Education vs. Prison
Posted by Texas Education on March 5, 2009
Wow, I’m actually agreeing with Kathleen Parker more and more, ever since she said Palin was out of her league last year. Now she has written an article about how we need to improve our schools or else spend it on prisons later. Which is what I’ve been saying for years now.
I keep yelling from the roof tops of how teachers will teach under the worst conditions, they will teach no matter what. I taught technology applications with no computers, no books, not even a computer for myself until the second semester. I never did really get computers. Oh, yeah, I got about a dozen, but they didn’t accept flash drives, would freeze up and I didn’t even have proper outlets to plug them up. I tried, I asked, but they have placed tech apps in never never land, no one but the principal to go to. Oh…and internet… forget about it.
It would be nice if teachers got the supplies they needed, decent furniture, enough books so kids didn’t have to share, or even get books at all, like moi. It would be nice if they even got the recognition they deserve. Lord knows I’d love to see “real” technology in the classrooms. I know, there are groups and committees that give them the kudos they deserve, but the average Joe still doesn’t get it. Really!!
samuelcyrus said
Actually, parental involvement and outstanding teaching dramatically trump anything else. As to pencils and pens and paper, my suggestion is to dramatically reduce administrative expenses and pay only teachers with the teachers and parents together deciding who ‘the boss of the year’ is. Always interesting to me is that teachers educate their children outside of public schools at a far higher percentage than ‘the great unwashed’ like me. So, Obama and Clinton can take their kids to $20,000 Friends School but poor people can’t take theirs out of failing schools. I would suggest reading one of Ben Carson’s book or perhaps Outliers and some of Malcolm Gladwell’s blogs. The only beneficiaries under the current educational system are administrators and the teachers unions. Really.