so it doesn't become a permanent blemish on their public record. Bad choices should have consequences, enough so that they'll be remembered.

My kids are all grown and gone, so 'ownership' of their mistakes are now wholly theirs. They were all young adults before they finally realized it....... which was probably the case with all of us.

[B11]

Retired from the zoo

I taught high school for 15 years. I studied languages ( French/ Spanish/ German ) I taught ( not very well :-( ) English 9 , Socials 7 and 9, P.E. 10, Science 7, Consumer Ed. 10 ( the parents job ! ), plus all levels of languages.
We have kids who live for video games and action films. No one has ever sat them down and made them keep still, for example, while reading. A lot of the ADHD etc. kids have never been taught how to sit quietly !!! Most homes have NO books in them. Kids never see their parents reading or discussing what they have read. Lots of kids don't believe they need to learn to read. ( Try accessing the Internet without it !) and can't see the use of school, 'cause none of the 'Rappers and movie stars ' needed an education.
I finally quit when our school system began making it easier and easier to graduate with no 'real' courses ( math, english, sciences, computer skills, etc ).
It has gotten so bad here ( Canada YMMV ) that Colleges and Universities have to give ' English for dummies' classes to teach WHAT THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO LEARN IN HIGH SCHOOL !!! None of this is made better by teachers who were 'educated' by people who don't know the rules of grammar themselves, can't do ANY math without a calculator, have lots of 'airy-fairy' theories about education that don't work in the real world !!!
So, I've gone back to truck-driving. I worked against the system for as long as I could, but a few people can't change such a huge mess. Some of our youngsters are doing it right, usually with the help of very involved parents. I worry about the rest, though. ( Rant over ! ) Brian

[Douglas Money]

We watched the Thanksgiving day parade in 1989. After the parade, I went out and tore down the TV antenna and through it in the garbage. We went until Feb 1999 with no TV. Only got it then because my elderly mother moved in with us and she was used to TV at home. My kids learned to really read during that time. They could chew through books faster than we could get them. Today, they don't read nearly as much, but some of them still do read quite a bit. At the time we got so much grief from other parents and teachers about how we were harming our kids becuase we had stopped TV and our kids would fall behind. Our kids today don't see it that way still.

[b.walker5]

If parents are not going to discipline their children then at least the schools need to be able to, BUT it is not the schools job!

+1 on that one Nate.

As somebody said, it's the same the world over and it crops up with every generation, however sometimes in history there are some spectaculary stupid things done to try to address it, and here's an outstandingly stupid example.

Three years ago we had a politician who thought 'she' could solve the problem by introducing a bill to parliment called the 'Anti Smacking' bill, and our outstandingly stupid govt of the day passed it into law. Parents are now criminals in this country if they use good old fashioned discipline on their kids. The focus was to try to curb violent abuse by parents but the end result is that we now have cases before the courts right now where parents have given their kid a smack on the bum in the supermarket for normal kids in supermarket stuff, and some do gooder mother has seen it and reported it to the police. Police are supposed to use their discretion when deciding if charges are needed, but in reality they cant because they have no way of knowing if it's a one off incident or part of a bigger picture, so they charge everbody and lets the courts decide. (imagine how much that costs!!)

Bottom line is that discipline in this country is illegal, both at schools and at home and kids from about age 10 know it. And they play it for all it's worth

I could go one for hours about the stupidity of the current education system and lack of discipline, and respect, but i'll likley get myself into trouble here for my views on the subject, so it's suffice for me to say that...

The world's gone mad, and the loopy bloody PC brigade are everywhere..

[Jerry]

As I see it, the biggest change in the educational system, for the worse, I think, has to do with the move away from creating mental discipline.

Mental discipline can be created by memorizing things, such as the difference between parts of speech. Adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and such. It is requiring written answers to be formed coherently and spelled correctly, using the correct tense and words. ("Fewer" instead of "Less".)

READING WAS ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED. We had weekly vocabulary word lists and were tested on them.

I am astonished on how poorly my younger coworkers communicate, either orally or in writing, and how poor their word usage is.

This lack of mental discipline spills over into the inability to separate truth from bs in political dialog.

So, IMHO, if we want to improve our educational system, getting back to instilling some level of mental discipline into our kids and students is a way to start.

[forexbob]

Those in power are quite happy with the way the current educational system is going. It suits them fine that each generation is getting more and more stupid.

“Education is dangerous - Every educated person is a future enemy” - Herman Goering

Don’t think that governments today haven’t learned how to control the masses. They’re just doing it a little slower and more covertly so we don’t notice it.

[DGXSER]

As has been said a few times or more already, it is less about how the educational system has changed and more about how the "mature" adults react and require our schools to act and the elected officials we see fit to put in office act. As well as how we now percieve things with out more "experienced" eyes.

I have a sister-in-law that just retired from teaching and about ten or more cousins who are teachers, along with spending 6 years doing almost 100% design of schools and talking to teachers and staff about the needs of the schools. The teachers whine and complain about what they have to put up with, and what the SYSTEM is doing to our schools. But reality is this, teachers in general by their very nature are extremely controlling personalities. And anythign that does not fit with how they think it should be is WRONG, not just inconvenient, or unfortunate, but WRONG WRONG WRONG. And they will, without a doubt and with no hesitation tell you ALL about it if you want to hear it or not. If most of us approached our jobs and our clients with the attitude of most of the teachers I have known, we would be unemployed due to personality conflicts. The ones who have some ability to see any other point of view ar ethe ones that make it into management level like principals and such.

the education system has evolved into a warm, fuzzy "daycare center".

It did not do it to itself, it is made up of people and any change was changed because the majority of the population that made it a point to speak out requested and required it to change. On the whole though, this is more again about how we see it now versus then IMO.

As to these items let me group them into two categories. First is the ones that are first and foremost the responsibility of the parent than the school.

Rule 1 : Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2 : The world doesn't care about your self-esteem.
The world will expect you to accomplish something
BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3 : You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school.
You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4 : If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss "Could also read PARENT"

Rule 5 : Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity.
Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping:
They called it opportunity.

Rule 6 : If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault,
so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7 : Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring
as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills,
cleaning your clothes and listening to you
talk about how cool you thought you were:


So before you save the rain forest
from the parasites of your parent's generation,
try delousing the closet in your own room..

Rule 10 : Television is NOT real life.
In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Any parent who blames the school for their kids not getting those concepts needs to stop having kids until they grow up to be an adult. Parents need to stop thinking their kids need friends and should love their mommy and daddy and not be mad at them, and depending on the system to teach their children the things they won;t because it might upset their little precious baby. Then whining and complaining that their little precious kid did NOT do those mean and horrible things the teacher said they did, and that teacher needs to be fired for being prejudice against their child. And yes that DOES happen ALOT.



Now for the ones that are partially the schools responsibility.

Rule 8 : Your school may have done away with winners and losers,
but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades
and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer.
*This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

You have always had as many times as you want to get a passing grade, that is how so many folks spent the best eight years of their lives in high school. Its just now they let them be promoted. But reality is that in the 60's 70's and 80's when I was in school, you could fail a class or two and still be promoted, depending on what class they were. But now they can't so they "adjust" their grades so they pass.

Rule 9 : Life is not divided into semesters.
You don't get summers off and very few employers
are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF.
*Do that on your own time.

So what about this has changed or is any different than when my grandparents were in school? And in actuality there are several companies and more than a few countries that require their employees to take a month off paid every so many years.

Rule 11 : Be nice to nerds.
Chances are you'll end up working for one...

The world is a MUCH smaller place than I have ever ever imagined when I was in college and school. There are so many many people that I have met through my travles in life and even teachers and such from school that I now find are either my clients, or folks I end up working with or work for me that I thought and in some cases hoped I would never see again as long as I live. So, substitute "people" for the Nerds in that statement.

So we have a system that is not as different from when we were kids. And as to the physical discipline, I can speak from alot of personal experience that it never really worked either. I had the long thick wooden paddle with holes in it used on me about twice a week, every week, of every year in junior high school. Never stopped me from doing what I felt was needed to be done at the time. And I did not grow up to be some gangster, hoodlum, or mercenary either. And I never went home and told my parents how mean the VP was and how he hurt me cause dad would have made me forget ALL about mr. mean old VP.