If you ruled the world what would you do about schools in America?

[Merry]

My Green Beret friend says that dogs should be in the schools because they can react quicker to violent situations than humans. I think dogs that can smell gun powder should be in the schools. I recently saw a fb post that said the teachers in Finland get paid as much as doctors and there's a lot more recess and play time for the children. They are after all children. My kids were hyper and I had to take them to the playground to let them get all the ya yas out before trying to get them to do some homework. Nothing sickly about them. As one little old lady told me once as I was dying of embarrassment as they climbed all over the place. 

Now I've been talking with a woman that grew up with us and became a science teacher. She says that she's seen near riots break out in the halls. And high school teachers have been assaulted recently not far from Sandy Hook. So how would you deal with this?

[P.A.]

I was a teacher at all levels for 38 years. Among the many things that changed for the worse during those years was the reduction or elimination of recess. When I was in school we had a total of an hour a day of free play, not directed PE. Kids need time to be kids. Also during my time the tougher subjects got moved back to lower grades. When I went to school algebra was taught to freshmen and when I retired it was being taught in 7th and 8th grade. I mostly taught history and for the last 3 years I was told to start American History in 1877. They were supposed to have gotten the earlier part in 8th grade four years before I saw them.
There was also the meddling in education by politicians who knew nothing about what they were doing. Starting with A Nation at Risk in 1982 "Reform" after "reform" came and went each one making things worse.
There is a large well funded group that wants to destroy public education and turn it over to for profit companies. Thus taking money that should go to education go to profit for the companies. I am sure you have heard of Charter Schools and vouchers.
I am tired of typing but I could go on forever.

[Merry]

Thanks P.A.. I think we're in pretty big trouble. I used to play with my baby sisters for hours on end. They both wound up with scholarships after being honor students. My daughter was a merit honor student. She's a mom now. And my three sons are in community college. Some very tough calls that parents have to make these days. I don't envy them. However it seems to me that if you can get a child into reading then anything is possible. I home schooled one of my sons briefly but there was little if any support from the school.

[Ioruach]

It seems to me that much of a child’s success in school is a product of his or her home life.  If the child comes from a stable home where the parents value education and assist the child in its early years on the basics of learning, that child will start out well ahead of his or her peers and that advantage will exist for years.  You can make all kinds of changes in the structure of schooling, how students are taught and methods of teaching, but how does society address a child’s home life and the attitudes of parents?

[Merry]

Well, I have dyslexia in my family and ADD and I have dyscalculia, a cousin of dyslexia related to math. The father of my kids had undiagnosed dyslexia and was illiterate as was his mom. My sis has it and my niece who's teaching English in China. Basically two out of my four kids have learning disabilities. My Dad could draw anything like a photograph but his handwriting looked like something from a ransom note and he used to get hit across the knuckles for it.

My point is that how teachers perceived the home environment depended on whether or not they had one of the kids with a learning disability or not. I was either golden and could do no wrong or the exact opposite. Having an illiterate parent in the house, I was spelling for them out loud constantly as they wrote out building contracts.I think that helped the kids understand that it was important to be able to read and write. On a certain level, illiterate people are blind and need a seeing eye dog that can read for them.

[exedir]

This is the debate between education and learning.  With education we have a process with learning we have a result, and in America process trumps learning.  Why is this the case?  Well, jobs is one thing and assets are another.  Education is mostly about jobs and buildings while learning is more about the student and what they derive from the process.

Public education has many objectives, of which learning is one of those objectives.  However, not every child gets the same thing out of the process.  

Question is, what is better more educated equally, or some educated to a higher, highest level of the students capabilities and capacities.  American public education has been the great equalizer to provide for the lowest common deliminator a plausible level of learning in order to function in society.  It has also provided an opportunity for those with the greatest capability and capacity to learn.  

Today, some of the learning is despite the process, where the student excels in part due to parental and outside exceptions and pressure.  And yet, even with the greatest investment in education in the world, our results are mediocre as compared to the efforts of some others in the rest of the world spending nowhere near what we spend as a nation. 

Many of our schools are not just places of education, they are areas of controlled confinement providing day care and security, where the security is reversed, where the mayhem is in the building and for a part of the day off the streets. 

[Merry]

One time I was chit chatting with someone in India about the differences between our cultures and the young adults in India, even in their twenties still have to tell their parents where they are and what they're doing. Parents and teachers get more respect. It's built into the culture.

Providing a functional environment to learn in is key, I can't imagine going to school and wondering when someone is going to hit me and how do I avoid that.

[Lifesighs]

First I would study where education is successful for the children places like Finland, try to model that especially to try to find the emotionally at risk students and give them a path for success so they aren't finding guns to kill everyone else.

Finding the problems and fixing them early is a good idea and I think having recess time and physical education is part of the whole along with music and art.