"The problem isn't that Johnny can't read..."

Posted by awebb 9 years, 7 months ago to Pics
5 comments | Share | Flag

"Atlas Shrugged: Who is John Galt?" hits theaters in 17 days. Help spread the word - Like and Share this post now.
SOURCE URL: https://www.facebook.com/AtlasShruggedMovie/photos/a.145967185415114.29212.144777702200729/850292108315948/?type=1


Add Comment

FORMATTING HELP

All Comments Hide marked as read Mark all as read

  • Posted by j_IR1776wg 9 years, 7 months ago
    "I believe that all education proceeds by the participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race. This process begins unconsciously almost at birth, and is continually shaping the individual's powers, saturating his consciousness, forming his habits, training his ideas, and arousing his feelings and emotions. Through this unconscious education the individual gradually comes to share in the intellectual and moral resources which humanity has succeeded in getting together. He becomes an inheritor of the funded capital of civilization. The most formal and technical education in the world cannot safely depart from this general process. It can only organize it; or differentiate it in some particular direction.

    I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child's powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself. Through these demands he is stimulated to act as a member of a unity, to emerge from his original narrowness of action and feeling and to conceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which he belongs. Through the responses which others make to his own activities he comes to know what these mean in social terms. The value which they have is reflected back into them. For instance, through the response which is made to the child's instinctive babblings the child comes to know what those babblings mean; they are transformed into articulate language and thus the child is introduced into the consolidated wealth of ideas and emotions which are now summed up in language." From John Dewey's My Pedagogic Creed. http://dewey.pragmatism.org/creed.htm
    Should we wonder why Johnny can't think?
    This crap guides our children's education. This guy has killed more minds than Rachel Carson has killed people.
    Reply | Mark as read | Best of... | Permalink  
  • Posted by hrymzk 9 years, 7 months ago

    Having been a Sub/Regular teacher (Science) in a major urban (NE) location for more than ten years, the problem lies with Johnny and parents
    The culture/attitude of the major minorities is to disrupt the education process as much as possible, so they do the least amount of learning
    They don't understand that they're condemning themselves to a life of standing behind the counter of a fast food joint, standing every minute of every hour that they earn their minimum wage, or down on their knees stacking cans on supermarket shelves.
    But then that's called motivation, the failure of the rest of adult establishment of the US. No one even tells all these kids that there's the ASVAB test to get into the high tech US Armed Forces. Math Science reading Comprehension etc.
    And we have >million kids dropping out of HS annually. That's not sustainable for this country to maintain its global presence.

    Harry M
    Reply | Mark as read | Best of... | Permalink  
    • Posted by stadler178 9 years, 7 months ago
      My mom spent decades teaching in one of the worst parts of DC. The stories I heard--not just about the parents, but about how the education system works--were truly eye-opening.

      The system really is rigged to fail in the first place; if your child falls behind at all, there will be very little chance of them catching up. The teachers know many of the children can't read at all, and so the goal is, for many teachers, to cheat on the standardized tests and not get caught doing so. (And if you do get caught, they hang you from the highest tree; if you don't, you get praised as a hero.) The end result is that--and this was even on the news--elementary school children in special education are scoring as high on standardized tests than the children in regular education.

      It should be obvious that massive amounts of cheating were involved, but everyone not only looks the other way, but praises the superintendent(s) for all the wonderful progress made in improving the school system. The teachers who tried to speak up and insisted on trying to help the kids learn at a level suitable for them were pretty much ordered to stick to the lesson plans given to them by the top dogs. And at best, to simply teach only what was on the standardized tests.

      Mind you, all of this happens as the DC Public Schools chancellor gets on the cover of Time magazine for making all these incredible changes to improve the school system. Go figure.

      But certainly one of the huge problems with the schools from what I could gather is, the schools are being expected to accomplish things that are the parents' responsibility. Schools are providing breakfast, lunch, and a snack for the after-school programs, so the parent doesn't even have to feed their children (leaving aside whether they can afford to or not, which is often an issue if, in line with the sad stereotype, there are five kids with five different fathers and one father is dead, another in jail, another doesn't even know he has a kid, etc.).

      All of that aside, if parents don't do anything at home with the kids, that really does become a problem. Unfortunately, for the working poor, many parents are having to work multiple low-wage jobs and are too tired to help their kids with homework. The same parents may or may not teach their children to take education seriously, and so that's the result.

      The other factor is, in some communities, the kid who reads books all the time is just a target. When few people in class care about learning, that creates a social pressure on a child trying to learn. It's easy for him or her to be pulled down by the crowd, even if he or she is capable of excellence.

      Worse still is that some parents are quick to take their children's side even when the child is clearly in the wrong. So there's no hope of getting even the parents to see reason. It's like they want their kids to self-destruct. And when they do, it becomes 'society's' responsibility to now take care of the kids they inevitably make.

      Granted, my mom's experiences were in an extreme environment--lots of poverty and a cycle of violence and fatherless homes; I don't think that is the norm for everyone. I think parents overall do care about their children getting a good education.

      I guess to make it more personal, my wife quit school as a teenager and was never able to work for anything but minimum wage. She regrets it to this day. I'm assuming she wasn't giving much thought to it at the time, because it's what her friends were doing. Sadly, the family structure is a big factor here--when your immature friends are as close as you get to family, your thoughts are just whatever the group thinks. You're vulnerable to any whim of the mob.

      At its root this has become, I don't even have to succeed, because someone is always going to be there to rescue me. From Wall Street to the workers who serve up Whoppers, this has become a society where the burden of the individual is no longer even his burden anymore. And to say otherwise is forbidden. In a world like that, thinking has already gone the way of the dodo.
      Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
    • Posted by j_IR1776wg 9 years, 7 months ago
      "Having been a Sub/Regular teacher (Science) in a major urban (NE) location for more than ten years, the problem lies with Johnny and parents" Having taught at a community college in Morris county NJ (IT), I completely disagree with your assessment. Blaming Johnny and his parents is akin to blaming Jews for the concentration camps.
      Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
      • Posted by hrymzk 9 years, 7 months ago

        Your reply is not sensible. Why Johhny can't read has to do with K-12 years. All my experience is with K-12. Your experience at Comm Coll is irrelevant

        Harry M
        Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  

FORMATTING HELP

  • Comment hidden. Undo