Lindsey-Kathryn Jarratt
English 1020
Professor Andy Smith
28 April 2009
Forget a village, we need parents!
Who was our 21st president? What is 38,474,028,374 in scientific notation? The best synonym for ubiquitous is which of the following? A) Liquefied B) delicious C) everywhere D) sweet smelling. What is the atomic mass of AU? What is AU? It is undeniable that high school is mundane and largely ineffective. Leon Botstein, in his radical essay Let Teenagers Try Adulthood, has the following cut throat feelings to express about high school: “High school is obsolete and should be abolished.” The giants it faces and the world that rests on its shoulders makes for an impossible objective. There are obvious social complications; tortured souls that congregate within the walls of our school buildings—note Columbine. But most importantly, our students are graduating without sufficient fact bases or life skills. However, Abolishing high school will be as helpful to our current predicament as blaming the source of education itself, which is to say, casting fault on educators and/or administration solely, would be as useful as putting a band-aid on a cancer patient.
Historically, school was an option—a privilege. Young people attended as work and family obligations permitted. Regular presence offered the ability to understand the world around them, to give them information otherwise inaccessible, at an age most appropriate for learning. As a privilege, students regarded it with respect and enthusiasm. Unfortunately, today’s students are fervor deficient when it comes to high school, which should call for method adaptation, but instead makes secondary education “obsolete.” The “stuff and chuck” tactics of most public schools is not successfully educating our children. They successfully remember material to successfully regurgitate it for tests and homework, but fail to absorb it for practical use, which is essentially the goal. “Disciplines are subordinated to the study of classroom management.”Botsein complains. The factual studying should be the student’s responsibility and the classroom a place for creative and critical thinking and therefore, effective education. “Obviously, a low premium is placed on reflection and repose. The student rushes from class to class to collect knowledge. Savoring it, it is implied, is not to be done,” Theodore Sizer characterizes how students are herded through their day. The Students will not put forth the effort if the information is spoon-fed and perceivably irrelevant. They will not grow or strive in an environment that supports apathy and indolence. The curriculum, providers, and methods of delivery must provide a milieu that interacts with and inspires students.
“School” was created to supply pupils with information otherwise unavailable. Today, High school is considered a rite of passage; a vital part of each child’s maturative, spiritual, and social progress. Schools are unsuccessful because their purpose has become unreasonable. Parents have “stepped out” and shed responsibility to participate in their children’s lives and nurture their development. It has fallen to the government to raise America’s Children. When did it become the schools’, and ultimately the government’s responsibility to keep kids out of trouble? Where in legislation does it say schools will provide a place for children to grow up, or self-actualize? Today’s parenting force is severely lacking and thus, schools are expected and failing to pick up the slack.
Furthermore, it is the parents, who are emotionally, spiritually, and physically unhealthy, that produce lazy, insubordinate, and psychologically damaged children. It is the parents who do not meet the needs of their offspring’s lower level Maslow requirements which enter them into the school systems with a predisposition to failure. And it is the parents who cripple the educators by not acknowledging successes and/or failures of the students, and cheating the system financially by cheating on their taxes. With one finger pointing at the school, three are pointing at the parents. The hidden culprit is the parent that skips the PTO meeting, the bake sale and the parent/teacher conference.
America has no one to blame but herself for the fall of secondary education. You can’t expect the village to breast feed the child, and the village will never fill the father’s shoes. Students need their parents to step up, and the school system needs to step out of the way of the train wreck that is about to come crashing down on everyone’s heads.
English 1020
Professor Andy Smith
28 April 2009
Forget a village, we need parents!
Who was our 21st president? What is 38,474,028,374 in scientific notation? The best synonym for ubiquitous is which of the following? A) Liquefied B) delicious C) everywhere D) sweet smelling. What is the atomic mass of AU? What is AU? It is undeniable that high school is mundane and largely ineffective. Leon Botstein, in his radical essay Let Teenagers Try Adulthood, has the following cut throat feelings to express about high school: “High school is obsolete and should be abolished.” The giants it faces and the world that rests on its shoulders makes for an impossible objective. There are obvious social complications; tortured souls that congregate within the walls of our school buildings—note Columbine. But most importantly, our students are graduating without sufficient fact bases or life skills. However, Abolishing high school will be as helpful to our current predicament as blaming the source of education itself, which is to say, casting fault on educators and/or administration solely, would be as useful as putting a band-aid on a cancer patient.
Historically, school was an option—a privilege. Young people attended as work and family obligations permitted. Regular presence offered the ability to understand the world around them, to give them information otherwise inaccessible, at an age most appropriate for learning. As a privilege, students regarded it with respect and enthusiasm. Unfortunately, today’s students are fervor deficient when it comes to high school, which should call for method adaptation, but instead makes secondary education “obsolete.” The “stuff and chuck” tactics of most public schools is not successfully educating our children. They successfully remember material to successfully regurgitate it for tests and homework, but fail to absorb it for practical use, which is essentially the goal. “Disciplines are subordinated to the study of classroom management.”Botsein complains. The factual studying should be the student’s responsibility and the classroom a place for creative and critical thinking and therefore, effective education. “Obviously, a low premium is placed on reflection and repose. The student rushes from class to class to collect knowledge. Savoring it, it is implied, is not to be done,” Theodore Sizer characterizes how students are herded through their day. The Students will not put forth the effort if the information is spoon-fed and perceivably irrelevant. They will not grow or strive in an environment that supports apathy and indolence. The curriculum, providers, and methods of delivery must provide a milieu that interacts with and inspires students.
“School” was created to supply pupils with information otherwise unavailable. Today, High school is considered a rite of passage; a vital part of each child’s maturative, spiritual, and social progress. Schools are unsuccessful because their purpose has become unreasonable. Parents have “stepped out” and shed responsibility to participate in their children’s lives and nurture their development. It has fallen to the government to raise America’s Children. When did it become the schools’, and ultimately the government’s responsibility to keep kids out of trouble? Where in legislation does it say schools will provide a place for children to grow up, or self-actualize? Today’s parenting force is severely lacking and thus, schools are expected and failing to pick up the slack.
Furthermore, it is the parents, who are emotionally, spiritually, and physically unhealthy, that produce lazy, insubordinate, and psychologically damaged children. It is the parents who do not meet the needs of their offspring’s lower level Maslow requirements which enter them into the school systems with a predisposition to failure. And it is the parents who cripple the educators by not acknowledging successes and/or failures of the students, and cheating the system financially by cheating on their taxes. With one finger pointing at the school, three are pointing at the parents. The hidden culprit is the parent that skips the PTO meeting, the bake sale and the parent/teacher conference.
America has no one to blame but herself for the fall of secondary education. You can’t expect the village to breast feed the child, and the village will never fill the father’s shoes. Students need their parents to step up, and the school system needs to step out of the way of the train wreck that is about to come crashing down on everyone’s heads.
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