The Double Bind.

[SoCalDem]

As college gets MORE out of reach for middle class families, there will be MORE and MORE young people entering the job market with "low quality skills". Schools are concentrating on complying with all the rules of NCLB, so more and more time is spent teaching to the test, instead of TEACHING TO THE KIDS.

Children often return to an empty house after work, and while away the empty hours playing video games, shooting baskets, talking on the phone or watching tv. Parents arrive dead tired, with nothing on their minds except getting a meal on the table and trying to relax a bit before they have to go out and do it all again.

I wonder how many kids are even getting their homework done, let alone getting help with it.

In large metro areas there might be jobs available to these young kids with high school or maybe not even that. Lots of kids get frustrated and just drop out, thinking they can "get a job and start their adult lives".. But in small communities, there are just not many jobs out there and the jobs that USED to be there are now being done by Moms, Dads, Grandmas, & Grandpas, or immigrant workers who will work for less..

The schools are not turning out students who can read well, write well, or knowing much of anything.. The super achievers will always manage and can sometimes get scholarships and grants, but the rest, just "do their time", and end up in dead end jobs, or NO jobs.

It really all comes back to MONEY.. Money the schools desperately need because local people are so stretched for cash, that they routinely vote down bond issues for school financing and support, teachers stretched for time because they MUST make the scores high or they will lose THEIR jobs, and school districts desperate for the little federal funding , yet putting more and more cuts in place to make ends meet.

Parents so desperate to make a buck to support their families that they often juggle jobs and spend long periods of time commuting on $3 gas, and spend less and less time with their families.

Kids are raising themselves and lots are not getting the education they need. There was a time when a kid could graduate with Cs and get a union job alongside Dad or Uncle or brother, and have a good shot at a decent blue-collar life, but those days are gone gone gone..

The jobs that people used to retire from at 65, are now being desperately clung to because more and more people cannot even think of retirement. Companies are so concentrated on the "stock price" or "beating the projections" that hiring people is often the last thing of their "to do"list. The entry level jobs are being eliminated, and with them, the futures of many middle class kids.. or FORMERLY middle class kids.

At a time when we need MORE education, we are giving our kids LESS. Other countries are beefing up their curriculums at the same time we are cutting things to the bone.

The government says the low quality jobs are "jobs Americans won't do", but in reality these are jobs that American, LOTS of them will HAVE to do, or they will have NOTHING to do.

This is the same government that loves to push people off aid rolls, and loves to call them lazy and shames them for not working..The same government that financially punishes the parents of these kids, or offers them decades of student-loan debt in exchange for a mediocre job.. the same government that sees nothing wrong in cutting school funding every chance it gets..

Intellectual curiosity used to be a hallmark of our society, but not for long...if it even still exists.

[Random_Australian]

1. Nail, meet hammer bang on the head. (K&R) Also,

it's a good tactic for swelling the ranks of the military, and also for getting people more easily duped by politicians.

[GeorgeGist]

2. I am so ashamed to be a Baby Boomer...

has there ever been a more incompetent generation?

[SoCalDem]

3. Until Clinton, the "previous generation" was calling the shots

:(

Most of us Boomers are NOT all that powerful in the overall scheme of things.. Reagan's invisible decayed hand is still on the rudder of the ship of state..

The best chance we had was when Clinton was president (the first Boomer), and the 8 year inquisition made his tenure a lot less than it could have been.

Maybe we'll get another chance..

[cassiepriam]

4. It is part of the plan, kids can't afford college, they go into military

to keep the war machine going.

[LWolf]

5. Many factors contribute.

I was the very first person on either side of my family to earn a 4-year degree.

I'm the daughter of a truck driver with an 8th grade education, and a secretary with a high school diploma. My mom went back and got her AA, very proud of herself, after I graduated from high school and moved out.

Even 30 years ago, college was a challenge. Like the culture I came from, I married and had babies straight out of high school. I worked, raised babies, and went to school for 15 years before I finally got my BA; another 30 units after that I had my teaching credential. I didn't finish the masters, because the student loans were already too large. I started my teaching "career" when my sons were in high school.

When they graduated, they went to the local community college. We could afford that, although I was still paying student loans. I just finally paid those damned loans off last year.

My oldest son got his AA, and wanted to transfer to UCLA. I couldn't help him; I was still paying for my own stuff. He looked at the debt load he'd be taking on, and walked away. He took a job managing a local chain store, and by the 2nd year, he made as much money as I did. He makes more than I do now, and I'm into my 12th year of teaching.

My youngest son took some classes but never finished the AA; life intervened for him in a different way, when he didn't use a condom when he should have. He's the single parent of the resulting child, and he's worked numerous low-skill and low-pay jobs, barely scraping by, ever since.

In reality, I am the financial foundation for everyone in my family. My senior citizen mother, my solvent son who rents an apartment in the LA area and knows if something goes wrong he can come home, and my younger son who moved in with me to support his son when he became the sole parent. And my grandson, who started kindergarten this year.

And I spend my days in those classrooms you refer to, with those students.
Money is part of the equation, but not all. Yes, we are grossly underfunded, overcrowded, understaffed. The constant political manipulation of curriculum, instruction, and assessment doesn't help, either. With an unlimited budget, we couldn't serve everyone successfully under today's mandates.

There's one more factor, perhaps larger than the other 2 put together:

The anti-intellectual tendencies of our culture. I have way too many parents who think I'm too hard on their kids, that it's ok if they can't spell, speak, read or write fluently, or do enough math to balance a bankbook, that we require way too much reading, that reading is for nerds, that writing or research is a waste of time. Of course, if that's what the parents think, what do you think the kids think? We're swimming up stream out here. While we're being held accountable for the learning happening, or not, we're battling the culture of illiteracy, and the tendency on the part of some of our students and their families to maintain it.

[SoCalDem]

6. I do not fault the teachers.. I know how much pressure you are under

My friend is a teacher, and she says that most parents of kids in her classes rarely come to talk to her when she sends home messages. When she calls she gets voice mail. She calls them phantom parents. Most of them have a couple of jobs, and little or no time for anything else.

I know how hard it is to go to school these days too.. The only ones in my family that made it to college did not finish, but the experience helped shape them..

Knock on wood..all my sons are doing fine jobwise for now..but all are scared that "something could happen"..and each of them has made a pitstop at the Mom & Dad Motel on a few occasions when "something DID happen"..

The pressure that teachers are under, must be something else.. The teachers I know are constantly being asked to teach a lot of kids who are just killing time and don't see the connection between learning and success.
And each year it seems like teachers get less and less assistance doing their work..

I salute you!

[LWolf]

7. Thanks for the support;

it is more appreciated than you know.

In reality, there are things that are good about our system, and things that are broken. Great teachers and poor teachers, supportive parents, parents that are sincere and give us all they've got but are illiterate themselves, weak parents, and terrible parents.

Add to that the entrenched underfunding, understaffing, and overcrowding, and no wonder we're in the shape we're in.