go back to the time when some freakin genius decided that phonics is a waste of time and dropped it from the curriculum and that would be the time when the education system stopped teaching kids how to read.

many teachers are incompetent (no matter how many people would deny that, it is a fact) since they themselves are the product of this failing education system.

kids are lagging in reading, science, and math skills and not one “expert” in the US know what to do. as long as we keep seeing those Sylvan learning center commercials on TV we’ll know that the education system is still in a downward spiral. whatever Sylvan learning center and other tutorial centers are teaching kids in order to improve their grades should’ve been given to them in school in the first place.

the education system has been on a decline for at least two generations and it all started when the ULTRA-liberals got hold of it. I’m not saying that the education system should turn conservative (I think that would be a mistake), but come on, we all know how idiotic schools are now a days. then add whiny parent to the equation, you know, those parents who think that an hour’s worth of homework is too much for their kids, then you have a failing system that keeps on failing.

my son, had a teacher last year that was so bad every kid in her classroom complained about her. the kids in her classroom didn’t do good at all, yet the school honored her at the end of the school year for gaining some stupid certification. my daughter had an awesome teacher that brought fun and innovation into the classroom and my daughter had straight A’s! yet my daughter’s teacher did not get any recognition after the school year except for the gratitude expressed by parents like me. when will these bad teachers be forced to be accountable for their failures?

bad curriculums, bad teachers, lack of funding, will always, always, create a bad educaton system. want to make it better, weed out the bad teachers, get the union out of the school system, start teaching the basics to kids once again (like phonics, basic math) and stop funding schools through property taxes (that is the most repressive of all taxes whcih takes money from property owners and distributes to non-property owners). fund schools through an income tax and have EVERYONE with income pay for it.

I give Beck credit; he’s pushing the envelope in a news media void. And though his presentation drives me crazy, he makes some valid points.

I have very fond memories of many of my teachers and the extra length they would go to ensure their students learned and contributed to the class.

Thanks for this article, RRRA, it certainly underlines for me that one size never fits all. First Bush and now That One both fundamentally changing our great nation. I find myself saddened at these changes and of course concerned, but more and more I feel helpless to counteract these changes as our Members of Congress don’t seem to listen to us and it is still a long ways to 2010 and the ballot.

He can read a teleprompter – that does NOT a great orator make…

In a single sentence, you painted the still life that is Oblahblah.

My minor was in Philosophy, which didn’t exactly dovetail with Chemistry but certainly helped me separate fact from fiction and spin from truth. If I could have made a decent living at it, I would much rather study epistemology and ontology.

Once I had a colleague who had attended a less traditional college tell me I was putting too many classics on my reading lists, that I should be putting all these “Juvenile Literature” books on instead, about teenagers and their social problems. The buzz word at the time–mid seventies–was “relevance.” They needed supposedly to have their reading relate to their own lives. It was an incredible argument to me since I had grown up reading only classics. I always found something relevant in them, and that is why they became classics. Those juvenile literature books were just too easy to read. Their themes were too obvious–they required no thinking.

Heck I can still remember ninth graders giving reports on things like the medieval morality play “Everyman” and explaining the theological points behind it and its history.

It also made my job as a teacher more enjoyable. As I said once on a post, I finally had to refuse book reports on modern things like Love Story. If I had had to read another report on how “Love is never having to say you’re sorry,” I would have puked.