jtr, I'm very happy for you that you did not have to experience what it's like to grow up poor. Also that your family has apparently never endured a large-scale negative change in its finances.
I grew up poor. My mother had to get assistance from her parents to keep a roof over our heads. We used food stamps and I got the embarassing-to-use-but-free school lunch program. I could not participate in many extra-curricular activities as I had no funds if those were necessary (band instrument rental) and also had to leave immediately to catch the school bus home as we certainly couldn't afford for me to take the city bus. I got a paper router when I was 12 so I could afford to buy my own clothes. It really sucked having just one pair of jeans that fit at any gien time throughout grade school. No dental care or medical insurance either, of course, so in my adult life I've had to endure fixing my teeth in hope that they'll last into my 40s.
Why I grew up in that situation had nothing to do with trying to milk the system or trying to take advantage of society. Both of my parents are college-degreed. My mother stopped being a teacher so she could raise the kids. My father worked for the local government (Water Department). They divorced around the time I turned 5. Dad always made his child support payments, but mother never could find employment that paid enough. We never had a car newer than 10 years old. Even after I was grown that was the case until the mid 90s when mom recieved an inheritance and used part of it to buy the first new car of her life (at the time, she was already in her early 60s). Over the years, this took a toll on her and she now has severe depression.
jtr1962 said:
I used to be a big supporter of public education but as of late I find the concept less and less appealing. First and most importantly, the public schools by and large are failing miserably at what they do. They have become patronage mills for labor unions and political hacks.
I agree somewhat. I definitely feel that teacher's unions have overstayed their usefullness to society. While at one time they were necessary to insure teachers could get decent wages & benefits, most of those issues have long been solved. Teacher's unions currently seem more interested in self-preservation than anything else.
Teachers seem more interested in their sabbaticals or having sex with their students than actually teaching.
1. Who isn't interested in earning time off? My company offers sabaticals & increases in vacation time as I gain more years of service. I'm looking forward to being here long enough to take advantage of those perks myself.
2. Really, don't you think the sex angle is a reach? Those are very isolated situations affecting far less than 1% of the teachers nationwide.
The vast majority of teachers are there to provide an education. Many could earn much better wages in the 'real' world and choose to teach because they want to make a difference.
Far too many teachers are ill-qualified. Public schools are spending a greater portion of their budgets on non-educational activities like pre-Kindergarten(i.e. taxpayer funded daycare), before and after school "programs"(whatever happened to doing your homework and going out to play afterwards?), and teacher "enrichment" days.
There are unqualified & uncaring teachers out there. There should be competency testing every other year to weed out those who no longer fit the bill. The uncaring attitude is mostly adopted from uncaring students who are raised by uncaring parents. My first wife was a high school home ec teacher in Gary, IN. Talk about situations where no one cared. She left teaching because the parents didn't care about the students who in turn didn't care about school (or anything other than socializing). No wonder the administration couldn't do anything. The parents never backed them up.
Before- & after-school programs weren't necessary 30-40 years ago. Back then most families had 1 wage earner and 1 homemaker. A parent was always home and had sufficient means to provide meals & help with homework. Current family structures have changed. Due to the desire for material wealth, in most 2-parent homes both parents work. This leaves no one home to feed the child breakfast or to make sure they get on the bus to school. It also makes the child a latch-key child in the afternoon, with no guardian to make sure the child does their homework & stays safe. Not to mention just gets home safely.
Those programs would generally not be necessary if a couple's desire for material wealth didn't outweigh their desire to raise a family.
On a side note, there is an emotional impact to the children from this. They learn that their parents don't have time for them. That it's fine to leave people alone. That, when they have kids, they don't have to worry about being there to raise them.
On teacher enrichment, how do you expect the teachers to stay current if you don't provide for it?
There are all sorts of stupid union work rules that prevent a teacher from changing a light bulb or opening the building for weekend classes.
These are only stupid until an accident happens and the inevitable lawsuit occurs. Ask your local school board how their insurance costs would be affected by adding weekend schooling.
This is more a failing of society than a failing of the educational system. If society wasn't hell-bent on filing a lawsuit over every hangnail & stubbed toe their child has outside the home, things would be much better. For more proof, look to the current news stories about doctors who are no longer practicing because of the cost of malpractice insurance.
The fact that many parents send their children to school ill-prepared to learn only compounds the problem.
Very true. And it's my belief that this is a direct result of the parent's desire for material wealth overruling the desire to raise physically & emotionally healthy children.
However, since the schools are "public", they are guaranteed funding regardless of their performance. All attempts to tie teacher pay to student performance on standardized tests are roundly rejected by the teacher's unions for some reason. Strangely, unions never seem to like paying according to productivity even though this would weed out the lazy and the incompetent.
Funny how that works...
I basically agree with the caveat that to measure teacher performance you also have to take into account the caliber of the students and their actual ability to learn.
Second, I strongly believe parents should not have children they cannot afford. Part of the cost of raising a child is paying for their education. It is not up to society to pay to educate children because the parents are too poor to afford to. Simply put, the parents should have though about this before having the child, same as with food or clothing.
Your comments here don't take life changes into account. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, when I was born my parents were happily married, owned a home, were educated, etc. But life holds many surprises and by the time I was school-aged my mother was raising us on her own with very little income to rely on.
My wife & I hope to start a family soon. We currently combine for a 6 figure income (very very low 6 figure). If I lose my job, however, that income drops dramatically and, with the current economy and my relative specialty, I could not easily find a replacement job. BTW, she plans on not working and staying home to raise the kid(s). I refuse to allow a child to grow up in my home without active parenting.
In all seriousness, the only way your plan would work is if the State required prospective parents to establish a trust fund fully funded to cover 18 years of operating costs related to raising a child. That would have to include enough funds for the parents to get by as well (mortgage/rent, utilities, clothes, transport, etc.). That is the only way to attempt to guarantee that children will be provided for. Even then, it's not an absolute.
Given the overcrowded state the world is in, we would be far better off if only the upper middle class and rich had children. This would make the issue of public education a moot point.
No, we'd be better off if only the physically, emotionally, and intellectually gifted had children. It would take a couple of generations but the net effect would be dramatic.
Also, growing up in poverty often produces undesirable emotional baggage carrying over to adulthood.
Only if the parents don't care. And I maintain that that can happen regardless of income.
If I could have one wish, it would be that no child would ever grow up poor.
Agreed!
This one thing would do more to improve the general standards of humanity than anything else but it won't happen as long as the poor insist on spitting out children like rabbits.
Since, as I mentioned above, you can't really say what your financial situation will be when the children you have now reach school age, I propose an alternate solution. I propose that, if a person/family accepts financial aid from the government in any form (welfare, food stamps, even unemployment), receipt of those funds hinges on any/all females capable of bearing children taking a (freely supplied) method of birth control. Basically, you can't control what they do before they land on the public roster, but accepting the roster should have consequences and those consequences need to be structured to minimize costs & minimize time on the roster. As an aside, that's why job training and educational benefits should still be a part of the welfare system. Just dropping people without regard to getting them back to being contributing members of society just makes things worse in the long run.
If the tax dollars spent on public education actually produced good results, I might feel differently, but the system is broke beyond repair. Most attempts at fixing it simply involve either throwing more money at the problem(i.e rewarding failure), or stupid panaceas like smaller class sizes or school uniforms.
I doubt you will find an educator out there that would prefer to teach a large class over a small one. It may work at the college level where students are expected to fend for themselves, but large classes do not provide adequate attention to individual students. School uniforms take care of the dress code issue easily. They also eliminate girls from wearing seductive outfits and boys from wearing jeans that are about to fall down off their hips. While I generally am neutral towards school uniforms, they can be effective at reducing the visibility (and thereby the effectiveness) of negative social situations (overt sexuality, gang signs, etc.).
If they really want to fix the schools, start by getting the labor unions out of the picture. Prohibit all public employees, not just teachers, from joining labor unions because unions increase the costs of running essential services unreasonably. Once this is done the system can be run much more efficiently, the good teachers rewarded, and the bad ones fired without a long drawn out grievance process.
Agreed.
Next, fine any parent who sends their children to school ill-prepared(i.e. hungry, not dressed properly).
If they can't afford food & clothing, how will assessing a fine help things?
End all before or afterschool programs that don't have educational value, and end pre-Kindergarten, period.
Before- and after-school programs should, I agree, be education oriented. I see no problem with pre-K as long as it is a fee-based system priced competitively with regular day-care services. It should be self-funding and not rely on government/tax funds (with the exception being access to the school facilities).
Part of the responsibility of having a child is being home for that child when they return from school, or making arrangements otherwise.
This has nothing to do with the schools. As mentioned above, this is by and large due to most parents placing greed and the desire for material wealth above the well-being of their children.
Use tried and true teaching methods rather than experimenting, at least until basic reading and math skills are taught. While I'm open to trying new methods, we should not use our children as guinea pigs before they learn the basics. Require stringent physical as well as mental education. I'm a firm believer in sound body, sound mind. Too many children these days get doctors notes to "opt-out" of physical education for questionable reasons. Many of these children use their obesity as an excuse, and it was lack of physical activity that caused the obesity in the first place! End social promotions, and have standardized curriculums and tests with enough latitude for enriched programs so those who learn fast don't get bored(a major problem I had in the early grades).
Agreed on every point.
Stop using special ed as a dumping ground for unruly or difficult to teach students. The special ed budget per student is more than double the regular one, and experts have said that most of those in special ed really don't belong there. I could go on, but I think I've made my point about the major changes needed.
Agree if that's what's actually happening. My experience working with educators was not that way, but I'm sure that it can happen easily enough.
Even though I grew up poor, I was lucky in that I had educators who cared about their students. In grade school, my 4th grade teacher would drive me and some others to the library in her vehicle to take part in a summer reading proigram. In HS, I was able to take part in a class field trip to Chicago (from Indianapolis) because a teacher provided my spending money (for lunch) out of his own pocket. Others saw I was above-average and challenged me to learn more. I was a lab assistant for HS Chem & CS (including a summer job assisting teachers who were about computer literacy -- talk about a role reversal!). I even had a special assignment to write a program to track my HS' attendance (1600 students on an IBM PC with dual-160K floppies using BASIC) including report breakdowns by name Special Ed classifications, etc.
I grew up poor and went to public schools. Much of my younger life was lived off of public welfare to some degree. Regardless, I acheived honor roll all the time, National Honor Society for 3 years straight, was a member of Junior & Senior Cabinets, achieved several national-level merit awards, was awarded several state level honors, attended college courses while in HS on scholarship, was accepted to MIT & Cal Tech among others, and recieved scholarships that allowed me to attend private college with minimal student loans (MIT & CalTech just weren't financially feasable even with student aid).
Almost finally, most of what I said about greed & the desire for material wealth does not necessarily apply to single-parent households. In many of those situations, the parent is doing all they can to balance their parenting with the demands of having to work to bring in an income. Some evn have to work more than one job to make ends meet.
Finally, I'm glad we agree on some things and can debate those we disagree on. We can all learn from each other's experiences and perspectives.
- Fushigi
