Education

[the King]

Amen! We're shifting so much of the burden of our economic debt (particularly state, since Mr. Popo and I both live in Washington) onto our educators. The University of Washington is facing down HUGE budget cuts and they are threatening to freeze K-12 teacher salaries from increases. I don't know why education is getting the shaft as our politicians try to figure out the budget.

The reason for that at least here in Michigan is that 86% of the states budget goes towards education and corrections. So, a state like Michigan with a dwindling tax base(less people working and living here)you can only cut into that other 14% to make up for it before you go into the big 2. For example the entire dept of Agriculture for the state of Michigan takes up 0.8% of the states budget which has seen massive cuts in the past 5 years. These are the people inspecting food and plants for placement in to the marketplace. So, overall those cuts in their budget haven't made that big of a dent in the entire budget, where as a percent of eduction or corrections would.

I know there was just a freeze on pay for teachers here in Michigan which was met with a huge uproar from their unions and the teachers themselves which seems a bit out of touch with what has been going in this state and the country in the last couple of years.

[Czernobog]

I always felt like I was really lucky with most of my High School teachers, although I had one that just didn't give a shit because she was close to retiring. I had some very good teachers, very friendly, and very passionate teachers overall, but the administration in my High School was ridiculous. They were overly aggressive towards students, including the best behaved, and we had about six deans and twelve assistant deans just to name a bit of the admin staff.

I remember when two kids started yelling to each other over a crowd, a dean immediately mistook it for a fight about to begin, and tackled a student, knocking his head into a lunch table. There was a rift between admin and teachers which I always thought might have been unhealthy, but it helped students bond with teachers at the same time. It was like the Deans were taught that every student was a dangerous criminal. I understand being cautious, but it was getting out of hand. Supposedly the administration staff has completely changed in the four years since I've been there though.

[CFFJR]

The things I'm reading in this topic are depressing as hell...

[wootcube]

I went to school mostly in the Wake County school system in NC, and I am SO glad I'm not there any more.

I almost failed 6th grade math.. I would get 40's and 60's on all my tests until my dad got so mad at me he made me sit down and go over every problem. Turns out my teacher wasn't able to do basic 6th grade math and couldn't even get the right answers to her own problems - which is why even the kids who were teaching themselves from the books were failing. Needless to say, she still teaches there last I heard. Thankfully they moved her to the history department, but still...

And when I brought this to the attention of the principal (I was in 6th grade) the other teachers called me out on it in front of the other kids, and said something along the lines of it being cruel to try and remove someone from their job because they need to support their family or something like that...never mind the fact that a bunch of 6th graders were being totally fucked over as far as math is concerned. That was a really shitty year.

This was pretty common. Teachers wouldn't hand out rubrics, didn't make expectations clear, had no idea what they were teaching, lost work, or just flat out gave everybody A's. There was one teacher who didn't grade anything (even projects) because she was so unorganized, I got an A on a major term project I didn't turn in :/ People abused her grading in this class when they figured that out - "I swear I turned it in...are you sure you can't find it?" And then she would "find" it.

Once I had a long-term substitute (teacher had a very ill family member) who could only speak broken English for Algebra (no joke). Again, I bombed math.

Nowadays they do this thing where they sit smart kids next to dumb kids and they're supposed to help them out. So basically I have cousins still in school tutoring other kids for free, because they take the time to do their homework and others don't.

We also had at least one incident of students getting pepper sprayed by the administration for every year I was in high school (and the year after I left as well)

I'm thankful I had two parents that could help me with the stuff my teachers utterly failed to do through school. A lot of kid's parents wouldn't or couldn't help with stuff like math and they just had to accept whatever the teachers gave them. If it wasn't for my dad I'd probably still be in 6th grade math....

*Edit* Sorry that was a little ranty...school makes me sad

[CFFJR]

I almost failed 6th grade math.. I would get 40's and 60's on all my tests until my dad got so mad at me he made me sit down and go over every problem. Turns out my teacher wasn't able to do basic 6th grade math and couldn't even get the right answers to her own problems - which is why even the kids who were teaching themselves from the books were failing. Needless to say, she still teaches there last I heard. Thankfully they moved her to the history department, but still...

And when I brought this to the attention of the principal (I was in 6th grade) the other teachers called me out on it in front of the other kids, and said something along the lines of it being cruel to try and remove someone from their job because they need to support their family or something like that...never mind the fact that a bunch of 6th graders were being totally fucked over as far as math is concerned. That was a really shitty year.

This is just... unreal. I almost can't believe it. Christ.

[mjmjr25]

Our government does not want spend a dime on any of it, and they wonder why our illiteracy spreads like the plague!!!

The collective "we" - ARE the government. We elect them, we re-elect them on all levels, from the Federal Government to the local school board. The problem is people blame "politicians", and "the government" with these blanket statements, "Ahh, Washington will just F it up."

People complain about this program and that program, meanwhile they use programs all the time. It gets cold in the winter, people apply for fuel assistance - that money isn't hatched in an egg, it's taken from the collective tax pool. As are SSI benefits, Police/Corrections, Roads, Medicare/MEDICAID, Food Stamps, WIC, Libraries, Snowplows, Battered Women's Shelters, Schools, Poison Control, Section 8 Housing, Daycare (for low income), etc, etc.

The New Deal created all of these (at the time) great ideas and programs, however we had spoils of victory, we had a massive export advantage beginning to take off, a younger populace (fewer elderly to take care of), and most importantly people did NOT WANT handouts, and DID WANT to work. All of these have changed in the last 60 years, but our spending really has not on these programs. We no longer are the only steel makers, car makers, electronics makers, etc so we don't have this massive trade surplus any longer.

Things are going to get MUCH worse before they get better, education and otherwise. I firmly agree education (and classes/mentors stressing work ethic) are vitally important to our sustainability as a world leader, and the lifestyle many of us are accustomed to. With that said, it is US who needs to not make blanket statements blaming "the government" but US, who needs to boot out those who believe ALL of these programs are sustainable. I'm not liberal bashing, hell, i'd love to help everyone who really needed help - the reality is too many people will TAKE help, but don't NEED it - thus the well runs dry, and we need to cut bait.

So what do WE do, elect those who understand tough choices need to be made. "Sorry, bud, you got hurt and "can't" work. - no more SSI." "But, it's my right...?" "Nope not any more, you can do x, y, and z - so you no longer qualify." Tough choices, but again, we can not sustain every person and every ailment. Elect people who understand this, people who get it. And when you hear someone say, "Oh, what a heartless bastard, f'in neo-cons." Say, "Actually, I think he's a good dude, it's not easy to take away someones home/car/cheap rent/food stamps/20% down for first time homebuyer, etc, but he's willing to be called an inconsiderate asshole for the benefit of us all."

[BoringSupreez]

There is one upside to all this: anyone who really does try their best at college can come out looking pretty good compared to their peers to employers.

Of course, that doesn't make up for anything.

[Michi]

I always felt like I was really lucky with most of my High School teachers, although I had one that just didn't give a shit because she was close to retiring. I had some very good teachers, very friendly, and very passionate teachers overall, but the administration in my High School was ridiculous. They were overly aggressive towards students, including the best behaved, and we had about six deans and twelve assistant deans just to name a bit of the admin staff.... It was like the Deans were taught that every student was a dangerous criminal.

Yep. That sounds familiar.

I really lucked out with most of my teachers. There's only one I can think about that really could have cared less, but for the most part the others were wonderful. I'll admit I didn't like all of them, but I do concede that while I may not have liked them personally, they were good teachers. It was the higher-ups at my school who were screwy.

In one of my classes, a substitute teacher printed out a list of student names who had been marked for "inappropriate internet access." Those highlighted in red being the worst offenders, and then passed out the list to everyone in class. Of course, my name was on it highlighted in red, which was impossible since I didn't have access to a computer with internet access that semester (I had a drafting class, but those computers weren't hooked up to the internet). I had to go through the whole day with teachers asking me if they knew if my name was on the list and having no clue what "inappropriate internet access" meant.

So by the end of the day I went to the office to talk to the woman who'd sent the email only to be harped at and accused of using a teacher's computer (something she didn't come right out and say, but I was able to pick up due to her insinuations.) Of course it turned out to be a network error thanks to the brand new network they recently installed, but what really pissed me off was there I was, under threat of suspension for two weeks. Someone with a perfectly clean record and excellent grades and it didn't mean s%*$ to them because, Oh NO, their new state of the art network couldn't be wrong.

They did something similar to a girl in my class just because of who she was sitting near during a football game. Apparently some of the people around her, that she didn't even know, were drinking and when they were found out, the person in charge just decided to suspend all of the people in the vicinity, rather than find out who was drinking, which would have been easy since the deputy that was present DID have a breathalyzer. The suspensions didn't stick for all of them, since the idiot administrator had no proof, but she was still out of school for two days. You could tell how pissed she was by the whole thing just by looking at her.

This of course is the same school who allowed a 30-some-year-old to go undercover at the school, posing as a student to try to track down illegal drugs. He walked around all day, scratching his stubble, looking hollow-eyed and asking if anyone knew where he could get some "stuff". Yeah. He blended right in.