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Re: Who Is Responsible for Student Achievement?
Posted:
Feb 17, 2012 9:16 PM
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At 01:56 AM 2/17/2012, john wrote:
>When looking at the problem we see the both sides blaming each
>other, when it actually takes both of them for education to work.
>Now as to whose place is it to actually inspire children to learn.
>The obvious choice is the educators, after all why spend that much
>money and that much of your life devoted to education, when you
>can't even encourage learning. If all parents were qualified
>educators, there would be no need for the public school system or
>teachers at all.
>
> As for the parents, their role should not be supplemental, but
> should be a compliment to the teachers role. The parents should not
> take up for teachers "slack", but rather should have more
> communication with teachers and see what and how they are teaching
> the children.
As with OPM (Other People's Money - so easy for politicians, public
schools, and often even corporations to spend), you must be talking
about OPC (Children). Funniest thing about responsible parents, for
some silly reason they want to make sure that their children are
educated. You know, that mammalian instinct to teach offspring to
survive - even thrive - in their environment.
The fact of the matter is, (before we dropped out) I tried very hard
to help support my son's schools and beyond, my local public district
improve its elementary school mathematics program and the committee
was delighted to have a university mathematician participating. As
long as they could use my name and not adopt any of my
recommendations. The same was true in my first state-level function,
a member of a subcommittee of the Credential Commission to assist ETS
to prepare a new test for certification of teachers of mathematics
and to make other recommendations to the Commission itself. I was
the token mathematician of the committee and was trumped in almost
every suggestion that I made. Surprising to me, was that ETS brought
an example of the kind of mathematics competency test they had in
mind complete with items and multiple-choice responses. It was
written by an ABD in mathematics from nearby (for them) Princeton and
my recommendation was to just give them our blessing and go
home. "We" rejected every item suggested and came back with purely
constructivist BS as an "authentic" assessment. That was in late
1988 with the NCTM "Standards" scheduled to come out the following
March. What I did not know was that a draft had been circulating
among these "experts" since 1987 and, if these folks could hardly
wait for the final product, it had to be bad. Of course it was but I
had the privilege of being opposed before it ever came out. The same
crap I had been fighting the math ed folks over for
decades. Fortunately the School of Education was diagonally across
campus and neither of us could throw a hand-grenade that far.
Wayne
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