On 4/10/2013 4:56 AM, Daniel J. Matyola wrote:
"Why not just fix the public system instead?"
Several questions answers to which in my country are mostly shameful:
1. Is teacher as a profession is respected by your society?
2. Is teacher as an occupation is worth doing in terms of salary and
monetary gains?
3. Do schools in general and teachers in particular have legal backing
in order to enforce proper discipline in classes?
4. Do schools are provided (no matter the sources, as long they're
legal) with sufficient resources, funding, lab equipment, computers, etc?
5. Are there strong college/university programs that prepare teachers?
6. How good are the people who work on school curriculum programs? Are
these programs improving towards challenging the pupils and developing
them to be stronger in terms of knowledge? Or are these programs moving
towards simplifying the curriculum so that more kids can get better
marks with less effort?
7. Is exam/grading system is such that it encourages knowledge and
success as opposed to merely getting high grades? By the way - in my
very personal opinion the exams where you need to choose from given
answers is probably the worst abomination of them all.
8. Is your system given means (that the system constantly exercises)
that allow it detect bright kids that are then given special curriculum
to promote their excellency or natural gifts? Do such programs exist for
all possible areas ranging from sports to mathematics?
Obviously I can keep this list going... However, if teacher is someone
who did not choose to become but rather couldn't do anything else and
who's looking forward to allegedly long between years vacation, if
schools have minimal equipment, if curriculum is targeted towards
mediocre students while final exams are constantly downgraded to ensure
highly PR'ed statistics of allegedly high marks while gifted and
talented kids are shunned down - then you may have a problem at your
hands...
Given the size of the system and hence its inertia it may be this close
to impossible to introduce any change whatsoever beside of course the
general direction at which this juggernaut is moving on its own...
You will notice that I am rather passionate (some already told me -
obsessed) with education... It has to do with my heritage...
Boris
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