Name: Anonymous 2005-01-18 12:42
I've been watching the kids in the schools as I grew up, and things seem to sadden me more and more, as I continue to observe. I've always been eager to learn, struck speechless at the opportunities to sit and learn and read (yet to do homework was an entirely different kettle of fish. But I'll get to that later.)
However, I have noticed time and time again that the youth of today is especially adamant about refusing to learn. They squander their time away, thinking that school is merely another tool of control, and that if they perform poorly in school, it's not their fault for not being able to function correctly, it's not the parents' fault for teaching the children discipline (afraid to hit or otherwise scold their children in any way that their brains can comprehend), but it's the fault of the teachers for not "teaching them correctly", and that "My old teachers brought me up on this method of learning so this is working against me" and "school is bullshit mind control anyway".
You remember how in the days of old, there was the concept of the one-room schoolhouse? Well, since that's gone out the window by now, the last tie connecting the students to a valuable education is the relationship between teacher and student. However this is being eroded, by parents who stomp into the teachers' offices, demanding that their children be given passing grades, threatening with lawsuits for doing anything that is outside of a strictly- and arbitrarily-defined "box"; and it is also eroded by the children of these parents, who are growing up in the environment that teaches them that they can get whatever they want in the world as long as they bitch and whine and threaten and sulk long enough.
In my opinion, this is a direct factor in the abject failure of the American school system. Children are being ridiculed for their ability to spell, or perform mathematics, or use a computer, or use proper grammar, or speak coherently. They are being forced into a regimen of "Sit down, do work whether you like it or not, if you don't comply we drug you up until you can be under our collective thumb"... and they don't have to be. You can't blame it on the other children, because they will be led by the actions and thoughts of others; they have no will of their own, no sense of their own existence. They live as extensions of their parents until the age of 7 or so.
You can't blame it on the teachers, because they are being cornered with the false logic that has permeated the education system for the past ten years. The threats of lawsuits, the threats of being seen as "too radical" or "dangerous" for actually using their heads in a situation where they have to think outside of the box for the sake of educating one child.
None of these things alone really has a huge impact on the development of your child-- it is the combination, the apathy that allows such a combination to fester and boil together, coming to a head in the ever-increasing numbers of students who graduate from high school, go to college, get their diplomas and have no idea how to function in the world.
Thus, faced with these sad facts and a willingness to right the wrongs, I came up with an idea of how to properly educate these children.
Let's say you were an elementary school teacher, licensed, tested, and everything. You've been proven sane and quite harmless, and you aren't going to lash out at or molest any of the children. You're fairly intelligent, enough so that you didn't completely fail out of college. You've always wanted to teach, and you've always wanted to see others motivated and willing in learn new things, knowledge that you have imparted upon them.
So, I'll just get straight to it.
One could start out as an elementary school teacher, teaching preschool... when the children graduated from preschool, you remain as their kindergarten teacher... when they go through kindergarten, you are their 1st grade teacher, and you continue in this fashion until they have graduated from 6th grade and are ready to head to junior high.
You have complete control over their curriculum, you can introduce anything you want-- teach them algebra, teach them geography (you'd be horrified to learn just how many high school students cannot name the 50 states and show them on a map... in my entire 11th grade English class, I was the only one who was able to name them all and label them on the map. There weren't even any questions with capital cities - just the names of the states...), teach history, teach computers, teach programming, teach English, teach grammar...
By the time they graduated from your 8-year regimen, you could work all of the "state learning results" or whatever guidelines you wanted into the curriculum; but you could also integrate it with your personal spins. Let's say you like art-- you could have your curriculum be normal with a little of a flavor of art. The same goes for mathematics, or computer programming, or writing...
Since the students will all be in the same class throughout the entirety of their 8 years in elementary school, they are more likely to have well-founded relationships with the other members of the class, especially if troublesome students (bullies, those who are mentally incapable of keeping up with the curriculum even after multiple attempts, etc) are removed from the class. You would end up with a tightly-knit group of students who were tolerant of each others' differences through necessity and a common culture and background, and as their teacher you would be able to develop a relationship of mutual respect and understanding between the students and yourself. Knowing them all quite well, watching them grow into themselves, helping them along as they go through their 8 years and finally emerge knowing all that you have set out to show them... knowing for a fact that they have not only bonded with you, they have bonded with each other-- and also they have developed a deeply-rooted love of learning, being introduced to the concepts of education at such an early age. They will emerge as a group of well-rounded students, with an eager appetite for learning, books, knowledge, and will take pride in the fact that they are all part of the same elite group of successful students.
If this were to be applied across many different levels of aptitude, it could emerge as an interesting way to keep the students interested and in tune with their own education, implanting into them the spirit of true learning, which is so rarely seen in children these days, especially with the tendency of the current academic community to write off children's behavior as the effect of chemical imbalances and the tendency of the parents of today to set examples for the students telling that their behavior is so easily corrected by artificial and chemical (termporary) means over more permanent behavioral imprinting techniques that worked so well in past generations.
However, I have noticed time and time again that the youth of today is especially adamant about refusing to learn. They squander their time away, thinking that school is merely another tool of control, and that if they perform poorly in school, it's not their fault for not being able to function correctly, it's not the parents' fault for teaching the children discipline (afraid to hit or otherwise scold their children in any way that their brains can comprehend), but it's the fault of the teachers for not "teaching them correctly", and that "My old teachers brought me up on this method of learning so this is working against me" and "school is bullshit mind control anyway".
You remember how in the days of old, there was the concept of the one-room schoolhouse? Well, since that's gone out the window by now, the last tie connecting the students to a valuable education is the relationship between teacher and student. However this is being eroded, by parents who stomp into the teachers' offices, demanding that their children be given passing grades, threatening with lawsuits for doing anything that is outside of a strictly- and arbitrarily-defined "box"; and it is also eroded by the children of these parents, who are growing up in the environment that teaches them that they can get whatever they want in the world as long as they bitch and whine and threaten and sulk long enough.
In my opinion, this is a direct factor in the abject failure of the American school system. Children are being ridiculed for their ability to spell, or perform mathematics, or use a computer, or use proper grammar, or speak coherently. They are being forced into a regimen of "Sit down, do work whether you like it or not, if you don't comply we drug you up until you can be under our collective thumb"... and they don't have to be. You can't blame it on the other children, because they will be led by the actions and thoughts of others; they have no will of their own, no sense of their own existence. They live as extensions of their parents until the age of 7 or so.
You can't blame it on the teachers, because they are being cornered with the false logic that has permeated the education system for the past ten years. The threats of lawsuits, the threats of being seen as "too radical" or "dangerous" for actually using their heads in a situation where they have to think outside of the box for the sake of educating one child.
None of these things alone really has a huge impact on the development of your child-- it is the combination, the apathy that allows such a combination to fester and boil together, coming to a head in the ever-increasing numbers of students who graduate from high school, go to college, get their diplomas and have no idea how to function in the world.
Thus, faced with these sad facts and a willingness to right the wrongs, I came up with an idea of how to properly educate these children.
Let's say you were an elementary school teacher, licensed, tested, and everything. You've been proven sane and quite harmless, and you aren't going to lash out at or molest any of the children. You're fairly intelligent, enough so that you didn't completely fail out of college. You've always wanted to teach, and you've always wanted to see others motivated and willing in learn new things, knowledge that you have imparted upon them.
So, I'll just get straight to it.
One could start out as an elementary school teacher, teaching preschool... when the children graduated from preschool, you remain as their kindergarten teacher... when they go through kindergarten, you are their 1st grade teacher, and you continue in this fashion until they have graduated from 6th grade and are ready to head to junior high.
You have complete control over their curriculum, you can introduce anything you want-- teach them algebra, teach them geography (you'd be horrified to learn just how many high school students cannot name the 50 states and show them on a map... in my entire 11th grade English class, I was the only one who was able to name them all and label them on the map. There weren't even any questions with capital cities - just the names of the states...), teach history, teach computers, teach programming, teach English, teach grammar...
By the time they graduated from your 8-year regimen, you could work all of the "state learning results" or whatever guidelines you wanted into the curriculum; but you could also integrate it with your personal spins. Let's say you like art-- you could have your curriculum be normal with a little of a flavor of art. The same goes for mathematics, or computer programming, or writing...
Since the students will all be in the same class throughout the entirety of their 8 years in elementary school, they are more likely to have well-founded relationships with the other members of the class, especially if troublesome students (bullies, those who are mentally incapable of keeping up with the curriculum even after multiple attempts, etc) are removed from the class. You would end up with a tightly-knit group of students who were tolerant of each others' differences through necessity and a common culture and background, and as their teacher you would be able to develop a relationship of mutual respect and understanding between the students and yourself. Knowing them all quite well, watching them grow into themselves, helping them along as they go through their 8 years and finally emerge knowing all that you have set out to show them... knowing for a fact that they have not only bonded with you, they have bonded with each other-- and also they have developed a deeply-rooted love of learning, being introduced to the concepts of education at such an early age. They will emerge as a group of well-rounded students, with an eager appetite for learning, books, knowledge, and will take pride in the fact that they are all part of the same elite group of successful students.
If this were to be applied across many different levels of aptitude, it could emerge as an interesting way to keep the students interested and in tune with their own education, implanting into them the spirit of true learning, which is so rarely seen in children these days, especially with the tendency of the current academic community to write off children's behavior as the effect of chemical imbalances and the tendency of the parents of today to set examples for the students telling that their behavior is so easily corrected by artificial and chemical (termporary) means over more permanent behavioral imprinting techniques that worked so well in past generations.