Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ssbell!mcmi!hdr!unocss!fritz From: fritz@unocss.UUCP (Sharon O'Neil) Newsgroups: comp.edu Subject: Re: Meter Reading as Computer Literacy Message-ID: <611@unocss.UUCP> Date: 9 Jan 89 20:46:49 GMT References: <12.UUL1.3#913@acw.UUCP> Organization: U. of Nebraska at Omaha Lines: 78 In article <12.UUL1.3#913@acw.UUCP>, guthery@acw.UUCP (Scott Guthery) writes: > Just when you think it can't get any worse ... New York Bell reports > that they had to interview 22,000 people to fill 2,000 *ENTRY LEVEL* > positions. > > You also have to ask yourself what the money > we gave their school boards was spent on. Down here in Texas I know > ... backfield coaches and band uniforms. > > Mathematics, plain old mathematics, is fundamental. Buying Apples > and running the computer literacy scam are diversions meant to keep > the taxpayer's eye off the bottomline. When, oh, when will we understand > that learning is hard ... that it has to be hard ... that you can't > candy-coat it with relevance or wrap it in empty self-esteem. When > will we stop accepting excuses for failure and start demanding success? > > Simply put, when will teachers teach? > Just look at what the money in the school systems is being spent on! You say it yourself: backfield coaches and band uniforms and Apple Computers. You yourself point out that education is more than teaching kids how to press the right button on the computer. You yourself say that we have to stop candy-coating the schooling process. /Then/ you ask "when will teachers teach?" Teachers don't just /decide/ what they are going to teach in the classroom. Schoolboards /tell/ them what to teach in the classroom. Teaching is a unique profession. Why? Because most other professions have some sort of measure of autonomy. Teachers, on the other hand, have much of their curriculum decided by the school board and by the community at large. They are also paid by that school board and the community at large. When will teachers teach? You're obviously not going to get extremely intelligent people to teach when they know that they're never going to make half of what they could make in private industry. You're obviously not going to get the basics taught when the community is telling the teachers that they have to pass Bubba because he is desparately needed for the game on Friday and you're not going to get the basics taught when teachers have to waste time including unnecessary frills because the school board thought it would be great to buy a computer for use in the reading class. The answer lies in your very own post. It's attitudes like the ones that I have seen in this recent discussion that drive good, quality people away from teaching. It's not enough to be gifted anymore. To be a good teacher one must also have a martyr complex anymore. There are many more factors that go into whether kids learn anyway. It's not that the schools are any worse nowadays. Fifty years ago many of the students that did poorly simply left school and got jobs. There were fewer students in the schools. Standards were not as high. Teachers had less education than they do now. Schools weren't as overcrowded. If you ask me what is wrong with schools today, I'll tell you what it is. It is the parents who have given up on parenting their children and expect the teachers to do it for them. Children are doing drugs, having sex, getting pregnant, and other things that were not commonplace for the average fourteen year old fifty years ago. Parents don't discipline their children. A troubled child is certainly going to have problems being taught. The teacher must spend much time just dealing with these children and their problems. Teachers are simply asked too much. If students were happy to begin with and if parents took responsibility then teaching would be a lot easier. Certainly, many of the parents here /are/ responsible, but many parents "out there" are not and time spent on the children from irresponsible families certainly detracts from all the children. -- ---------------------------------+-------------------------------------------- Sharon O'Neil | Internet: oneil%zeus@fergvax.unl.edu Who reads these, anyway? | Bitnet: oneil@unoma1 Univ of Nebraska - Lincoln | "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"