Answers:
My parents were educators. I remember other parents going to them and asking for their help in trying to improve the educational system in areas where the other parents were dismayed and desperate. I remember they had an enormous uphill battle against an educational establishment.
Now my sister is in education & I hear her saying that everyone is a self proclaimed expert on what works in education and what needs to be done, with a million different groups making demands, and none of them have been to Teacher's College.
Take a look at teacher salaries vs. those in other professions. It is pretty evident that we do not value education. Public servants get the lowest salaries ... we only want people who are dedicated to the work ... what we might get from this strategy is people who are not able to qualify for the better paying jobs, and people who need to find some kind of corruption to put food on their tables.
There needs to be a serious review of the prevailing wage by type of job, and the importance of that job to society. I don't know if anything can be done about that in our form of government and economy, but understanding that will play a role if you want to try to go the route of Home Schooling, Private Schooling, Parochial Schooling, or Public Schooling. Watch out, more money for teacher salaries does not neccessarily solve all the problems.
It is evident to me that people who want to help improve the education of all kids in the system, they need a multi-pronged approach.
* You know that whatever success you have will probably be very slow, so you need to focus on how best to supplement your own kid's education. Do not rely exclusively on the nation's educational system when it comes to educating your kids. But you also need to figure out how to do it so that when they get to some topic in school, they are not bored out of their gourd because you have advanced them beyond their peers.
** Add questions here in YA / categories education ... what to do to help your kids become more knowlegeable in different subjects, and interested in those subjects. For example, there are games which focus around learning geography. Name some that are good for specific age levels. What else, other than games?
* You need to explore groups out there which are interested in helping improve the educational system but are able to work WITH the system & are not at odds with it, like what my family has found ... start maybe with the Parent Teacher's Association (http://www.pta.org/) but do not stop there. Research what other organizations are trying to help the system, and see if any have a mission direction that appeals to you.
http://main.edc.org/theme/schools.asp...
http://www.apqc.org/educ/index.html?gcli...
http://www.actionforhealthykids.org/reso...
http://www.schoolboarddata.org/...
http://imp.sagepub.com/
* Keep an eye on what's going on with your local politics with respect to funding schools, school board ... there may be trends where you need to step in and become politically active on one side
Edit ... comments on Lisa's observation that America learns about America & rest of world learns about rest of world ... my education started in Britain, where British children learned about the British Empire and darn little about any other nation's other than how they interacted with Britain. It wasn't until I got to College and took classes like "The History of Revolution from French Revolution thru Present Day" that I learned much about other nation's histories, and even then it was just in the context of the class.
I learned a lot more about History and Geography outside of academia.
I got active in simulation games. In discussions with other players about simulation game design, we were led into exploring aspects of other nations that are rarely covered by academia. For example, we pretty much only get the part of Russia history where the Germans engineered the Communist Revolution (regime change in Russia) to help them in WW I, but it came back to bite them in WW II and the Cold War.
(in fact if you look at the history of regime change by the USA ... there are scores of times it has been done and usually the result is that it comes back to bite USA just as seriously as the Germany example above)
then there was the interaction between Russia and the West in the Cold War ... we get that in our history in school, but we don't get much about the aftermath, about the need to help the new Democracies, so as to avoid their collapse, and a return to the conditions of the Cold War ... God help us, if there is another, we might not be victorious the next time.
But we don't get history from the Russian perspective ... their Civil War was not a 2 way struggle, but a 3 way, plus they are annoyed with the West for sending in military forces to try to help a side that ended up being one of the losers, and I would not be surprised if that was not part of the fuel that ignited the Cold War. There's just huge chunks of history important to other nations that gets omitted from what is taught in our schools.
Another example of me learning outside of academia, in a discussion group I made the assertion that "Democracies do not war on Democracies" and someone in Canada asserted "Oh Yes? How about the War of 1812 where the USA invaded Canada?" which led me to an education into a part of history that had been omitted from the school systems of both Britain and USA, and then I got interested in how come that part of history is not taught & what other parts of our history are not taught. I believe that this deliberate omission of chunks of our history is extremely dangerous when it comes to future relations with other nations. Other people's have various reasons for hating us. Some of those reasons may be aburd, but some are legitimate.
Well you tricked them by calling it "New England." Nobody would look at a map and think that section is part of the UK.
What countries do you really need to know about in Africa? Egypt, Somalia, Ethiopia...
And how many countries border France? That's sort of tricky. It's like Spain, Andorra, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Germany, Belgium. Right? That's really a tough one.
Get politicians out of the classroom. Morons think the No Child Left Behind thing is working and they haven't set foot in a classroom for over 40 years. Now schools just teach the state's test that tells the government whether teachers are teaching what they are supposed to teach. Which means teaching the test instead of teaching reasoning skills.
Your educational system sucks. yes... but its also a naivety that seems to be infiltrating in the USA. Its as though the rest of the world learns about the rest of the world except for america... they appear to be only concerned about themselves and their own country. its as though nothing exists outside of the american borders... i primarily blame the media however as you have noticed, a major contributor is a lack in literacy.
I guess complaining might help, whether its teachers, principals or even education ministers (I dont know what they are in america, here in australia they are ministers)... but given the amount of abuse that teachers cop and how overworked they already are. and the lack of action that politicians tend to take it may just be wiser to teach them yourself.
Parents need to pay attention to what the kids are being taught, how much they are remembering, and teach them the rest at home. Every situation is a life-learning experience.
This article contents is post by this website user, EduQnA.com doesn't promise its accuracy.
More Questions & Answers...