Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!cs.utexas.edu!oakhill!steve
From: steve@oakhill.UUCP (steve)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: blaming teachers
Summary: You were just joking - weren't you??!?
Message-ID: <1412@devsys.oakhill.UUCP>
Date: 3 Aug 88 19:25:35 GMT
References: <12230@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <12260@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <233@quintus.UUCP>
Organization: Motorola Inc. Austin, Tx
Lines: 65


>   Teachers have children for ~5 hours per week-day.
>   A couple of days ago I read a book called "Miseducation" (or something
>   like that, I can produce a better reference if anyone cares) which
>   quoted a study which reported in their sample that parents spent
>   ~15 minutes per week-day talking to their children, ~30 minutes a day
>   on week-ends.  That gives the teachers about an 11-to-1 advantage.
>   [Ok, teachers don't spend all their time talking.  Call it 6-to-1.]
>   
>   I'm not saying this is good.  Surely few of the people who care enough
>   about education to read this newsgroup can be that apathetic about their
>   children.
>   
>   My point is that schools *claim* to be able to teach the subjects they
>   are teaching, and that if that study is at all typical, most children
>   are getting "academic" input *only* from the schools.  If education 
>   really does depend so critically on the parents' involvement, then
>   (a) it is time that the schools confessed frankly that they can't
>       educate children on their own
>   (b) we have a big problem, because what kind of parents will ignorant
>       children make?  What do we do to break the cycle _now_?  Blaming
>       today's parents won't change them.
>   

First if this fact is true - it is sad (not that I'm really surprised). 
But to claim that the teachers must take up where the parents fail is
renoucing the responsibilities of parenthood, is just plain shortsightness.
By the way there is still a flaw in your statisics.
The 11-1 advantage disappears when divided over 20 (conservative) children
to 1-2  (with 30 children at 6-1 it goes to  1-5!!).

But to continue - No teacher (or school administrator) will ever tell you
that they can educated a child in a vacuum.  The sad truth is that the
ideals the child carries are largely based on the values the student gets
from his whole environment.  A school system has a child only about
10,000* hours before graduation.  The child is out of school much more (about
150,000** hours).  There is no way to tell the student that what 1 hour of
what we give you is more important than the 15 hours of the outside world
teaches you.  Thus the only way to break this vicious cycle is to convince
the outside world to tell the student that education is important.  Tell
the parents that even if you don't have an education it is important that
your child gets one.  Also the community needs to support education better.
This means more support and better pay for teachers, less tolerence with
just passing, more resources and better equiptment.  Having school boards
and administrators that work to improve education, and not just play politics.
Its also means more than 20% voter turnout for school referendums.  This
stuff takes time and money, but I can't imagine that it won't pay off
in the end.

I'm sorry for raving, but I just want to make this point.   Education will
not improve until the community as a whole supports it.  To blame teachers
for it is wrong.  There are bad teachers, but from my experience more of them
are dedicated to educating our youth than any of the other groups (school
administrators, parents, etc.).  Better yet, let's stop pointing fingers
and start working together to correct the problems, and change the communities
attitude.

			Your mooncalf - Steve

  P.S.  I know a cheated a little on the statisics, but I think I am
	more accurate with mine than you are with yours.

* 5 hours times 180 days of school per year time 12 years = 10800
**24 hours times 365 days a year times 180 years (don't forget leap years (
  plus 96) = 157776