As bad as the teachers and schools are, I think the parents are also to blame. Kids are growing up more spoiled than ever and it used to be that parents would back teachers but now they defend their kids.
Some kids are pretty smart but so many of their fundamentals are missing. It will be an interesting coming decade.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
Scruffy wrote: Are you kidding? Todays kids are some of the sharpest and most confident I have ever seen. It seems there is nothing that they can't do, and with the resources kids have today, they can do anything.
But then you're probably just looking for an excuse to complain about the state of the world. Sorry. Carry on.
\
I'm guessing you aren't in the business of hiring the next generation of employees. I've found the majority of them to be extremely competent in technology, but on the other side, they feel entitled. They think they shouldn't have to do the "entry level" work, want to be highly paid right away, expect to work when they want to work, and that they deserve to get promoted/raises (not that they must earn them). I've found many a young person looking for work who, when offered a job that isn't exactly what they want, for the wage they want, would rather sit at home (usually parents home). Their parents provided everything they wanted growing up...and are still doing so. They have no desire to go sweep floors/stock shelves/etc just to make some $$ till the job they want comes along. Parents are a lot to blame for this though...they allow the kids to just mooch...
That's not been my experience. The kids I know want to get any job they can so they have $$ to spend. To answer your question I am not hiring kids right now, just noticing what a great crop of teenagers we have here in the mountains. It may be different down the hill, but I'm impressed by what coming out of the Jeffco schools.
Kids are not stupid, but in a lot of cases they need to be retaught to get rid of that mind set. Example - my eldest nephew used to say "I can't know how." Until one day a teacher told him that he already does know how, he just needs to use it. And amazing - he did, and his grades went from Fs to As.
There has been too much coddling, too much of this self esteem crap and I'm sure we, all being of a similar generation, can agree - where did we get OUR self esteem? By doing well, whether it was on a spelling test, giving a speech, playing sports. Through our OWN efforts, not because someone gave false praise, like has been the model in schools for too long now. "We don't want Jonny to feel bad because he failed the test." What? If Jonny has no learning problems and was just pure lazy, then he earned that F just like the kid who did study earned that A. And he SHOULD feel bad!
But by putting it off on the kids as them being stupid and lazy, ijits like this person justify incompetent teachers still in classrooms- and there are some, most definitely - and justify failed programs.
I'm not going to blame any of the technology - any good teacher will take that technology and help use it to educate. Any teacher worth their pay can take any educational situation and turn it into a profitable learning experience so that everyone in the room gets something out of it, everyone feels good about learning something that day, everyone feels challenged enough to want to go back to that class the next day.
This false crap was never needed except by poor school counselors and poor teachers - both of which should have been in other jobs long before this.
