Quote From: manda7I graduated last year from public school. I had excellent grades and am now doing well in college where I am studying to be a nurse. I think that people are making excuses by blaming public school when students don't do well. With any type of school, you get what you take out of it. Most kids today are lazy. Why don't we call it what it is! I do not think it is the school's fault. I was raised by a single, disabled mother, and I was able to take advanced classes while working and doing internships. So when I hear public schools being blamed for students not passing even the most basic classes, I think maybe we should look at how much effort the student is putting in. I went to school, payed attention, studied, and passed the classes. There were also students who cut school, did not pay attention, did not study, and (surprise surprise) did not pass. It seems very simple to me, each person is responsible for their own success. We just don't like to take responsibility for our own actions (laziness), so we blame the school (laziness). Life is not like private school or home school. You get what you are given in life and you choose to either work hard for success, or be lazy and blame something else for your failure.
As for the people who are choosing not to educate their children at all, I hope they feel good about crippling them for life. Regardless of their opinion about education, it is necessary in our society. The best job you can get without some kind of higher education is at McDonald's. They are sentencing their children to a life of almost certain poverty. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Thank you!
We did a little of everything--public, private, and my brother was homeschooled briefly. I've been to good public schools, bad public schools, good private schools, and bad private schools (just because it's private doesn't mean it's better--one of mine was practically unschooling-for-tuition!). The high school I attended was academically up to par but very rigid; I'm learning disabled so I had a hard time but I did learn what I needed to know to survive in college. None of them were perfect.
I eventually went to a respected private college and graduated without the extra help I could have gotten because of my learning problems. The bottom line was that my parents were clued-in, interested, and made sure I was doing what I needed to be doing. They didn't do my homework for me, but the taught me the processes I needed to do it. Public school teachers have 35 kids in a class--they cannot be parent substitutes.
There isn't any one single problem with America's educational system. It's overwhelmed. We need better teachers, we need better administrators, we need better standards, we probably need fewer tests (although, really, any child who is actually educated should be able to pass them. I was a National Merit Scholar--high SAT's--but I never did any test prep at all) but we also need parents to follow through, pay attention to their children's homework , teach them to sit down and behave in class, read to them, and not start waving a lawsuit around if their child gets busted cheating, cutting class, or causing problems.
I don't even think this is a new problem, only that it becomes more obvious as more and more education is required to make a living. My grandfather made a very solid living with a high-school diploma back in the days when there were non-college and college tracks (he was non-college). It's extremely hard to do that now.
I agree that there are a lot of things kids need to learn by doing. I'm not in favor of loads of homework or disembodied academia (schoolwork without context), but I don't see how one learns algebra by association. Some things require some tedium and discipline.
Parents want the best for their children, but what’s the best way to educate them? Dr. Phil’s guests face off in a debate about whether to school, homeschool or unschool. Dana and her husband, Joe, call themselves radical unschoolers. They say education happens as a side effect of life, and they don’t believe in tests, curriculums or grades. Are their three kids learning what they need to know? Then, RaeAnn says public schools are death traps and wants to homeschool her children. Her husband, Steve, says their kids are safer at school than they are at home. Can this couple reach a compromise? Plus, Nicole feels like an outcast at 26. She says she hated being homeschooled, and couldn’t relate to other kids. Share your thoughts here.
