This is just sad.

Actually I couldn't have found Vietnam on a map. Probably still couldn't. I'm lousy on geography.

Sorry I couldn't resist the Bush jab. I just find it a little ironic that we've got a president who'd never been out of the country before he ran, who couldn't name world leaders and who definitely would have been in the lower percentile in that geography quiz they gave the kids (even though he campaigned on more standardized testing), and one of his supporters is lamenting the fact that we don't have better educated kids. It's not just the education system that stinks -- kids have a poor example in our president, who was a below average student. If he can become president, why study harder?

 

so we should just pick the best student to be our president? i'm much more interested in other qualities for leaders...i've known some pretty book-smart people who couldn't lead a group out of a paper bag...on the other hand, i've known some people who weren't great students but had a certain leadership quality that was hard to deny.

 

I graduated from the joke of a school system New Jersey has this past year.

The only way you can learn in America these days is if you actually want to. Some of the teachers are a complete joke, they don't care if a kid is failing or not, they just collect the money and leave. The dumbass star athletes are given grades to pass through high school so they can keep playing the sports they play in. Half of the kids are sleeping in the class with the teacher not doing **** about it. Then you have the "rebels" that think its "cool" to disrespect and embarrass teachers that actually want them to learn something. Then you have some foreigners that have no clue of what they are doing in a school because they quite simply CANNOT speak the English language.



That leaves the 13% that actually know where Iraq and Iran are.

 

And State requirements, as well as local School Board requirements.

 

Thank you. Thank you very much .

 

After realizing you had NO CLUE of what you were getting into when you decided you wanted to be a teacher, you have two options:

Teach in a school, get off 2 months and various breaks in the middle of the year, while living partly off of your husband's (or wive's) salary.

OR

Flip burgers and live mostly off of your husband's (or wive's) salary.



This is what my cousin went through just this past year, she took the former.

My town failed to reach State Requirements my Junior year. We couldn't watch movies in class during my Senior year. What does that do?

 

I live in the Cy-Fair school district, however ive already decided that if my wife and I finally are able to have a child, that we are going the private school route. I know there are arguements for and against this, plus the cost factor (i am already socking away money for this), but to me, there are too many distractions at a public school that can hinder a child's ability to learn, especially if that child is learning disabled.

Does anyone else feel that the exponential growth of the city's suburbs can effect a child's education?

 

One thing that kind of surprised me when I first came to the US were the news on TV...especially in Houston. Other than CNN, there seemed to be almost NO news about what was going on in the rest of the world. It seemed like local news (someone was killed in my city) had a much higher significance than things going on in the world (1,000,000 people were killed in a civil war somewhere else).

It's understandable to a certain extent because it is human nature, but relatively speaking, the focus on local issues and human interest stories seemed much stronger than in Europe. In Germany, for instance, almost everyone watches the news of the public television station in the evening and there is a balance between national and international topics on there.

I believe in TV potentially having an educating function. If the quality of your TV programming goes down significantly (e.g., dominance of "Ricki Lake" or "Sally Jesse Raphael" (or what her name is) shows), I would think that it will have an impact on your average education level, considering that people watch TV a few hours a day...

 

Its not sad that a young man may not know where he goes to war. Whats sad is that a young man may have to go to war.

 

Clever post. Of course that is much more sad.

But gaining an understanding about other people's countries and cultures can be one of many things that contributes to avoiding war. Just think about all the prejudice in the Arabic world about the USA. If they were better educated and knew all the good sides of the United States' society, history and culture and if they were not indoctrinated by their leaders the way they are, they would probably see things differently. An uneducated society is a breeding ground for preachers of hate.

 

Nice, Stoke.

Jackie, your post underlines another problem with our education system in America: we're taught that we (and our allies) are the only countries in the world which don't employ propoganda against its citizenry. If the Arab world would just watch more American news, they'd love us! Never mind all that aid to Israel...

 

• Only 71 percent of the surveyed Americans could locate on the map the Pacific Ocean, the world's largest body of water.

 

A little bit more on that public vs. private school thing, to me anyway who went through Katy I.S.D. schools, I would put my kids in public education. In the end private or public you only get out what you put in. A kid can sleep in a free class or one his parents are paying tuition for.

Now the arguement becomes what about the negative effects of the environment in a public school? People listen to me, you can't protect your kids frm the outside world! The same idiots in high school will be idiot co-workers and idiot brothers in law 20 years down the road. Public education gives kids the chance to learn how to interact with others and how to handle all types of situations. For god sakes that's how we grow and mature!!!

I knew kids who had the same exact classmates from kindergarten all the way till their graduation. What way is that to teach diversity and people skills? Kids need to interact with different kids, hear their ideas, discuss, argue, fight if need be, but at the same time they're learning and growing.

The worst situation is homeschooling. You take a perfectly normal kid and take them away from everything. Then they have no social life, no friends, miss out on school spirit and sports and all the good school stuff. They become introverted, insecure, and worst of all the get depressed because they are missing out. I saw this happen to my ex and her brother. Homeschooling is the worst.