Posted by
Apomnemonysis on Friday, March 21, 2008 11:59:01 PM
I remember as an elementary school student attending PTA - Parent-Teachers Association meetings in my elementary school. The Teachers reported on realistic and practical activities, the children performed skits and provided entertainment, the parents gave their input and that input was respected and acted on by the principal and teachers.
Today, it is not Parent-Teachers meetings, but Parents-Teacher "conference" where the parents meet one pair (or half a divorced pair) at a time with their child's teacher(s). The teacher gives overly detailed analysis of the child's work. The OBE system is cumbersome and NOT INFORMATIVE.
The teachers do not know how to respond to the questions and demands of the parents who are more aware of how schools operate and how they SHOULD operate.
Attempts by parents to give meaningful, tradition-bucking input or to demand specific accountability and to request or demand specific changes in curriculum, in group meetings of teachers and parents, are side-tracked or ignored.
Growing up, I saw the changes. As a parent myself, I saw things becoming even worse. Lack of EFFECTIVE discipline, students' disrespect for teachers' authority, principals' and teachers' disrespect for the parents' authority, intelligence, and desires. I saw the teachers give up under the weight of laws written with distorted views of childhood development and of learning processes. I saw the unions step in to insure continuity despite incompetence, raises despite failures, promotions despite ignorance. I saw the people who graduated from these institutions of lower learning become parents too ignorant of pedagogy, psychology, sociology, childhood development, and a lot more, yielding to the union-controlled schools.
We homeschooled our children. They did well enough to be accepted into four top universities and graduate with honors. It is easier, safer, and gives better results for parents who have no teaching certificate to teach their children, than to have a person with a teaching certificate teach their children in a public school.