california

[mike777]

Wow wonderful personal stories of school.

 

I finally ended up in a school with a small HS population at each level. As I recall all of us were promised admission into the local Univ if we graduated regardless of our grades. I never took the SAT. We took Univ classes in HS but I do not remember anything called AP or AP level tests so I assume I had zero.

 

Granted this was late 1960's or 1970 so we often walked the few blocks to be part of the protests against the war but I almost never walked the few extra steps to ask for help from my teachers. It just never crossed my mind as an option.

 

As for my Grammer school in the south side of Chicago, in retrospect, I do wish many more of the teachers had helped. I am thankful for the tiny few who did.

 

Looking back at all levels of my public education I wish I knew I could or should have went to teachers or admins and demand more ...much more.........

 

Late in life as a Grad student in Calif I did demand more from these Prof's...some helped...many were worthless.....in general the students came across as even worse so.......

[helene_t]

Somewhat off-topic, my (Danish) school story.

 

From I was 6 to 10 I went to the local public school just like almost everyone else. A few ambitious parents would take their kids to a private school, but this was an middle/upper class area so the public school was not seen as inappropriate for ambitious parents. My class had some very misbehaved pupils as well as teachers, though. Our classroom was also used for creative class which means making toy animals out of used beverage boxes. We would use those boxes as munition in our wars against the neighbor class. One teacher even encouraged wars during classes. He was fired eventually.

 

Because of other kids harassing me I would often refuse going to school, or stay at the teachers' office during breaks to be safe from kids. After having asked my mum to move me to a private school for years, it eventually happened when I was 10.

 

From age 10-14 I went to a hippie school where we were indoctrinated with pop-marxism and had very elaborate sexual training including watching photos of a teacher participating in group sex, but learned very little else. I generally liked it, got well along with the teachers and sometimes with a few of the kids, too. From what I know of what happened to my classmates afterwards, several boys ended up in prison, one girl became a long-time nut-house resident, one became a street prostitute. One girl who was constantly bullied by other kids and frequently ran home crying at lunch break became a lawyer, for what I know she and I were the only ones who got some kind of eduction. I think this is partly to blame on the school although it must be said that most of the kids were quite hopeless cases already before admission to the school.

 

Then I went for one year to a militant marxist school, left because I got sick of the way the teachers abused the kids although they didn't dare to abuse me, I could speak up for myself. We had only two hours of training a day, the rest was manual work and political stuff. But the training was very intensive so I learned some useful things, such as speaking German. They were OK with me spending the math lessons reading books that my father supplied because the school's books were too easy.

 

Then at age 15, one year at a more serious moderate-leftwinged private school which was basically set up to give children who had wasted their first nine school years at worthless schools a last chance to learn what they need to learn to go to grammar school. Excellent school. And then three years at a pretty normal grammar school where I learned lots of useful things. It was not a school for the brightest kids, I think out of 27 kids in the class we were only five who started an M.Sc. program three of whom dropped out (although I eventually got my Ph.D. anyway, not sure what happened to the others), but that didn't really matter, the training was fine. For some reason (I don't quite remember) I got tired of it during the last years, so I went three months to Israel to work in a kibbutz during the autumn term.

[luke warm]

my elementary school was about 2 blocks from my house... i still remember standing in line outside the school, holding my mother's hand, while medical people passed out sugar cubes with the salk vaccine on it... i was 6

[kenberg]

Helene, you had a seriously weird childhood! I mean that in a friendly way, but it does sound weird. Much of my thinking on teaching children could be summarized as "Try hard not to do anything that is completely crazy". Movies shown to children of the teacher engaging in sex, whether group, twosome, or single, doesn't pass this test. Kids are pretty resilient or few of us would grow up to be functional but we should try not to test the boundaries.

[Lobowolf]

I prefer low voter turnout to ignorant voter turnout.

Another point of agreement between Winston and me! I think we're up to 2 or 3 now.

[h2osmom]

My husband is a teacher, and started out his teaching career in Watts, well known for being a poor and gang infested area. One day he was on his conference, and a kid was walking the halls rather than being in class. Brad told the student he would walk him to class. The student resisted, said he could go himself, and Brad insisted he would accompany him. Three different times the student changed his story of where he belonged that period. At that point Brad told the student they would go to the office and sort it out. The student tried to run out the front entrance, and Brad grabbed his jacket to keep him from running. They arrived at the office, and the kid refused to say his name. The counselor recognized the kid, but couldn't place him. Brad then went and asked Math teachers in turn to go to the office and try to identify the student, while he watched the class. The 2nd teacher was able to identify the student, and said student was given a 3 day suspension from school. The next morning the kid showed up at school with his 18 year old sister. They wanted to register a complaint. They were told that the complaint could only be taken from his parent; not a sister unless she was legal guardian. That afternoon the mother came in with the student to lodge the complaint, which was that Brad had grabbed the kids jacket to keep him from running. The jacket wasn't damaged in any way, but that was the parent response.

 

Once the kid refused to give his name to the school authorities, he lost all credibility. When a parent doesn't support school authorities at all, then there is no school authority. It's true that students shoouldn't be afraid of their teachers. It's just as true that teachers shouldn't be afraid of their students.

[luke warm]

Once the kid refused to give his name to the school authorities, he lost all credibility. When a parent doesn't support school authorities at all, then there is no school authority. It's true that students shoouldn't be afraid of their teachers. It's just as true that teachers shouldn't be afraid of their students.

that's a big part of the problem, parents haven't backed up the teachers for a long time... i think i mentioned that corporal punishment was allowed when i was in school... i also should have mentioned that had my dad found out i was so punished it would have been worse for me at home

[PassedOut]

Once the kid refused to give his name to the school authorities,  he lost all credibility.  When a parent doesn't support school authorities at all,  then there is no school authority.  It's true that students shoouldn't be afraid of their teachers.  It's just as true that teachers shouldn't be afraid of their students.

that's a big part of the problem, parents haven't backed up the teachers for a long time... i think i mentioned that corporal punishment was allowed when i was in school... i also should have mentioned that had my dad found out i was so punished it would have been worse for me at home

Same here.

[kenberg]

I would like to separate the issue of corporal punishment from the general question of support for the teacher. I am not fond of corporal punishment but support for the teacher is essential.

 

 

In the jacket case above, the student is running off and the teacher grabbed him by the jacket to prevent this from happening. In my view, if the jacket got ripped, tough. Next time the kid should follow the teacher's directions. The ripped jacket would be a natural consequence of the teacher doing his job while the kid is resisting reasonable control measures.

 

There are times when a teacher needs to be reined in. but there are far more instances where a teacher is given crap for doing what would strike me, and I think most people, as perfectly reasonable. The jacket case seems like an example. It is most important to realize that a teacher need not be perfect to deserve support. He cannot be a sadist or a bully but he definitely does not have to be perfect. There just are not that many perfect people to go around.

 

As to corporal punishment: I am not horrified by it but it really is not so practical. Kids get bigger. Not all teachers are strong (we need those who are not, just as we need those who are not perfect). A grandson, when he was younger, had trouble with self-control When he was six or so I was supervising him at some function and I picked him up and removed him from a game where he was being a pain. I physically restrained him from rejoining the game. But I also explained to him that he would be getting bigger and I would not always be able to do this, so his job was to learn how to get himself under control. He paid close attention. Most kids want to learn how to interact successfully with others. If they get to be sixteen or so without learning this, the fat is in the fire.

[mike777]

Since we have sort of veered into education here is a thought.

 

I would like to see increased dollars go into building more schools/colleges and thus increasing the supply.

 

Giving more tuition aid simply increases demand and drives up the cost of a college education.