Obama calls for longer school year.....

Local_Historian wrote: You won;t see a longer school yeah, because that will NOT cure the problem. How exactly does he expect adding more days to fix the budget shortfalls, the textbooks 20-30 years out of date (Sorry, if it talks about Carter or Reagan as the current president, it needsupdating) the lack of teacher aides, supplies, even decent teachers?

All it does is provide more free childcare. If that's the goal, then fine.

Free childcare is one reason why I think you could see year around elementary schooling. But it would only happen if the economy gets going again. Schools have enough budget issues as it is right now.
Then again maybe year round schooling won't work because the teacher's union would fight it tooth and nail.

Children need to be children. This means time to just "be". Lazy, long days of the summer. Boredom (ennui). Angst. Time alone.
Longer school terms rob children of this rich experience.

SS109 wrote:

Local_Historian wrote: You won;t see a longer school yeah, because that will NOT cure the problem. How exactly does he expect adding more days to fix the budget shortfalls, the textbooks 20-30 years out of date (Sorry, if it talks about Carter or Reagan as the current president, it needsupdating) the lack of teacher aides, supplies, even decent teachers?

All it does is provide more free childcare. If that's the goal, then fine.

Free childcare is one reason why I think you could see year around elementary schooling. But it would only happen if the economy gets going again. Schools have enough budget issues as it is right now.
Then again maybe year round schooling won't work because the teacher's union would fight it tooth and nail.

That brings up a good issue. Why is it that schools have such budget problems? We pay more per student than most any other civilized nation and we are 25th out of 30 in Math and 21st out of 30 in Science. Why is that? We give more money than most nations to our school system. Where does it go and why do we not have better results? Who is to blame?

How do the other nations who are beating us do it on less money?

Local_Historian wrote: Having been a teacher - longer school year will NOT solve the problems.

Having worked as a museum docent, Hoot Owl is NOT far off. We did some some wonderful home schooled families, and they came agan and again, and had lesson plans and real questions, and their children were smart, well educated, polite and wonderful to be around.

However, they were few and far between. More often, we saw the "unschooling" movement group. they came in a herd, and the herds on the farms part of the museum were better educated and behaved than these children and parents. They came a lot too - so the moms could side on the benches in the pavillion while their children ran rampant through the museum sites. They couldn't follow an instruction to save their lives - "don't touch the cookstove, it's hot", and damn if we didn't grab several kids hands as they reached for it anyway. I got cut in the broom shop as a child grabbed my broom making knife off the machine (after asking about it and being told to NOT touch it), and swung it around like he was a junior ninja, hitting me in the arm in the process. Luckily, I hadn't sharpened it that day and had been using it; the cut was superficial.

Every other site at the museum dreaded this group, because these children could not listen and were unsupervised. When we talked with our bosses, they spoke with the parents, who claimed their children were supervised the whole time. Really? Your child is an 1/8 of a mile away from you, yet they're supervised by you. Right.

I met a 7 year old who could not even recite his ABCs, a 10 year old who could not add simple numbers, and more. I understand the concept of homeschooling, I understand the concept of "Unschooling" - these children were neither. They were just shy of being feral. These are the failures of that type of system, BECAUSE the parents were being too lazy, or not understanding the concepts, or just really didn't care.

These kids exist - or are you next going to tell me that the over 150 people who had to deal with these families in the years I was there, who all saw the same things, who all dreaded those children coming about and who did actually do their best to try to teach them something and keep them safe - we're all wrong? Or we're all assinine too.

Let me note that every one of those people had college experience (interns), were college graduates in the fields of history or museum studies, and more than half had been or currently were teachers on all levels of the educational system. So it's not like we were a bunch of clueless gits.

Just because you disagree - and yes a stereotype exists about homeschooling - doesn't mean it's not the truth. The stereotype gets its basis somewhere, from some example or series of examples.

I hesitate to reply to this post, but I feel that I must.
Our daughters were wilder than a March hare. This was intentional on our part. Here was our reasoning:
1. we felt that they must be masters of their own world. So we took away the word "no". We observed that children were told "no" because of arbitrary rules about inconsequential things. "No" would make them losers from the very start because they would be doing forbidden things. We controlled their world, so we made sure that nothing in their environment was dangerous or hurtful to them. So "no" was not necessary.
2. we controlled their environment. This was stated above but must be listed because of its extreme importance. We were not over-protective but gave our girls free rein to explore, conquer, control, exploit the world. They were a holy terror at Safeway, WalMart, and everywhere they went. I apologize to everyone who came into contact with them, but no one was harmed, insulted, abused, or altered by them. We were sure to instill politeness and courtesy into their rearing.
3. our daughters' minds must be unfettered. In order to think and reason, they must not be hindered by retreat behind the curtains in their minds which are drawn by years of disapproval.

So, major bean, not to get too personal, but how did they turn out? You never gave us the rest of the story.

Viking, our daughters never gave us a minute of trouble. They are both independent, self confident, truthful, and sober minded. They have never done drugs. They are financially responsible and frugal. Both put off dating until they received their B.S. degrees.
They were both expensive to raise. We never denied them anything financially. Their passions were competitive figure skating, snow skiing, violins, and clothes.
Neither is foul mouthed or disrespectful. They are now 26 and 28 years old and have only one traffic ticket divided between them (that's 1/2 a traffic ticket per kid).
Neither was "boy crazy". Whenever I stated "wilder than a March hare" I was not speaking of sex.
Both are politically aware and active voters.
Both are sincere. They never offer a thing, except to give it. No false pretenses.
One of our daughters is considered, by the University faculty, to be a mathmatical genius.

I assure you that my summation of our daughters is not fantasized or embellished in any way. We worked and planned very carefully from the day that they were born to give them the best chance that we could offer. And that meant that they should have inner contentment and confidence. (By the way, they were both home birthed. I was the attending midwife.)

I do not know if my rant is what you were asking, Viking. If not, just ask a specific question and I will answer.

major bean wrote: Viking, our daughters never gave us a minute of trouble. They are both independent, self confident, truthful, and sober minded. They have never done drugs. They are financially responsible and frugal. Both put off dating until they received their B.S. degrees.
They were both expensive to raise. We never denied them anything financially. Their passions were competitive figure skating, snow skiing, violins, and clothes.
Neither is foul mouthed or disrespectful. They are now 26 and 28 years old and have only one traffic ticket divided between them (that's 1/2 a traffic ticket per kid).
Neither was "boy crazy". Both are politically aware and active voters.
Both are sincere. They never offer a thing, except to give it. No false pretenses.
One of our daughters is considered, by the University faculty, to be a mathmatical genius.

I assure you that my summation of our daughters is not fantasized or embellished in any way. We worked and planned very carefully from the day that they were born to give them the best chance that we could offer. And that meant that they should have inner contentment and confidence.

I do not know if my rant is what you were asking, Viking. If not just ask a specific question and I will answer.

No that is exactly what I wanted to know. Another perfect example of how parents make all the difference in how their children turn out. Good for you. I have a great deal of respect for how you raised them and how they turned out.

Viking, please excuse me, for I was editing my post while you were composing your reply. There were only two additions to my post. Please refer to my above post.

Education does start in the home and is only augmented in school. Educating children is a challenging task, but as the two examples above illustrate, the results can be rewarding for both parent and child. As also pointed out, it takes exceptional parents who are dedicated and clear in their objectives to do this well. Somewhere I read that children act according to what we expect of them. Expect much and receive much in return. Expect little and you have members of a heard. Congratulations on a job well done.

Not all parents have the patience or the organizational skills to home school. Not all parents can stay home to home school if they want to have a home.

I believe that most of the teacher unions are off-track, just as other unions in this country are. It's sad how they have evolved. Whoops! Let me run from the creationists.

However, "in the beginning" they were needed because teachers were getting paid diddly squat, and still are in many communities, were expected to spend all their free time grading papers, working on lesson plans, meeting with parents, and tons of other things without compensation. The unions changed that to an extent, but my teacher friends still can't just leave the school at the end of the day to enjoy time with their families.

And how do you get a student to have better grades if he/she refuses to attend and the parents back them up and insist that their child should get a "D" even if they were never in class? Principals overrule teachers all the time.

Unions have their place and their benefits. It's just how to get the sensible people to run the unions, if that's where you think the problem lies.

As far as home schooling, it seems to be quite prevalent up here. However, I hear the "teachers" trying to do the minimum so the kids can do other things. Kudos to the parents who don't skim over courses.

Until this country starts showing respect to teachers and others, and really stress how important education is, by the parents, we won't see any change for the better.

A whole summer off? Why? The first month of school is bringing the kids back up to speed from the end of the last school year. Most parents can't afford vacations for the entire summer, nor camps and all the other stuff they do over the summer. I can see that teachers need summers off because of all the crap they've gone through with out-of-control kids. They have to recover. And, in most school systems, teachers don't get paid for that time off. They simply have their paychecks allotted for 12 months.