Education Rant

Education Rant
by
Robin Hall


Rants are good. They are a way to express an opinion that may or not be shared with others. Here is my rant on education.

The first thing our country needs to do is make quality education available for all. So, define education. Its what happens in schools, right? ( Sure, another rant could easily be to fully research and implement real education. I may do that rant but why don't one of you take up this aspect? ) So, back to the question, in which schools should we make quality education available?

Why should schools and teachers in more affluent neighborhoods / school districts so often be so superior to schools in impoverished areas as to place these dichotomous entities into completely different categories much of the time? I have a very simple answer. ALL schools should be equally treated and funded. They are NOT equally treated and funded in this country and never have been. This oversight is impossible to ignore and so obviously needed that I am flummoxed every time I ponder this sad situation.

Visit a public school in a wealthy neighborhood. Check out its range of resources, current schoolbooks, computer access, qualified teachers and the upkeep ON the school itself.

Visit a public school in some of our poorer areas. Check out its range of lack of resources; dated schoolbooks, if in fact there are any at all; its lack of computer access and all too often, the dull glare in the eyes of the instructors. Also check on the dilapidated buildings and grounds.

Startling isn't it? This is simply wrong and should be immediately changed.

Another part of the educational system that needs changing is the inane importance of sports programs that often takes precedence over classwork and places the best athletes on paper pedestals which crumble the day these athletes graduate.

Heretical? Consider this substitution. Physical education for ALL. Everyone takes part in aerobic fitness, strength training and some social games. This will help them much more than watching the athletically inclined get their workout on school time and at the BIG GAME on Friday nights. This needs to be changed NOW.

Require a second language from the very first grade. Require it to mastery in order to graduate high school. With quality distance learning through Internet access, even the most remote school in the tiniest district could offer each student access to dozens of the world's other languages, to the level of mastery.

The government should do long range forecasts concerning what languages will be most useful to it in the future and offer incentives to the more capable learners if they master one or more of those languages.

Guess what? If this had been done decades ago, the language skills needed in modern society would already have been met. Farsi, Arabic, Russian, Chinese and more could be mastered in this program. Students could complete their other chosen coursework and a workforce prepared to meet the future would be in place in every discipline from war and security to business, arts and labor.

Offer, but not mandate, course work in the arts. Distance learning could help with this too.

Place less emphasis on college, for many or most of the students, and more on getting a good job, yes trade and technical schools. What has been done in the last hundred years, neglecting the NEED for graduates to get jobs, well, its criminal. Change this NOW or I will be very cross.

Let teachers teach. It seems self evident. It is not. Too much time is wasted in keeping order, grading papers and in endless, useless meetings. My suggestion is to require all students in four year teacher training programs to serve a 5th year. Half the year they would work as classroom aids. The second half their service would be as interns or substitute teachers. We are all too frequently paying untrained people to do this. Why not future teachers? Pay them what the aids and substitute teachers get. And while I am at it, drop that silly lunch room duty BS.

We need to have a way to go beyond the average, way beyond, if we are to survive in the future. My suggestion is yearly testing of all students and not those dull achievement tests either.

No, really test to help channel our very brightest into well designed programs that would forever challenge them into excellence and support of our future. These superior students could have the answer to heretofore unanswerable problems we WILL face in a changing world.

STOP dumping incapable youths into public schools. This is unkind to them, unfair to the able bodied. Find a way to let these unfortunates live a decent life within their capabilities. I wager its not to thrust them into public school for the amusement of annoying students.

Many people with less than average intelligence can live productive lives by finding work they can do. Let them. Help them to do their work, but NOT in public school or those tragic back wards of hospitals we have read about.

Another discreet category of students includes the blind and vision impaired. Few blind people I have met ever felt at home in a sighted school. Their training, schooling has very special needs. Today's computers let the blind have access to jobs they never would in the past. The better students can enter fields impossible to imagine only a decade ago. The need for mobility training in schools for the blind is simply impossible to fulfill in public schools unless things change drastically.

For the exceptionally gifted disabled and blind/vision impaired students, and there are many, I see no way for them to flourish outside of very special, live-in schools. The talents of far too many bright boys and girls go to waste when we ignore this.

Today, we have the capability to do all of these things. We should do them while there is still time to save our very freedom from the hordes of outsiders who have few goals in life other than advancing their agendas such as world domination by a particular religion.

Radical Islamism is in our midst now. Their hate training, especially in the child abusive madrasahs, is aimed at their perverted world view. We must not let them prevail.

I will rant again. The next offering has to do with outrageous taxes and the need for population control.