By golly I believe you have it Mr. Mork. The reasons for wanting a better
education for your child than Minneapolis provides should begin with those
things which Jim Mork so accurately lists: Bad teachers! Wasteful
Administrators! Distracted parents! BUT I believe he is wrong about
"Unproven teaching methods". The methodology so employed has been proven.
Proven to not be effective for 50% of students! As Mr. Mork asks for data, I
would say this is fairly conclusive data that the system doesn't work. In
fact if any child received such a score on a test I believe the grade given
would be an F, as in FAIL.
As to graduation from high school, honestly who cares. Whether it is from
public or private school. This is an outmoded rite of passage that should
be done away with, as the ability to teach grammar school with an 8th grade
education was done away with. The public should pay for a minimum of two
years of college and more if a person is doing well. No one but the
military, (trying to exclude poor young people) honors this outmoded
certificate. High Schools do not even honor it, passing it out to
semi-literate people almost as often as to those able to do college level
work.
I know many successful people who did not finish high school, many did not
even attend high school. Most however graduated from college. A good
example of which is that anchor man fellow on ABC News. Fellow by the name
of Jennings I believe. I do not know about Peter Jennings but the others
received damn good educations from the military in only a few weeks. So
there is a suggestion, hire as many retiring NCO's as possible, who had
experience teaching at Military tech schools. Most have no college
education, but they are the finest teachers, as a group, that I have
experienced, (far superior to those in Graduate School). These fine men and
women could change the way Minneapolis schools do business. There success
rate is presently almost 100% working with many who were the "Victims" of
public high schools. We should at least look at their teaching methods and
possibly insist that any public school teacher be a "Graduate" of the
schools the military uses for teaching its NCO teachers.
While many will feel these are absurd suggestions, I think they are no more
absurd than doing such a poor job that half of all students fail to complete
a course of study that even the dimmest are given certificates for.
Jim Graham,
Ventura Village
>If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.
- Albert
Einstein
----- Original Message -----
From: Jim Mork <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, September 02, 2002 11:09 PM
Subject: [Mpls] Schools: Why They Fail
> Mark Anderson wrote:
> "Jim Mork - Lots of people have zeroed in on the
> problems for poor school performance -
> unfortunately they are all different answers.
> Our problems with the schools still are mystical
> -so we'll have to muddle along until we
> arrive at that utopia when everyone agrees."
>
> Mark, that answer is frivolous. Critics should
> be very specific on what THEY think is mainly
> wrong. Bad teachers? Wasteful administrators?
> Unproven teaching methods? Distracted parents?
> I mean, if you are considering a private school,
> I think you need one or more REASONS, not just
> some general idea that some private schools
> somewhere have higher graduation rates. If that's
> the only reason anyone can come up with, then
> they are as big a failure as the worst school.
> Because they don't really understand the whys of
> the successful school.
>
>
>
> =====
> Jim Mork
> Longfellow Neighborhood
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
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