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would be able to, and the teachers would feel a helluva lot more useful and stick around a bit longer. Too bad the school systems don't let them nowadays... I do bitch about the terrible problems of schools, but for the most part, I don't think the teachers are to blame. (Obviously there are a few exceptions... although if teachers were appreciated and allowed to do their jobs, I think that would weed out most of the bad ones and keep the good ones around longer.) I think it's the system itself, and the way it hobbles both the teachers and students. If I was allowed to actually LEARN in high school, instead of being forced by law to go there every day and do nothing, I know for a fact that my life would be a helluva lot farther along then it is now. I wasted four years of my life and didn't learn a damn thing that would be useful when I went off into the world. If the teachers were allowed to teach the things they should be teaching, colleges wouldn't have to teach basic things like english and math that the kids should have learned in high school. But they can't, because the teachers aren't allowed to tell the kids to sit down and shut up, so the kids don't. The teachers aren't allowed to give the students challenging material, because then they might complain. If the teachers were ALLOWED to do their job, most of them would. But everyone wants their child to get straight As. Everyone wants their child to be special. So now the ones who actually want to learn are held back to the pace of the ones who don't care. And the ones who don't care don't even KNOW they could be doing better most of the time, once again because the teachers aren't allowed to confront them and challenge them. Take a look at an 8th grade math book from 50 years ago. This was before they had calculators in every backpack, and yet they were doing things that I didn't learn even in the gifted math classes I took up until 10th grade (when my school realized that they earned got more money for AP classes, and got rid of the gifted program). Listen to someone under the age of 30 speak. Most of them can hardly form a proper sentance. 12 years of school, and they never learn the difference between 'fewer' and 'less'. I was rather shocked when I was in middle school to find out that the HONORS english classes in middle school never went more in depth than Subject and Verb. Honors. Not remedial, honors. 12 years of school, and not a damn thing learned. Somehow, I doubt that it's because of a failure on the part of every teacher. I think that's a failure with the system. It's a failure with the choice of what to teach the kids. It's a failure of how to teach the kids. And every teacher is stuck there in the middle. I have had a few teachers that I would qualify as bad teachers. In some cases, I learned in spite of them, simply because I wanted to learn. In others, I caught up on the sleep I lost because I had to wake up far too early to go to school. (I had one first period french teacher who wouldn't let me sleep in class, despite the fact that I kept an A- to B+ average the entire semester, all the while being lazy and only doing about half of my homework assignments. That's pretty damn impressive right there. So I tortured myself by staying awake and pretending to listen to the teacher read directly from the textbook, while I worked on my drawing skills. Still can't draw worth crap, but at least I got something done.) I have also had good teachers. They managed to teach in spite of the standardized tests and lack of teaching material. They were few and far between. Then there were the rest. The ones who never got a chance to find out if they were good teachers or not, because they were never really given a chance to teach. They were given textbooks full of the same material the kids learned the year before, and a standardized test to give them at the end of the year. I can't even imagine how many kids would learn, if only they knew that they could. I had a bit of an advantage there, I learned to read at a young age and my parents never let me rot my brain in front of the TV. So by the time I got to school, I already had a head full of useless facts, and a desire to add to that collection. But not everyone has that head start. Most kids don't know how to learn, and teachers aren't allowed to tell them to sit down and shut up long enough to do it. And they aren't given the material to teach them anything new, other than some basic benchmarks. Multiplication in third grade. Essay writing, algebrae and geometry in high school. Anybody notice a big gap in there? Good, making sure it's not just me. School is not an institution of learning anymore, it's just a place to put the kids so that they're out of the way long enough for the adults to go to work without having to worry about them. Which means that when the kids reach that magical age of 18, they are not going to be prepared for the world. College campuses have to teach the kids the barest of basics all over again. Most college students still go home and show their report cards to mommy and daddy, because they never really graduated from high school. Sure, they spent four years there and got a diploma and a funny hat, but they're still teenagers when they go off to college. Not adults. Looking back, I can only think of two classes that ever actually CHALLENGED me. And I had to seek out these classes. Neither one has a damn thing to do with anything I ever wanted to do with my life, but I took them because I knew I would go insane if I didn't do something. And I don't think either one of the teachers of those classes were particularly great teachers, they just had a curriculum that was something new. Something that the kids hadn't been over and over once a year for the last 8 or 9 years. Something to actually teach. And because it was a class that had to be sought out, those classes also had kids that actually wanted to learn. For once I could sit in the back of the class and just listen and learn. I did horribly in those classes, my grades were in the toilet. I even had to retake one of them. But at least I was learning something. Oh, and for god's sake, pay the teachers enough so that they don't have to leave and find a higher-paying job... I lost a good english teacher that way. She didn't just get a promotion, she HAD to get a promotion to keep food on her table and a roof over her head. I don't remember the exact details, but I think her husband had gotten sick or injured and was unable to work for a while. Odd that I can remember the incident when she tripped and almost fell on me while disembarking a bus on a field trip in perfect detail, yet I can't remember why exactly why she left. Ah, the human brain. How very tricky. Futz, that just reminded me that I left the book I was going to borrow from my brother at his house. Sorry, off topic, but it was a book about the human brain. :) Research for a rather mad-scientist type project that I'm thinking about trying. See, even now I'm still trying to learn. Trying to make up for the four years in high school that I wasted... not learning... and not by choice. Oddly enough, that very same brother I just mentioned used to teach computer science... but he had a family to provide for, and so he couldn't just sit there and earn crap money while the kids he was teaching used what he taught them to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. He loves teaching, and he's good at it. But he can't afford to when he's got a family to support. Stop spending government money on Halliburton contracts, and start paying it to the people who watch our kids five days a week.
Oh, and Mr. G, if you're out there... At the time I didn't want to look like a geek in front of the whole class by correcting you... but Pharoh Akhenaton's name is not pronounced 'Ah-Ken-Ah-Tawn', it's Ak-en-Aton. Servant of Aton. It shouldn't be too hard to at least pick out the last part of his name. Aton was the sun god he used to supplant the old polytheistic religion. Ak-en-Aton. I've always been into ancient egypt, so every time you said that name it just grated on my nerves. It's not hard to pronounce. :)
Anyhow... I've rambled on far too long (25 hours without sleep... long day.), so I'll try to sum up as best I can. First off... obviously, pay them enough so that they can afford to stay. Especially when dealing with fields that tend to earn more money. Anyone who is teaching computer science in public school could be making ten times that much out in the job market. Second of all, let them actually teach. No more spending an entire year to repeat what the students already learned. Teach. Review a little ahead of time, sure. But then teach something new. Third of all, give them the things they need to be ABLE to teach. Textbooks that take the time to explain, but don't coddle. Curriculums that don't repeat year after year. And give them the power to run their own classroom. Nowadays if a teacher sneezes on a kid, they can get suspended or fired. Teachers need to be able to control their classroom. I'm not suggesting reverting to the time when it was okay for a teacher to smack kids with rulers, but SOMETHING has to be done to let the teachers run things properly. They have no power, no respect, and no way to get it unless something changes.
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