Education, Education, and more Education

As my educational classes continue thoughts of future education keep swirling around in my head. Today there was a guest speaker to my class to talk about contemporary education and what is happening now based off of Horace Mann's original common school idea. The most shocking thing I learned today was that there are schools who have students who are kicked out of public schools, and told that they can not be in a public school whatsoever. I had absolutely no idea this happened, nor can I imagine teaching in a school with six kids who have security guards and one teacher there to explain the subjects to them with limited supplies based on what is allowed to be in their vacinity. On top of this realization is the fact that schools are so unequal with each other AND that government tries to change things in education so much that even the people don't always know about it. The speaker gave us an example of this because she has moved around and taught in several different states and it has cost her thousands of dollars to get certified each time because of the local standards, yet there are federal standards as well..

For a future educator this is kind of scary, if I decide to move what are the laws that are going to be on the books about what can and can't happen in public schools and on top of that I only really have experience of being in private school for the majority of my education. So I feel more comfortable in private school environments because that is where I was taught. I also think it is absurd that there are so many different standards depending on what state you live in. I thought that the point of public schools is as a standardization of education in order to make sure that students are taught what they need in order to succeed. However, there are those schools that you here about that are at a lower level even as graduates, how are they going to succeed in life.

Another question posed to us by the speaker was what do you do with those students who don't succeed in public schools, what happens to them? I think this is an extremely important question, there are all of these laws about No child left behind yet you still have THOUSANDS of students who don't succeed in public schools and their alternative is almost a waste of time until they are old enough to say that they can graduate. A personal story I have heard of this is from my cousin. She was put in classes that the school called Special Ed. and what did those teachers(if you can call them that) do? They gave them the test, told them where the answers were, and then let them watch movies the rest of the time. WHAT KIND OF EDUCATION IS THAT?! If these people are already falling behind and you water down or make something that easy you are just continuing their decent. That isn't helping them and what message does that send to someone like my cousin? That you don't have the same abilities to learn as someone else so we aren't even going to teach you anything and waste our time. The fact that THIS kind of education still exists in our country is ridiculous and is appalling. My cousin is perfectly capable of learning the same things as anyone else just differently. But what those teachers did was stunt the knowledge that could of been learned in the appropriate time frame so that my cousin is now behind at a later age because no one even tried.

I know my blog has become somewhat of an education piece lately but since it is my major and there is an election it keeps popping up everywhere I go. I would love to hear other people's opinions on education matters. So please comment cause I would love other perspectives on these issues.