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What's happened to school?

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I'm seriously considering home education for my youngest child. We already have an older child, who's gone partly through the education system. The thing is, they are far enough apart in age (7 years) for us to notice a marked change in the quality of education being received from our local school.

They just seem to have given up.

By that I mean, the standards of teaching have dropped, their attitude is one of not caring, and I'm seriously concerned that this is going to impact my daughter's level of knowledge, and basic foundation learning.

The lessons are focused almost entirely on maths and english, to the exclusion of everything else. I'm asking myself, where's the art, where's the science. Music? Forget it.

Basically they've managed to suck out all the joy of learning, and reduce school to a dry, boring treadmill.

My daughter this morning broke down in hysterics at the prospect of going to school, and this is the culmination of a lot of physical problems, which I'm pretty sure is due to anxiety.

So I don't know if this is just us, or a general downturn in educational standards, but I'm pretty convinced at this point, that we could do a better job at home.

Any other experiences or observations on the subject, either UK or US based, feel free to comment.
 
I think music programs were the first to go, probably sometime in the mid-1970s.
This is the first time I've heatd of sience progams being cut.
I think arts is part of the music thing going away.
They still teach geography don't they?

I'm guessing we're talking about public schools in the US?
 
Ultimately, it is us as parents who have shot ourselves in the foot. My answer is US based but I am going to believe it happens nearly everywhere. Everyone wants lower taxes. However, what many folks seem to forget is what we actually get out of those taxes we pay. Here in Wisconsin our governor, in his infinite wisdom, cut taxes here by gutting another 100 million out of the education budget. His reasoning is that the schools need to learn to work on a leaner budget. Fair enough if the budget was ridiculous to begin with but it wasn't. His constituents scream for lower taxes, he complies, and our education system suffers. We have already had a long history of low teacher wages, schools having to have fund raisers just for basics, and any negotiating power for better has been completely removed. When a school faces even tighter budgets they are forced to choose between math and band, science or art, english or social skills, etc. Education, in my opinion, is the top item we should always account for in any budget since we are trying to make productive and responsible citizens to take the reins from us as we age out.
It is common practice for teachers to buy school supplies out of their own meager wages in order to cover students from less well to do families, work with text books that are badly out of date and in poor shape, and often have little help from parents in trying to guide their children into adult life. I wanted to be a teacher many years ago but seeing what a teacher has to put up with these days has thoroughly squashed that desire. (This coming from one of the problem children my teachers had to put up with) We ask our teachers to teach our children properly the things they need to know to get through life and yet we remove the resources for them to do so. A painter can't paint without painting supplies. A carpenter can't build without tools and wood. A teacher can't teach without the necessary tools to do so. We pay our political representatives and leaders outrageous amounts of money to accomplish very little. It's time to put our investments where they belong... educating our children BEFORE we turn over this mess we made to their control.

Sorry about the soap box diatribe but this has been a hot topic with me for many years
 
In the U.S. the solution to every problem is to throw money at it until funding is the problem and everyone forgets what the original issue was.

My sister-in-law and her husband (retired) are both teachers. They spent their entire careers teaching at a private Catholic high school even though they could have made considerably more money in the state system. We sent our son to Catholic school rather than into the public system. While it probably cost us close to $40k in tuition, a good education is certainly worth it (and seems to be paying off). Nuns .... gotta love them. ;)

Public schools in this part of the world ... city schools have to deal with large numbers of poverty level kids and the issues they bring. They have language barrier problems, supply shortages and security issues. Finding decent teachers to work in that environment is tough. Suburban schools are overcrowded and caught up in the quagmire of political correctness that teaching anything beyond 1+1 is challenging.
 
Zigman66 said:
I would think geography would be hard to teach these days. Seems countries keep changing their names. Every globe I see these days has country names that don't exist anymore
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Actually I think Geography would be a very interesting subject to teach at a young age. It's not just about countries and capitals, it's about the environment. Which reminds about something that happened at school recently. They took the kids on a "field trip" to apparently learn about "habitats". What actually happened was that the class went to a local playground, and were told to look for rubbish (of all things!) in the environment. Now I ask you, what springs to mind when I say the word habitats? Is it by any chance, observing animals in their natural environments. I'm not expecting an African safari excursion, but there are local places which allow observation of animals. Why not take the kids to one of these places? Would be a lot more interesting for them.

Anyway, the net result of their "field trip" was basically a session in the playground for the kids. What the hell did they learn about habitats from that? It's things like this that lead me to conclude that it's just about a box ticking exercise for the school, to satisfy an inspection request from the local authorities. It's lazy on the part of the school/teachers, and achieves nothing useful in terms of the kids education. Lazy, couldn't care less attitude, and a waste of time!
 
dontpanicbobby said:
They learned bad kids litter and play. Good kids don't litter and they cleanup if they see it. Was that a kindergarten class?
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No, this is a class of 8 year olds.

lunatic59 said:
I would be more inclined to believe it was some sort of indoctrination into politically correct environmental activism than apathy.
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Possibly, and let's hope nobody picks up a used bottle of Novichok ;)
 
Well it's bye bye to primary school, and we've withdrawn our child from state education, to do home schooling. We realised that the teachers either a) can't cope or b) don't care, when we got told our daughter was "on target", but doesn't know any of the times tables except 2 and 10. I checked the National Curriculum, and a statutory target for this age is that the kids should know by heart, all times tables up to 12. I asked myself, if she hasn't got this basic building block, what else is she missing? So even though they've reduced subjects to Maths and English, they can't even teach those correctly!
Homework books not marked, spelling tests not given (after learning the words), rubbish variety of subjects, and boring the kids to death. The list of grievances goes on and on. We've had enough. We can and will do a better job ourselves, and we won't be following the pile of crap that is the National Curriculum. Encourage creativity, science, music, and proper field trips. Let's get some enjoyment back into learning!
 
in early 80s.. i started school in the catholic sys.. to about 3rd grade.
studied a little... made Bs and Cs....

then went to public school because we moved....
made straight As.. and not even tryin too hard!

fast forward...
my daughter is now starting 9th grade..
in public education...in all honors classes.
the teachers push and challenge the students.
always has lots of homework. making mostly As... one or two Bs a year.

when she takes an elective.. they are in classes with "normal" teachers.
Spanish 2nd year...
it is Night and Day.. the teachers dont care.
help students to pass. makes it super easy.
you have to work to fail the class!

this is what is wrong with our schools.
bad teachers... they dont care. punching the clock till retirement.
bad policies... no child left behind!!!!!!!

the children that shine.. if the school has the funds.. they help polish them. top 10%
the rest are just cattle moved through the system. 90%
these are just lost in the flow. many can be polished and motivated to more.

of the bottom 50%... there is no hope.. :(
this is a very scary section.... this is a huge problem for the future.
i think that most can be fixed with good educational resource and motivation.

Betsy Devos.. is a huge barrier to fix our problem
she is robbing our kids future...
killing the USA potential to stay at the top.
 
3rd grade then. You can fill that gap without taking her out of the system.
I am not trying to tell you how to raise your child. Never think that!
Have you talked with the Teachers? Dad's don't usually like to do that.
 
dontpanicbobby said:
3rd grade then. You can fill that gap without taking her out of the system.
I am not trying to tell you how to raise your child. Never think that!
Have you talked with the Teachers? Dad's don't usually like to do that.
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Oh yes, believe me I've talked with the teachers. Including directly asking why she has gaps in her understanding (didn't get a satisfactory answer there). I don't mess about, I'm very direct when it comes to things like this.
I don't want to bore you with the details, but there are lots of reasons why this is the right thing to do. We have an educational path for her, which will work out much better than the traditional school route. We've got a good track record of this with my eldest, who's just achieved top exam grades. She didn't go through the traditional school route, but did attend further education college to do her exams. Not many people know about the college option at that age (15), and stick with mainstream school. Let me just say, the local school is way over subscribed. They don't have enough teachers, and they run the place like a business. it's not good.
 
dontpanicbobby said:
You can fill that gap without taking her out of the system.
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But why should there be gaps Bobby? We send our kids to school to get a good, and complete education, in accordance with the National Curriculum. But aside from the fact that they don't appear to be teaching things correctly (must be very difficult with a classroom of 30 kids). I also don't believe that the kids are getting a varied learning experience. There's no music. There's very little art/craft. There's not really any science. We can provide all these things at home (both me and my Wife are musical). We have learning materials that explore science, geography etc. And also, my daughter is quite creative, she likes to make up stories. They seem to be getting virtually no time to do story writing at school.
Gosh I'm rambling now.
 
Well I can only talk about my ancient school experience. But I never met a teacher who didn't help a student who asked. Granted I went through the Parochial experience. Never did Public.
 
I have a few friends who are teachers, and now school principal as well as two family members (in-laws) who were high school teachers their whole career. I can't make sweeping generalizations about teachers because I've known some outstanding, highly dedicated and caring teachers and some who should be selling shoes at the mall, instead of having contact with impressionable minds. There are good public schools and bad ones, but the general consensus here is that if you throw money at a problem you can fix it (or at least make it better.) That philosophy IMHO is what makes things worse.

I'm just glad we had the option of private (Catholic) school and we could afford to send our son there.

I will say that when I went to public school, I got a decent education ... because of the good teachers and in spite of the bad ones, but then I always liked learning, so when it was left to me, I made it work for me. It's the less motivated students who are really shortchanged by the teachers just out for a paycheck.
 
And, I will add that I came from an educated family ... Father had his degree from Princeton and Mother from Moore College of Art in Philadelphia. There was no shortage of intelligent discussion and exposure to a wide variety of subjects from a very early age. Mom made sure we not only completed our work but found some fun in doing it. Dad was a [censored by my therapist].
 
dontpanicbobby said:
Well I can only talk about my ancient school experience. But I never met a teacher who didn't help a student who asked. Granted I went through the Parochial experience. Never did Public.
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But some kids aren't inclined to ask for help, even when they're struggling. It's entirely dependent on the individual. Mainstream school may be ok for most kids, but not for everyone. In particular, kids with anxiety issues, and autistic tendencies will really benefit from some more focused and tailored learning experience. Classroom teachers really don't have the time to do this.

lunatic59 said:
I will say that when I went to public school, I got a decent education ... because of the good teachers and in spite of the bad ones, but then I always liked learning, so when it was left to me, I made it work for me. It's the less motivated students who are really shortchanged by the teachers just out for a paycheck.
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I'm really not blaming the teachers, I do believe most of them want to do a good job. I'm blaming the system, the silly curriculum, and government introducing excessive testing and assessment. To me it just seems to get in the way the important job of actually teaching.
 
lunatic59 said:
I think a good many teachers would agree with you. :(
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The ironic thing is, that a lot of the prescribed methods to be used in maths at this age, are pretty much irrelevant when it comes to the stage of taking the important exams at age 16. We're going to bin most of that stuff (but not all), and focus on the important basics - starting with times tables, and the relationship of multiplying and dividing. She's not grasped important ideas like this.
 
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