What are the problems with the American educational system?
Teachers are expected to train like a professional, but they are paid and micromanaged like a fast food worker. They are expected to fix things in kids that doctors and psychotherapists can’t fix. The ADA and IDEA don’t recognize any differences between a slow learned and a juvenile onset paranoid schizophrenic. Somehow, they are supposed to deal with the kid who is smearing feces on the rug in the corner (at 8) because he is unable to comprehend that this behavior is socially unacceptable (true story, I ran across the kid just after he’d FINALLY been moved from the regular classroom into a self contained room. At the same time they are to teach fractions to the average kids and extend the lesson to keep the gifted kids from being bored. And in between, they are supposed to figure out a way to make fractions understandable to the kid with an IQ of 80. And when all this doesn’t work out well, everyone blames the teacher and shows up after school to scream at her because their kid isn’t
It boils down to this, really: Too many people sitting on their collective *sses and b*tching about how bad the educational system is and not doing anything about it. Parents: Who don’t take any cotton-pickin’ interest in their children’s activities or attendance records, who don’t make sure homework gets done, who are too lazy to support their children’s teachers (remember classroom mothers?), who don’t teach their children manners or to respect their peers and teachers, who think their kids need drugs to be able to pay attention in class. Teachers: Who don’t properly challenge their students, who don’t demand consistent good performance, who are arm chair doctors diagnosing active children as suffering from ADD or students who aren’t paying attention or participating in class as autistic, who would rather push a problem child off on someone else instead of finding out what makes them tick and making it work for them. Administrators: Who are more concerned with following all the littl
