JoeSpareBedroom wrote:

"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
...


In article ,
Norminn wrote:
e made me a permanent


Independent. Reagan was
just about as phony, but nobody caught on. The real proof that our
educational system is in the sewer.


Without commenting on the rest of it, the educational system is and
always has been a local function. The feds, even to this day, have a
relatively small dog in this hunt.




I'm always amused at people who make these broad statements about how our
educational system is in a shambles (see gfretwell's comments, for instance.
I wonder how many of these proclamations come from people who've never
bothered to raise hell in order to get things improved overnight in their
own school systems. I have. It's easy. Our school system is just fine.




I have experience with public school systems in three very different
locations. First, small town with some
great, dedicated teachers, but those were the exceptions. Time after
time, I've seen very intelligent kids
bored out of their minds because course work had no challenges. Parents
can't change a system that
doesn't want to change. The area where I live now has a very entrenched
"pass the buck" work ethic. Like
nothing I have seen before - anyone who excells is disposed of quickly.
The pass the buck mentality would
be funny if it wasn't so wasteful.

I graduated from a hospital-based nursing school. No college at all,
although we had a couple of college
instructors for tougher courses.

What I have seen throughout my work life is college grads - many
master's level - who cannot write or spell.
My parents' generation was much better educated after 8th grade than
college grads are now. More and more,
education is geared toward technical skills for jobs.

One of the best books I've read was David McCullough's biography of John
Adams. John Quincy Adams was
reading philosophy and latin at age 11, in preparation for entering
Harvard at age 16. Folks any more have no
idea of what is possible in education, and there sure as hell aren't any
teachers around teaching latin and philosophy
in grade school. What passed for a "book report" when my kids were in
school was a tragedy. I wrote a thirty-page
report on diabetes when I was in 8th grade. My kids didn't have work
that tough in college.

Raise hell? With whom? A teacher who can't spell and doesn't give a damn?