This is a real shame!

[neveronfriday]

I'm not sure that the number of illiterate people is growing. It looks to me like more illiterate people are attending college than in the past.

Yep.

Same problem here in Germany.

[kinuta]

I wonder what this thing about Africa being a nation is ? Many high schoolers here think that. Coupled with their inability to find neighbouring Indonesia and The Philippines on a map, the unshakeable belief that blood type determines ones personality, unquestioning wholesale belief in horoscopes and heeby jeeby-isms of many colours simply reinforces my belief that the education system in Japan might need a bit of retuning.

[J.A.W.]

I'm not sure that the number of illiterate people is growing. It looks to me like more illiterate people are attending college than in the past.

Yep.

Same problem here in Germany.

...and in the Netherlands.

[AllenLowe]

I actually think there is much more to this than just poor public education - in the last few years I've been listening more and more to alternative rock and roll and so-called new folk, as well as a lot of contemporary new music in general - I, myself, am working on several music projects in which I am writing songs with actual lyrics in them. One thing that has struck me, in everone from Jeff Tweedy to your average folkie, is how badly they all use language. Their sense of poetics is poor and warped, with awkward rhymes and poorly set up thematic transitions, bad hooks and cloddish symbolism. To me this has only a little to do with public education, as it sucked when I ws young also - one learns most of these things (and I mean not only language but about intellectual history and world events), IMHO, not from school but from independent examination and the reading of books and documents from newspapers to magazines. THIS is what has really declined - I have often told my wife that we suffer from a post-literate generation. Much as I love television, it has contributed geatly to this, as has the proliferation of independent recording. This ties, as well, into my recent complaints about the very empty formalism of a lot of new music - 1)it is based on a fetishization of process, as opposed to a synthesis of process and substance and 2) it reflects the work of musicians who know little history or literature, but mostly other contemporary musicians. It is similar to the poor state of independent film, highly touted as that form is. Most of these filmmakers know Tarantino and little else; they need to see Antonioni and Renoir, they need to read Proust and Beckett, but their works exists in a "contemporary" vacuume.

Edited January 22, 2006 by AllenLowe

[catesta]

I'm not sure that the number of illiterate people is growing. It looks to me like more illiterate people are attending college than in the past.

Yep.

Same problem here in Germany.

...and in the Netherlands.

Glad to know this is a global problem.

[catesta]

Their sense of poetics is poor and warped, with awkward rhymes and poorly set up thematic transitions, bad hooks and cloddish symbolism.

YES!

[Christiern]

It goes hand in hand with the unimaginative music. That brings us to the concurrent deterioration (read, corporate takeover) of the music industry.

[Son-of-a-Weizen]

I wonder what this thing about Africa being a nation is ? Many high schoolers here think that. Coupled with their inability to find neighbouring Indonesia and The Philippines on a map

Hey, the map thing I can let slide.....but there are limits!!! It's when those high school kids start interning over at the JVC music dept for the summer and start mucking things up and threatening to poison the whole of civilization that we need to sound the clarion call to action.

VICJ-60506 Bobby Timmons, Trio in Person +2

VICJ-60507 Barry Harris, Prominade

VICJ-60508 Junior Mance, At the Village Vanguard

VICJ-60509 Billy Taylor with Four Fruits

VICJ-60510 Johnny Oberny with Warne Marsh, The Right Combination

VICJ-60511 Thelonious Monk, At the Town Hall

VICJ-60512 Cannonball Adderley Quintet, in New York

Edited January 22, 2006 by Son-of-a-Weizen

[catesta]

It goes hand in hand with the unimaginative music. That brings us to the concurrent deterioration (read, corporate takeover) of the music industry.

YES!

The kids don't see it coming though.

[Brownian Motion]

This thread is bullshit. Kids are no dumber now than they ever were, but the quality of teaching has declined somewhat, due mainly to the fact that bright women can now aspire to professions other than teaching. If you want a better educated populace pay your teachers more; money will attract the best and the brightest. The average salary for a baseball player is 2,555,000. Start your teachers at one twentieth of that figure and your education problems will disappear.

Edited January 22, 2006 by Brownian Motion

[Christiern]

I think you are stating the obvious, BM, when you point out that it is education, not intelligence that has brought on this sorry state. If you see this thread as "bullshit," I think it is because you misunderstand it.

[JSngry]

I know more than a few teachers who gave up simply because the money wasn't enough to make up for the lack of success they were having due to them having to deal with kids from broken homes with slack (if any) discipline, and a lack of willingness on the part of administrators to actually expect kids to learn.

And that's a problem right there - low expectations, the notion that these kids are so "disadvantaged" for whatever reason that there's only so much that can be done with them. Just get them out the door with as little conflict as possible. Politically pragmatic, surely, but hardly the foundation for creating a strong future.

Yeah, it's a tough situation, and yeah, teachers shouldn't have to be baby sitters. And sure, "super humans" are in short supply these days, always have been. But that's what it's going to take to get this shit back together right.

Nobody I know goes into teaching for the money - they go into for the satisfaction of seeing young minds stimulated and nurtured. If they can't get that satisfaction, hell yeah, they bail. Who wouldn't? If the idealistic impulses of an adult can be crushed so easily, what hope do those of a child have?

Raise teachers' pay, absolutely. But don't expect that to really change anything other than the budget, not unless and until a commitment is made to no longer treat kids like commodities and jsut pass 'em through w/o any concern for how they come out. That's going to take a total overhaul of the educational system, the social services system, and a willingness to tell some "parents" that they're their own child's worst enemy. And then back it up by offering a consistently viable attitudinal alternative. And yes, that means losing some kids. But it also means raising the bar for those who don't get lost, and it means doing so with every intent of seeing to it that they get over that bar. Feeling wil get hurt, and political opportunists of all stripes (the real enemy here, imo) are going to need to either cut the crap and deal or else get the hell outta the way. By any means necessary.

It'll take money, guts, and love, and the transition ain't gonna be pretty. But failure to transition is gonna be even uglier.

[Jazzmoose]

And that's a problem right there - low expectations...

I'd say that's the problem.

[frank m]

I can only repeat my remarks based on about 30 years of teaching Physics on college level. It was generally agreed by teachers of other disciplines that over that period, there was a marked deterioration in student interest preparation and performance. This, to the point of our inability to teach to the level that we had previously maintained. That was the root cause of our taking early retirement, as most of us agreed who pulled the pin. Mathematical preparation had plummeted, but worse was the student attitude that they were deserving of passing the course without doing the requisite amount of work.

I'm sure that the top students in high school are still as good as they ever were, but the general body of students is in big doodoo, despite the fact that they don't realize it yet.

[neveronfriday]

In my country lowering the standards seems to be easier than a realignment of the educational system. Therefore, it has never been easier getting a high school diploma and entering university .. and that's where the problems then start.

Payin g teachers more is not going to help much, if at all.

What JSngry wrote above pretty much also sums it up for our educational system here (or anywhere else, I would think, minus one or two countries here or there).

Unfortunately, it is utopian thinking.

Sad.

[Joe G]

Getting a college degree has become a consumerist activity, in that people apparently feel that since they paid for it, they should get that diploma. Standards have been lowered in other areas as well, such as obtaining credit, getting a mortgage... I think it all ties into the attitude, especially prevalent in America, that you can get something for nothing.

[JSngry]

And you can. At least for a while...

[Dave James]

I've always found the "pay for play" issue an interesting paradox. To coin a phrase, "some of my best friends are teachers." One thing that sets them off like no other is to point out the fact that teaching is, in fact, part time work. The standard teaching contract calls for approximately 180 days of service, give or take a half a dozen days. You do the math...that's a half a year. The rest of the time is taken up by vacations, summer break etc. So, when you say a teacher "only" earns $40,000 a year, if you annualize that based on the fact that they only work six months, that's $80,000.

OK, having said that, I still think teachers are worth more than they are being paid. What's different between the job now and the job then (whenever "then" was) is the attitudes a lot of these kids are packing and the fact that mothers and fathers now expect teachers to act "in absentia parentis". That by itself is worth more money. It's another indication of the lack of accountability that permeates all of society.

On other comment. How do you separate education from intelligence or intelligence from education. Seems to me they are fellow travelers by definition.

Up over and out.

[AllenLowe]

remember, also, how much education is oriented towards standardized tests and the expectation that certain levels will be reached - this greatly restricts what teacher are allowed to do; "leave no child behind" has had a particular impact on this, preventing creativity and using false standards of evaluation.

[Jim Alfredson]

remember, also, how much education is oriented towards standardized tests and the expectation that certain levels will be reached - this greatly restricts what teacher are allowed to do; "leave no child behind" has had a particular impact on this, preventing creativity and using false standards of evaluation.

Exactly. There is so much focus now on "going to college" that in order to be a good school able to say "we send our graduates off to college", school boards lower standards so that everyone can get in.

News flash: Not everyone should go to college.

[Alexander]

Well, based on my one semester in the trenches of public education, I can confidently say that one of the biggest reasons schools fail is because of the failure of administrations to properly support their teachers, especially new teachers.

Mine is a case in point: In the fall, I was hired to teach four 10th grade English classes. In three out of the four, things went quite well. The kids were bright, largely interested in learning, and capable of rising to the expectations that I set. The fourth class, however, was a problem. For one thing, the class was at the end of the day (and the classes at my school are 80 minutes long) when the kids are burned out. Because of the scheduling, that meant that this class got a disproportionate number of the Voc-Tech kids (kids who are not academically inclined and spend the first half of the day taking things like auto-shop so they can learn a useful skill, which is great) who weren't very interested in English and had low academic skills. On top of that, for whatever reason, the school saw fit to put virtually every discipline problem into this class (I'm not exaggerating. At least half the class had a long history of suspensions). The class was also quite large (31 kids, the largest of the classes I taught by quite a margin). The problems in this class began on the first day, and things just went downhill from there. I immediately sought help from my supervisor and from my mentor. That I got poor advice from both would be an understatement. Promises were made to break the class up or remove the biggest problems in the hope that the dynamic of the class would change. These promises were never kept, and things went from bad to worse. Nothing got done in this class because I spent all of my time trying to keep the kids from running amok. My other three classes, by contrast, were very successful. The kids were learning and we were making real progress. The "hell" class would move forward in fits and starts. Everything I tried would only work for a short time before the bad behavior would start again. When I went to the administration for help, I got either platitudes or threats (as in threats that I would be fired if I couldn't get the class under control). Then, in early December, things in this class reached a boiling point. A student threw an object at my head while my back was turned for a moment. I exploded in fury (not what I should have done), referring to the student who hit me as "a little prick." Guess who got a pink slip for Christmas?

The point is that while I certainly could have handled this last incident better, it happened because I was handed (as a new teacher) a nearly impossible situation and then was given no help at all (or bad help, which is often worse than no help). The fact that my other three classes were successful was given no consideration whatsoever. All that mattered was that I couldn't handle this one class.

Now I'm really not sure if I want to continue teaching at all. I certainly don't want to be put in that situation again.

Edited January 22, 2006 by Alexander

[Alec]

As a current high school teacher, I am always amused by threads like these.

First of all, a big remedial math course for Dave James and his claim that 180 days of work is half a year.

Let's work that out. There are 52 weeks a year. Most people work 5 days a week. That adds up to 260 days. Let's also assume that the average worker gets a total of 3 weeks off (vacation and holidays) that reduces the number by 15 days to 245 vs a teacher's 180.

Hmmm things are looking much closer aren't they? (I won't even count all the weekends and nights of preparing lesson plans or grading papers.)

Teaching for me is a second career. I took a pay cut to become a teacher and I work harder than I ever did. (and I'm glad I did. I'm not complaining about the $$)

In reality, our school's primary mission is not education but, rather, socialization and pacification.

First of all, no one can agree on a definition of an educated person. If they could then you could easily devise an assessment that would measure it and simply give that test to see how the students measure up.

The problem is what do you do with the students who don't measure up? Assign them menial jobs or manual labor? Society would self destruct. That is why Jefferson's plans for a true meritocracy failed.

While everyone likes to moan about the current state of education, the truth is that people have been making dire warnings about what kids know since well, forever.

As a teacher I do the best I can with who I have.

Is it enough?

Sometimes.

[catesta]

As a current high school teacher, I am always amused by threads like these.

First of all, a big remedial math course for Dave James and his claim that 180 days of work is half a year.

Let's work that out. There are 52 weeks a year. Most people work 5 days a week. That adds up to 260 days. Let's also assume that the average worker gets a total of 3 weeks off (vacation and holidays) that reduces the number by 15 days to 245 vs a teacher's 180.

Hmmm things are looking much closer aren't they? (I won't even count all the weekends and nights of preparing lesson plans or grading papers.)

Teaching for me is a second career. I took a pay cut to become a teacher and I work harder than I ever did. (and I'm glad I did. I'm not complaining about the $$)

Alec, just out of curiosity what do you do for the 3 months you have off?

And no, I am not trying to stir shit up.

Edited January 22, 2006 by catesta

[Alec]

As a current high school teacher, I am always amused by threads like these.

First of all, a big remedial math course for Dave James and his claim that 180 days of work is half a year.

Let's work that out. There are 52 weeks a year. Most people work 5 days a week. That adds up to 260 days. Let's also assume that the average worker gets a total of 3 weeks off (vacation and holidays) that reduces the number by 15 days to 245 vs a teacher's 180.

Hmmm things are looking much closer aren't they? (I won't even count all the weekends and nights of preparing lesson plans or grading papers.)

Teaching for me is a second career. I took a pay cut to become a teacher and I work harder than I ever did. (and I'm glad I did. I'm not complaining about the $$)

Alec, just out of curiosity what do you do for the 3 months you have off?

And no, I am not trying to stir shit up.

Hell, I rarely rise to the bait anymore.

In reality it is not 3 months, but rather 2 and change. We got out of school on June 22nd and returned on August 29th for a total of 67 days.

This summer I went to China for 6 weeks. 4 weeks teaching Chinese English teachers, and then 2 weeks of vacation. I also had to prepare for a new course I am teaching, Modern World Literature. That meant reading 6 books and working on lessons. Often during the summer I either teach summer school, or take courses to keep my certification.

I need at least 75 hours of continuing education credits every three years in order to maintain my license.

Some summers I just goof off and laugh at all of you who don't have a cushy job like mine.

[catesta]

Some summers I just goof off and laugh at all of you who don't have a cushy job like mine.

Fair enough