Reply to Anyone else feel like school fundamentally doesn’t work?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think it doesn’t work but for very different reasons than what you’re stating. I think far too much time is lost to transitions and having every kid in the class wait for the very slowest or worst behaved kid. My DD could accomplish everything she does at school with two mornings of 3 hours’ of work. We send her to socialize and have fun opportunities, like learning new sports in PE and doing art projects that we wouldn’t be able to help with.

And she’s at a fancy private school.

My public elementary in the 80s worked far better than anything I’ve seen lately. Unfortunately I think it’s because it had standalone ESL classes, standalone special education classrooms, and leveled classes for reading and math plus entire semesters of pull-out work for gifted kids. Modern schools cannot do all of that without pushback from parents and legal issues. Nevermind that the 80s were probably the last years of truly professional, trained teachers. Many people who would have gone into education when I was growing up have been exposed to far more opportunity than there was back then, and they’re making other career choices. With occasional exceptions, my DD’s teachers have been not-bright and not talented at the art of teaching children or classroom management. [/quote]

Your dig at the quality of teachers is gross.

But many of your other points are good. Standalone services MUST have been more effective than the crap we have now.

My kids are in high school, and from what I can tell, inclusion-for-all means that some kids get to high school unable to adequately read, write, and reason, then get understandably frustrated when they're shoehorned into the same "gotta go to college" classes that everyone else is. 
[/quote]

You may be in a strong school district or near some colleges with great teacher training programs. Unfortunately I am not and also live in an area with far higher COL than DC. It is very challenging to find quality teachers willing to work here. This isn’t even a teaching-specific problem. Same for many other professions- the quality of tradespeople, mid-level white collar workers, and others in my area is poor relative to other regions.

And you can argue in circles that teachers now are better than they were 40 years ago, but the standards and the education and achievement level of the people going into the profession has objectively gone down since the 70s and 80s. When women graduating from average backgrounds in the 60s and 80s had the option to be a secretary, nurse or teacher, salaries were pretty similar. Now women’s options are quite broader and so are the salaries, and teaching salaries have fallen to the low end relative to other professions. It means the profession attracts a few talented wealthy types who don’t need to worry about money, a few who care so much about teaching they don’t care about the small income, and the vast majority who would do something else with higher pay if they could access it.[/quote]

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