Obama says longer school days and years will bring the US up to par

By Nicholas Stix

About two hours ago, I made the mistake of visiting an Amazon.com discussion on education, whose title I used for this post.

Initial post: Mar 11, 2009 9:47 AM PDT

Zacksmom says:

I would enjoy reading your thoughts on this proposal from our President.

Currently, our students leave the house at 7:30 a.m. and return at 3:30 p.m. with backpacks filled with homework assignments that (on average) take anywhere from 1-2 hours to complete each evening. Adding this time up, and allowing a full hour for bus ride to and from school room, it seems our students are getting 8-9 hours of "schooling" per day. (40-45 hours per week)

With that being said...is the answer really spending more time in the classroom? Will that really improve our rankings in education as compared with the rest of the world? Will that prevent 20-25% drop out rates? Increase the enrollments in our colleges and continued learning facilities?

Is it really that our children don't spend enough time learning? or is it the cirriculum? or is it lack of focus of our teachers to teach the "3 R's"?

And finally, is it really up to the federal government or the individual states to improve our youth's learning?

Your post, in reply to an earlier post on Mar 25, 2009 8:53 PM PDT
Nicholas Stix says:

Nothing will improve our world educational rankings which, if the Usurper-in-Chief has his way, will further sink. Our world educational rank has sunk, due to our sinking national IQ.

In 1960, when America was 88 percent white and 10 percent black, the national IQ was just under 99. Today, America is 12.3 percent black (85 IQ), 14.2 percent Hispanic (89 IQ), and has at least six million Arabs and South Asians who have a common IQ of about 89. The national IQ is thus now about 96, and dropping like a rock. Our world educational rank is correspondingly dropping.

If "Barack Obama" realizes his dream of importing tens of millions of black Africans with an average IQ of 67-70, and Latins from Indian tribes with IQs even lower than 89 (while keepig out white immigrants), in order to demographically dispossess and politically disenfranchise America's white majority, in 10-20 years, America will be intellectually just another third world country, with an IQ in the 90-92 range.

"Obama's" talk of education reform is just a scam with which to rob the taxpayers of billions more, and transfer the money to his education cadres. In Chicago, when he and domestic terrorist Bill Ayers ran the Annenberg Project, they wasted $159 million on a school reform which failed to boost test scores not one iota. Of course, they couldn't boost IQs; no one can. But they weren't interested in boosting test scores. For "Obama," the schools exist for the political indoctrination of children, the rewarding of comrades, and the punishing of patriots.

In reply to an earlier post on Mar 25, 2009 8:54 PM PDT
K. Skerpon says:

As a high school teacher of 5 years I totally agree. Accountability is so key. I teach in a Catholic high school so obviously I approach this from a different perspective, but ultimately parents are children's first and primary educators. If a parent doesn't value education - shown through attentiveness to the student's grades, encouragement to do better (we can always improve), and support of the teacher - then why should the kids? Are there bad teachers, sure, of course - just like there are bad doctors, bad lawyers, bad police, bad office managers, etc. However, when a bad experience with one teacher turns into a parent never supporting the teacher and always believing that their child is in the right, that is a problem.

I had one parent who refused to believe that their child wasn't turning in any homework and accused me of throwing their students' work out. Why would I do that? Instead I was able to get the child to "come clean" about it, that they weren't turning in any homework, and the parent still said that they could no longer trust me because the situation had even occurred.

Regarding homework, I will 100% agree that busy work is a waste of time and unfortunately some teachers use it too much. However, not all homework is busy work and studies have again and again showed that in many subjects (such as math, many sciences, and even arts like music - it's called practice) is the key to long term mastery. And repetition needs to happen on many levels, thus homework. For example, if my math teacher husband never gave homework and instead had all that repetition happening in the classroom.. 1) he would not be actively teaching, which is something that many posters have complained about, 2) he physically could not cover all the topics required by state and federal exams, and 3) students could not work on differentiated assignments (meeting them at their learning level) that homework allows. Homework is a necessary part of education.

Finally, when parents comment to their children that "teachers are people who couldn't do anything else, so they became teachers" what do you think that does to the authority of the teacher? Until teachers are respected as professionals, and payed as such, no amount of planning and active learned is going to change the situation. We respect doctors, lawyers, etc. because of the valued work they do - and they are justly compensated and given esteem for the amount of education that it takes to hold that position. If we treated teachers the same than perhaps the results would reflect that.

Nicholas Stix says:

K. Skerpon: "Finally, when parents comment to their children that `teachers are people who couldn't do anything else, so they became teachers' what do you think that does to the authority of the teacher?"

NS: American parents said the same thing, back when American education ranked higher in the world than it now does.

KS: "Until teachers are respected as professionals, and payed [sic] as such, no amount of planning and active learned [sic] is going to change the situation. We respect doctors, lawyers, etc. because of the valued work they do - and they are justly compensated and given esteem for the amount of education that it takes to hold that position. If we treated teachers the same than [sic] perhaps the results would reflect that."

NS: Unless they are my students or writers whose work I am editing, I don't usually point out people's writing errors, but when someone identifies herself as a teacher and a "professional," I make an exception.

Prior to the hyperbole that set in circa 1980, there were only four "professions": Doctor, lawyer, clergyman and architect. Do you really believe that the average teacher is intellectually on a par with the average doctor or lawyer? Many public school teachers are semi-literate; in many urban districts, the overwhelming majority are racist ignoramuses who often come to school unprepared, and teach their charges insane nonsense.

In the matter of pay, if the government suddenly increased teacher salaries several fold, to reach parity with doctors, how would the results reflect that? Would semi-literate teachers suddenly become literate? Would racist ignoramuses suddenly become tolerant lovers of knowledge? How would such alchemy take place? It can't be that the semi-literate, racist ignoramuses would be fired and replaced with scholars, because the former are overwhelmingly blacks and Hispanic, and would sue and win; and urban schools would not hire the latter, because they would be overwhelmingly white, with a few Asians thrown in.

KS: "However, when a bad experience with one teacher turns into a parent never supporting the teacher and always believing that their child is in the right, that is a problem.

"I had one parent who refused to believe that their child wasn't turning in any homework and accused me of throwing their students' work out. Why would I do that? Instead I was able to get the child to `come clean' about it, that they weren't turning in any homework, and the parent still said that they could no longer trust me because the situation had even occurred."

NS: Your description of the specific case does not support your description of the general problem. How could a parent justify not trusting you, based solely on your having caught his child lying to him? The parent didn't have a bad experience with you, he had a bad experience with his child. The rational response would be for the parent to distrust his child. If your description holds, the parent was lying, and simply rationalizing his own hostility and lack of morality.

Readers interested in obtaining a more accurate picture of what ails American education are invited to read my chapter on it in the following free report.

http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/publications/?b=sowa07

In reply to your post on Mar 25, 2009 9:59 PM PDT
Legendary Swordsman says:

Holy f*** you are one dumb person. I think you are dropping the nations average IQ.

To which I responded:

I can’t possibly compete at your level of wit and erudition. You must be either a school administrator or a tenured professor of teacher ed.