Sunday, May 15, 2011

Things that make you go..WTF?

Apologies my friends..I just haven't felt....inspired to pontificate lately. I find however after finding a new blog to follow written by a gent in jolly ole England..I are inspired once more. I'll try not to let such a lapse happen again. :P

1st up? Well apparently we in Texas are firing 100,000 teachers across the state.
http://www.kvue.com/home/117522288.html

I say unto thee..okay fine. but why not do layoffs where an even bigger part of the problem is..School Administrations. You know..these are the people that have ever so slowly outlawed anything entertaining from school because *gasp* it MIGHT be unsafe. You know all those little entertaining games WE played..hell some of which our PARENTS played, growing up? Yes these games like dodgeball etc are deemed to unsafe..your child might get a scraped knee or hit with a flying bouncy rubber ball so..pfft..it's gone. so many others I can't think of right now that they've made "a bad thing to play" and therefore not allowed. then there's zero tolerance policies. Not only can't you bring a gun to school..but to draw a picture of one, or draw a stick figure person holding a stick figure gun will get your child suspended.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,303796,00.html

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=22787

Zero tolerance for kids bringing their own eating utensils from home
http://www.newser.com/story/71440/school-suspends-1st-grader-for-cub-scout-eating-utensils.html

http://edschultz.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=53609

So seriously..by all means...lets lay off some teachers..but start at the top and lay off ALL of the school administrators out there and start over again with a fresh plate. Preferably to be filled by people with some common sense and a functional brain, instead of small minded[and in the case of the men..tiny dicked] pencils pushers, with delusions of grandeur on a power trip.

Then we can move on to another problem..standardized testing. Our teachers are teaching to the tests. They're teaching our kids to memorize by wrote everything on the tests and nothing that isn't on the tests is taught. Why are they doing this? The higher the grades and pass rates..the more money the skewl districts get from the state. Which turns not into better learning for the kids..but higher salaries for unionized idiots..who are failing our kids miserably.....and then some.

Interesting factoid for a finish on this portion. You do know that kids back in the pioneer days of this country [you know when by and large everyone worked the land to survive?], when kids were taught in little country schoolhouses? That kids were better educated by the time they finished what we would call middle school; than many of our high schoolers are now? Sad isn't it? Forex...how many high school kids do you know that can do Trig? See back then kids had to know all this stuff, learn it, learn to apply it to be functioning adults and members of society. How is this possible? Because they had to use this stuff in everyday life! Now it's not soo much and the kids coming out of the public school system; unless they've been taught to love to read and learn and grow..are going to be nothing more than flesh and blood automatons. Button pushers. Mindless drones doing the same thing day in and day out without thinking about it because it requires no critical thinking.
How many of you were actually taught The Constitution growing up. How many read it in school, studied it, learned that it was good because it's made our nation what it is? Among my older readers I suspect the answer is probably most. among my reader my own age..not many, among any younger than that? Probably none. Sad.


Oh but wait...we can't do that but this is cool?

http://healthland.time.com/2011/05/12/cafeteria-cams-track-students-calorie-consumption-at-school/
This is whats most important in our schools now? School lunches? What the fuck ever happened to ohhhh..I don't know..LEARNING.

I've gotten so pessimistic lately that I think that this country is irrevocably doomed sometimes.

Next up will be a nice little bit about Obama, oil and the "Energy Crisis" but that's for later tonight..or the next day or two.

4 comments:

  1. Exactly, why fire the teachers when it's the administration that's useless. Being the child of, and spouse of teachers I can tell you there ARE teachers who are worthwhile and want to do more than teach the TAAS or TAKS tests.

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  2. Really. We did trig AND the Calculus. And no calculators, although we WERE allowed slide rules.

    And then, memorization. Hamlet's Soliloquy. The Gettysburg Address. The Preamble to the Constitution. . . amongst others.

    Even in language classes: reading Caesar's De Bello Gallico in the original, and in German, reading Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" and Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front". . and DOING the original Dreipfennigopfer. . .

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  3. A couple of things:
    1. The reason the administrators are not getting laid off is because they make the decision on who gets laid off.
    2. I know 3 teachers and a woman who works the counselling end of things in a public school. They all loathe standardized testing for the reasons you mentioned. Did you know that severely mentally retarded children are also required to take and pass the same damn standardized tests. The school districts are given no leeway and the mentally retarded kids' scores count against them. The standardized testing system we have now is idiotic.

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  4. Sotarr..I figured as much
    Tim..hence why I said fire every single administrative official and they're hangers on.
    and no I didn't know about the mentally retarded scores counting. Yes I agree the system is totally fucking idiotic...hence my rant.

    ReplyDelete

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