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Topic: parents: roll of educators?
| Author | Message |
| PluckyPane | Posted – 4/28/2008 11:05:40 AM | show profile whew. it's brutal in current events and tv this morning. anyhoo, i was surprised when i was talking to my step daughter this weekend that the school was "restructuring" their curricula for fall 08 to accommodate a new football program. yeah, i'm all for sports, but taking money away from the basics? the pta is going to open up the killed classes as a fee-based elective if enough have the interest. so if i want my daughter to take economics, i have to pay for it, but other subjects like calculus will still be required. we're still waiting to hear when a public meeting will be held for parents. i'm in awe that economics could ever be an elective. gym is required. philosophy is required. is their aim to graduate heady philosophers who have no concept of money? this is a capitalistic society for cristssakes! no wonder these kids get into credit card hell in college! thank god we're teaching her money management and investing at home. |
| Louisewasnothalfbad | Posted – 4/28/2008 1:32:38 PM | show profile Roll of educators? Like a loaf? |
| PluckyPane | Posted – 4/28/2008 1:53:32 PM | show profile lol. typos happen to the best of us. ROLE |
| rhino writer | Posted – 4/28/2008 2:48:01 PM | show profile I was talking to an art curator at an Ivy League school last week, and she was astonishing me with stories of her colleages' utter ignorance of anything relating to economics or even how our economy actually works. And these are people who are the cream of the crop in many other matters. Horrifying. |
| noname1234 | Posted – 4/28/2008 2:51:11 PM | show profile What kind of school does your stepdaughter go to -- high school? College? public? private? I've never heard of a public high school with philosophy as a required course! If it is a public HS, good for them! |
| PluckyPane | Posted – 4/28/2008 3:56:03 PM | show profile woah.....no money for education? oh no, there's money. it's just paying for obscene salaries for administrators and going to the school sports programs. come on. with the new bs ratio that there are one teacher for every 18 students instead of 20 or 24, it creates jobs, pensions, and more expenses for the tax payers. you and i probably had 25 kids in our classes....how bad did we turn out? teachers in my district negotiated a 7% increase in their salaries. 7%! i won't even get into what the athletic director is making. the middle school has an athletic director! why?? and yes, philosophy in this district was added as a req in 06. while it's nice that my step daughter will be well rounded and moral (which is what we as parents are supposed to teach her), it's really stupid that she won't know anything about how the world of money works. maybe in a few days i'll cool off about this. |
| voracious reader | Posted – 4/28/2008 7:06:34 PM | show profile Time to suggest a book.... Beer and Circuses by Indiana University professor Murray Sperber. When the book was published a few years ago, there were many a death threats against the brave professor! Real eye opener! |
| writesonwater | Posted – 4/29/2008 1:28:43 AM | show profile | email poster As the wife of an educator and a sometime education writer, I'd have to say most American schools and educators are doing a great job of educating a very socioeconomically diverse generation. In the U.S., everyone gets an education. Granted it's better in some places. I think efforts to teach morals etc. may be a response to some of the terrible news about bullies and kids without scruples, while a renewed emphasis on phys ed is a response to American homes turning out chunky latchkey kids who sit in front of the TV/computer/video game in lieu of family involvement or good babysitter. I'd definitely say economics is an essential. But afterschool programs that keep kids active and supervised would be a big step in the right direction. I'd also like to see SAT/standardized test prep courses essential for kids who are passing, and tutoring courses essential for those who are not. For people with as much education as they have, teachers are not lavishly paid. With an increased emphasis on accountability, administrators are under a lot of pressure and their salaries are modest for their doctoral-level educations compared the huge amounts lavished upon their counterparts in industry. That said, there are some real dud educators out there, and if school systems weren't so desperate for educators, they wouldn't find a place at the chalkboard, living proof that good teachers aren't overpaid because they're in short supply. Also, it is certainly the parents' role to teach checkbooks, morals, love of reading, early literacy, and to help their child develop their gifts. I had someone tell me recently that it wasn't normal for parents to do all those things. Bull, I say. ------ http://writingporch.blogspot.com/ http://jlouiselarson.blogspot.com/ http://familyrootsandwings.blogspot.com/ |
| voracious reader | Posted – 4/29/2008 8:55:07 AM | show profile Also worth mentioning is Washington Post education reporter Jay Mathews' column Class Struggle. Published each Monday, he gives a provactive view of education. Likewise he also has a message board directed at college admissions called "Admissions 101." PluckyPane, Jay loves hearing from parents. He'll often directly answer your questions. Why not send him your "rant" and hear what he has to say? You never know, you might end up in one of his columns! By the way, if you're referring to primary education, I wholeheartedly agree with writesonwater! While my oldest son was lucky enough to take an elective class in high school called "Money and Investments," my younger too have depended on my husband and me to explain the role of the Federal Reserve Bank Chairman and how he influences their ability to become home owners. Likewise, I purchased David Bach's book, "The Automatic Millionaire" for my oldest son and it became his bible. At 26 he's self sufficient and living in his OWN home. Regarding higher education, Murray Sperber and a few other authors like him have been questioning the role of sports at universities. I know first hand how poisionous sports can become since my oldest was at Indiana University during the Bobby Knight controversy. He asks in his book wouldn't you rather see money invested in research labs and hiring more full time professors than building a new sports arena and hiring coaches at a half a million a pop? I've always said that more important than my investment in my home was my investment in my children's education. PluckyPane, whatever you do, don't give up! Keep asking questions and demand answers. Keep us posted!!! And by all means -- contact Jay! |
| PluckyPane | Posted – 4/29/2008 5:34:22 PM | show profile voracious, thanks for the reads. i will check them out. as for teachers, my argument never once went toward the quality of who is teaching. i'll applaud teachers for working very hard for those 10 months, but i'll have to leave it at that. but i am truly irritated with the administration. if you were a kid and you were asked if you wanted to take philosophy or economics, which would you take? duh. but it's cool. i'm going to teach her economics and investing on my own. but it does blow my mind that kids are expected to learn how to save for retirement from their parents. money isn't exactly openly discussed at home, but it is in our home. i pity the kids whose parents don't know enough about money or just don't care. that kid needs an impetus to want to do better than their parents. |
| reporterwriter | Posted – 4/29/2008 9:29:28 PM | show profile >>i'll applaud teachers for working very hard for those 10 months, but i'll have to leave it at that. << I'll applaud teachers for working hard all year round. It takes a lot of dedication to go into a profession where the salary doesn't meet the cost of living and where you're saddled with doing so much for 30 kids that parents can't/don't/won't do anymore. (It's 30 here, not 18.) The old argument that teachers are paid so little because they only work 10 months of the year doesn't wash anymore. Teachers have always used the remaining two months to continue teaching, to take grad courses and to pick up a little pocket change on the kind of job you can get for two months, like delivering pizzas. (IMO, as a society we don't show teachers enough respect for the responsibility we give them!) |
| PluckyPane | Posted – 4/30/2008 2:56:15 PM | show profile i'm not going to debate teachers' salaries, but i will tell you that a new grad teacher in my town starts at $41,500 and includes tuition reimbursement for those career-enhancing classes you claim they take. gee, that doesn't seem too bad considering the starting salary of a police officer in the same said town is under $31,000 and the librarian, with a fucking required master's degree, is making $34,000, and they have to work nights and weekends. when's the last time a cop had off on christmas eve let alone a week off at easter or passover? but again, my beef is with the school administration. |
| Enigma418 | Posted – 4/30/2008 6:04:46 PM | show profile Ok, that struck a nerve. My wife is a librarian and I can tell you for a FACT that her day does not just end when she leaves work. She may get paid for 37.5 hours per week, but she works more like 50. Between municipal and county meetings, library committee meetings, school board, and The Friends of the Library planning meetings, all on her own time, I think she deserves a bit of a better salary too. The mayor and the chief school adminstrator call her regularly at home. She is also required to allocate a certain amount of her budget to purchasing books that the school doesn't seem to be able to afford. And she is expected to develop excellent programing for not only the very young patrons through storytime and craft time, but also to develop interesting and well-attended library programs for adults of all ages and market them. And just in case she had a little bit of time left over, she also does community outreach to advocate the importance of library use as more and more people think they are EXPERTS at research because they can type google.com. I won't even go into database management, vendor relations, book ordering, weeding, collection management, dealing with the public who wants everything for free, and maintaining the internet computers that some kid put another new virus on as a prank. One Sunday we went in to scrap the gum off the bottom of chairs and desks. All that and she hasn't gotten a raise in 3 years because she's not union and the tax payers keep voting the library budget increase down. So if you think librarians are NOT educators and only little gray-haired ladies who check out your books, you are the one who is mistaken. Plucky, if you want your kid to learn about economics, go visit your library. I bet your branch manager is a genius at balancing the ever-decreasing budget. |
| PluckyPane | Posted – 5/2/2008 1:08:41 PM | show profile interesting link about money and education: http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/HomeMortgageSavings/WhyGenerationYIsBroke.aspx#pageTopAnchor |
