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Trish
SFN Addict
USA
2102 Posts |
Posted - 12/14/2008 : 19:56:51 [Permalink]
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How much is based on funding and how much is also based on parent involvement in their child's education.
My daughter and I lived in several areas where the schools were underfunded. However, I pushed teachers to challenge her in course work. From her 2nd grade teacher who considered her reading at too high a level to even bother trying to challenge her and she also didn't consider that a girl really needed to be challenged in math. I actually had to get the principle to give me course work from a higher grade level and I had her work on that with me at home.
I've seen parents in poorer school districts pull their students out of class for a vacation of 6 weeks in the middle of the year. This does a great disservice to the child in setting back their education. Also, I've watched parents drag their children to go shopping at 2200 rather than allowing them to get a good nights sleep for the following school day.
If education is important to the parents, parents will do what is necessary, despite the school system, to educate their child. I helped my daughter understand science through purchasing those little books that suggest various kitchen experiments and allowing her access to my college texts on science at an extremely young age. I even purchased a lot of pens because she broke them so she could see what pigments were used in creating the inks. She also used most of my coffee filters for those experiments. But rather than getting upset I encouraged her interest in science.
I think we expect too much of someone who only has about 6 hours contact over five days (30 hours a week) if we as parents do not take an interest in their progress. If parents don't care about education then the likelihood that the child will care about there education is small. They after all take more of their cues about life from us than from a teacher.
Oh, and as for a Catholic education, I had one as well. I think I would rather have gone to the public school, simply because the other children in the school were cruel once they found out that my parents were not paying full tuition. Additionally, private schools are not necessarily equipped to notice or teach to unseen disabilities. My brother was not diagnosed with dyslexia until attending public school as a high school student. So there are drawbacks to both forms of education. One might think that parents willing to spend the extra to send their child to a private school actually care about education, where parents who consider school as 6 hours a day without their child a relief may not. Let's not forget to take responsibility for our own views on education. |
...no one has ever found a 4.5 billion year old stone artifact (at the right geological stratum) with the words "Made by God."
No Sense of Obligation by Matt Young
"Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith. I consider the capacity for it terrifying and vile!"
Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
They (Women Marines) don't have a nickname, and they don't need one. They get their basic training in a Marine atmosphere, at a Marine Post. They inherit the traditions of the Marines. They are Marines.
LtGen Thomas Holcomb, USMC
Commandant of the Marine Corps, 1943
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 12/14/2008 : 20:08:45 [Permalink]
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| Indeed, most of the education's role will fall on the parents (kudos, by the way, you seem like you did a great job with your kid). Unfortunately, it is not easy to have a policy to improve the quality of parenting so we should focus on having every school offering the best quality of teaching possible to their students. |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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Trish
SFN Addict
USA
2102 Posts |
 Posted - 12/15/2008 : 15:10:34 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Simon
Indeed, most of the education's role will fall on the parents (kudos, by the way, you seem like you did a great job with your kid). Unfortunately, it is not easy to have a policy to improve the quality of parenting so we should focus on having every school offering the best quality of teaching possible to their students.
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Agreed - but again there is only so much that a teacher (even a great teacher) can do when they only have the child for approximately 30 contact hours per week. |
...no one has ever found a 4.5 billion year old stone artifact (at the right geological stratum) with the words "Made by God."
No Sense of Obligation by Matt Young
"Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith. I consider the capacity for it terrifying and vile!"
Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
They (Women Marines) don't have a nickname, and they don't need one. They get their basic training in a Marine atmosphere, at a Marine Post. They inherit the traditions of the Marines. They are Marines.
LtGen Thomas Holcomb, USMC
Commandant of the Marine Corps, 1943
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Robb
SFN Regular
USA
1223 Posts |
Posted - 12/17/2008 : 12:13:22 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Trish
Originally posted by Simon
Indeed, most of the education's role will fall on the parents (kudos, by the way, you seem like you did a great job with your kid). Unfortunately, it is not easy to have a policy to improve the quality of parenting so we should focus on having every school offering the best quality of teaching possible to their students.
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Agreed - but again there is only so much that a teacher (even a great teacher) can do when they only have the child for approximately 30 contact hours per week.
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I agree. I have a child in 1st grade and two things I have noticed:
The kids in her class that are doing well have heavy parent involvement, the children that are having problems (academic and behavioral) have little parent involvement. It does not matter how great a teacher is, what matters alot is the family life of the child. The two years that my parents were having problems and got a divorce were the worst two years academically of my life. |
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. - George Washington |
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Bill scott
SFN Addict
USA
2103 Posts |
Posted - 12/17/2008 : 13:22:21 [Permalink]
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| My wife and I have been looking at schools for our oldest daughter, who will start kindergarten next spring. We have looked at public schools, private schools and home schooling. We have not made any decisions as of yet but I would say that we are leaning toward public schools at this time. One conclusion I did come to is that parents play the biggest role in any child's education. A good point was made about teachers only having your kid 6 hours a day, 5 days a week for maybe 36 weeks, or so, out of the year. And this time is divided up among the 20-35 kids who are in the class so even the best teachers are limited in how much they can impact each individual children, and that's where the parents come in. My final conclusion was that a privately educated child who's parents treated the school more as a day care stood a much lesser chance at "success" then the student who attended a "lesser quality" public school but had parents, such as some here, who were heavily involved in the whole education process of their child. Just my two cents. |
"Lets get one thing clear, Bill. Science does make some assumptions." -perrodetokio-
"In the end as skeptics we must realize that there is no real knowledge, there is only what is most reasonable to believe." -Coelacanth-
The fact that humans do science is what causes errors in science. -Dave W.-
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 12/18/2008 : 10:31:43 [Permalink]
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| You certainly are right Bill. There is only so much that even a great teacher can do. And, unfortunately for equality, great teachers tend to be recruited to private of higher end public schools... |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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Bill scott
SFN Addict
USA
2103 Posts |
Posted - 12/18/2008 : 11:16:00 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Simon
You certainly are right Bill. There is only so much that even a great teacher can do. And, unfortunately for equality, great teachers tend to be recruited to private of higher end public schools...
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We make a comfortable but modest living. We could afford private school but it would be huge sacrifice in the finance department. We have not made any final decisions yet but I think our conclusion will end up being that there are several "good" public schools in our area and in conjuncture with hands on parents the public schools can provide a quality and enriching education. The public schools are not a tax provided day care center and any parent who treats them as such their child, I believe, will show this. My two cents, again. |
"Lets get one thing clear, Bill. Science does make some assumptions." -perrodetokio-
"In the end as skeptics we must realize that there is no real knowledge, there is only what is most reasonable to believe." -Coelacanth-
The fact that humans do science is what causes errors in science. -Dave W.-
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 12/18/2008 : 11:29:34 [Permalink]
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| I really know little about American public schools but it'd seems to me that a good public school would be good enough, especially at an earlier age, as Trish mentioned, parents have a bigger role than teachers. |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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Trish
SFN Addict
USA
2102 Posts |
Posted - 12/18/2008 : 14:49:09 [Permalink]
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| In kindergarten and first grade, Cait attended an excellent school and had excellent teachers. In some school districts (if you don't mind providing transport) you can actually choose a different school through open enrollment to get a better education. Again, you know your child best, and you know what abilities your child has, i.e., their reading level, understanding of mathematics, etc. Keep it fun, and see what there is today to assist you in education. There are some excellent video games coming out now. Especially for the Wii. http://www.arcademicskillbuilders.com/ |
...no one has ever found a 4.5 billion year old stone artifact (at the right geological stratum) with the words "Made by God."
No Sense of Obligation by Matt Young
"Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith. I consider the capacity for it terrifying and vile!"
Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
They (Women Marines) don't have a nickname, and they don't need one. They get their basic training in a Marine atmosphere, at a Marine Post. They inherit the traditions of the Marines. They are Marines.
LtGen Thomas Holcomb, USMC
Commandant of the Marine Corps, 1943
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Machi4velli
SFN Regular
USA
854 Posts |
Posted - 03/27/2009 : 02:36:07 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by the seeker
Yes, you have a good point there, but I never said that it was the school system itself. In the first post in this topic, I actually stated that it was the government.
Where do the taxes go to? The state government.
The way they make it work is that the better the property, the more taxes you have to pay. The more taxes you pay, the better your school is.
Once again, everything seems to come down to money. And they say that public education is free of charge too...that it's open to "everyone". But really, if you don't have enough money to buy the property in a certain prosperous area and pay the taxes that come with it....then you don't get the good education.
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I agree that school systems have problems, but I am not sure there is any evidence that they were set up with the intent to "keep the rich rich and the poor poor." I think it has more to do with local economic and cultural factors. In larger cities, I think the problem has a lot to do with the structure of local governments.
Since the inner-cities tend to have a denser, poorer population, they can become entrenched. The few people who are able to be successful tend to move into the suburbs and then begin paying taxes to the suburb's government, which makes it tough for the inner-cities to improve because they lose the taxes from the successful former-residents.
A few cities have restructured their local governments to combat this. Instead of a city with its government and suburbs with their individual governments, they have created metro governments to pool the funds of a city and its suburbs to pay for the costs of education and other services.
This seems like a good idea to me because it reduces the burden of high infrastructure costs in the city by having people living in suburbs pay for some of it (which makes sense in a way because they do gain benefits from the city, whether they work there or go there for entertainment, etc.) |
"Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."
-Giordano Bruno
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge."
-Stephen Hawking
"Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable"
-Albert Camus |
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Education = class struggles
