Government workers at their very best! My very bright nephew Zach, rather than being allowed to skip a grade or take advanced courses (not offered due to the fragile self esteem of others who migh feel "dumb"....was forced to function as an unpaid teachers assistant and help the slow students in the back of the classroom.

And we wonder why we do not produce scientists and doctors and engineers on pace with many other nations?

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And I can cite and example of a teacher sending a personal note in the mail to my house in recognition of my son holding the door open for her when she was coming into school with a handful of papers. And my daughter for being helpful to struggling students in class.

Not all schools systems are failing.. the community happens to be very involved in the school leadership and day to day operations.

And I chose to live here primarily because of that very reason than putting my kids in a larger school system and the bureaucracy that comes with larger school systems and the lack of attention they are given from the parents and community. They have the feel more of an institution of the damned than a school for learning.

Some say I am foregoing my life and sheltering my children.. while in reality I am ensuring their future by small sacrifices of today. I will be able to relocate after they are established adults themselves.

So I pose the question.. have we not embraced the advancements of today upon the school systems to make them more efficient and reducing the heavy burden of overhead costs in place of scraping the idea of education for all because of flaws in certain regions of the country.

I hardly think the rural school model here is that unique to others spread across this country.

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And why should that not be the same the other way around?

wow - that's amazing, shawn! when i was considering moving here, i did some serious research into the school district, thought it sounded like a good fit for my kids, & so we moved.
then suddenly, the superintendent retired & we've now got a completely unprofessional guy in there who thinks his job is to blow smoke up the parents asses.
there is a marked difference in the level of communication on his part as well as the teachers since he took over.
i don't like it - not one bit.

Guess what the easiest college degree is to get? That's right, the teaching degree. So you are not talking about the special college kids here, your talking about the student athletes with the 1.435 GPA that's taking up space. Tommy Boy, "lots of people go to college for 8 years!" Yeah, they're called doctors.

Teaching your children starts first and foremost in the home. I learned more from my families kitchen table than I ever did from a tenured teacher with a bad attitude.

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I actually have no problem with eliminating tenure, even though I'm pretty sure I'd be one of the first one to lose his job afterward.

It would be a major first step.

But I still think the key is to get rid of the monopoly power. Compulsory education plus tax funding of public schools plus accreditation requirements (in the hands of the monopolists and the coercers) just reduces the parent/child's choices.

The biggest problem with the rural school model is that kids often have just two choices for school -- the local public school or homeschooling. Since homeschooling is perceived as an option only for a few, this reduces to one choice.

And if you have one choice, then you have to operate on a mass production "one size fits all" basis. Some rural schools are as good as the richest suburban schools; more are very limited in the range of opportunities offered.

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i came from a very small community.
the high school & grade school were FULL of nothing but tenured teachers who had been there since christ was a child.
i feel my education suffered greatly because of some of them but also was enhanced greatly by some of the other tenured teachers.
it's almost like a crap shoot.
that's not how we want our teachers to be.
how do we get the good teachers in there & keep them there?

That is an interesting and yet difficult question.

Much alike other things in life, and especially when you are dealing with people, there is a disparity among teachers.
Some are good, some are mediocre, and some are downright bad.

One of the best things that I learned when I taught at a college,
was that just because you know something, does not mean that you can teach it.
Teaching, in my belief, is an occupation that is not just an occupation.
To be good at it you must have a passion to not only teach, but to guide and even learn from the students as well.

I have worked in the "Ivory Tower" that is the world of academia (aka college).
And while I have a few letters that I can put after my name (not quite at Wade's level :icon_smile: ),
they don't mean squat when comes to the actual ability to teach.

I have two issues with education that pertain somewhat to your question:
#1 Tenure - This is the academic version of union seniority. Nothing to do with one's ability, just longevity
#2 Pay Disparity - Take the teacher in a rural school vs an overpaid, under worked, long tenured college professor.
I'm not saying that the college professor shouldn't be paid more, they should be, but the disparity is obscene.
Especially when you consider the "student contact time" or lack thereof with many college professors.
I won't even go into sabbaticals, that really pisses me off.


I'm afraid that I did not do much to address your question 4packgirl, but the rant felt good. ::wink:

Where do you get your facts from DakotaT? Maybe in North Dakota it's easy, but at most schools that offer education majors, it's as hard as any other major. At the U. of Montana, education majors who want to be accepted into the school of education must have at least a 3.0 in all classwork. And even this may not get you into the student teaching program.

Another retired PE teacher and myself are teaching (visiting lecturers) a class this year.....Methods of Elementary PE for Education majors. To get into our sections we put the GPA cutoff at 2.75. Five students who had signed up didn't get in.

And very few athletes are in the education program, even PE, which here is NOT an easy degree to attain. A 1.435 GPA would make you ineligible for all Montana athletic programs.

So before any of you blast teachers, just remember, somebody taught all of the worlds leaders; somebody taught all the doctors, lawyers, businessmen, and yes, even the dropouts. Whether it's a private school, public school, charter school or whatever, teachers are there to try in some small way to make this world a better place for all of us. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail. Lawyers win some cases and lose some; Doctors save some patients and some die; A businessman builds a successful business and the one down the street fails.

There are good doctors and there are some bad ones. Good lawyers and bad ones; good Presidents and bad ones. But remember one thing. Unless they grew up and lived totally isolated from the world, they ALL had teachers who tried to do their best to educate them and hopefully make them just a bit better person for this world.

End of sermon!!

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Boy the three of you professors sure take pock shot criticism poorly. Ever heard the saying those that can't do, teach, and those that can't teach, teach phy ed? I never walked into a classroom in Elementary, Junior High, High school, or College where I was mesmorized by the intelligence of the guy holding the piece of chalk. My high school teachers were laughable, and by college professors were burnouts from the world who once held important jobs, but at least they had some credibility unlike in my high school. I found my professors to be incredibly lazy, so my effort equalled theirs, still graduated Cum Laude. I took my piece of expensive toilet paper and went home, but it opened doors that don't open unless you have it. As you probably can tell from over the years, I have zero respect for authority, unless I deem it warranted. I'm still looking, and am still very, very disappointed.

If you guys want to explain the rigors of being educators, that's fine; I'll just go with the experiences that I know.

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