"Ignoramus30510" wrote in message
...
On 2011-04-22, Ed Huntress wrote:

BTW, unions have had nothing to do with what is taught in schools. That's
mostly state and local school boards, with some federal standards if you
want federal money. And if you think that they teach "nothing but
'self-esteem,'" all you're telling us is that you're talking off the top
of
your head, one who probably hasn't sat through school classes or more
than
one or two school board meetings in his adult lifetime.

That's the truth of the matter, isn't it, Rich? You haven't been there.
All
you know is what you hear on TV. You're just blowing smoke.



Ed, my son goes to a elementary school. My impression is that the kids
are learning something useful, but at the same time, I would not call
it super great either. At least my son is in advanced placement, and
they get a little bit of extras that they learn. Altogether, it far
from horrible, at least in AP, but I would not truly consider it very
rigorous and excellent schooling. I am "satisfied", but wishing for
more. At the least, I wish they had more homework and they were asked
to put solutions on paper, not just answers.

You're obviously an involved parent, so I can pass this along from
experience.

Getting involved with the system is your main pathway to
getting the education you want from public schools. Attend
a few Board meetings and find out what drives your local
schools -- people who know what they're doing and who are
trying to improve education, or retirees who need something
to do on Wednesday nights and who think there is entirely
too much education going on.

Talk to teachers about the amount of homework and what they
would like to see. Your situation is a bit of an anomaly: Over the
past ten years, suburban schools have been giving too *much*
homework, to the point where psych associations and so on have
spoken out against it. My kid was swamped with homework until
our local schools pulled back a bit so the kids would have a life
left. By fourth grade, he often had two or three hours of homework;
by ninth, it was four hours. Too much.

Talk to teachers. If you're going to disagree with what's being done,
either at Board meetings or in person, come armed with research.
Today's buzzword is "evidence-based." Education research tends
to be neatly packaged and easy to communicate, once you get past
the litany of jargon. Most of it is available from one place:

http://www.eric.ed.gov/

Get your kid involved in competitions -- math, writing, etc. My son
won third prize in the state teachers' writing contest for 4th to 6th
graders, when he was in 4th grade. It turned him into a writer. He felt
he had to live up to his talent. That's why he was All-State as a baseball
pitcher, and All-County in soccer, too. d8-) He had to live up to his
own image of himself. It's a great motivator.

Anyway, it all worked for me. Good luck to you.


I heard about religious kooks trying to dominate school boards.
Apparently, locally that is not a problem, where I live.

i

Texas, Kansas, and a few other states have that problem. They have my
sympathy. We had one kook on our board who argued that "intelligent
design" should be taught alongside of evolution in biology. We hooted him
down so badly at a board meeting that he kept his mouth shut for weeks.
g Mockery and derision are the best medicine for that. Forget trying
to change their minds with reason.

--
Ed Huntress