Miss Kitty, writing at Educated & Poor, rants about the frustrations of trying to be a good teacher in a system that rewards mediocrity.
Education is not, and never has been, a race—unlike a race, it's NEVER truly completed, and it's neither a forced march nor a high-speed sprint. I pity those who learn nothing more after they have a diploma in hand. They seldom figure out that the refusal to keep learning is suicide without pills or bullets or blades ... it's a lot more painful and prolonged, and most people who die from Quiet Desperation never realize how sick they've been, or for how long, or that they're killing themselves from the inside of their brains out.
There's more at the link. Recommended and thought-provoking reading, particularly if you or your children are studying at university.
I guess I'm fortunate to have read for all my degrees at universities which followed Oxbridge standards of education (they're an awful lot higher than those at most American universities). I have a feeling I'd have been horribly frustrated by a situation such as Miss Kitty describes!
Peter
2 comments:
Part of the problem is the US Education system isn't focused on "Learning". Kid's go through years of schools catering to the lowest common denominators, and that have moment if not whole years that represent scenes from Lord of the Flies, rather than any real education system. Most students coming out of high school could count on one hand the number of quality teachers they had. And despite appearances to the contrary, most students can tell a good teacher from a bad one, even if they complain about the good teacher's grading. Hell, one of the best teachers I ever had failed me on the first test and had me working hard to keep a B in his class the rest of the semester.
Students endure and are pushed through the system like so much meat through a grinder on the promise that "College is different" and worse that you're preparing for college so that you can "get a degree and get a good job".
So every student, whether it's a good idea or not is shoved off to college and when they get there, what do they find? More of the same, high school 2.0, with an even worse good to bad teacher ratio, oh and did we mention you get to pay for the privilege? Those that manage to slog their way through, come out thousands of dollars or more in debt, and then discover that "Surprise! Because everyone and their dog has a degree, you don't actually get the good job, you get the menial crap jobs that you would have gotten right out of high school anyway, oh and we have to retrain you entirely because you didn't actually learn anything in college.
Then they discover that in their first 2 years on a real job, that they learn more than they ever did in 4 years (5 or 6 these days) of college.
And this is what they've been told is "learning". Is it any wonder then that so many burn out on it and want nothing to do with "learning" again?
Peter: It is obvious that it has been a long time since you've had contact with academe. The first commenter is so right.
I was married to an elementary school teacher for 21 years and I did a lot of volunteering. Unions alone could nearly destroy any hope of education being accomplished in government schools, but the biggest problems is the perception that education is "free."
People demonstrate how much they value something by what they are willing to spend on it, be it money or TIME.
Anything subsidized by a third party will eventually be held in contempt. This is true for health insurance, medical care, and yes, "education."
The government indoctrination centers at all levels are really about promoting the perpetuation of the Peterson Syndrome. You can read more about it at my blog:
http://www.thecompostfiles.blogspot.com
Shalom, Moshe
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