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I just watched "the greatest movie ever sold". I forgot how much they said the advertisers paid to put acne commercials on "chanel one news", the one they show in middle school. That money probably didn't go to the kids, it goes to channel one news inc. but the principals were explaining selling ad space inside the school bus and on the fence of the stadium, saying, we keep getting budget cuts and trying to decide who to fire and which programs to cut, we're just trying to find ways to stop the bleeding. They said they could sell ad space to stuff like crimestopers, but they couldn't sell to advertisers promoting $0.69 cent whatever's to captive teenagers because the parents would complain. And yet no one wants programs cut and they keep cutting funding.

I'm sorry, but I can't accept that line of reasoning, especially given the inefficiencies in public education spending. To me, this justification is really saying, "Our budget got cut, so we have to sell to the highest bidder. Coal, anyone?"

I understand that budget cuts are tough, but that doesn't excuse putting Disney characters on your math worksheets and watching Disney cartoons during class.

Well, with Disney being such an old 20th century brand, it's critical that new Consuming Units(TM) be encouraged to provide Mind Share(TM). If Disney doesn't colonize that space, someone else will, and the Disney brand will be diminished.

Can you imagine what might happen to the economies of Florida and California in such a situation?

We all have to work together here to make it in the New Global Hypereconomy.

It's a win-win-win.

The school wins California/Florida win, and Disney shareholders win.

The real problem is that there is no ability grouping in the younger grades. I made a decision early on with my kids that I was pretty much going to allow them to read what they wanted to. Even though schools may hate ability grouping, I think as a parent you are well within your rights to insist that your child has a need to discuss the things he reads with his peers. It is the duty of the school to place him in a setting with other children who actually read books.

Welll...my kid is 8 and does not play any violent video games or watch any violent movies; these books would freak her out, I'm pretty sure. The teacher does seem kind of micromanaging, but she may have parents who are expressing concern about stuff like this.

My dd13's 1st grade teacher color coded the kids based on both behavior and achievement. They all had little pockets on the wall with their names on them and three colored popsicle sticks: green, yellow, and red. If they misbehaved, she called out, "Jenni, move your green" and Jenni would need to take the green popsicle stick out of her pocket. If you got down to red, there was some consequence. Dd was so petrified listing to the other kids get called out publicly that she never got in trouble.

The kids were also put in green, yellow, and red groups for reading and math. The green group was the advanced students, yellow average, and red kids who were behind. Again, although dd was all "green," this whole system sucked so badly and stressed dd out so much that we wound up removing her from school part of the way through and homeschooling the rest of the year.

Sorry, sidetrack...

(on the subject of homophobia [though it was a while back] when I taught art in a local private middle school, I was repremanded by the principle for objecting to near continuous gay-jokes being delivered durring class time by students. Apparetly I was being too hard on them, and they didn't really mean anything by it.)

-Mich

This whole thread is a side track I will weigh in on several of the ongoing conversations. First, with respect to the Hunger Games, my DS8 is relentless in his requests to read the books because according to him "everyone in his class is reading them." He is a grade skipped 3rd grader in a 3/4 HG classroom and I believe that many of the kids in his class are reading the books (though not all) but I just don't think he is ready for it in the same way I have made him stop at the 4th HP book for now. There are many books for him to read and I would just like to save some of the more mature themed, violent books for later. But, I don't judge those other families for allowing their kids to read even though it puts more pressure on me to stand my ground with my own DS.

On the subject of those awful behavior systems, I just don't get it. Why does it seem so obvious to us here on this board that many of those humiliation techniques just won't be effective and can even be damaging for kids. At the end of last year, my DS finally told me that he thought that his teacher tried to make kids be good by making them feel really bad about themselves. That broke my heart. Positive reinforcement is the best way to get my kid to behave and it is probably for most other kids too.

Finally, I had a huge disagreement with my DS's school last year about forgetting to sign his reading sheet. Even when it was clear that he had read and even written a sentence, if the parent forgot to sign, they made the kid skip recess and go to "homework hall." My child is very energetic and it would never be useful for him to skip recess. In my discussion with the principal about it, she said it shows that parents are involved and that is why it is required. This further infuriated me because at that time, I was helping our PTA organize and offer after school enrichment - I pointed out that this showed my involvement. Anyway it was resolved that my child would never go to homework hall and it never happened again. But, it really did feel sorry for the kids whose parents were not down there fighting for them to keep their recess.

Haha!
My son (YS9) brings home a blank reading log every week and we never fill them out. Teacher has never said anything and there has never been a consequence to my knowledge.

I hate reading logs for kids who actually spend some of their free time reading and enjoy reading.

Ok, I've read the entire meandering thread, and while I'm not sure the OP is even reading it anymore, I'd like to present one more idea about the teacher censoring your child's talk. Censoring ourselves to know what is appropriate or not appropriate to say within specific groups is a vital behavior skill that will help our children be successful in the workplace, at home, etc. there are things we discuss with our spouse, say about intimacies, that would be horrifically inappropriate to discuss with our children present. That is called discretion and does require that we censor our choice of topics because of the harm it could do to someone else witnessing the discussion. There are a myriad of examples of how we use discretion.

Your child is being given a valuable opportunity to learn how to use discretion and self control for the sake of others.

My daughter was given the same opportunity when she chose to enlighten a group of children on the playground about the facts of life at 8 years old. She'd asked questions; I knew she was advanced in her ability to process the information appropriately, so I gave her direct answers. It seems many parents were not so inclined to share the same information with their children, and thus one parent called the principal upset that they now had a child who knew things they weren't ready to process. It was a good opportunity for me to teach my child that just because she was mature and advanced didn't mean others were and that being respectful of that was an important skill to acquire.

Just a thought; hope it helps.

As to the parents signing things for a kids's grade - it's a massive pet peeve of mine, it in no way indicates anything about the kid's grasp of knowledge at all.