Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Truly sad - if true

Two points:

1. I agree that IF the story is true is something to consider. The source you quoted is just telling us that someone told him that the principal said so. So I'm automatically dubious.

2. That said, there is truth in the idea that US public schools have serious problems and that lack of academic excellence is among them. No, I'm not claiming that the problem is universal in public schools or that it doesn't exist in private ones. It's an education thing.

But still, there are some very serious problems about lack of academic excellence in public schools. Teachers, especially at the K-8 level, have low GRE and SAT scores and many admit to being math-phobic. Yet if you try to note this fact, you get accused of "bashing" teachers who work so hard. (Nice segue, that.) And it must be that they're underpaid, right? Well, around here, average salaries range from the mid 70s to the 90s, and we still have an awful lot of lousy teachers.

People look for simplistic answers that suit their needs, and no one seems to want to take a good hard look at the many factors that drag our education system down:

* Many teachers don't know the subject matter (but they know how to "teach," which apparently makes up for that)

* Poverty/lack of a meaningful safety net creates huge stress for families (and their parents get the blame for "not caring" or being "uninvolved," and no one seems to notice that it's hard to be "involved" like our vaunted upper middle class mommies are, when you're working 80 hours a week just to pay the rent). If you've ever had trouble focusing at work when a major stressful event was going on in your life, you have an inkling of how poor people live every day, except they face multiple stressors daily

* A rabid focus on high-stakes bubble tests drags us down

* Lousy textbooks make it hard for even a good teacher to impart knowledge

* We help poor performers (which is good) to the exclusion of others (which is bad; see: bubble testing, above)

* We pretend that everyone should go to college and don't focus on jobs for people who don't want to do that or can't afford it/don't want to be debt serfs

Etc.

IMO, the conservatives are right about problems in education (low standards). But so are the liberals (poverty). And the Libertarians have good points (too much testing and too much job security for teachers). Thing is, many in these groups seem to believe that their pet peeves are the only problems. So everyone argues, and we can't make progress because we're all so partisan right now. Unfeeling conservative! Knee jerk liberal! [Insert insult] [insert group]!

In the 1990s, some people in Ireland who had been involved in a vicious conflict that went back centuries decided that they hated the conflict more than they hated each other, and created a peace agreement. We don't seem to be there yet, unfortunately. We care more about seething at one another than we do about fixing our problems.