This change is not good:

[L Verge]

(05-25-2017 03:56 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  You might likes to read this:
http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/linc...ducate.htm
Gene, your first passage is spot on. Neither money nor school can come up for lacking parental personal care and engagement.

I agree with you completely. However, having watched the transition from a society where Mom stayed home and also where the teachers knew best to one where parents are often in the shadows or where the teachers and principals are always wrong, we can't expect much to change.

Our economic situations now almost demand that Mom become part of the work force in order to pay the mortgage, and this leaves children unattended (with parents not having a clue as to what really goes on in their lives). The increased higher education levels of many parents may also tend to make them think they know more than the teachers (and in some cases they do!). This gives parents a power level not present fifty years ago. They use this power to intimidate school officials.

And, unfortunately, there are many weak teachers in our national system. There is a great demand for teachers to fill classrooms, so many of them are hired without proper credentials, certification, etc. My daughter is a mentoring teacher here in our county schools. She doesn't mentor students; she mentors teachers who are struggling in the classroom.

Working here in the museum, I sometimes have a hard time distinguishing the students from the teachers in the upper grades -- no professional behavior, no professional dress code, and no setting ground rules for the students.

I will probably get in hot water here, but I remember forty years ago the upheaval in our county system when the school board (political appointees with little background in education) decreed that we would no longer group students in a track system according to their abilities and needs. The theory was that mixing the needy children in with the high achievers would bring the needy ones up to speed. Teachers said it would have the opposite effect, and it did. When the achievers saw that they didn't have to work very hard in order to pass, they stopped achieving. Water seeks the lowest level.

Anyhow, I am rambling, and I sincerely wish that parents and society in general would work with educational systems to improve attitudes as well as curricula. I suspect, however, that the increased use of computers will create an environment where our students are one-on-one with a machine, where no one is actively monitoring what that machine says, and where good teachers are obsolete.

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One last thought: School budgets are controlled by politicians. Few items on an agenda can gain an elected official more votes than promising to throw more money into school systems - whether it is needed that year or not.