Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Hey Rick! Your opinion on a Hot Topic in California.

Stetson's comments don't deserve a reply.

I almost forgot another HUGE reason teachers have earned a less than stellar reputation. My apologies to you Union folks, but any time reward systems are based on tenure rather than performance, performance will not be optimal. IMO, teachers unions have played a MAJOR role in the current state of public education.

Well I completely agree with that. But I would whip your arse if you laid a hand on my kid with out giving me the chance to straighten my kid out first. The teacher would get all my numbers and IF it happened again I would be at the school ASAP. The third time the teacher would have my permission. All this happy happy BS works both ways. We can not have "teachers" who sit on their hands pointing fingers untill they have kids whizzen in the fish tank and then wonder why their class room is a disaster ! Duh

Yes I agree somewhat and you could get your arss busted then too, in which I had plenty of times. Haggis, didn't single out when or where only all as a whole. Still yet I think you can get a quality education in a public schoolas well as a private school. I do think children educated in a public school has a easier time adjusting to the real world once they are out on there own, only because they have been exposed to more of an enviorment simular to what the real world is like than one educated in a private school. I am not saying either has a better education than the other but maybe one is a little more street smart fresh out of the gate. I think we, us, them and others have become our own worst enemy here ie. setting frivolous laws governing corporal punishment, sexual conduct and etc. That could have been left up to the school, teachers and parents to control. All it has done is tied the hands of all the above ie. being afraid of breaking a law and being sued and proscuted. Think about it, we have all agreed this country has become a law suit compensation loving nation....

Snuffy, my son tried that stunt years ago. Didn't need to blister his butt, just explained to him that it would take at least 5 minutes for the police to arrive. Asked him if he could imagine how sore his hind would be in those 5 minutes, after all if I'm gonna go to jail might as well get my money's worth <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

My point is the lack of dicipline, or the ability to dicipline as a parent see's fit. Do you honestly think the prisons would be empty if only they ( the prisoners) were given another "time out" Give me a freekin break! Dr. Spock has greatly contributed to the decline of our educational system.

Stenson, your right. You don't have a clue having never raised a child!

Al

Oh parents should have the right to opt out of allowing corporal punishment, but they need to be ready to pick the little darlin' up and make other arraingments immediatly for their kids education.

I think you signature is appropriate for your views if you just add "little" before bastards <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />

Stetson:



I agree with some of the things you say, but my question is necessary because without that out on the table we have no true basis of communication.



With all due respect, you really have no clue.



T LEE has it pretty much covered. The major problem with student discipline is that most anything that would be your first instinct is prohibited.



For example, in my school district, students are very rarely expelled. The most that ever happens is an "OT," an "opportunity transfer" which means that one principal trades their problematic kid for another, and everyone hopes the kids do better in their new environments. Every child is entitled to a "free and appropriate public education," you see. Let's go with a very common issue. That means you can tell the principal to "[bleep] OFF," in front of the entire student body, and you don't/can't get kicked out. So Johnny loses his temper one day, says the F word to his 7th-grade teacher who just failed him on a third-grade math exam, and the next day the student is back in class with a smile on his face, and the teacher has to suck it up in front of the rest of the class. How likely do you think it is that another student will try and tell the teacher off when the teacher asks them to sit down, or stop talking, or where's your homework? How likely would it have been if that student was escorted out by security and never see in that teacher's class again?



That's not the teacher's fault. About all you can do is send them out of your class for the day, and the principal will likely not call home because the parent might say "Well Johnny never uses that kind of language at home. Is this the kind of teacher you hire? Is this what you teach my kids? I want to transfer Johnny to another teacher, and I'll be calling the Board. What is your name again?"



Guess what? If she does, everyone in the school district will lose. Happens all the time. If you have a wife and a mortgage and two kids, and you get by one of those scrapes without losing your job/position, you'll think twice about it next time.



Until July, I worked in an at-risk youth program. Waiting list affair. Parolees, drop-outs, wards of the state, teenage pregnancies, recovering drug addicts, gangbangers, all under 18. I buried three students in three years, two of them girls, one of them pregnant and shot twice.



Guess what? Even with the hardest core teenagers in Los Angeles, gang capital of the world, since our program had the "death penalty," which means we could get rid of students immediately and they'd have to re-enroll themselves at another school, we had superb discipline.



Get mouthy with staff? Get your stuff. Goodbye. Miss assignments? Probation, which means double the work for four weeks, and "get your stuff" the first time you're lax. Any use of foul language? See ya. Gang attire? First time you get sent home to change. The second. Bye. Fight? Everyone within 25 feet is gone. Saw it happen twice. You get one of those students crawling back after 5 weeks because they can't enroll in another school, and you let them back in under severe conditions, and the effect on the rest of the class is huge. Teacher wins. That doesn't happen in regular programs. Guess what? Student wins too. I think most of my graduates had to be DQed at leat once before they beared down and gave me their best. Of course, that is a unique population, but still, the problems are common.



You get the picture.



Yes, there are incompetent teachers who cannot maintain discipline no matter what tools you give them, but that has ALWAYS been the case.



The problem with your simplistic arguments is that teachers and administrators are effectively handcuffed. I much preferred dealing with the meanest and greenest on a daily basis with a full bag of arrows than the normal student population with a squirtgun. Even on this thread you have someone already mentioning lawsuits because of corporal punishment. I'll tell you another story about assigning the entire class extra homework on the first day of school for being too loud and rowdy when I get back from church.



I feel your anger and frustration, but I don't think you have a clue as to how things really are.



Rick

Rick, yes that is true. I do not have a clue. I am NOT being feceitous. I do not have kids. I do not understand any of this stuff. I would just want to be the one to straighten my kid out. I doubt if you were my kids teacher that we would have any thing other than respect for one another as you would not have problems like this with my kids. Easy to say but when I look at parents today it blows my mind. When I see parents that are giving kids unecessary drugs because it's what the teacher wants it blows my mind. Every one has to work together and untill that happens it will continue to be a screwed up situation. I just do not agree with a teacher, any teacher "popping" or "blistering butts" when their is a permission system and that was not followed. Teachers need to follow the rules as well. It might be difficult and frustrating but teaching is not a license to do as you wish with anothers children. It is simplistic and dated. I am not trying to wet any ones corn flakes that is just my view.

Stetson
"I am not trying to wet any ones corn flakes that is just my view."

Better get that polyp checked out.
art

Rick, just wondering, how many of these kids actualy get the message and see the light at their early age?

My kids are in their twenties now, so I don't have an idea of how many children in a given class are medicated. How the heck did teachers handle it when we were kids? Is ADD and hyperactivity a new illnesses?

I think the problem begins with the parent, and their methods of instilling dicipline. Yes, I believe it needs to have it's limits, at the same time I think we've gone too far in the wrong direction.

ADD???? For crying out loud, give a kid two cans of soda and they go wild -- must be ADD!!!! I think it was JJ who created a thread a while back on need for people to get a license to have kids. This ain't rocket science.

I'd wager that 30+% of kids behavioral problems could be directly attributed to diet.

I retired 2 years ago after being part of the public schools for 31 years. 7 years in the classroom (high school) and 24 more in administration, mostly as an Assistant Principal, but held positions as Personnel Director, and Facilites Administrator.

From 1970 till 2001 so much changed in and about our society that many of you just can't understand how that changed education.
Civil rights was a big, so was the court ruling about student freedoms (hair length, dress, etc)

Do you know that today the courts recognize almost 40 different descriptions of "families" and that a mom and dad with only their own biological kids are a minority. When I had to call a parent I had to first see who had custody, if the last name was the same, if dad was dad or maybe he was mom, or if there was even a dad or mom, sometime it was grandma, uncle Tom, or a roommate. I also had to check to see if I had to call a doctor, a probation officer or friend of the court. I also had a list of who I could not call because if I called the wrong person the kid would get the hell beat out of him and end up in the hospital. We also had list of who could and who could not pick up the child and get report cards sent to. It wasn't uncommon for me to speak with a parent who would refuse to come in, (usually to busy) then tell us to do whatever we think because they can't do anything anymore.

Know what would make education easier, if all parents would stay married to eachother, live lives like June and Ward Cleaver, be involved in PTA and Scouts, attend church every Sunday, have steady jobs with middle income wages, own their own home, have a dog and a cat, and raise their childern with these same values and be Republicans <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />. NOT.

Kids are always going to change, the are forced to grow up faster, fend for themselves sooner, cope with multiple parents and their problems, compete with others on how they look and dress and face a world that is changing faster than they are.

We are damn fortunate that the vast majority of kids are able to do this despite some poor teachers and lousy parents. I've learned over the 31 years in education that most kids are pretty darn nice people.

Muley Stalker, my point exactly. I think their looking for a quick solution to a problem they don't fully understand.

I know in my case how special some educators can be. My daughter had a learning disibility in school. If it was an oral presentation, and an oral exam she would retain 90% of the material covered, and ace the test. Written work was her downfall. She wasn't dyslexic (sp?) but we had some people evaluate her. One of her highschool counslers took my daughter under her wing and did a great deal to help her graduate high school. In some schools they would have wrote her off in and left her to special ed. Now she works in a hospital in the billing dept, working with computers.

Well, I'll weigh in too on account of I'm a teacher in an inner-city school, a public school no less. Although I weary of talking "shop" in my free time.

Accountability? I'm all for it, bring in vouchers.

Salary? Ya gotta pay to get quality, "what the market will bear" in many areas is appallingly low. If one has accountability paying professionals a competitive salary is hardly "throwing money at education". Personally, I'm satisfied with what I make, but then I tend to worry about such things less than most folks.

True, you can't pay for passion. On the other hand, offer a person a decent salary and they'll bring to education the same kind of drive they would have taken somewhere else.

Discipline? I'm with Rick, give me arrows. I am fortunate in that the Administration of my school usually backs us up on discipline issues, up to and including expulsion (but then I teach in Texas, not Ca.).. Actually I very rarely NEED such arrows. Almost always if you genuinely like the kids and have thier interests at heart they'll like you back and let you run things. Sounds like a crock but it usually works.

I get a little skeptical when I hear about the "good old days" where academic standards are concerned. LOTS of my friends in high school thirty years ago were academic dim-bulbs too. The difference is that now a kid has to know more. I can remember when only a few went on to college, now most kids HAVE to go on to college to succeed.

In my generation the Armed Services were a safety net, lots of young men didn't like high school, dropped out, got in the services and turned their life around. Those same kids today would be lucky to get hired at Mc Donalds.

My mom arrived in this country in the '60's with no high school diploma, my father became disabled. Within a year of arrival my mom was hired by a major retail chain full-time, with benefits and recently retired on a comfortable retirement. That same company no longer hires full-time employees so as to avoid paying benefits. If my family had arrived in the US today we would all have no insurance and be on food stamps, at least for the first few years. We were unusual in that my mom worked, many of my friends had stay-at-home moms. Today hardly any kids do.

I would suggest that more than anything what HAS changed is the quality and kind of parenting. Most kids merely reflect where they come from. 90% of the time when you have a problem kid, you can accurately predict what the parents will be like.

I have taught the brightest honors classes as well as the most remedial subjects. A great many of those honors kids, the sort who go on to West Point, Havard et al., have real parents, the sort I remember.

Likewise a great many of those problem kids come from simply appalling homes. I often wonder just what it takes to take all the light out of a kid's eyes by age fifteen.

The short of this being, don't ask ME to raise your kid. I'll do my best to be a shining role model, the sort of teacher they'll come back and thank years later, but I can't do that nearly as often without parents.

As part of that parenting KNOW what your kid is being taught, ask them, ask the teachers. Get in their faces if you have to, they are public servants and your taxes pay their salary. If you don't like what you see complain, as often and as loud as you have to. Teachers are your public servants, likely your taxes pay their salary, and theres nothing that can throw a scare into the educational establishment like motivated, vocal parents. Especially when they are right.

Birdwatcher

Please excuse me while I climb up my soapbox� <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />

All of you who think you know what is wrong with schools and education should volunteer to go to a public school and supervise lunch. It would give a teacher 30 minutes to eat without having indigestion form the stress of doing �lunch duty� and it would open your eyes to what is really happening.

And when you take some little darling to the principal�s office for throwing his food and starting a fight, you call his parents and deal with them. Sure, go ahead and spank him good. Then deal with the school board and the lawyers. After you have done that, call back and we'll talk again. In other words, put your money where your mouth is. Heck, I'd even settle for you volunteering to teach a Sunday school class. Let's see how you would handle it yourself.

BTW "the summer off" is time unemployed. I earn x number of dollars for the days I teach. They just "hold" it for me (while they earn interest) because they think I lack the brains and discipline to manage my finances and pay my bills while I am not working. Most of the male teachers I know (even the coaches) have summer jobs roofing, landscaping, or what have you just to make ends meet.

Teaching is a calling. I'm not in it for the money and you can read some of the posts here and see I�m not in it for the respect and prestige. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

The most influential people in a child�s life are:
Parents
Teachers
Friends

After they become teenagers the order of influence becomes:
Friends
Teachers
Parents

See the picture?

As long as a beginning teacher makes $20,000.00 per year while your average pro baseball player makes $2,000,000.00 a season you are going to have what you have now. A few good dedicated teachers who follow God�s calling and a bunch who are too incompetent to do anything else. I would also expand that line of reasoning to include law enforcement, firemen, and EMT�s. We trust them with our lives, and our children�s safety and welfare yet we expect them to be the lowest paid professionals in our society.

And you don�t see what is wrong with that picture? Maybe, just maybe, you are getting what you deserve / paid for? Want better teachers? Attract better people into the profession. Give them half the pay and respect they deserve. Most who go into the teaching profession now are leaving it within their first five years. Those who stay in it are the few who are dedicited to the calling or too incompetent to find something else.

Personally, I would like to see school vouchers. I am all for parents having a choice where they send their children to school. But that will never happen. Being locked into public education is one of the things that keep the middle class from becoming part of the upper class. I would also like to see real vocational education programs. We attempt to school all children as if they were going to go to college. All I learned in public school was �how to go to school�.

I know that the 50�s educational methods do not work with today�s children. Children face larger and greater problems now than ever before. They know things and deal with things we never had to. The baggage they bring to school with them is unbelievable.

You complain about the bad, even criminal behavior of some students without realizing that�s the result of �reducing the drop out rate�. In the 50�s punks and thugs did not attend school. They dropped out or were kicked out and got a job or ended up in jail. Today, my child has to sit next to that thug and try to listen to his teacher while watching his back and worrying about his safety. Makes for a real cozy learning environment.

The teachers spend more time dealing with discipline than with teaching. They are forced to. They can�t kick the kid out of school, they can�t spank him, and they can�t make him do any work. Their hands are tied so they have to do the best they can to develop some type of relationship with that kid just so they can teach class. And we expect them to do this with 36 students in each class in 30 minutes a day. There is no time left for them to teach any subject matter.

Having said all that I will tell you that I have wonderful students and great parents to deal with. There are still places where the majority of the community has high moral values. It makes all the difference. It�s also tied to affluence. Most affluent people have higher expectations of their children and their schools. My son�s elementary school is one of the best in the Country. 100 % of the students have passed all elements of the State mandated tests. They also have 3,000 man-hours of volunteer work from parents this year.

Some of you know that I recently made a move. That�s the reason. The school system in the town I was teaching and living in was going down the crapper because of decisions made by the local school board. And who elects those people?

As a teacher I have a statewide job market. If I�m not happy in the school system I am working in I can move. Let me tell you not all public schools are bad. If yours is, I would suggest you start to question why? You might start by looking at how much your school pays its teachers above the state minimum salary. Does your school system hire only young, inexperienced teachers because they are cheaper? Or are you willing to pay more for experienced, successful, proven teachers?

What happens if your sports teams are not winning? Do you change your coaching staff? Do you have to pay more to attract a coach with a winning record?

What would happen if you hired your superintendent, your principals, and your teachers by that same standard?

Do you elect qualified people to your local school board? Are they there because they have children in the school system and are genuinely concerned about the quality of the schools or do they have some political agenda or an ax to grind?

I don�t know about other States, but in Texas the local school board has a lot of control over the direction of your local school system. If yours is not working I would suggest that�s where the REAL problem is. And no one can change that but you.

I�ll climb down from my soapbox now and return you to your ball game. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

I watched a show on the Discovery channel the other night that reminded me of what I see with parents too often now. I think it was called Gold coast racing or something like that. It was about kids who race golf carts. They filmed this family that traveled with kids and raced. Mom and dad just screeched at each other. No real communication at all. Dad had sit fits and threw tools in the trailer yelling at the kid if he did not perform to his standards. They had a older kid, (teenager) who was ripping around on a three wheeler as the mom lamented that he better not get caught because they had already been warned that their were no three wheelers allowed <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> So the kid finally gets busted by the speedway cops and mom thinks its damn funny that jimmy is giving the cops grief. She doesn't even say a word to the kid, just wants to know if they will get the bike back. All I could think was man, this is the best family on the circuit they could film ? I dont think we can group all parents or all teachers together in any group but it certainly makes me wonder where we are going as a society, or how fast we are going to get there <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

Hey aggie

I am not on the side of the teachers or the blankity blank Union or the deans or the directors. They play this crap called politics and other people kiss their dairy air and I dont lower my standards to their hemoroid lipped no good antics. I am being nice about this so I told them to kiss off and I refuse to play their antiproductive games. wont be the frist time I did this wount be the last. I have morals and they need me I dont need them.

Bearbeater

Ok, I just read all of the above. You know what you guys all are mostly right but the one major overlooked thing is the parents, sure you guys would kick little Johnies hind end so hard he would have to unbutton his collar to fart but that is the view of a bunch of fellows who have a sence of right and wrong, we tend to flock together as one of a kind. Take a look at the parents of todays kids, they themselves for the most part are nothing more than kids themselves no matter how old they are. The parents make the babeis as an afterthought or accident then make a poor attempt to raise them all the while they are playing with their own toys or attempting to aquire toys for them selves.Proof is the credit card dept owed by most younger families. Live beyond your means and you will soon have to pay the bill. It's big screen TV's, the latest computor gear, New cars..... The kids get left in the shadows baby sat by TV. The Teachers of today if they are not ready to retire are the children of the Liberal vietnam war era parents. Thank goodness there are places like Texas where they recognize the value of disapline, even if it is being eroded by a greedy legal system. Stetson your statements do ring true in a liberal world where all parents will take time to displine and teach their children manners and social values not just the "ME ME ME I I I" values imposed on us by the demands of society today. Don't go blaming the teachers or the Unions or the admin before you look at your own house hold first.

Bullwnkl.

Al,
I hear ya, Discipline has been taken away from the parents as well as the teachers. It seems that in most homes these days both parents have to work and the kids are in daycare or the babysitters ten or more hours a day (I believe these are reward based systems only). It's true that in the "old days" some parents did go too far and some kids did suffer, so the people in power legislated child abuse laws, these were supposed to help, but it doesn't look like it's any better now. Kids are still being abused maybe even more so, at least you hear more about it. From reading the posts here it seems that both the parents and the teachers realize the problem and only a few blame the other group. That's good a group like this may be able to do something about it. Seems most of what you hear in the media is the teachers blaming the parents and the parents blaming the teachers. In fact it is both of our faults but we have to work together, the parents have to instill in their preschool children what is acceptible behavior and what is not and the teachers have to reinforce that when the kids are at school, but the Gov. threatens both of us with legal retribution if either try to spank a child. I do not believe that spanking is the answer to everthing and most kids will never need it but when nothing else seems to work it should be an accepted practice. Just another examble of a good thing (child abuse laws) used in a bad way.

stetson, since you admitedly are unfamiliar with modern day children or school and since you seem to question my wife's actions let me go through your post point by point



1 the kid in question has no dad and does not know who his biologial father is. It is doubtful if the mother does either.



2 Litigation that is why she carries personal liability insurace so azzholes who won't/can't control their kids sue when somebody else does.



3 What was she doing. Corraling twenty two other four and five year olds. Only supposed to be fifteen in a class but shortage of teacher don't you know. Supposed to have a teacher aide too but budget constraints don't you know. You ever tried to keep and eye on twenty three kids that age all at once? Oh, I forgot you don't have kids.



4 Expell them? You can't especially if they are disadvanteged. Minority. Low income. etc etc. In short once in you can not get rid of them save shifting them to some other teacher



5 By state law if my wife does not report cases of suspected child abuse that see sees to CPS she is criminaly liable. You understand why maybe that she has to err on the side of caution.



6 In our district policy is that no teacher can make medical recomendations other than that a child should see a medical doctor.



Oddly the kids she has the least trouble out of are Hispanics who's kids are sent to school clean, disciplined, and eager to learn. The parents are probably second generation illegals.



There is a waiting list of kids that want to get into my wife's class. There are three other pre-K teachers and she is the only one who has parents fighting to get their kids in her class. Some of the kids she taught are now parents and want their kids in her class.

There are twenty-five year old successful men who will still hug her neck when we run into them in public.





stetson, I am damn proud of her and before you pop off again you need to think about it just a bit.





BCR



p. s. Last year she had a four year old threaten to bring a gun to school and kill her. Do you take that serious or not?