"Not enough money for education? It’s a myth. The truth is, public schools are rolling in money. If you divide the U.S. Department of Education’s figure for total spending on K-12 education by the department’s count of K-12 students, it works out to about $10,000 per student. Think about that! For a class of 25 kids, that’s $250,000 per classroom. This doesn’t include capital costs. Couldn’t you do much better than government schools with $250,000? You could hire several good teachers; I doubt you’d hire many bureaucrats. Government schools, like most monopolies, squander money. America spends more on schooling than the vast majority of countries that outscore us on the international tests. But the bureaucrats still blame school failure on lack of funds, and demand more money.” —John Stossel
The ‘fad learning disability’ syndrome is starting to reveal something that modern education is just now (re)learning: in general boys can’t be taught the same way girls can, particularly at the age when hormones start kicking in. We have so ‘feminized’ classroom education that there is little that holds the attention of boys. They are bored. When they are bored they look for ways to entertain themselves. Too often they entertain themselves in ways that are inappropriate and cause classroom distractions. The first reaction of the teachers and administration is that he’s got a ‘learning disability’. Bullhooey, he’s bored and the teacher and admimistration don’t/can’t provide him learning opportunities that hold his interest.
All well and good, but there are still a small percentage that are not just simply bored, they are evil and don’t belong in a regular classroom. One of the biggest problems in public schools today is the inability of virtually anyone inside the school building - to include the principal - to expel a student. The paperwork drill is so onerous, and the blame for the kid’s behavior is so quickly shifted to the teacher and administration, that most teachers and administrators simply ‘put up’ with the little terrorists. As a result teachers spend 80% of their time ‘managing’ the 5% that are causing the problems. Teachers struggle with it daily, and it often brings the good ones to tears. Tears of frustration. Tears of regret for how much they could be doing for the other students if the one or two probelm children could just be removed and dealt with elsewhere.
The ‘No Child Left Behind’ philosophy is BS. Some of them need to be left behind.
For American public education to improve a number of things MUST be accomplished: 1. Hold children to a higher standard and actually flunk and retain those that don’t measure up. Give good students more options - better schools, more challenging classes, scholarships. 2. Hold parents accountable for their children’s success. It’s not the school’s job to make sure your kids learn, it’s the parent’s. 3. Establish tough standards for teachers, promote those that perform, fire those that don’t. Pay them more than a token wage. Teaching is a profession, not a trade. 4. Give teachers the power to enforce discipline in the classroom. This includes the power to permanently remove a child for any reason. 5. Stop allowing teachers, parents and administrators to use ‘fad’ learning disorders to excuse a child’s behavior or unwillingness to learn. 6. Develop curriculum that doesn’t just teach facts or processes, but trains the mind. 7. Break the NEA and insulate process of education in the classroom from political influence. Punish teachers and administrators that take obvious political stands. 8. Establish and enforce values. Tell the kids early and often what is right and what is wrong. Reward the right, punish the wrong. Let the kids know that actions have conesquences. And lastly, there is nothing new in education. Mankind been running organized schools for well over 6,000 years. It’s all been tried before and we know what works. Cut the crap, dump the fads and get back to the business of teaching.'CHOCOLATE CITY' SPRINKLED WITH NUTS from Ann Coulter
So Hillary Clinton thinks the House of Representatives is being "run like a plantation." And, she added, "you know what I'm talking about."
First of all: Think about what a weird coincidence it is that Hillary would have made these remarks in a black church in Harlem on Martin Luther King Day. What are the odds? Did she even know it was a holiday? Bravely spoken, Senator. I haven't been this surprised since finding out Hollywood likes a movie about gay cowboys.
Now that Zell Miller is out of office, the only office-holding Democrat I like anymore is Ray Nagin, mayor of New Orleans. I had never heard of him until Hurricane Katrina, but after his "gaffe" this week, he's my favorite Democrat. I like a politician who casually spouts off insanely politically incorrect remarks in front of large audiences and TV cameras.
Nagin cheerfully told a crowd gathered for a Martin Luther King Day celebration that New Orleans would soon be "Chocolate City" again. I don't know who's supposed to be offended by that. I'm not. Perhaps all the white mayors who know they couldn't have said it. True, life's unfair. Oh well.
When it comes to choice-of-word crimes, I'd prefer detente to mutually assured destruction. Lead us off the chocolate plantation, Mayor Nagin!
Perhaps next week will be more exciting or nil if I'm suquestored.
