Education Reform Needed?? - education Forum

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Forums > All Posts > Education Reform Needed??

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2011-01-07 08:39 PM

LLBarry
Beverly, MA
Posts: 299

Clearly the US is in need of education reform. What are your ideas for education reform what are your thoughts of preposed ideas like charter schools school accountability and the voucher system?

2011-01-08 01:35 PM

LLBarry
Beverly, MA
Posts: 299

More proof that education needs to be reformed. In New York City the Education Department paid more than 100 consultants six-figure salaries in 2010. See article. Bloomberg, decided that instead of cutting much needed figherfighters he would cut those consultants instead.
Good call. Are there more instances where extra money is being spent in the area of education that it doesn't need to be.. Perhaps that money could be shifted around and given to some much deserved teachers!

2011-01-18 06:02 PM

Schmidt
Colorado Springs, CO
Posts: 1058

I can't claim any expertise or make suggestions regarding charter schools versus home-schooling versus public schools...and unions and tenure and parents and consultants and everyone else proclaiming what is the best path forward. We don't seem to have a shortage of those "experts." But somewhere in the dialogue I wish there would be more emphasis on teaching critical thinking skills. When I look back on my prep school and college days, the teachers that I remember most were the one's that encourged us...challenged us...to think and not those that required us to memorize a whole bunch of stuff that was quickly forgotten.

This AlterNet article, Huge Numbers of Students Don't Learn Critical Thinking in College addresses my concern. A study of "several thousand undergraduates through four years of college found that large numbers didn't learn the critical thinking, complex reasoning and written communication skills that are widely assumed to be at the core of a college education. Many of the students graduated without knowing how to sift fact from opinion, make a clear written argument or objectively review conflicting reports of a situation or event. For example, they couldn't determine the cause of an increase in neighborhood crime or how best to respond without being swayed by emotional testimony and political spin."

In college I remember sitting in a large classrooms taking copious notes as a tenured professor lectured on and on in his monologue using notes he probably used over and over again, year after year. All we had to do was write down and memorize what he wrote on his overhead projector and...wallah...that's exactly what we'd expect to see on his tests. It was not a lesson in critical thinking...it was an exercise in note taking and memorization.

I know there are good teachers out there because some did just that...engaging the students in a serious discussion/debate on different ways of looking at a problem. Maybe I'm too ancient to know what is being taught now. However, AlterNet's concluding paragraph echos my sentiments:

"More importantly, we don't need a generation of people who can't understand or analyze the critical issues we face as a nation voting for candidates based on manipulative and often misleading political attack ads that appeal to emotion rather than to reason. In the past election, we witnessed the effect of the failure by so many people to discriminate between falsehoods and emotional appeals on the one hand and factually based arguments on the other. The best guard against a continued dumbing down of our political discourse is a well informed public able to think for themselves rather than relying upon the words of demagogues and political con artists to set the terms of our national debate."

Thoughts?

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