Letter to the Editor
Nice timing
Published Wednesday, October 21, 2009
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Stumble It!How ironic that the school board is getting
$10 million in stimulus money right after a bond issue was passed. Interesting that they didn’t mention any stimulus money until after the election. They’ll probably waste it like they do most of their money. How much is that going to cost us?
Community Discussion
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Just who are the idiots who passed it?
Yea, schooling is such a waste of good child labor. If we continue to do it at all it should be on a shoestring budget and privatized, like HMOs are. 60 kids to a classroom learning about Home Economics (brought to them by Dawny) and Health (brought to you by Crest and Trojan) is the American way to go!
I hope that they teach the students that cool song:
"Barack Hussein Obama.
Mmmmm Mmmmm Mmmmm."
Once again, where are our priorities?
The usual gang, crying over money spent on the American people, perfectly content to line the pockets of corporate interests to the detriment of the American people.
Spare us the notion of educated children, and a healthy working class. Yes, those people who contribute to society their work which is the basis of real value behind the dollar.
No, let's dumb the kids down (well on our way there). Let's keep people sick. Let's forward the interest of the rich, while killing ourselves in the process.
Shokd -- it's just that the money is so badly spent. The more money we spend, the dumber we is.
The disparity of wealth in America has grown extraordinarily large over the past 20 years, more-so than even the robber-baron days of the 19th century. The top 1% today have a larger share of income than any time since 1928. Top 5% have 58.9% of the wealth in America, whereas the bottom 60% have 4% of the wealth.
Barrack Husein Obama! Redistibution of Wealth! Socialist! Nazi! Ahhh!!! you say...
We don't want to "redistribute the wealth", we want income equality. No that doesn't mean a CEO makes the same as a baker, but it does mean their sons have an equal opportunity to make something of themselves in life.
We want a healthy populace.. and I'm not just talking access to medicaid. Better education, having access to careers that even the worst case amongst us can make a living (besides selling cocaine), having the same chance to make something of yourself regardless of what (financial) class you were born into... these things are important. Successful people should make money yes, but it shouldn't be massively different than someone who is just making a living (note I said making a living, not living off welfare).
In a nation where one wealthy person literally makes more than enough money every year to buy most average Americans (assuming you cost the total amount of money you will make in your lifetime) we do not have equality. Political power, education, healthcare, basically the ability to survive and make something of yourself as a human being is not equal in our society. In fact, if you don't have money you do not have a right to live... being kicked out on the streets in -40 is real, starving to death in America is real. Children living and dying on the streets IS REAL.
This is not ok. This is not ethical. You may not be a communist, but you should be able to agree with me that this kind of thing isn't ok!!!
Having a class system based on birth is simply wrong. It's a moral absolute to me.
/rant off
You will be paying bonds for the rest of your life. The stimulus money has stipulations on it from Grand Poobah Obama that wouldnt allow it to be used in the same way the bond money is, so you cannnot even group the 2 in the same discussion. Did you really expect them to turn the money down?
Over the past 30 years, we have doubled school spending and our results have stayed constant. That is an amazing fact only a idiot could ignore - or the majority of Fairbanks voters that voted for those junk bonds.
The school bond was heavily padded with extra money the school board threw in just in case the bond passed. Does no one remember the story from last winter? That is why I voted against it. It was not vital, it is heavy with extra fat. Our student population has decreased, but spending has magnified. Our schools cannot make headway in achieving proficieny standards and yet, more money is needed. The way I see it, existing funding must be more carefully spent and the district needs to be held accountable for failure to make proficiency progress.
the public education system is the primary engine being used to merge the usa into the oncoming one world government. schools are not for education as much as they are for indoctrination. it is irrelevant to the leftists if the kids are learning math and science. so you won't see any improvement in test scores. the public school system has been used for merging the usa into the one world government since the leftists in the 1960's discovered that you can't over throw the usa government by head to head confrontation in the streets of the big university towns. china and russia would be really adverse to giving up their sovereingty. so why should we give up ours? stop funding public schools.
Schools are an 'Institution'. Other notable Institutions include: Jail, Insane Asylums, Government, Universities, Gulags. So I guess the word fits quit well.
I survived pulic education in FNSBSD in SPITE of the attempted indoctrination on a daily basis. Any teacher with any crackpot idea could teach impressionable kids that the idea was 'fact' and of course the kids believe them. That's what children do. At a young age they trust the adults around them, teaching them. Sight reading was an abject failure and left many years of kids unable to use phonics or to READ. Isn't READING one of the big things schools are supposed to be teaching? If you can't read- how can you be expected to learn or advance in school past the third grade? Thanks school district!
The widjet machine just falls so short for most students. The district says all kids will learn this piece of information at this time as the children move along the conveyer belt. If they fail to get a widjet of information when it is shoved at them- they can't go back and pick it up and resume their place on the belt starting at the widjet station they just picked up. NO! They are stamped 'Defective' (learning disabled- or worse just passed to the next grade). Children are not defective and do not need labels that are negative that they can strive to live up to.
Making the widjet machine even worse it the No Child Left Behind testing. I agree there should be testing- of basic skills only for elementary children. Until a child can do the 3 R's well, all the rest of the touchy-feely stuff can wait.
There are adults that can not write in legible cursive. How about spell the months of the year or days of the week correctly? How about balance their checkbook or understand the concept of interest on their credit cards? How about what APR means? I know a person who works at admissions for a major university (not UAF) who complains that ALL universities are having the same problem of people showing up to college lacking basic skills. These students, with High School Diplomas in hand, take and pay for a year to year and a half of remedial classes- BEFORE they can take classes that actually count for credit.
A GED was designed to be the equivalent exam for a basic education, which 50 years ago was 6th grade. We now have High School drop-outs that can't pass it with studying for it. They should be able to pass with ease- if our system was working properly.
We need to teach the basics for K-3 and test yearly to see if the child meets the criteria (meaning learned ALL the subject matter) of that grade level before passing to the next grade. If not, the child flunks. They will repeat the grade until the subject matter is mastered. This sounds cruel until you think of what CAN be done. The child can write and do math, but reading is a challenge. So they are given less assignments in the other subjects or breeze through them; then they can spend the rest of their time working with someone to help with the area they have trouble. Maybe their parents can help them, once the problem is identified.
Children in K-3 also need all of their recesses back. When I was that age we had 3 recesses a day. We used our large muscles and reoxygenated our brains. It gave us a place to not feel so frustrated and reset between subjects. Not to mention exercise. Small children actually learn better when they are not all fidgety. AND it would save money!! How? You don't need 2 hours of PE a week when the children have an added 2 1/2 hours of recess a week already! 1 less tenured teacher per every 2 elementary schools. If you can follow the math here, thank an elementary teacher.
Now for all the money the FNSBSD spends on education per child- we are NOT getting a quality product! Time to start over again with the processes involved. The one-room school houses provided excellent basic skills but were very limited in scope. We went to larger schools and solved the scope problem, but lost the basic skills. In the long run- which group of adult citizens was gyped the most? The children graduating today.
Good teachers exist. Thank them often. Promote them to be mentors for new teachers- not take them out of the classroom! Pay the teachers- NOT the administration. How many Vice-, Deputy-, Under-, Second Banana- top level superintendants do we have now? Getting a little top heavy. We pay those people downtown way too much for way too little. Kick them out! Redistribute the money to the teachers.
Anyone wonder why homeschooling has long been so popular around here? Homeschooling proves that a great education can be had for pennies on the dollar of what public school is spending per child, with inferior results!
Oh yeah- the stimulus money. How about that FNSBSD caught in a big, fat lie! Lying by omission is still a lie. At least model moral behavior for children- since most of the rest of the 'programming' stinks.
Tami26
Absolutely excellent comment. My wife and I have mixed public school and home school for all our children. Public school for the labs and internet access (which we did not have at the time), and the social life, and home school for the real learning. We had great difficulty finding suitable home school courses, and suffered frequently from the popular misconception that home schoolers were a bunch of ignorant lazy welfare hicks addicted to fundamentalist religion, (largely perpetrated and perpetuated by the members of the public school system). The main reason for our children's success was our engagement with them, and our own interest in education and intellectual curiosity. The parents' attitude is everything, and if people think they can just shove their kids off to school and abdicate any responsibility for their education, what happens with their kids will be a roll of the dice. Bureaucracy and peer groups are not good roll models.
That having been said, there are some truely excellent teachers in the public school system. Unfortunately, in our experience, these teachers don't last long, as the system tends to "eat them alive", and they quit or move away. Pressures from administration, unions, and parents with political agendas compromise their ability to teach their students. Public school is for students who can't afford private school, and just as other public institutions compromise quality to provide inexpensive quantity, we get what we pay for.
Parents should settle for a smaller house, cheaper car, and less luxuries, and spend less time chasing the allmighty and elusive dollar and spend more time at home. If you want it done right, do it yourself.
And yes, Isanova, yours was an excellent rant too. I agree with you too. We do not need government to make us all equal. We need government to enforce the rules We The People have devised to keep things fair.
/rant off
Oh where to start with this one. The education system is broken and has been since the early 60's. Our current educators are products of that broken system. They have no other point of reference to judge by. The system is driven by money in every aspect, be it for maintenance,construction or salary increases.
The teachers union has made it impossible to weed out the the teachers that lack skill, concern and compassion. It's next to impossible to eliminate instructors that have personal issues that makes them ineffective or at the very least, should not be in a position where they can impact the development of the students.
Perhaps we could start culling teachers and Administrators right now. Lets give them the same test that the High School graduates are supposed to pass. When I was in school, we only had to go to the 8th grade. High School was not required because many of us needed to go to work to help support our family. We had to pass the Iowa test to graduate from the 8th grade. You can look that test up on the internet and take it yourself. Have our standards been purposely reduced? I think that is so! Do we dumb down our children? Absolutely!
Why doesn't the post secondary education institutions work hand in hand with the secondary system? Has anyone ever surveyed the students and asked them what their expectations are? Our children are not stupid! They haven't lived enough years to be stupid! They just don't have any direction and get bored to death. It's no wonder they drop out of school. I'd get tired of a constant rehash of the same thing over and over. Why can't our students take post secondary classes while still in high school? They have been able to do that under the running start program in Washington State Schools, for at least 25 years.That means that Alaska Has already let two generation miss out on opportunities that should be available to them. We are now working on the third generation. We just don't get it and I doubt we ever will! There seems to be some protection of territory in play here. Fear stops growth! It's that simple!
OK, I'm off my stump. Education is very important to me and I wish it had the same importance to our education systems!
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