Prabhupada, Los Angeles, June 13, 1972: […] So in each and every home, formerly, this independence was very much valued. So at the modern education this independence is being killed. People are becoming unemployed, machine. Machine … High technologist means he must find out a job where technological machines are there. Otherwise he will starve, and he will have to go round, factory to factory: “Will you give me some service?” “No vacancy.” Yes. So we shall discuss further next, tomorrow. (end)
Full Lecture
Modern education: Trickle-up dumbing-down | Long Island Herald
Randi Kreiss
The New York Times reported last week that three-quarters of the 17,500 freshman at City University of New York’s six community colleges require remedial classes in reading and writing and math.
This report is consistent with what’s happening at other two-year colleges across the country. And if what I’m hearing from teachers at four-year colleges is correct, the educational deficits among all entering college freshmen are disheartening.
Reading, writing and math are still the three reliable pillars on which advanced education is built; however, students are leaving high school without a solid foundation in these basic skills.
The reasons are obvious, the solutions are difficult and we are caught in a cultural and political vise that will not permit sensible remedies to be applied. Still, we have no alternative but to try.
First, if students need remedial help in college, then the primary and secondary schools are failing in their mission. We all know that American students are no longer the most high-achieving in the world.
Furthermore, the students who win all the top science and literary prizes increasingly grow up in families where the home culture insists on academic excellence (see “Tiger Mom”).
As a former tenured teacher, I believe that the tenure system has got to go. It has become a liability, rather than an advantage, for teaching professionals. Teachers can no longer be guaranteed a job for life, especially when many are not doing their best work.
In the world of “rubber rooms,” where New York City teachers are paid not to teach while their disciplinary cases are being adjudicated, sometimes for years, who can expect quality education? How can we tolerate such a waste of our tax dollars?
Are we serious about preparing our students? We need to pay our teachers very well, but not guarantee their jobs. We need to reward and promote them based on their performance. Education must be a 12-month endeavor.
Our present system of two-month summer vacations harkens back to a time when children were needed to help out on farms. A two-month vacation doesn’t work in families where both Mom and Dad have jobs. It doesn’t work when students wind up with too much time on their hands.
A friend of mine said that we will never eliminate summer vacation because of the “summer camp lobby.” Does that require a comment? I think not.
There’s a lot of trash talk around targeting teachers, with local governments pulling funds from schools and threatening teachers’ unions.
It is not productive to demonize teachers and the excellent work that so many of them do.That’s where politics comes in. Let’s be brave enough to cut funding from other dependents of Uncle Sam who have so much waste built into their programs. Let’s trim all the entitlements, and raise the age for Social Security and Medicare.
Education must be both reformed and well-funded. We need modern school buildings and up-to-date textbooks and state-of-the art science labs. We have to pay and support the people who staff the schools, and improve the college programs that prepare teachers to teach. The best and the brightest must look to teaching as rewarding and well-paying. The very concept of tenure does a disservice to the profession.
I spoke with a teacher the other evening, debating these very issues. In the beginning she made all the usual arguments for tenure; she mentioned, too, that in her district she has unlimited sick days.
Ten minutes later, she mentioned that she sometimes babysits her grandkids to help out her working daughter. When she does, she takes one of those “guaranteed” sick days; thus, our taxes are providing her daughter with a free nanny. This teacher knows that she can’t be fired.
Of course, she is an exception, but still, abuses abound in a world of guaranteed jobs.
If our high school students need remedial help before they enter college, the schools and the teachers must be held accountable. I know that parental involvement and home environment and socio-economic status are critical factors as well.
But the job of a school is to educate children, and we need to keep improving, updating and changing the way we teach, or we might as well just turn the keys over to the Chinese.
Copyright © 2011 Randi Kreiss. Randi can be reached at randik3@aol.com
source: http://www.liherald.com/fivetowns/fivetowns/stories/Modern-education-Trickle-up-dumbing-down,31328?page=3&content_source=
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