I agree with your conclusion that the educational system in this country is not doing it's job. From the beginning until 4th grade American children compete very well. But starting in 4th grade they start to decline and by the time they reach high school they lag so far behind as to rank the US toward the bottom of the industrialized nations.
I disagree though that throwing more money at the system is going to work. Homeschool parents typically produce highly educated children with little money. Why is that?
1.) One-on-one attention (in this case more money might help because you can hire more teachers so the classroom sizes are smaller.
2.) Better behaved children. From my own experience I find homeschooled children are much better behaved. They follow instructions, they pay attention to instruction, they tend to be more motivated and engaged.
3.) Parents can design curriculum around their child's needs and interests. That just isn't possible in classrooms with 20 or more kids. Money might help here too, but the size of schools would explode.
I worked with middle school children for over ten years in varying capacities and I can tell you from my experience and that of several family members that are also in education throughout the country that the biggest problem schools face when trying to educate children is discipline.
You can't teach children that won't behave. They talk during instruction. They won't complete homework assignments. They don't study for tests. They won't follow instructions because they know there is nothing a teacher can do.
I think education in primary grades still competes with the world because the younger child is still slightly afraid of the authority figures in their lives. They aren't quite sure if they want to disobey. Thus the teacher can do more with the kids and they actually learn more.
By the time the kids reach 8th grade, they have learned they have the upper hand. They don't need to obey the teacher. They don't need to listen to instruction. They don't have to study.
This has created a horrible trend in education to dumb down curriculum so most children pass. I was pressured and criticized if I had a class in which more than just a few children were failing. It didn't matter if I had five other classes excelling under the same type of instruction. It was somehow my fault that particular class did poorly.
And I had classes that did poorly for a variety of reasons. Maybe I had more than just one or two trouble makers that took up much of my time trying to discipline them and keep control of the classroom (can't just put them in the hallway these days they get into trouble....can't send them to the office because the principle can't do anything with them either...calling parents is pretty useless...some parents will even complain if you hold their child in detention during recess)
Maybe I had a class full of low achievers. It only takes a handful of apathetic children to change the dynamics of your classroom. Next thing you know the whole group could care less; especially if your apathetic child is the most popular kid in class. I would stay awake nights trying to think of ways to motivate that one child. And I can promise you that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
There are a multitude of issues that has created the poor results we are seeing today. I worked for a very poor school district. My kids didn't have access to computers for years. They worked out of text books that were falling apart. But I still had classes that excelled. If the grouping was just right... If I could spark something in one of the more outgoing kids...Oh, what a joy! Those kids would go above and beyond what I required and parents were amazed. But it wasn't something that happened consistently.
So many children today just don't care. They have more important things on their mind by the sixth, seventh and eigth grade. They have to look just right, have just the right clothes, know just the right music, watch just the right shows on television, be able to attain the highest scores on video games, be the best in a dozen sports and activities, be invited to the best parties, have the most popular boyfriend/girlfriend, be a part of the most popular group, and the list goes on and on. Everything except getting a decent education. Most will do just enough to get by and that's in a classroom in which the curriculum was already dumbed down.
Those that are willing to do whatever is asked of them are cheated because there is no challenge.
My biggest irritation as a teacher was when a parent blamed me for their child's failure. I'm a pretty outgoing person. I've always had a great repoire with kids and to have someone tell me I wasn't interesting enough just burned my hide. I'm didn't spend four years in college and countless hours in re-certification courses learning subject matter and teaching techniques to be an entertainer. If I was any good at entertaining, I would be in Hollywood making millions.
Caring for their children, being sincere in my desire to teach, loving my subject matter, creating a curriculum that was engaging, challenging, and varied just didn't matter. I just wasn't interesting.
All I could say was entertaining was above my pay grade. And if their children honestly believed that everything they did had to be entertaining, they were surely going to fail in many areas throughout their lives. I was already doing everything I could to educate their child and I showed them my curriculum guides, activity lists, grade books, rules, extra-credit materials, and disciplin plans. If after all that they still weren't convinced, then I had to throw up my hands.
Honestly, it got to be so frustrating listening to parents whine for their children. Then having to tolerate rude children that didn't know any better was unbearable. And the sleepless nights killing myself trying to figure out ways to motivate the children was taking it's toll on my health. After I moved to Illinois I decided to take a break. I literally slept for 12 hours a night for the first six months or so. I was exhausted.
Though I love movies about educators that worked miracles because they are so inspiring. I also hate them because they give everyone watching them the wrong idea about what school and teaching should be all about. They rarely show the negatives that exist and if they do, it's always solved by the end of the movie. They don't show you that the vast majority of negatives today aren't getting solved and it's just gettings worse.
You fix the American family, the behavior and work ethic of kids and the educational system will become great once again. American children once led the world. The first thing that changed was the type of child entering school. The second thing that changed was the curriculum to get the vast majority of these low achievers through the system. Then the last thing that changed was unions took over in so many systems throughout the country to tie up more and more of the money in areas not pertaining to kids.
Illinois takes in more money for education than most of the states in this country through taxes. But Illinois ranks toward the bottom for the amount of money actually spent on the kids. I wonder where the difference is going?
I'll get off my soapbox now. Seriously fix the kids first, then get rid of unions and rules that prevent districts from firing poor teachers, then spend funds in a financially responsible way and American schools will be great again.
