One of the towns here on Boston's tony South Shore just had a heated *school committee* election.
Out in a landslide went some 'old bag'; she was vilified on account of her support for *deleveling*. That was a proposal to essentially get rid of honors tracking at the middle-high school levels. She was allegedly a proponent of *heterogeneous classrooms*.
There was a tremendous an uproar for her head, albeit mostly from parents of very young children who arrogantly presume their kids will qualify for the *honors* classes some ten years down the road. Just joking there!
Three newbies stood up proudly to dethrone her; and when her head rolled off the guillotine the whole town cheered - like it matters at all. In the larger scheme of things this amounted to nothing more than a dehydrated 5 year old peeing on a forest fire. There's no difference between 1 on 30 teaching and 1 on 20 teaching.
And, as a matter of fact, one of the best teachers I ever had (5th grade) completely ignored the students. He was the one whom I mentioned before; the one that made us read a 200 page book EVERY SINGLE WEEK and write or deliver orally a book report EVERY SINGLE WEEK; the one who told us to open our math books, read the section, DO EVERY SINGLE PROBLEM, and then go to the next section and repeat the process entirely on our own. Mr. Sullivan facilitated more total learning than almost any other teacher I ever had. So the idea that *more targeted lecturing* is so life-and-death important for these poor kids is nothing more than an ignorant myth.
Lastly, look at this from another angle. Anyone who truly cares about education should not do what these local folk just did. No, instead of voting out the real knuckleheads, they ought to let those Morons reign supreme. Because only when the system is a complete joke, as it is in much of the South (on account of school violence), will parents step up and do the right thing - opt out and homeschool their own.
For background on this post visit - Factory School Spin.
3 comments:
When you say 'in the South,' do you mean down here in god's country? Our schools do suck, but it is because the "education" schools down here are to facilitate chicks finding husbands. You would fall out laughing at some of the idiotic things you hear our teachers say.
Paul,
Admittedly, that was a gross, reckless generalization I submitted - that the schools in the South were horrible.
I was basing that entire remark on what I learned in Charlotte, NC. There something like 50% of the teachers each year reported being *assaulted* by students. And something, if memory serves me, crazy like 20% of the teachers quit each year.
Needless to say, homeschooling was very popular down there.
C-Nut, I was not offended, I was just asking. By the way, my high school had one of the first highly publicized mass shootings in the country. Of course, that was long after I graduated. Google Luke Woodham.
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