The Bobcat Nation

This might spark some interesting debate. Are American schools as messed up and inefficient and Stossel asserts?

http://www.reason.com/hod/js011306.shtml

I don't think they are all that bad, but yeah, I think there are a lot of problems. I think many teachers can hide behind tenure and unions.

Then again, for what they get paid, it's probably easy to lose your ambition and desire to really give it your all day in and day out, year after year. Especially when the attitude, or lack of, in students seems to be declining. Teachers cannot do much to control or disclipline rude, arrogant, and out of control children.

Do not enough parents get involved? Can a parent overcome a bad teacher for a year? I know it takes a lot of time, but I think they could. Then again, not all parents were fortunate enough to get an education at MSU

I'd like to see Montana students go against the Belgian students and see what happens, to start. Part of it is that some teachers are just bad and don't care to do anything innovative in the classroom or worse because they have "tenure" and it is next to impossible to get them fired. I'm starting to wonder if we should pay better teachers more money. I think education programs at universities, like the one I'm in here at MSU do a good job with teacher preparation. There's expected to be a lot of teacher retirements in Montana and elsewhere in the next few years. Maybe getting some new blood into the schools will help. Personally, I hope I can do a good job and bring enthusiasm into the history/social studies classroom, which is hard to do.

bozbobcat wrote:I'd like to see Montana students go against the Belgian students and see what happens, to start. Part of it is that some teachers are just bad and don't care to do anything innovative in the classroom or worse because they have "tenure" and it is next to impossible to get them fired. I'm starting to wonder if we should pay better teachers more money. I think education programs at universities, like the one I'm in here at MSU do a good job with teacher preparation. There's expected to be a lot of teacher retirements in Montana and elsewhere in the next few years. Maybe getting some new blood into the schools will help. Personally, I hope I can do a good job and bring enthusiasm into the history/social studies classroom, which is hard to do.

Montana students would probably get creamed by Belgium students. In Montana stats show the students produced are actually of good quality, MSU Billings combined some studies here http://www.msubillings.edu/caer/quality ... .htm#_ftn1
But the teacher quality and the school imput is near the bottom, saying that Montana doesn't do a good job hiring teachers, paying teachers, and rewarding/punshing teachers. It also doesn't put any money into better education. Of course recently the state was found in violation of its constitution by not providing good education.

That aside I see some good points to this article, and some interesting ones. One thing that stands out to me, the US (in general) does not feel the need to increase school funding. Which is unfortunate, the future generations are already being criticized but they're not given much of a chance with crap teachers, poor funding, less "elective" courses, and less consideration for "PE" classes as well.

Now I know, other generations had less education than what is offered today, that is true. But look at other countries around the world, take Belgium, they're offering better education and a wider range of education to their students than most US schools are. Down the road the future of Belgium is going to be more educated than most of those in the US. Little old Belgium. The US is ranked 9th globally, in education. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9322920 Behind countries like Canada, Finland, Korea and Japan. How will our youth stack up in the future against these nations?

That msnbc article does go on to metion that the US in 2nd in spending "per student" so why aren't we 2nd in education? A flawed system. The tenure is one issue, if it takes 6 years to fire a sexual predator thats a teacher then there's something wrong with the system.

On a side note, I don't think offering higher compensations to the teachers is the answer. Teachers need to be paid more, but to simply just pay the highest wage to the best teachers doesn't solve our lack of quality education. We need smaller classrooms, more computers in the schools, more "worldly" classes that offer wide ranges of history, language, and arts. We also need more PE for our kids, with so many being overweight now. Coattailing on overweight kids, we also need an increased budget on their school lunches, anyone who has seen "Supersize Me." would agree.

Yes, past generations had less education, but they cannot program a TV now. There is a lot more technology to learn and prepare for now than in the past.

Re/Max Griz wrote:Of course recently the state was found in violation of its constitution by not providing good education.

Actually that is not correct. The lawsuit wasn't about the quality of education it was about the funding of education, or lack of. I may be splitting hairs here but there is a difference. It wasn't about test scores or ciriculum it was about making sure everything was funded properely.

well i know they'd kick CA schools into the ground. we have a local HS in CA that made it into the top 100 HS called Monte Vista, but from the list i saw most were Florida and other East Coast Schools. i wonder how the our US schools would fair if we compared state to state testing. I'm sure MT would be close to the top. All the kids I've met from MT had a better academic base than i did, and that was PUBLIC schools. I think that although the salaries are small in MT the teachers (which we have many in our family) really love what they do. that alone makes a huge difference in motivating students.

ChiOCat wrote:Especially when the attitude, or lack of, in students seems to be declining. Teachers cannot do much to control or disclipline rude, arrogant, and out of control children.

Weren't similar generalizations made about students in the 70's...

The teachers' union is more to blame for the current state of our education system than any other group. They have dictated the way teachers are paid so much now that really the only thing that matters is a teacher’s experience, it overlooks their teaching ability and what they teach i.e. a bad teacher gets paid the same as a good teacher, a geometry teacher gets paid the same as a gym teacher.

They've probably been made about younger generations for years. But I don't recall guns in schools when I was in school. I remember teasing and taunting and bullying, but not as bad as it is today. Or at least as bad as the media says it is.

Couple thoughts:

1. Belgium? Why the heck would you compare us to Belgium? Send 200MM more people to Belgium, and let's see how their gubmint does w/education. While yer at it, make sure the new 200MM people come from all racial and ethnic backgrounds --- they don't get to just have Belgiums.

2. Just a thought: there were no guns back in the day, but probalby just as much teasing/taunting. One day, it became politically incorrect to fight a battle (fist fight) on the play ground. Maybe there was something to kids working things out with their fists after all. Now - the kids that get teased, sometime take very drastic measures. Just an observation.

Depends when you went to school. For about 40 years there have been instances of school shootings. I don't remember if it was late 80's-early 90's there was a school shooting in little Lewistown, MT

ChiOCat wrote:They've probably been made about younger generations for years. But I don't recall guns in schools when I was in school. I remember teasing and taunting and bullying, but not as bad as it is today. Or at least as bad as the media says it is.

School violence as a whole has gone DOWN since the 80's. The reason you never heard about any school shootings was because the media didn't cover it on a national scale prior to the 90’s. National news did not become big until the early 90's. There was no CNN or Fox News that looked solely at National and Global news. People relied on their local news outlets and these outlets seldom covered stories coming out of small communities in rural America. Schools are statistically safer today then they were 20 years ago.

catamaran wrote:Depends when you went to school. For about 40 years there have been instances of school shootings. I don't remember if it was late 80's-early 90's there was a school shooting in little Lewistown, MT

I was in high school at the time of the Lewistown shooting, and know way too many grisly and personal details (and always wondered if that shooting was the backstory behind the Pearl Jam song "Jeremy," as I'm sure their bass player was well aware of that incident being from Big Sandy).

Yeah, the same stuff happened when we were kids as today. And I think Quast's point is spot on about the media and the national exposure anytime any sensational news occurs. For that matter, anytime a cute white girl (but not ugly non-white people) goes missing anywhere in the country, it becomes a national obsession. Weird. We're obsessed about news that, although disturbing, is so isolated and rare as to be virtually nonexistent and makes it appear as though it is a chronic national issue.