It occurs to me that although many say that the quality of education in our public schools has suffered in the last few decades, it must might be that we have misunderstood the issue. I know what I was taught back in the 60's, and what my children were taught in the late 80's, and my wife has taught for almost 3 decades. She started teaching Kindergarten, but now teaches 8th grade.

I think that the level of knowledge being offered has improved, and shifted a bit away from things no longer as useful as they once were. (ask any of your kids how many pints in a quart, quarts in a gallon, etc.)

I also think that there are still children who, for whatever reasons, will make an effort to take advantage of what is offered, BUT, there does seem to be a lower percentage of them. The percentage of those who don't care, again for whatever reasons, has gone up.

So, altho the quality may have improved, the quantity of those taking advantage of it has taken a big hit, meaning the quality of the student body has diminished.
For this discussion, let's hold the quality of the teachers at a constant over the years.

Question to debate, is it the quality of the education being offered that is the problem, or the quality of the students and/or their efforts expended towards accepting what is being offered?

Question to debate, is it the quality of the education being offered that is the problem, or the quality of the students and/or their efforts expended towards accepting what is being offered?

I think its a mixture of both actually. I have always believed public schools to be the equivalent of herding pens to keep the children occupied.
The schools themselves have tried to be everything to everyone and it isn't possible. Too many variations in both learning styles AND apptitude/ability for the one size fits all approach of the PS system to work.

Also life in America is really not all that difficult. It takes very little to actually live comfortably. So I do not think some people try all that hard and it gets passed to their kids.

I think another factor is the "Why Bother?" factor. There really are no new horizons out there. How can you really get kids excited about the opportunity to work for the rest of their lives and pay a mortage. Whoo Hoo!
All lot of kids see their parents spend their lives at jobs they dislike always trying to pay bills and stay on top. Not exactly the stuff dreams are made of is it?

The first of the 2 paragraphs I brought down from your quote describes 4 of the children my parents raised, and 3 of them didn't even aspire to the barely above poverty level of our parents, and the second paragraph is exactly what motivated the other 2 of us to do things differently than our parents did. We must have had dreams that the other 4 did not.
It is anybody's guess what internal motivations are at work in the minds of children. Likewise I wonder what is in the minds of parents who bring children into the world without a plan for helping them to the point that every generation is a bit better than the last, or at least has the opportunity to be better.
Maybe a lack of optimism in the parents is instilled in the attitudes of the children?

Escape from poverty seems --in my experience--to be a strong motivater to work hard in school and escape it. Except in cases where children grow up surrounded by people who have no dreams. Lack of hope is ingrained from day one and I don't think they can actually conceive of any other way of life.
When you get to the more affluent levels it seems to drop some what because evn though they are "coached" about trying to be successful I think the fact that life is so easy here in America they begin to question the purpose behind it.
It has always seemed to me that the majority of people go through the motions.
You go to school
Start a career
get married
buy a home
spend the rest of your life paying for it.
Few seem lucky enough to enjoy a career that fits their interests.

I think many start out enthusiastic, but real life intrudes and for a great many people it leads to a life of "getting by"
We raise our kids in an environment of "Follow your dreams" but there is the way we want life to be and the way it really is.
You start off wanting to be a Fighter Pilot and end up an accountant.
"You can be whatever you want to be" rapidly turns into "You had better find a career soon"
I think a lot of kids see this and just lose their enthusiasm. Its hard to maintain a dream working at a job you don't really like. They see their parents put all that effort towards a mortage and maybe a weeks vacation---how do you maintain enthusiasm for that?
We can say they should work harder, put more effort into it, but I have seen the best laid plans by the more talented of people go nowhere. I mean c'mon for every Gates there are a hundred thousand who end up nowhere. I myself haven't given up on my dreams and think I will pass on my enthusiam for life onto my kids. But I am surrounded by people who no longer have that spark.
I go to work and am surrounded by people who have no desire to go anywhwere. Lots of Glory Days stories, but no drive to achieve anything any more. If all I have are stories of yesteryear I hope I have the courage to suck a bullet.

There are no real goals out there. No foreign shores unexplored. Space for the most part offers no real opportunities except for a limited few. Hell each new generation just rehashes an older generations entertainment.

Kids get into the PS system and they hear the All You Can Be speeches but only see day to day drudgery by most people. After a while they stop buying into it.
The PS system itself smothers indiviualism and allows for the majority of kids to stay in the background and let a few kids answer the questions and maintain the bell curve. The vaunted social interaction is generally surviving peer pressure and hopefully surviving your mistakes. Classes are repeat after the book Blah Blah Blah!
The PS sytem was great when we were an agriculture society. It offered options to escape that life and find a new path to follow.
Even after the second World War there was the excitement of the possibilities of the future. There were gonna be rocket cars and homes on the Moon
But that turned into the Burbs and strip malls.
There is no longer any real challenge in any of it.

I think that there is always a new frontier around the corner for me individually. And maybe all the interesting places in the world have been discovered, but I haven't seen them yet. I am still working on the places in the southwest that I like to hike into and explore.
Education isn't just to make good employees out of us, or to help us discover some new place or scientific concept. A major portion of it is to enhance our quality of life, and that part seems to be overlooked. History and literature as taught in public schools was so boring to me, but now that I am a very senior adult and these subjects are not being spoon fed to me in edited or sugar coated form, I find both interesting. Likewise the science shows on TV, but a lot of it I wouldn't understand if I didn't have the decent background I got in public schools that allowed me to understand the things I learned in college (didn't get to start that until age 31). Every subject has its building blocks that we assemble in our brains until we start understanding.
I suppose that if we could get everyone to take a long term view of education and show them that besides making them employable, it can also enhance their quality of life, then their attitudes might improve.
My experience is that more useful information is taught in public schools now than when I was young, and we also have the internet and TV for the really interesting stuff.

I think the only problem in your question is that you assume teachers haven't changed. I am not sure that is true, or isn't true, but in grading education, it certainly has to be considered. Here is what I think I know....
When I was learning history and English, I seldom knew the political leanings of my teachers. They pretty much left me alone to figure that sutff out myself. The exception was the environment, where teachers couldn't get on the bandwagon fast enough. Well intentioned enough I suppose. Today's new teachers are more politically charged and focus more on pedagogy than curriculum. Consider the credentialing program in Californa. Knowledge of subject matter is almost an afterthought. A couple of SAT like exams once all of your indoctrination into diversity classes are through. I don't know, but it seems like a focusing on subject matter during the credentialing process, with a short test at the end making sure you're not a overt racist would be more appropriate. Today's kids are not allowed to know we referred to Washington, Jefferson, et al. as the founding fathers. There is some new gender neutral name which includes others besides those actually participated in the constitutional convention. Pictures of Mt. Rushmore are forbidden (insensitive to the American Indian). Pics of Indians in tradition outfits are verboten as well. If teachers have butchered history this bad, I can only imagine what they have done to my beloved English. Oh yeah, I have heard about reading lists which contain such important reading materials as a book of Tupac Shakur's poetry. When your high schooler comes home and writes U R 2 much 4 me 2 handle, and thinks it is an example of a literary masterpiece, well, I think teachers have to take some of the blame. When you mention the founding fathers, and your child looks up at you blankly, well, you get the picture. How about this. Go home and ask your high school senior what they know about WWII (particularly what they learned in school). You'll be amazed by the acts of oppression carried out against Japanese-Americans. But what about the war? They will razzle you with information on how women helped manufacture while the men were at war. But what happened during this war, who were the major players? They will note people you have never heard of as testiments to the heroic nature of man. Yes, you will finally say flabbergasted, that is all well and good, but what about Nazi Germany. They will kindly stare blankly back at and smile. I think they were the bad guys, they will tell you innocently. Arghhhhh!

Please go back and try again. The premise was that the teachers have not changed. They didn't have much control over curriculum or text books then, or now. That was, and is, decided by administrators and school boards.
I think that the problem is not the curriculum as much as it is the students and their attitudes, which probably is derived from their parents or peers. I see what was being taught to my kids vs. what I was taught, and I can see what my son, the 8th grade science teacher, is teaching now. There is so much more available now than when I was young. I help him find interesting books and videos for his classes, but I read/view them myself before he gets them.
To me it is all very interesting information, if not all that useful for earning a living.
Education should be more than training us to earn a living and be good little taxpayers. It may be only a few of our children who use public schools as a stepping stone to a career in astro-physics, the study of plate tectonics, or deep sea exploration, but surely a lot of the rest can at least find it more interesting than the garbage on network TV.

Question to debate, is it the quality of the education being offered that is the problem, or the quality of the students and/or their efforts expended towards accepting what is being offered?

I think the major problem with our educational system today is the general atmosphere of education. Too many school systems have lost the battle for maintaining a positive learning environment.

A second major problem is the quality of type of education program that generates education degrees today. Too many schools are of the show up, parrot back certain lists of criteria (the three types of learning environments one can create our. . . A ... B ... C.

As a larger rule I think we don't expect enough from our students, and they get that and they under perform. More material will lead to more discipline, will lead to being better able to deal with a demanding world in a successful manner.

Tougher classes for teachers will lead to better educated teachers (the less education classes the better, the more acquiring knowledge classes the better) and teachers that were not trying to get one of the easier degrees on campus. Weeder systems, or limits on the number of slots in education colleges would also lead to more productive competition. Reducing non-teaching demands on teachers and raising performance education would lift the perception of incompetence from overburdened teachers trying to comply with an odd maze of demands from administrations and bureaucracies.

ibelsd, you obviously have strong feelings on the subject. Care to share how it was you came to know all this?



About 7 years ago the government in Ontario decided to centralize education; they redrew districts and imposed a central curriculum system. Overnight the flavour of education changed in this province. Gone were such 'frills' as music, geography (the social aspect at least) and anything remotely connected to the environmental sciences. The arts all took a hit and math and hard science was reinforced. Just seven years later I DO notice a difference when I talk to young people; or at the very least people younger than myself.

The point is that these curriculum changes were all applauded by the people who voted for the government who instated them. In fact, curriculum reform was one of their key election strategies. It is clear in the case here that the general public (and by that I mean the hordes of uninformed voters) decided the course of education.

Were the students apathetic and lazy? Sure, but I'm willing to bet that the classmates of people who attended public school in the 50's and 60's were too; it just manifested itself differently.

Now, see Joe, it looks like we can agree on some things.... My knowledge regarding education comes from two sources. One is a primary source. I am a former teacher who went through the California credentialing program. The second source is the news media which reported on the changes to curriculum in California and elsewhere in the U.S. I am afraid I have no sources to quote as I have read this stuff over the past couple of years.

Bill, you are right, teachers didn't specifically push the curriculum in all instances. In fact, a lot of the curriculum has been created in order to minimize the usefulness of the teacher. It has been referred to as teacher-proof curriculum. Just follow the lesson plan, stick to the text book, use the publisher's tests, etc. Nothing can go wrong! Wrong. Teachers simply haven't fought hard enough to teach. They have fought for increased funding, better salaries (understandable), smaller class sizes, etc. Throughout it all, they have essentially given up their right to teach. This has been exacerbated by school administrators who are powerless and increasingly talking heads. As Bill also noted, the power is now on the school boards, on legislative education committees, and in Washington. Schools have increasingly less leeway to discipline students, protect the best interests of diligent students, and to set their own curriculums (is the plural of curriculum, curriculi?). We all know more kids are going through the system with one parent. We all know schools make lousy surrogates. If there is a problem in education, it would be unwise to exclude the only individuals who actually work IN the classroom. My key point was simply that teachers HAVE changed in the last 30 years. There has been an undeniable shift away from teachers as master's of knowledge towards the more benign, facilitators of social awareness. While some applaud this shift, I think it has ruined an entire generation of young people who are taught to think in the abstract without first leaning the basics.

now I understand....
But don't be basing your opinions on just California and the media.
Almost all the news I have heard about the great state of CA concerning education has been one of "hey, let's try this weird and unproven idea for awhile, and if it doesn't work we will try something else on the next generation"
And the media likes to report only the bad news.
A friend was a navy recruiter back in the 70's in CA, and he said a lot of recruits could barely read the tests, much less score well on them.

When we lived in Idaho, K-6 was good, Jr. High School was marginal, and High School was pretty bad, academically speaking.
We moved to AZ when one of our kids was entering High School and the other entering Jr. High School. Schools here are much better than Idaho.

My wife has taught teachers how to teach Phonics in several states during some of her summers. She has seen things that are very discouraging to the teachers.
A lot of schools are little more than day care and the public, administration, school boards, etc. seem to be unable or unwilling to do anything about it.

But there are many dedicated teachers trying their best. Yes, there are some bad teachers, but that was also true were when I was young.
The biggest change I see is in the interest level, or the attitude of the students, and the willingness of parents to support the teacher in his/her efforts.

My interpretation of public schools inadequacies points a figure at the politics and administration of education.

I have seen locally in my lifetime a shift from teacher's unions being concerned with educational issues to a complete emphasis on compensation.

I see education being used by various groups to steer money to their businesses. Education is viewed by many to be a huge dollar business and it is their goal to get as much of that pie as possible. When a state has control of such a large pool of dollars it has been profitable to have education policy which helps these groups and color it to be in the name of education. I see this at the state level and local level.

The students are being taught in schools which are based on the principles of 'who you know' being more important than 'what you know'. Is anyone surprised there is less incentive to academically excel in such an environment when the rich kids or the star athletes or the prettyones get the most attention and better access to school programs?

Public education is inherently socialistic. The best teachers are paid the same as the worst teachers. This reinforces the idea that there is no incentive for excelling.

There are good teacher, just as there has always been. They are hindered by the atmosphere of public education system being a money grab via special interest groups. This atmosphere does trickle down to our children and is detrimental learning.

Some sort of competition needs to be introduced into public education which supports the idea of incentive and also better supports the idea of equal opportunity, which is what public education should be all about.

My answer to the question is the quality of the education as our schools are operating with the wrong motivation.

By incentive, are you referring to teachers or students? One of the reasons why teachers are all paid the same (which isn't EXACTLY true) is because there is no real way to quantify their performance outside standardized tests; which are inherently counter-productive in education.

By incentive, I am referring to both teachers and students. There are ways to quantify the performance of teachers other than standardized tests. I had spoken with a professor at the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville on this subject four years ago. He was very confident in the ability to test a classroom to determine its effectiveness and improve it. He was doubtful it could be used for compensation purposes since it requires much cooperation with the teacher. However, I would think if the first is possible, there could be a way to tie it in with compensation with some further study.

I do not know of specific means to use our ability to recognize teaching ability and compensate it without being counter productive. Do I think it is possible? Absolutely. We need to strive to find it. Knowing how to academically identify good teachers is now possible. That is a good first step.

Unfortunately, the compensation for a teaching staff is not dependent on performance but is much more dependent on the value of the real estate in their area. It is dumb we as a society base teacher salaries on the value of land. We must come up with a better system. There needs to be an incentive to produce the service of education which makes sense and provide revenue for education which is flexible and will expand to compensate superior teaching.

I would never claim all teachers are bad, Bill. It is like any industry, some do their job better than others. Even the better teachers have become impotent in the classroom. They don't have anyone to blame but themselves. They allowed a lot of the reforms which took power away from teachers. It came in small doses, but over time, it led to "teacher-proof" curriculum. This was a real, honest to god, term I learned in one of my credentialing classes. The teacher didn't say it with pride, just as a statement or fact. Someone else noted that the unions don't fight for education, they fight for salaries and benefits. That is their main job, so I don't really hold them directly accountable, but it shows how distracted teachers have been from their actual job. Bill, you asked me to not get my information from only experience and the media. I am at a loss as to where else to get information. The articles I read weren't just about California either. Only my experience is limited to California. I just want people to think about the issues we all seem to agree upon. Namely, teachers are losing their freedom to teach. Power is too centralized to be effective. Decisions are being made too far away from the places where learning is supposed to occur. Now, ask yourself if you still think the federal government should get involved. I know this is off-topic, but it is the direction education is going, and this seems to be a key problem.

I believe that the "quality" of students is about the same, it's just that their own attitudes(and those ingrained in them from their parents) are what determines success in school. Most of the evidence that I can present is anecdotal, but here it goes. Here is what I've found in my experience working in a public school, as well as knowing those involved in education.(i.e.-they teach)

-In some districts, a teacher who is very challenging often receives flak from parents that discourages them from continuing being "tough" If a principal visits you about your rigorous class more than a couple of times, a teacher is going to get the message very quick-dumb it down or you're out of here because junior has football practice and doesn't have time to read history.

-Some parents don't value education. Case in point-father of a kid is often unemployed and a shade-tree "jack of all trades" because he can't stick with anything for a long amount of time and because it takes away from him watching t.v. and drinking beer. No one reads in the house and "school is stupid" At least, that's what junior grew up with his whole life. The kid is surly and wonders why he isn't successful in school and why he's banned from prom due to low grades because he is giving off his dad's attitudes about education.

-If parents don't go through the principal, they will often do the homework for junior.

-I've posted a few times under numerous threads(no one has yet to try and refute it interestingly enough) that no matter what building you call it-private, charter, corporate, or public-the sole determining factor of whether or not a school is "good" is the community that the given school is located in. You can have two buildings ten miles apart and the community attitudes can be totally different. I know one where unless you go to a four-year college institution, you are laughed at and made fun of. Parents are lawyers, doctors, white-collar professionals. The other district has mostly people with names on their shirts. People go into professions like welding, or hope to catch on at the railroad after graduation. The drop-out rate is at 30% and teacher turnover is roughly 50% since many aren't willing to make the dumbing-down compromise as listed above.

Until we address individual attitudes(and family attitudes) about the importance of education, all the legislation of the world, re-organizing of schools, voucher systems, will not work, or at least-won't work significantly better than the current system.

Amen, brother (Nebraska29).
When my wife first started teaching in Idaho, it was a freshly started up Kindergarten program that the parents wanted, but the administration did not want, even tho it was totally funded by the state. I heard the Superintendent say something like "do we want our kids to be robots?". He was a former jock, his kids were jocks, the local high school was more likely to be over budget on sports facilities than on core curriculum.
This guy hired a friend's son to be the new principal where my wife worked. The principal actually came to my wife and asked her to slow down so the other 2 Kindergarten teachers could catch up. He was getting flak from parents whose kids were learning nothing, while my wife's students could read at the end of a year of half-day kindergarten. She told him she went to college to teach, not baby sit. He threatened to fire her, but the parents threatened to fire him, so he backed off.
But the same parents are likely to do as you say in the later grades, where real math is taught. A Jr. High teacher tried to get an advanced math class started, got heat from his principal. High School "Honor Roll" students typically couldn't write a letter that was not full of bad spelling, poor grammar, sloppy punctuation. Only the "High Honor Roll" students were actually college candidates. A friend's child who was on the regular honor roll had to take remedial classes at Idaho State university for a year to be able to handle the regular classes.
We moved out of there before any real damage could be done to our own kids.
My wife now teaches 8th grade in AZ, and she has always felt that the kids need to be challenged, and will meet the challenge if the support is there. High expectations may not always yield high results, but low expectations are almost guaranteed to yield low results.

I have a slightly different view of education in the US- I think that 99.9999% of the problem with the American education system is the parents, not the teachers, not the school boards, not the principle. I have had the opportunity to view and review different education systems around the world- and though some systems spend far far far less money, the quality of education is far far far better!

The only common denominator I see is parent participation.

I will use the Russian system since my child now attended both American and Russian style schooling.

In America, you have a parent teacher conference, where the teacher has a solo parent to teacher conference, where they basically build your self esteem and tell you what a wonderful child you have and MAYBE some area where your child could use a "wee bit of improvement, if they focus, they are really a good kid, just need a little more focus". Now- a Russian parent teacher conference- all the parents are in the room with teacher, sitting in the same desk, and the teacher calls out the parents name, if the child is not performing 100% to his/her potential, they blame the parent in front of all the other parents! Wow, talk about social conditioning!

The subjects taken by the child are totally the decision of the parent- the curriculum IS NOT determined by the teacher or anyone else past thier equivilent of around the 6th grade from what I understand- they start becoming more specialized into thier next educational phase- if it is higher learning, then alot of "traditional" subjects are taught on more and more complicated basis- with no room for failure. You fail, you don't move on, period. YOU MUST pass your exams, which are comprehensive for the year- it is not an exercise in "regurgitation"- but how much you have learned- and from what I have seen, this is the European model throughout. Standardized quarterly and yearly testing as WE know it isn't the same there.

So, if we want to have children that are more educated, and some kind of education reform, then it is not "changing the teachers" it is "changing the parents"!

Is it the quality of the education being offered that is the problem, or the quality of the students and/or their efforts expended towards accepting what is being offered?
I'll start by saying that I think that if anything the quality of education in American schools has increased decade over decade in general. Students are getting into much more complex academic studies earlier in preparation for college in some schools. I remember that in high school every class my senior year was an AP (Advanced Placement) class that had a similar difficulty and scope to a college subject and it also counted for college credit. Programs like that are very new, I want to say they were implemented in the late 80's / early 90's.

To echo what CruisingRam said, parents are a big part of the problem. This article makes some good points indirectly about that.

I'm not suggesting that one ethnicity is smarter than another and I don't think this article is suggesting that either. The bigger picture here is what role the parents play. The article generalizes that asian students tend to do better because they feel not doing well will have negative consequences. When I was growing up I was pretty much a minority in my school and most of my friends were of asian descent. If they brought home a B+ on a test there was going to be hell to pay. I personally held myself to a higher standard and rarely brought home a B, but in my house as long as you got C's that was acceptable, my dad even let D's and F's slide with my brother because he was a Football player.


Aside from parents, some of the reason for our education problems is the attitude toward learning amongst most Americans. I'm not so far removed from high school and I'm sure that many of you aren't either (or at the very least can remember those days) and I clearly remember being called a nerd, geek, etc while I was in school. If you weren't in that group, surely you can remember some of the people that were and how they were always deemed "unpopular" and "uncool".

To a certain extent this even extends into our adult lives. Not necessarily here on AD, but on a few political boards I have passed through in my time the conservatives would constantly denigrate liberals for being "intellectual". It is a pretty sorry state of affairs when being intelligent is a bad thing.

As another example of this, I frequently dumb down vocabulary around co-workers and friends because I'll get the inevitable "huh" and have to explain myself. Why should you have to use several words to express a thought when one will do? In my limited experience with european cultures, this doesn't seem to be as prevalent over there.

So in summary there are two main factors we are fighting here - the importance parents place on education and the amount they support their children in their endeavors and the fact that being intelligent is a cultural faux pas.

Parents are always to blame. If there is a problem with the system they can change it. Yet parents in this country don't.
For my part education will not just be a priority for my children but for me as well. My example will be one of continual education. Taking classes just to find out how and why.
hopefully this will pass on to my kids.
I also plan to ensure that there are many enjoyable ways to learn. I want my kids to enjoy learning. So I will probably forgo traditional public schools. I have been kicking around an idea for a business related to the whole charter and home schooling movement that might get some kids excited about learning. This subject has become a centerpoint of interest for me as I think the desire to learn, explore and dream has faded.
The main reason for that is indeed the culture of learning is for geeks and that trying to succeed is somehow not "manly" I like that quote you got there Cube.
I think that American society had slid far too much towards the "No Fear" garbage of the instant gratification and mindless pursuits.
The fact that being cool seems to inevitably mean a slacker with poor hygiene has become somewhat ridiculous. They may be fashion concious but a loser is a loser.

I would add though that I still beleive the lack of any frontiers that are themselves a challenge has lent steam to the slacker ideal.
Some people are not meant for higher education, but NEED to DO something. explore, build, seek out new life and civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before....
Uhm sorry!
In a culture where the high ideal is a life of mortgage payments and climbing the corporate ladder, how do you maintain enthusiam? Living well is not always such a boon. where is the adventure?