My sister in-law has taught elementary school for twenty years and might quietly agree with most of your points, although she has become too closely aligned with the school unions to publicly admit this. Short of abolishing unions altogether, how would you suggest we make the changes you described? Competition is doing this for the auto and airline industries, but popular education ties federal money to unions too closely for an similar adjustment.

A friend and I have recently started a common sense themed blog as well, http://www.considercommonsense.com. There is an education article there from a different perspective. Once I figure things out more I would be interested in linking with your site in some manner.

Keep up the great work.

David- That is great! I only wish more people would start teaching civic responsibility at an early age.

Woodenshoe- Well said. Thanks for the comment.

God Bless America. God Save The Republic.

AHS Editor- I’m not quite sure where you are going here, but I think that you are right about a lack of accountability, both in schools, and also in society and government from a broader perspective. Thanks for dropping by.

Blogcruiser- Thanks for the comments, but I’m not sure that ceding more authority, or even the appearance of doing so, to students is the answer. In fact, it is this propensity that has degraded the system of respect that allows classes to function.

It is one thing to prepare curriculum with the best interests of the students in mind, or to expect teachers and parents to help students identify the path of their learning, but that is not the same as letting students control the reins of education.

Students who are minors must be made to understand that their main task is to become productive adults. Much fun can and should be had along the way to this goal, as well as much learning. For that to happen, young people need to be taught the concepts of respect and responsibility and be taught to apply them in situations that are less than enjoyable rather than expect to be accommodated at every turn.

Windspike- I rarely link because I rarely deal with topical issues and rather work on larger abstracts from the “bigger perspective.” At least for the time being anyhow. But your post fit in nicely and I wanted to link over. Glad you don’t mind.

As for the teaching of values alongside more objective material, I think that we need to keepo that relatively simple and stick to instilling those character traits that are most useful to society. Morality can be taught in the home or church or somewhere else, but there are (I think anyhow) a few values that are nearly universal: respect people in positions of knowledge and authority, or at least respect the position they hold; develop and maintain personal integrity through responsible actions and behavior; don’t lie, steal, or cheat your way through life; and one which I’d like to make more universal, tolerance for those who hold differing subjective opinions than you do.

All other ethical, moral, or relativistic values can be learned outside of public schooling and their applications should be applied outside of the schools too.

Having taught myself (High School Math – five course, four preparations), I noticed that most of my time and attention was spent dealing with the bottom 10 % of the classroom. That said, these were the discipline problems.

Some schools are also good at dealing with the top 10% of the classroom, mainly by shuffling them off to “gifted,” or AP type classrooms. So, where does that leave the middle 80%? Left behind.

The difficulty in dealing with classroom dynamics is that, oft times, parents relegate the teaching of both academic subject matter and instilling of discipline to the teachers…which is borderline teaching of values and ethics.

A wholistic approach to education would also include ethics, values, and learning skills coruses into the curriclum. That said, we will have to at some point, enter in to that difficult conversation about whose values should we be teaching…then we get into it with the reichwingers because the genuinely have some extreme viewpoints on values and ethics.

Anyway, I’ll have to think a bit more on your thoughts on this, yet another fine post, and perhaps reply on my blog.

Incidentially, I am wondering, what is the “Airborne Hog Society?” Moreover dear Editor, would you rather live in Bosnia or the good ol’ US of A?