What is Digg?Sponsored by Dragon Age: Origins
Join the Dragon Age: Origins development team on Facebook view!
facebook.com/DragonAgeOrigins - EA presents BioWare's new dark fantasy epic Dragon Age: Origins. '9/10' from Game Informer.
235 Comments
- laxidasical, on 06/09/2009, -3/+70Horrible editorial that doesn't address the real issues facing most public schools: student apathy, 20th century education for 21st century students, and the rapidly increasing number of non-english speaking students that require massive amounts of resources, yet when they do succeed, have no post-secondary options.
Why do other countries perform "better" (which is a statistical fallacy)? Monolingual, mono-ethnic populations that drive out the lower performing students. If we only tested our kids enrolling in state universities, we'd look pretty damn awesome, too. American schools educate from the high needs disabled to the highly gifted. My district alone has 100+ nations represented and have over 30+ languages spoken in it. It would be pretty easy if everyone had the same background and same cultural norms; same language and same educational goals. It would be easy if we could kick out the kids who didn't perform or conform.
So think about that before you start bashing the system or offer novelties for solutions. - MikeCann, on 06/08/2009, -0/+46Important subject to discuss. I don't agree with some of the ideas though. Making it mandatory for kids to go to school to age 19? Are they going to arrest kids at 16-19 who don't go? I also think school is not always the answer to the education problem. Check out the movie/documentary "The War on Kids". Often I think kids that age shut off school and would be better served working internships/apprencticeships in fields they have interest in. For example, I think a 17 year old artist would get more education and life experience spending a year in my buddy, Dave Tree's art studio than in a high school classroom. Just my opinion, but a subject that is worth discussing. Thanks for posting it!
- awesometastic1, on 06/09/2009, -0/+28Horrible article with horrible suggestions. The solution is not to try to get students to receive more education by simultaneously forcing them / bribing them / or tricking them with better advertisement from universities.
The problem is a lot more complex than that. First and foremost the vast majority of students don't appreciate getting an education. 100 years ago to get an education really meant something and to have that opportunity was considered an amazing thing to both rich and especially the poor. Today people don't believe that by combination of the fact that now-a-days expectations are so ridiculously high combined with students who often think any college degree should be able to achieve those high expectations *looks at communications majors* ;-). 100 years ago the expectations were that getting a college education meant that you would be able to own house/land/provide for your family reasonably well. Today, it's that you should be able to afford a mansion and possibly become a millionaire, even if you were a psychology / history / art history major or the like (majors that are useful to almost no companies and will often find you working at places like Starbucks / Target / etc ;-).
People have forgotten that an education to be useful must give you useful skills that are worth something to a lot of employers. Education used to be centered around mathematics / science / etc. Now it's completley possibly to get things like a "General Studies" degree or "Physical Education" degree or "Communications" degree or "Art History" degree, none of which give you any real skills that couldn't have been easily picked up "with a $1.50 in late charges at your local library" and in these four cases you wouldn't have even had to read much. Students take these sorts of degree programs because they are easy, requiring virtually no effort (which leaves more time for drinking and partying which every American knows is what college is all about ;-). We have raised a couple successive generations of students who are completley apathetic to education and expect that everything should be given to them and whatever is the easiest path is the best one.
Number 2 is the way the country as a whole is rated is skewed quite a bit. Most "civilized" countries weed out all the lower end students completley before they get to the age-levels they test for these things. The middle-end students they weed out later, teaching them trade skills. Only the high end students get to go to college. In Germany, for instance, after what we would call grade school they separate you based on potential. This continues on with you possibly moving up or down depending on performance (it's actually a pretty fair system in that regard). However, your performance dictates where you'll end up in your education / career. In America, we have this notion that everyone should end up in college and it's unfair if some people can't make it from lack of effort or intelligence. On the flipside, in poorer countries education is so highly valued that students will literally work every hour of the day to learn everything they can (and are ecstatic to do so). These types of things skew American test results quite a bit.
Two more problems in the early going are that we pay teachers very little (thus don't get a lot of people worth much, at least not that stick around) and we don't expect much from students. In the first case, particularly in elementary school. Every single parent thinks they know better how to teach then the teacher (making the teacher's life a living hell with 2 to 3 hours a night of having parents yell at them regardless of how good or bad they are). They further teach for about 7-ish hours (up to about 10 hours a day already ;-) with also virtually no prep time causing them to also spend their weekends and evenings actually preparing for each day (my wife during the school year works typically abour 15 hours a day and only doesn't work both weekend days for her sanity. She could easily spend both weekend days working instead of one and be a better teacher that way). All the while she takes home about $34,000 a year and has a masters degree (bachelers in mathematics, masters in reading/literatue). This is not an environment that keeps the top teachers around for any length of time. In American schools we also insist on keeping down syndrome and other mentally handicapped students in the same classroom as others, usually with no extra help given to the teacher to compensate for this. So effectively the teacher becomes a baby sitter to those students and spends 80% of their time with those students and 20% of time with the students who might actually amount to something. (i know that sounds harsh, but that's just the way it is). These above problems are much more pronounced in grade school levels, but still exist to some extent higher. I've known a lot of teachers and most of them that are worth anything (who put in the effort and actually care) quit within 5 years, often sooner because of these things.
On the second issue of expectations from the students. In Germany (again for instance, using them as an example as they have one of the top education systems in the world), they expect every student to read/speak two or more languages by the end of our kindergarten equivalent. In America, by the end of kindergarten we expect our students to know how to sit in circles quietly and be able to count to 10 and say most of their alphabet in our arbitrary order. This at an age when the human brain is a virtual sponge and can learn things easier than at any other age. But sadly, this is all we can expect because we have over sized classrooms, overworked/underpayed/often yelled at teachers, and parents who assume that all education must happen during school hours and are shocked when teachers mention that the parents should take an active part in their kids education outside of yelling at the teacher for not "challenging" their child. All the while with society mocking them because they get "three month vacations every year" so they shouldn't complain about their salary (note: any teacher worth anything spends close to a month or so in their classroom after schools out and another month to a month and a half there before school starts: net vacation of about a month. This is good for most careers, but not one's where you work 90-ish hours a week and get paid around the poverty level even if you have a masters degree and any time you try to stick up for yourself and strike for higher pay society looks at you like you're the devil because you are being selfish and robbing their kids of weeks of education). - darkened, on 06/09/2009, -1/+25The only viable way to make school better for a wide range would be to end high school that all it offers is basic college preparedness. Instead to have it that everyone goes through 9th and maybe 10th grade as normal. After that point they would either make the decision they plan to goto college and go on to 11th-12th that is full college prep. If they accept they can't handle college they would then enter 2 years of vocational training so they exit high school with some type of trade skill instead of being useless.
- sonnybobiche, on 06/09/2009, -0/+24The fact of the matter is that not everyone is going to succeed in academics. America can't do anything if everyone is a scientist or engineer and there are no refrigerator repairmen or piano tuners. Forcing everyone to attend college for one year is a waste of money that will piss everyone off. I assure you, the people who actually belong in college are already going (and then some).
- bakaoni, on 06/09/2009, -2/+25Yet again, we only need to look to our neighbour to the north, Canada to see these experiments in action.
In Quebec you go to school until grade 11. After that you go to CEGEP (if you so choose), which is similar to community college. At CEGEP you do one year, which is your grade 12 - if you want to do it. Or, you can get a technical DEC which is grades 12 and then two years post-secondary.
You either get a skill or get into University. The point is to prep kids for the rigours of University life. If you do 3 years at CEGEP, you can enter a Quebec University as a sophomore.
I think so highly of this system that I moved to Quebec just to get my kids into it. Community colleges and CEGEP models need to be part of the equation. - theaceoface, on 06/09/2009, -3/+23So this article says the way to fix school is (essentially):
1.More School
2.More School
3.More School
4. Unseal college accreditation reports
5. More School
The problem with the American school system isn't that there isn't enough of it. What need to change is the rote/ didactic top-down way pupils are taught... - darkened, on 06/09/2009, -8/+25Another option would be to end the Federal DOE and let states actually control their school systems?
- record200, on 06/09/2009, -1/+16"but we should ensure that all children stay in school until age 19"
That's stupid.
The longer the education term the less motivation students generally have to study.
It's educational basics. - ChelseaBlacker, on 06/09/2009, -2/+17Raising the drop-out age wouldn't improve the slacker kidsperformance. It's better to get those who genuinely don't give a crap about their education out of the system (perhaps into polytechnics/trade schools?) because they're destructive attitudes & a waste of resources to all the students who want to learn/understand it's important for their futures.
- inactive, on 06/09/2009, -0/+13You hit on a good point of comparing american high schools to other countries, but there is a deeper issue.
The best example of student apathy and what is wrong with American higher education comes from Orange County. When asked why you want to go to college, he responds,
"Because that's what you do after high school."
College in america has turned into High School 2. All these advisers take all those kids, eveyone, and tell them they can and should go to college. That's been a huge push of the last 15 years, making college available to everyone. In the end what you get is a lot of people that probably should have taken a year or 2 off before starting college or not at all, and they end up wasting their time and drop out after 2 years or manage to get out with some arts degree. And you wonder why bachelors degrees have lost value recently. - Diggbotness, on 06/09/2009, -0/+13I love all the talk about how impressive University of Phoenix is. Everybody knows its just a "pay to get your degree" school. A high school advertising on TV would be a waste of money anyways.
This article is pretty poor. It's not the length of time that creates a smart student, it's the students desire to learn in that time. Adding another year is just another year for students to sleep through class and not care. Meanwhile students who do care are already off to college.
He also doesn't realize college isn't for everybody. Just because ~40% of the people who get into college don't graduate, it doesn't mean it's the colleges fault. It's suppose to be hard, it's suppose to thin the herd. Otherwise, getting a degree from a real university means nothing.
What really needs to be done is fix lower education first. Get rid of this no child left behind crap. If the kid hasn't put in the effort to learn to read, he stays back a grade. I remember kids in elementary school who just didn't care, they'd ignore everything that was put in front of them. It hindered the rest of us who were ready to learn, because the teacher had to try and sit with them and force them to learn, or discipline them. Once the younger generations are smarter, reform the middle school as that generation reaches it, then the high school. Obviously it would require some coordination between schools, but not that much. If we can get kids in elementary school doing algebra, that's some progress. - diggetnu, on 06/09/2009, -4/+17Probably because several thousand years of private only schools produced nations with literacy rates below 50%. Free public education was probably the single most significant advancement of society during the 20th century.
"free markets" in education simply don't work when less than half of all families can't afford to send their children to school at all.
How are the schools 'indoctrinating' your kids, by the way? By teaching them the evil ways of math, science, language, and rudimentary history lessons? Really? - jammrk, on 06/08/2009, -2/+15Something needs to be done. Most of these schools, particularly the high-school graduate so many functional illiterates. I believe the 1st thing that needs to happen is to over-haul the attitude towards education so prevalent these days. I so many children who just dont care enough to invest the time it takes to learn. I also believe a bigger emphasis needs to be placed on self-education, "Education is dependent upon experience and experience is dependent upon self-reliance", paraphrasing TH White.
- Tddupre, on 06/09/2009, -6/+18How about we get science back in the classroom and get creation "science" out
- emazur, on 06/09/2009, -1/+12Mandatory 1 year college or community college is a horrible idea, especially depending on the kind of courses you want to take. Take computer science for instance - I went to the horrible Florida State University (not picking on FSU specifically, they're almost all horrible). To take your first Intro to Computer Science class, you have to first finish algebra, pre-calc, and trig. Meaning you won't even begin coding until your second year of school (the exceptions are those who were exempted from those from the entrance examination). And even then, the required math and science courses will be taught by "teachers" who no speaka da english (in large lecture halls, to boot). So any student interested in trying out computer programming will have completely wasted this mandatory 1 year proposal.
You wanna fix education? Stop treating kids like they're helpless and dependent from 5 to 18, and that college is the only path to success after that. And stop force feeding ***** down their throats the whole time - make it so kids can discover what they enjoy instead of regurgitating what teacher says is important to learn. Take books for example - the reason hardly anybody (including college grads) will ever read another book in their life after graduating is because they never learned to enjoy reading in the first place. Read the a book for 30 to 60 mins., and if you don't like it, to hell with it and move onto another book that seems interesting. If it ain't, wash, rinse, and repeat until you develop your own taste - don't force *****' Lord of the Flies or Shakespeare down our throats if we don't like them.
Really what we need is a hands on educational environment where teens can try out many different things quickly to find they are interested and/or good at, preferably for the purpose of finding the kind of work they're interested. And maybe work in an internship type situation with local (or maybe distant) companies.
But forcing teens to go to school to 18 or 19 is not the magic bullet, it is a suicidal bullet. Kids need to become independent EARLIER in life. I'm not an advocate of college, but for those who are there are better options than waiting til your 18 to start - take Bard College at Simon's Rock for example:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story ...
Other options would be to allow a high school student (any age) to take some kind of high-school exemption, with the agreement that 1-year of career training or community college will fulfill a state's mandatory educational requirements. Or at the very least offer more dual enrollment courses that can be taken while still in high school.
I haven't read it yet but this book sounds very interesting: "The Teenage Liberation Handbook"
http://www.amazon.com/Teenage-Liberation-Handbook- ... - Bloodwine, on 06/09/2009, -3/+141. get rid of No Child Left Behind
2. get rid of No Child Left Behind
3. get rid of No Child Left Behind
4. get rid of No Child Left Behind
5. get rid of No Child Left Behind
No Child Left Behind is an abomination. Like a lot of things the government does, it had good intentions but in practice it has been horribly twisted. The biggest problem with school today is that children are taught to ace the government tests and not the subject matter itself. - woahwoahwoah, on 06/09/2009, -0/+11I personally don't agree with extending the school year or making it mandatory to attend school for an extra year, as we also need to be mindful of the private lives of students and how difficult it is already to juggle homework, extracurricular activities, and time with family/friends after returning home at 3PM each day. We should offer parents more flexibility and let the states establish educational standards with less federal intrusion. I do agree with more creative advertising and combating drop-outs.
- TheCash, on 06/09/2009, -10/+201. Abolish the NEA
2. Abolish the NEA
3. Abolish the NEA
4. Abolish the NEA
5. Abolish the NEA
There, that was easy enough. - woahwoahwoah, on 06/09/2009, -0/+10Uh, no. Thanks for your gross generalization, mate. I'm an elder American myself, and I also stand with other small government advocates for legalization. Ron Paul shares my viewpoint, and he's far from a student who thinks it's "cool".
Nice try, asshat. - aliabassi1, on 06/09/2009, -8/+17How about closing down the department of education, this article is written by a person part of the public education system that has failed American children over and over and over and over again. The only time America had the best education system was when it was fully private, when the government did not touch it. This is a classic case of government intervention ruining something, making it worse and thinking that they got to go in and fix their own problems!
Obama was in a voucher program when he was a kid - NOW his adminstration is against that idea...!
the voucher program for those who do not know is a system where schools compete with other schools to get students to go to their facility. Fully public and parents get to choose where their kids attend.
LEAVE THE PEOPLE ALONE! Communities run schools better then federal suits who need to keep their job! - sandhyap, on 06/09/2009, -3/+12Another option would be to end the Federal DOE and let states actually control their school systems?
- dattaway, on 06/09/2009, -0/+9"No Child Left Behind" <--government fail
- norman619, on 06/09/2009, -0/+8Exactly. I went to college twice. This frist time was after high school. IT was such a waste of time and money. The only reason I finished was to get that little piece of paper that said I went so that my employer at the time would pay me what I was worth. I got a computer science degree and was completely unchallenged by college. I already knew most of what they were teaching because I learned it on my own as I explored the world of electronics, computers, and networks as I grew up. My first employer was the ONLY one to give a damn about my degree. All my other employers afterwards only cared about my demonstrated real world experience. Colleges tend to only teach theory. Rarely do they teach application. Colleges do not prepare you for a job. Give me a kid and I will have them knowing their stuff inside and out and ready for a successful career in programming or IT for a fraction of the cost and time. When I first saw the below on TV I was so happy I wasn't alone in feeling college was a complete waste of time and money for some people. Forcing people to go to college only takes seats away from people who WANT to be there. Shockingly, college is not for everybody no matter how much people wish it were.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlSx3zHunRY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi3u7dyrlXY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1auDSZZe4Bg - woahwoahwoah, on 06/09/2009, -0/+8Yes, mandatory college attendance for one year is an unjustified intrusion that only extends the issue. There are other ways to find training out of your own interest and pocket.
- woahwoahwoah, on 06/09/2009, -1/+9I attended a private school, and I wholeheartedly agree that we should let the states and families have more flexibility where selecting interest-specific institutions of learning is concerned. We should encourage competitiveness in the system while simultaneously rolling back federal control over what belongs to each state and their districts.
- MajorMansteak, on 06/09/2009, -1/+8I think this article is way off base. The problem isn't the schools, but the parents and students that go to them. Parents have started treating schools as a babysitter to watch their kids for 9 hours while they work rather than being an active participant in their child's educational lives. Regardless of whether the parents are married, divorced, gay, etc, if they don't have an interest in their child's education, why should the child? If parents and their children don't give a damn about education, then they will never be educated. Simple as that.
"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink" principle.
"You can put a child in school but you can't make him learn." - SpinningHead, on 06/09/2009, -0/+7My wife is an inner-city teacher. Its not whether parents are together that makes a difference. Its whether or not the parent(s) give a ***** and value education.
- tinkafoo, on 06/09/2009, -0/+7If college is made just as mandatory as high school, then it will become just as useless.
- norman619, on 06/09/2009, -0/+7arpad:
Join us in the now. NCLB only forced schools to lower standards to meet those of the weakest students. I don't care about the intentions. I care about the real world results. - JigoroKano, on 06/09/2009, -0/+6I was raised by a single parent and now I'm a theoretical physicist.
One parent who gives a ***** about your education >> two parents who don't give a ***** about your education. - nrylee, on 06/09/2009, -0/+6I don't think he was saying anything was wrong with polytechnics (and if he was I disagree), but what I think he means, which I do agree with, is that if a kid has no intention whatsoever of going to college, why make them waste their time preparing for it, when you could prepare them for what the will do (ie. Polytechnics).
- GreatSunJester, on 06/09/2009, -0/+6"You can put a child in school but you can't make him learn." --- and if he/she/it does not learn, he/she/it DOES NOT ADVANCE. Use red ink for mistakes, use letter grades and never ever think that as long as the kid feels good about him/her/it-self that is what matters. Success feels good. Inspire them to succeed instead of getting by.
- yoderizer, on 06/09/2009, -0/+6Letting students leave early for vocational training sounds great to me. We could save future electricians,mechanics, etc. a lot of money by providing that training at the end of high school.
- Swivelstick, on 06/09/2009, -0/+6So you want an even higher crime rate and larger prison populations.
- w1cked1, on 06/09/2009, -0/+6If you kicked out all the potheads, you'd have nothing left but complicite sheeple. Oh yeah, that was your point wasn't it, skywalker.
- WolvesOTheNight, on 06/09/2009, -0/+5I think that not only the article misses the real problems, as do some (but not all) of the people here.
1) We need to get the average class size down to about 16, with a maximum class size of 20.
2) When people are looking at a major, teaching should be a sane option. In college I knew some good intelligent people that were very good TAs, and if they had majored in education they would have become very good teachers. But, being intelligent, they realized that teaching barley pays a living wage, and sometimes not even that. Had teaching paid a reasonable (but not get-rich) wage, at least some of them would have gone for it.
I know some people will object to paying teachers (and other school staff) more due to the poor job some many of them do. My response: any teacher that is unable to improve their performance to an acceptable level should be fired. Any administrator that is unable to do a proper job (including evaluating their underlings) should be fired. The rest of them should be well paid.
3) Congress needs to knock off the micro-management.
Do I think any of this will happen? Well, not any time soon, and probably not in my lifetime. - paulsmith288, on 06/09/2009, -0/+5my brother is a fully qualified British teacher with a few years experience - he went over the USA last year to work.
He is leaving now - not because of the kids , not because of what he has to teach - but because the govt is cutting his wages by 10%.
You cant fix schools if you get rid of good teachers
All the people high up earn lots of money - none of them are getting their wages cut. None of them work in a class room with actual kids. - kernel16, on 06/09/2009, -0/+5Quebec has a similar system know as CEGEPs, it's an epic failure. Most students don't have a clue what they want to do, and end up in a loop redoing programs and wasting time, until eventually ending up going the 'default' way or dropping out. However, I suppose the way the classes are set up and how the system works, if you do go on to college, then it prepares you perfectly for it.
As far as math goes, anyone else agree that we should switch over to linear algebra and multidimensional numbers much much earlier and make it a natural aspect of basic math teachings. - daPhoenix, on 06/09/2009, -1/+6What's wrong with polytechnics?
Don't tell me you're one the "If you don't go to a university you're nothing!" -people who are pouring out of every crack in the wall. If you haven't noticed, there's a lack of professional people who are actually able to do something other than catch water with their noses on a rainy day. - jcmead, on 06/09/2009, -0/+5Time for an old fart to rant.
Class size - Most of my classes had 30 or more students.
Day length - School day was 8 hours
Year length - 180 in school days (More time in the summer less "holidays" during the year) school started after Labor day and was out the first week of June
Go to school until your 19: I graduated when I was 17 (Should I have gotten 14 years of school before College) (15 with the current addition of Kindergarten)
Most of the ideas are not good. I was in school way too long ago for most of the problems to have affected my education. No Kindergarten no PreK , I started in the first grade ( if you would be 6 before the start of the next school year you started), Little or no time was spent on "play" time (color between the lines), we were taught letters numbers (1-100), reading (Dick and Jane, This is Dick see Dick run. This is Jane See Jane run, Run Dick run, Run Jane Run.), and started basic math and counting ( Addition and Subtraction, Counting by 1's, 2's, 3's ... up to 20's). If by the end of the year you couldn't read (aloud) , Count (1 to 100, Oral test mid year, written at year end), Add and subtract ( written any thing up to 99 and show your work), and (very) Basic written vocabulary ( 100 word written test). If you couldn't pass the test (at least a c- 70% and no "grading on the curve" if you got a 69 you got a 69 even if the best score was a 90 ) you didn't go to second grade.After that it got harder each year with more expected of the student. No taking Math with a calculator ( not that most people could have carried one of the monsters, weight of around 15 lbs and had to be plugged in) in Jr. High (and no it didn't hurt our psyches to be called Jr. High it just meant we were out of the little kids school and almost in senior high) we did have a section on the use and care of a slide rule, only to be used during that section. 7, 55 min classes per day with some (2 max) BS classes ( Art, Shop (Male Only), P.E., Home Economics(Female Only), Spanish).
This would be an average 7th,8th and 9th grade schedule: 8:00 to 8:55 - Math, 9:00 to 9:55 - English, 10:00 to 10:55 - Geography, 11:00 to 11:55 - P.E. (Required) , 12:00 to 12:25- Lunch,12:30 to 1:25 Art(or Spanish, or Shop, Or Home Ec.), 1:30 to 2:25 Study Hall (means what it says, used for home work, reading, extra credit work. No talking, no note passing permitted) if the teacher wasn't busy She/He might or might not be willing to help you with problems but most would use this time to grade paperwork from their own classes.), 2:30 to 3:25 History (American, World and variations).
If you failed two or more of these classes you would be back in that grade next year. (this included the BS or "Elective" classes)
Then came the fabled world of High School More of the same at a higher level with the same expectations.However you were now going for Graduation Credits (24 required in three years, not as hard as it sounds as some classes could count for more than one credit if worked properly EX: JROTC counted as History and P.E., Drama counted as Speech and English) As a Senior IF you had most (18 or more) credits you could actually Skip the 8 class Requirement and go home an hour early.
And no these were not exceptional schools just run of the mill normal schools. No federally mandated test to cause teachers to "teach to the test" so the school can get extra funding.No single test that determines your entire life after High School. Just teachers that would teach you to think, Make you think and let you learn.
Sorry for the rant ( Sometimes I can be so full of it) - norman619, on 06/09/2009, -0/+4If anything the foreign students are ripped off big time by the University system. The prices they are charged for the same classes are criminal.
- esfisher, on 06/09/2009, -0/+4Some people just can't see any solution to a problem besides more government. It's really sad, and probably a product of government education.
- norman619, on 06/09/2009, -1/+5That should be VOLUNTARY not mandatory. At 18 you are legally an adult and should be treated as such. Obama has no clue about education. Kids don't learn anything when it's forced upon them. They have to want to learn. The entire system is broken, out dated, and and in dire need of an overhaul.
- almayng, on 06/09/2009, -0/+4My husband is an Elementary school teacher and his main complain about why these kids can't learn is because of their parents. The parents of the smart, well mannered students show up for every teacher-parent conference or just show up after school to check on how his/her kid is doing. The "bad" students have parents that never show the slightest interest on anything that has to do with their kids. Those kids have horrible manners, they think they can do and say whatever they want, therefore, they don't care about school and do not learn. You can blame it on politics all they long but in my opinion education starts at home.
- aserer511, on 06/09/2009, -0/+4This is one of the least thoughtfully written op-ed pieces i've ever read, bringing probably no new constructive ideas, spare a few minors ones, to the table
- edwartica, on 06/09/2009, -0/+4I can't speak for any other region, but the biggest problem in Oregon Schools is the fact that no one knows what the real problems are! In 1992, measure 5 was passed which took funds earmarked for schools and threw them in a general slush fund. I was a high school senior, and the difference between pre measure 5 and post measure 5 was like night and day. SEriously, Oregon schools (particularly Portland Public Schools) were amazing before measure 5.
Now, since 1992, Oregon has undergone a massive surge of people moving here. They don't do the research on WHY schools suck, they just know they do and they try to fix them without addressing the problems. - nosliwm, on 06/09/2009, -1/+5Anybody seen Star Trek XI yet? We just have those weird edutainment pods they had on Vulcan and presto! Problem solved.
- SpinningHead, on 06/09/2009, -0/+4Great, so the southern half of the country wont learn basic biology or astronomy. Before the fed started pouring money into GA, they were actually hiring people with only HS diplomas as substitute teachers and eventually made many full-time teachers.
- Paranor01, on 06/09/2009, -0/+4Gee, watch THX-1138 much ?
Thanks, but no thank you. -
Show 51 - 100 of 242 discussions
The Digg Toolbar for Firefox lets you Digg, submit content, and keep track of Digg even when you're not on the Digg site. Download the official 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is