OK it’s no secret that our public education system sucks. As much as I don’t like our current president (due to polices not race, regardless of what his critics say) but I will say his idea for pushing up education makes more sense than Bush’s cronies No Child Left Behind Act.
Obama is making a push to extend the school year. Now I’m well out of school so this really doesn’t affect me. For those of you currently in school all I have to say is suckers!
I’m not sure if extended the school year will improve our education system much. In fact I’m guessing it won’t. I’m not saying this because I want Obama to fail on this, far from it. I’d love to have the base education level in this country go up. The problem though is money. See schools don’t have enough of it already and keeping them open for longer is going to cost more of it.
We also need more high quality teachers. Of course being teachers don’t make shit for money, because there isn’t any, there is no incentive for many people to enter the teaching career. This is where somebody usually says something about teachers going into their career because they want to teach children. That’s true for those currently in it but there are many out there who want to teach children and be a food provider for their family. These people often decide to go elsewhere since proving for their family is more important than helping other peoples’ children.
I’m certainly not advocating the federal government give more money it doesn’t have to education. I am advocating finding means to help schools raise their own money. Having money would open the doors to better learning materials and faculty. Look at all the best schools in the nation they are private. Why? Because private schools make money and hence can afford to buy materials and pay faculty decent wages (hence they can acquire good teachers).
Another cheap thing we can do to improve education is simple, stop running them like prisons. Morale has a huge impact on the effectiveness of people to perform tasks. If a student has high morale they will generally perform their task of learning better. Nothing kills morale quite as effectively as being treated like a potential criminal at all times. Currently many schools subject children to events such as random drug and weapons searches, all day surveillance, random accusations, and worst of all zero tolerance policies. But probably most destructive of all is the public education system being prejudice against students who think outside the approved lines. Take it from somebody who was heavily pro-gun back in high school, at some point you will be hauled into the principal’s office and be accused of plotting to shoot up the school shortly after a school shooting (in my case it was shortly after Columbine and it was a week of Hell).
Shit I’m on a roll so I’ll throw another improvement in. This one of course would involve money once again as most things do but alas it’s a good idea. We should start teaching children important life skills in school. I’m still surprised at how many of my fellow individuals don’t know how to balance a check book, read a legal contract (and boy is that an important thing to know), be proficient in the use of a computer, fix things around the house (luckily my school had shop classes but many no longer do), and think logically.
Yes there should be seminars (we probably don’t need classes for all of the listed things) on basic things like balancing check books and reading legal contracts. I know I read every line of any contract I sign and I don’t put pen to paper until I understand every clause. Most people don’t and willfully sign away the damnedest of things. I firmly believe there should be classes on basic home repair and maintenance as well as logical thinking. If people knew how to do basic home repairs they would save a fortune. If logical thinking was made important we wouldn’t have to entertain all these illogical arguments like gun control (I knew I could slip that in somewhere).
Simply extending the school day isn’t going to accomplish much. In fact I’m at a loss on how we can afford to extend the school day when most schools are government funded and the government doesn’t have any money.