SATReading scores drop to lowest levels in 40 years

[Daithi]

Yet you trust mediamatters.

[kennyc]

Well, we just had a big controversy over vouchers in one of our metro area school district -- primarily because parents were attempting to to use vouchers to send kids to religious schools. It was stopped by a Judge twice.

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_18673490

[stickybuns]

Originally Posted by Daithi

Yet you trust mediamatters.

Well, I wouldn't trust Keith Olberman as far as I could throw him either.

At any rate, do you have evidence that Media Matters fabricates its research for its "fact checking" articles? That's a genuine question, by the way.

If you have a better sources for fact checking than Media Matters (left leaning bias) and Media Research Center (right leaning bias), I'd love to know about it.

Edited to Ask: I really would like to have evidence from an independent source that problematic/incompetent/abusive teachers are a significant and wide-spread (beyond a handful of "bad apples") problem. I find it difficult to justify the condemnation of the entire educational system over a horror story about ONE crappy teacher.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by stickybuns

Well, I wouldn't trust Keith Olberman as far as I could throw him either.

At any rate, do you have evidence that Media Matters fabricates its research for its "fact checking" articles? That's a genuine question, by the way.

If you have a better sources for fact checking than Media Matters (left leaning bias) and Media Research Center (right leaning bias), I'd love to know about it.

Edited to Ask: I really would like to have evidence from an independent source that problematic/incompetent/abusive teachers are a significant and wide-spread (beyond a handful of "bad apples") problem. I find it difficult to justify the condemnation of the entire educational system over a horror story about ONE crappy teacher.

Well I am not myself in the educational system, but isn't even one bad teacher one too many? The children of today are the leaders of tomorrow after all. And there are some problems (or have been in the past) with Schools. Not just in the quality of teaching (assuming the story I referenced is in any way accurate) but in discipline as well, which feeds back into problems with learning. After all if kids are being bullied they can't focus properly on what they are supposed to be focused on even if the teacher is good at his/her job. And I know (from personal experience) that schools tend to look the other way when the students doing the bullying have 'the right name.' So even if the teachers aren't bad at their jobs schools do have some work to do on themselves. The point is schools are supposed to be places of learning, nothing more or less. And problems (whether with bad teachers or bullying) don't just go away if you refuse to acknowledge them.

[stickybuns]

Originally Posted by crich70

Well I am not myself in the educational system, but isn't even one bad teacher one too many?

I'm certainly not arguing that cruddy teachers should be able to keep their jobs, but what I am arguing is that we shouldn't be condemning the teaching profession as a whole. In much the same way that I don't panic that my toddler will one day be kidnapped every time I see an Amber alert, I don't spend my time worried about her ending up with a lousy teacher. Sure, I've had my fair share of the bad, but I've also had some truly amazing ones.

Now, regarding the union protecting the lousy teacher:

I have a union representative at my job. If I should ever be accused of wrong doing, I would expect my union representative to fight tooth and nail on my behalf. I would hope/presume that I was innocent of whatever the charges are, but regardless of such details, until an investigation has been completed, it is the responsibility and duty of the union to fight for my behalf.

[mldavis2]

As a former teacher, I can assure you that there are thousands of outstanding teachers who work for pathetically low wages as a labor of love. My first teaching job, many years ago, was at a small rural school that had such a poor tax base that they couldn't afford to meet the state minimum teacher pay level, so the state had to make up the difference, and the pay was embarrassing for a master's level college prepared educator.

The net result is that we are expecting teachers and other public servants to provide world-class performance at barely above poverty wages and then wonder why we aren't attracting the best and brightest college grads into the teaching profession. You get what you pay for in many cases, and it's a tribute to those who work long hours preparing lesson plans "off the clock" who keep on "keeping on" when the public blames them for lack of parental support, increasingly overcrowded classrooms, and an impossible range of both functional and dysfunctional students with MTV attention spans in the same classroom.

[HappyMartin]

Not fair to blame teachers. Do parents sit and read in the evening in front of their children? For all the self proclaimed independence of youngsters they do largely copy their elders, eventually. The problem is they do what the elders do, not what they say. For this argument I need to exclude the people on this forum for obvious reasons.

Funny thing happening in Yeoville, one of the immigrant suburbs of Johannesburg. People are very poor in this suburb and come from all over Africa and speak dozens of languages yet there are 3 or 4 active poetry clubs/societies where people meet not to discuss poetry but to listen to readings of each others poetry. I bet the children of these people will be readers.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by HappyMartin

...
Funny thing happening in Yeoville, one of the immigrant suburbs of Johannesburg. People are very poor in this suburb and come from all over Africa and speak dozens of languages yet there are 3 or 4 active poetry clubs/societies where people meet not to discuss poetry but to listen to readings of each others poetry. I bet the children of these people will be readers.

Life is what you make it.

[DMB]

There is a problem about educational reading and that is: what do we recognise as the canon? What must be included and what sort of things perhaps excluded? I don't know whether anyone here has read this book. I did and found it far too prescriptive.

I think that education should take us out of our comfort zone and introduce us to ideas that are new to us, but people shouldn't be made to feel bad about what they like.

Personally, I am an autodidact and from my mid-teens I read furiously because I felt that in order to understand a work of literature one needed some acquaintance with its precursors. By the time I was 20 I had read a whole lot of stuff that I didn't enjoy one bit, such as Lyly's Euphues books -- extract here:

There dwelt in Athens a young gentleman of great patrimonie, & of so comely a personage, that it was doubted whether he were more bound to Nature for the liniaments of his person, or to fortune for the encrease of his possessions. But Nature impatient of comparisons, and as it were disdaining a companion, or copartner in hir working, added to this comlinesse of his body suche a sharpe capacitie of minde, that not onely shée proued Fortune counterfaite, but was halfe of that opinion that she hir selfe was onely currant. This younge gallant, of more wit then wealth, and yet of more wealth then wisdome, séeing himselfe inferiour to none in pleasant conceits, thought himselfe superiour to al in honest conditions, insomuch yt he déemed himselfe so apt to all things, that he gaue himselfe almost to nothing, but practising of those things commonly which are incident to these sharp wits, fine phrases, smoth quipping, merry taunting, vsing iesting without meane, & abusing mirth without measure. As therefore the swéetest Rose hath his prickel the finest veluet his brack, the fairest flowre his bran so the sharpest witte hath his wanton will, and the holiest heade his wicked waye. And true it is that some men write and most men beléeue, that in all perfecte shapes, a blemmish bringeth rather a liking euery way to the eyes, then a loathing any waye to the minde. Venus had hir Mole in hir chéeke which made hir more amiable, Helen hir scarre on hir chinne which Paris called Cos amoris, the Whetstone of loue. Aristippus his wart, Lycurgus his wenne: So likewise in the disposition of ye minde, eitheir vertue is ouershaddowed with some vice or vice ouercast with some vertue. Alexander valiaunt in warre, yet gyuen to wine. Tulli eloquent in his gloses, yet vayneglorious: Salomon wyse, yet to too wanton: Dauid holye, but yet an homicide: none more wittie then Euphues, yet at the first none more wicked. The freshest colours soonest fade, the kéenest Rasor soonest tourneth his edge, the finest cloathe is soonest eaten wyth Moathes, and the Cambricke sooner stained then the course Canuas: whiche appeared well in this Euphues, whose witte béeinge lyke waxe apte to receiue any impression, and hauinge the bridle in hys owne handes either to vse the raine or the spurre, disdayning counsayle, leauinge his countrey, loathinge his olde acquaintance, thought either by wytte to obteyne some conquest, or by shame to abyde some conflicte, and leauing the rule of reason, rashly ranne vnto destruction.

and

Chrysal: Or the Adventures of a Guinea, Wherein are exhibited several striking scenes with curious and interesting anecdotes of the most noted persons in every rank of life, whose hands it passed through, in America, England, Holland, Germany and Portugal.

I read this sort of thing while doing a maths degree. There is no way that I would expect any student to read that stuff!