"HeyBub" wrote in message
m...
J. Clarke wrote:
HeyBub wrote:
Leon wrote:
"HeyBub" wrote in message
m...
J. Clarke wrote:

John Silber, former president of Boston College, was asked what one
thing could be done to improve the quality of education in America.
He answered: "Abolish colleges of education."


Sounds exactly like the typical "former" employee with an ax to
grind would say.

I'd say get rid of public education and all the bureaucracy that
come with it. Privatize it.

Yep. If universal education is felt to be a worthwhile goal, give out
vouchers.

Oh, and before you shrug off John Silber as a disgruntled
ex-employee, you might check his Wikipedia entry. I just did and I
see I made a mistake: He was president of Boston University, not
College.

FWIW, I have a friend who has a PhD in education, and is retired, not
fired, so one can't claim that he is "disgruntled", who shares the
opinion that the flaws in the system are inherent in the educational
philosophy currently being taught in the colleges of education, and
in the poltical tendency to require the schools to provide more and
more social functions that are not rightly part of education.

It's worse than you think.

In America, we do not have a single living Nobel laureate or Fields
medalist, not even the president, who is qualified, by law, to teach in
the schools of my state. No winner of the Pulitzer, Booker, Hugo, Edgar,
Newberry, Caldecott or other literary prize. Nor can any of the justices
of the Supreme Court stand in front of a classroom as a teacher.

In my state, one can be certified to teach mathematics at the high-school
level without ever having had a college course in Calculus.

Pitiful really.

Does anyone doubt that a retired Civil Engineer could teach geometry off
the top of his head? Would you expect a retired nurse to be able to
instruct in high school biology? And so on. Well, they can't.

Makes one want to weep.
SWMBO is a high school teacher, 10th, 11th, 12th grade biology, forensics
and AP biology as well as chemistry and physics.
She entered the teaching profession about 6 years ago after
having worked 17 years in private industry.

She is unique in the local school system, in that she is the only person
employed
by the local school board that has ever been a success outside of education.
Most
teachers and administrators have no clue how the real world works and wait
for the next crumb of "enlightenment" to drop from the ivory towers of the
universties and state administrators.

When school is in session, SWMBO will average working 15 hours a day
with 5 of that spent on non teaching related task.

Effective discipline is nonexistant, most parent are unreachable and could
care
less what happens at school.

No one is allowed to fail.

The system is broken beyond repair.

In contrast she sometimes teaches partime at a private military school, the
kids are
respectful and do their work.
I have sit in on several of these classes and always leave feeling good
about life in general,
just knowing that there are pockets of humanity where good behavior, manners
and
and hard work are still practiced in school.
Zero discipline issues in these classes, if any one ever raises their
voice or causes a disruption they are removed from the room by
upperclassmen, and
according to her, when they return there is no more problems with that
student "ever".

basilisk