30 Something

I was watching an abc news special called, "Stupid in American."and the premise was that american students are educationally behind students in other countries. John Stossel was giving permission to video several classes and talk to students about school and many were surpised that other countries were smarter. The scene from the schools looked as if there were teachers who weren't doing their job, allowing students to sleep in class and play games that aren't associated with their lesson, etc. It was a really sad picture to see. Of course my goal as a teacher is to be excellent, but because I watched the show I desperately want to become what I've always wanted to become--an inspiration to young people. However, it's not as easy as it seems. Mr. Stossel put a lot of the blame on schools and teachers and made a big effort to establish that the school system is broken, which I agree with, but there are other factors that go into a child's education. One key factor is parents. I have numerous student's whose parents i'm sure are at their wits end and don't have time to "deal" with their children at school. The dropout rate in my city is pretty high and the graduation rates are significantly below the state standards so I'm pretty sure that some of the parents don't care because some of them were the dropouts. Some of them have a hard time reading themselves, so to expect that their children come home and do work is not something that is not done. Of course there are some parents who are quite involved and I can tell that because of the quality of work that is returned, but to just say the system is broken is going overboard. Yes it's broken, but there are other pieces to the puzzle that need to be address also.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 06, 2006 at 3:35 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.