THE EDUCATION ENIGMA: What Happened To The Public Schools

Ever wonder why public schools don't do a better job? Here's the 2-minute explanation. (Bruce Deitrick Price / Improve-Education.org)
(Music is "Ain't That A Shame" by Fats Domino.)

http://www.improve-Education.org

Category:

Education

Tags:

• literacy
• productivity
• failing
• schools
• educators
• teaching
• Dewey
• social
• engineering
• intellectual
• academic
• liberal
• progressive
• reading
• NEA
• K-12
• whole
• word
• phonics

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

What I advocate is that, starting pre-k, kids are taught the simplest, most basic stuff. Foundational knowledge, that builds and builds without stress or strain. What happens in bad schools is that little is taught, less is retained, and so the students arrive in 10th grade history or whatever, and they don't know the names of oceans or countries. Teachers struggle to teach even the simplest new information. There's no background, no context. Then everybody says, See, it doesn't work.

[MultiSmartass1]

@FireGuyX That's a seperate issue from my initial point which goes to the inherent purpose of the schools. The schools as parent argument is natural outgrowth and component of the mater plan of school: to provide a basic education to workers. However, parents work and would be seperated from their children nonetheless so your point isn't that strong. All you need to know what schools are set up to do as opposed to what people think they are set up to do.

[FireGuyX]

@MultiSmartass1 To say that schools are nothing more then an individuals education is an ignorant statement. The amount of time that a child spends in school is also a persons upbringing. The public schools fail at what they intend to do but instead create negative side affects such as a child being separated from their parents for half the day and taking unnecessary courses. The amount of corruption in public schools would take a whole book to explain.

[MultiSmartass1]

First of all, nothing went wrong with the public schools because nothing was right about them to begin with. The schools are doing what they were intended to do: teaching basic reading and math skills to future farmers and workers. Nothing more or less. The schools have been larded with a bunch of other missions and unfunded and funded mandates. You can't change the schools. Sorry, Charlie.

[squidly1117]

The Core Knowledge program does exactly that.  I'm so thankful we have charter schools in our area teaching Core Knowledge.

[sleeper2345]

Most students are taught traditional facts just like you advocate. Yet, students learn little of this information. Have you ever been in a classroom or worked with teachers? I'm in classrooms all the time and teachers are doing exactly what you advocate. Why doesn't memorizing facts work? Have you read How People Learn?