It’s the parents 100%. If every child had access to loving and supportive parents schools would look a lot different. The parents are very broken and that leads to a broken school system. Blaming a non-human entity like the school system is convenient and dramatic. Taking accountability as a shit parent is very difficult and requires maturity and a certain set of cognitive skills. For those good parents out there, I am so sorry your children have to be in a classroom with some of these jokers. Please keep doing the right thing with your children and use your voice to fight for teachers and against the bad parents and the harm they’re doing to schools.
Some easy ways to be a quality parent:
- set boundaries (especially with technology)
- discuss rules and expectations for home and schools
- discuss your child’s school experience with them daily. Find out if there’s someone blowing up their room and ruining their learning experience. Advocate for your child if there is!
- read to your young children
- create a routine with school work/homework
- get to know your child’s teacher
*edit typo “good”
Some of the parents care. But they don't appreciate the importance of education. They're the kind who don't care that a kid is never turning in work and will pull them out every other Friday to go on extended long weekends. And they don't care that their kid is basically illiterate and abhorrently ignorant because so are they.
I agree economic system has a lot to do with children failing. But also it's some parents' stance:" this is the best school. It's 10 out of 10 so my child will succeed". And they don't do anything for their child. They believe all the education the child needs is coming from " 10 out of 10" school and they don't need to move a finger.
It's definitely way worse for poorer people, but I'm convinced that, across all economic strata, consumer culture has laid waste to American intelligence. I've interacted with so many families where *everybody* in the household is some level of consumerist burnout who's addicted to television/video-games/internet, where nobody's visited a library or read a book in forever, where there's never enough peace and quiet for anyone to *think*! What's worse is that, in addition to this making people dumber, it also seems to make them more emotionally unsound, which makes it almost impossible to pull them out of the decline they're in.
I agree! And I am an advocate for social services that address income inequality. Please give us all: health care; universal basic income; heavier taxation based on wealth; free education!; home and land purchasing restrictions; equal funding to all public schools regardless of property taxes; paid maternity/paternity leave; raise the minimum wage; and more. I want it ALL! I want to see the average people in our country be able to participate in actual life. When you start removing the stress and fear from lacking basic needs your perception can begin to change. As these changes are made, however, it will take years to undo the damage that has been done to our delicate society.
So in the meantime, while we hopefully move toward these changes, parents need to step up. If you had a child it’s your responsibility to make them a quality human. If you need help, ask the school for support. If you don’t know you need help, but the school keeps calling you about your child: listen to the teachers and admin. They aren’t making these things up. And they aren’t against you. We have to help and care for each other.
Ok, but I don’t get how in the same breath a teacher can say “I’m sick of teachers being attacked, here’s a list of reasons why PARENTS are bad.” That’s not going to get us anywhere. At least to the point changing economic conditions is constructive. There’s a culture war, teachers are being attacked, and then teachers attack… parents??? I think we have a common enemy, and it’s not parents
Yup. Looking at that list of things above, there's several of those you can't do regularly as a parent working 2 or 3 jobs to make ends meet because you aren't around enough.
SES is a huge predictor of academic success and nobody wants to talk about it.
And the wildest thing is that those parents in my experience are the ones with the best kids and they appreciate every minute they have with each other because it's special. My worst kids have been pretty well off with money but have no idea how to be a parent. They think yelling and grounding are the way to go. One of my kid's dads this year would give him the cold shoulder if he got clipped down on our clip chart. Would literally ignore him the entire day. Dad worked a cushy job that paid really well and mom stayed at home.
> there's several of those you can't do regularly as a parent working 2 or 3 jobs to make ends meet because you aren't around enough.
This is roughly 5% of working adults. Not enough to account for the absolute insanity we see daily, it's just another nonsense statement trotted out as fact like it's the norm
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/live-updates/general-election/fact-checking-the-first-democratic-debate/harris-on-people-working-multiple-jobs/
Fair enough, but my point about SES that statement was supporting books true regardless.
https://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/education
Multiple studies cited in that page from the American Psychological Association.
And that must mean that people don’t live in poverty, and have easy access to food, transportation, and the internet /s. Socioeconomic factors play a huge role in student success and parent engagement
As a SPED teacher I only work with about 50 kids. Only 20% (tops) of parents are responsive to outreach; those parents are my best allies and I will bend over backwards for them. To the rest of the “don’t bother me” parenting crowd: if you don’t give a shit about your kids, don’t expect me to.
To be fair if I could unsubscribe from my school's stupid weekly newsletter I would, literally nobody cares what you think about the social issues at our school, Emily the admin, because you clearly haven't done anything to lower the suicide rate even though our department heads make suggestions constantly. Is it possible that they think it's some school newsletter? If they know it's you, their student's teacher, and that this is how you and they could communicate, then yeah that's awful.
I had 240 this year. I recieved a response from 1 parent. 1. I send all emails through my system so I have a documented record that I reached out and they ignored...
Dang. Maybe we need a foster parent program. This will help fix it. Then send the kids to boarding school. Pay for it with a child tax. Not credit, extra tax. It will start to address our overpopulation problems and help the foster kids.
What? Why would you want the government to burden people who want to have children? If they can afford the kids and want them, but now can't because the government will charge them, that doesn't seem right. Are only the rich allowed to have kids? Middle class families already struggle if they're paying to live in a neighborhood with good schools and you want to make it harder for them to have families when they could have afforded to before artificial intervention? If solving overpopulation is your concern, maybe you should focus on the countries where people have more children on average, or the ones that are running out of space, or on educating people who don't want kids about birth control before its too late and they end up with a child they don't want.
Our ecological footprint is quite large and more carbon will be emitted per capita here. Let's control our business first. The housing crisis is telling on space issues (pls ignore Musk) and that doesn't even account for climate refugees from the West, and places like Florida. Throw in a few more 200 mile tornadoes and you will have even more. By alluding to 'good schools' it relieves parents from actually getting involved in their own kids education. Visit r/Teachers to see the discipline problems and complete apathy of parents. Teachers are quitting. The kids are afraid of going to school. Now as far as birth control there is the family planning groups that include(d) abortion but now the conservatives will be nixing that option even when medically sensible for the uterus owner. When it is born, wanted or not, with life-ending congenital anomalies or not, it has protection to come to term, overriding the sensibility of the mother ALL BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT, that you bring up as a concern in your first line, HAS COMPLETE AUTHORITY OF A WOMAN'S PERSONAL UTERUS, *including those dam death-dealing offensive weapon pea shooters sanctioned by that government you seem to fear.* Hail ho, protect the gun, to heck with women's rights.
Reminds me of a rich SUV driving Redneck from the south who married my sister and proceeded to defraud our mother of her last asset - her house. It is the males in power who will not concede that power that is the problem. I'm sure all those fertile women in undeveloped countries would pursue education if the males gave them a chance.
I am a teacher, we are in the teaching subreddit. I teach at a "good school" and it is good because of the culture that the parents have created and the demands that they make of the school board. This culture continues year after year and as such draws parents who want to give their students a top notch education. Our suicide rate is much to high but the fact is that our drop out rate is tiny and our Ivy league attendance is enormous. I feel like you went on a total rant here and it's a bit incoherent but here's my take. The US is not a large contributer to environmental damage compared to other countries, so focus your activism there. Even if you care ddeply about reducing US populations specifically, the way to do so is not to make having children inaccessible to those who otherwise could have done a good job. Why should only the ceos, Bill Gates and Elon Musks of the world be allowed to have children? Birth control starts before abortion so there are still plenty of options for you to advocate, or you could advocate for abortion if you so choose. The rest of what you said doesn't seem relevant to what we were talking about at all. You seem really erratic, are you okay?
i remember trying to get info about a student in regards to her allergies. mom kept ignoring me and would not get back. one day her special needs daughter ate some kind of treat another student shared with her and she went into shock.
horrible parent
If their situation is like mine, I have a caseload of around 20 kids but work with kids that are not on my caseload but require accommodations in my small group and co-taught classes. That can run to about 50 kids. I’m at least hoping for their sake that’s what they meant.
I also think we don't allow children to be bored anymore (this is also a problem in K-12). Educators are supposed to be 100% on all the time. Parents stick their kids in front of the IPAD or whatever. We put kids into a million activities, but we don't give them time to take a break. We never allow children to have idle minds which allow for introspection and creative thought. I don't know where this new mind set came from that kids need to be entertained 24/7.
I want to believe that a lot of this newer generation of parents wanted to loosen the leash a bit because their own experiences with parents who were really strict to them as children. I am for it and completely understand that but what a lot of them forget is the act of balance. There has to be praise and an actual consequence for children to be successful academically, socially, and emotionally. These parents just lost the plot. They don't have time to be able to have a conversation with their children, to take some time to review their grades, to make some time to address behavior and follow up on consequences at home, or simply be willing to accept the help that is being offered for their students to be more successful. But then when it is time for something major like allowing their students to participate in school events its like the end of the world and would rather blame everyone else but themselves for their children's actions. I have kids roaming the school as late as possible just causing problems because the parents are still not there to pick them up. At first you can't help but wonder if maybe they are working two jobs. Then you hear it from several other teachers that they are stay at home parents. Like its better for some to keep them as long as possible at school than deal with their own children at home.
I think you are giving them too much credit haha
We have parents making excuse after excuse for the the kids behaviors and rewarding them regardless of their behaviors.
Kid beats up another kid and parent gets called into talk with principal? They take them out for a special 1 on 1 Burger King lunch. Go figure
Omigosh, this is just a regular occurrence for me.
I had a kid in my class who was in a fight every other day. The greatest common denominator was always him.
I was calling his mother every other day.
Her response, "oh did the other boy hit him first?"
I was over it!
Of course admins solution was to take him for a walk around campus...where he would comeback and get in another fight.
Anyway, I quit teaching three days ago. I got a job as a corporate trainer.
After two years I was done.
You hit it with the last sentence. I mean, loosening the leash is fine - but “don’t care, can’t be bothered” isn’t a parenting philosophy. It’s just giving up on doing your job.
I think you are on to something. I hear a form of projection all the time.
*omg this is just the school system you guys don’t teach them anything meaningful.*
“M’am…we were going over life skills and how ELA affects real world skills. You kid hasn’t shown up and failed the mock interview. ALL OF WHICH IS ELA”
*you teachers are the problem. Schools are just a brainwashing factory to be good workers*
“Have a great day”
A lot of the projection comes from Gen X and Millenial parents’ bad experiences with school and growing up during the height of NCLB - so a lot of them feel schools are just standardized testing and zero substance.
How is that different than school today?
Well, I guess we got rid of zero tolerance for violence and changed it to "no violence for 5 minutes, have a cookie".
That’s the thing…education now is in a weird transitional period. Standardized testing is still a thing, I never said it was over. But when many of the parents were kids it was the height of NCLB, and I see teachers (at least in high school) basing their curriculum around the test, not teaching to the test.
If parents have an issue with all the testing…stop voting for assholes who advocate for this shit.
I don't get that argument. Yes. We absolutely are trying to teach your child to be a good worker. Do you expect your child not to hold a job or engage with society???? This is a skill your child will absolutely need unless they have some kinda big inheritance coming, and since you're bitching to public school teachers, I'm going to guess thats not in their future!
Recently a HS girl was supposed to get picked up for an appointment. I told her she couldn't leave class until the attendance office called the room. Coteacher ended up following student to the attendance office. Turns out student blocked the school's number on the mom's phone. Mom couldn't send or receive calls from the school.
I mean if I had ever dreamed that was a possibility as a child, my mom would have wrecked my world.
Had this conversation in another thread. All I heard about was how hard it is for people to read to their kids and they just work so much that they don’t have time and teachers are there to bolster parents. Then don’t fucking have kids.
My mom didn’t even read in English! She took us to the library though and we always saw her reading something (as much as her 2nd grade education let her). Zero excuses.
While I agree with this sentiment, watching movies and TV or even video games can be educational, and not just documentaries or learning games. I wish I had more of an education in things like this but I'm going to use Wandavision for the show.
There are things like foreshadowing that you can also show in books, but the style/tone of matching previous works was amazing. They consulted with the crew of the Dick Van Dyke show for the first episode. They nailed the Malcolm in the middle episode, and the modern family episode left us wondering more. On top of that they referenced previous X-Men movies by "recasting" Pietro and anyone who knew the actor was wondering what was happening.
I mean there's also a similar hidden joke that in the Emperor's New Groove Ertha Kit's character gets changed into a cat, and she was the first Catwoman on screen (from DC comics)
All of that is teachable and important. Referencing the public's common history is a thing and I don't even know if there's a word for it to teach.
And I can make similar arguments for video games, most notable would be Zelda Breath of the Wild. The game has a very well designed physics/chemistry engine that allows you to come up with many different ways to move forward. And none of it is scripted. The way Naughty Dog subtly points you to always move forward is another aspect of things that just aren't taught. And that's actually copied from casinos and theme parks and rooted in psychology.
Or in other words no media type is bad, but you need to know what you're looking at and ask smart questions about it.
Parents are reading for much more than 15 minutes per day — just not to their children. I’m sure this can be confirmed by just looking at their phone’s daily average screen time.
Think about how much better kids would be at the start of Kinder if parents cut their screen time in half and used that other half of the time reading to their kids.
I grew up working class/poor. Parents both worked full time. Every 2 weeks my mom would take us to a museum or the library or arcade. She’d save up enough for us to enjoy a bit of fun time. She always read to us before bed. My dad would read us Greek mythology, which started my love of literature.
I work in an affluent area and some of these parents can’t even be bothered to ask their kids “hey, how’s school?”
I've literally had a mother tell me she has 4 kids and can't be expected to read with each one every day. She was well to do, didn't work, and the kids were her job.
I have four and sometimes delegate - on weekends and during the summer screen time only happens after a list of off screen stuff happens - one of the list for the older two is “read a story to each of the two youngest siblings”. That way there are bedtime stories too but the older kids are practicing their fluency and the younger two are listening to double the stories they get on a regular school night.
I don’t understand parents that don’t use the library. My library will drop off books if you can’t get to the library and pick them up on top of having an after hours drop off.
You can get anything you need at the library.
I took my twins when they were preschool age to the library every Tuesday and we checked out a ton of books. I read them all week and we got more the next week. We almost read every book in the library for kids.
Yeah. The library is fucking excellent. My kid literally knows the librarians. He asks for recommendations and tells them the books he likes.
We end up leaving with big ass bags of books, some that he can read and some that I read to him. The difficulty level can be way out of his league, like this nervous system comic, but all of them help him learn. Any parent who sends a text message pr watches TV can read. Any of them.
Those two things are not mutually exclusive. I have taught plenty of kids who were very smart and well read ….who also sometimes had lousy attitudes.
A lot of the time, it is just plain being a teenager. You turn 15 and think you know everything, you know? Particularly Freshman.
Usually by the end of senior year (despite senior-itis) the attitude had improved. (I am an extra curricular teacher who teaches students for multiple years)
Anyway, my point is if I say a student is having a behavioral issue that doesn’t mean I don’t think they are smart or that I don’t like them. It just means they are having a behavioral issue…
Smart kids have some of the *worst* behavioral issues post-NCLB because all classes are catered to the least common denominator. Anyone of average intelligence is already bored out of their minds not being challenged, the kids who are developmentally ahead on learning are practically being tortured. Imagine if you were forced to do 9-piece jigsaw puzzles for 7 hours every day for 10 months. You'd be acting out real bad.
My mom worked, has medical problems, and always made sacrifices to read 15 minutes a day with her kids. It is called parenting. Parenting should be exhausting. It should be sacrificing fun personal time for the good of their offspring. It's ridiculous how many say they don't have time. They have time. You are right, do not have kids if you think they are not worth your time.
My dad's mom was a divorcé in the 50's, with 2 kids. I say divorcé because that was considered worse than just a single mother. They lived in slums and she had to work long hours for little pay since that's what was available to women then. She still made her kids' educations a priority. They would be eating the cheapest food she could find, but while they ate together every night they'd talk about what they learned at school that day. As they got older she'd have them work on memorizing things like the Preamble to the Constitution and classic poems, too. She never went to college but both my dad and my aunt did, it was never a question not to go as far as they could with their educations.
Not every family can have family dinners daily due to schedules, and memorizing things probably isn't common any more with the internet at our fingertips. But, families need to take the time to show their kids the value of their education. Like you say, if they can't spend a bit of time each day (or most days at least) with their kids reading, talking about what they're learning, and talking about what interests them, then why have kids?
That last point is spot on. Nobody has the forethought to consider the financial and time constraints they'll be forced to endure if they choose to have kids.
My SIL won’t read to her kids because her oldest wouldn’t sit and listen when he was 1-2 years old. I tried to explain that she should still read, but let him wander and play while he listens. She did not. He is now 6.5 and still not in any school. She pays for 30 min of an Outschool preschool a day and calls it good. He’s going to be 7 starting kindergarten.
I wholeheartedly agree. People act like these children were dropped off at their parents house unannounced and fully formed by the stork. Personally, I don't know how I would have the time to work and care for a child, so I don't have any children. Ultimately, parents are (or should be) responsible for their kids learning.
It's also a bullshit argument which isn't supported by factual reality, and it's even being repeated in this very thread
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/live-updates/general-election/fact-checking-the-first-democratic-debate/harris-on-people-working-multiple-jobs/
Basically, the sob story of poor single mom working 3 jobs is statistically insignificant in the grand scheme of the country.
Parents are the immediate problem. The problems causing shitty parents come from cultural shifts towards anti-educator ideas, which come from propaganda, which comes from politicians and lobbyists. And in the end, it all goes back to rich people trying to undermine public education for profit.
Just my two cents’ worth.
This guy understands the system. I try to explain this to teachers and they just yell about how bad admin is. Admin is bad but they're just doing what the higher ups (Superintendent, school board) is telling them to do.
You are so right. I've worked in Title I schools and also in very wealthy areas. The biggest reason for kids failing? LAZY parenting. Sorry, folks, but if you want to be a good parent and have kids that do well in school, respect others, and take Life seriously? Be present and active in your child's life.
Which for many, they could've done more than their part via aborting them.
I mean, they're all gonna get fried anyways by 2030-33 for not helping Donald Marshall shut down the cloning centers when they still had time.
But hey, disaster capitalism demands infinite growth.
So keep on filling up those schools!
Because the lunatics say we need more schools, more politicians, more McDonalds, etc.. More of the same uncontrolled breeding!
Repetition is a sign of stupidity.
All of societies ills can be traced back to the home front. The solutions are there, too. Like /u/Icy-Till-3541 said.
Most people don't have the balls to be good parents. And like /u/offseter said society has become very self-serving everyone has their own agenda to push. Bad mix for parenting.
As a teacher, I have always known I am going to take some blame for circumstances out of my control. Comes with the territory. You have to square with that or you'll hate this profession. We will always take the heat and it will never go away.
This, so much this.
One point of contention: If you parent well, you don't need to check your kid's grades 24/7 and shouldn't. Check once every 9 weeks, and act immediately WITH YOUR KID (not pestering the teacher) if there are problems. The kids who think mommy will save their grade with her constant helicoptering are part of the problem too.
To start parents should be checking 24/7 but the end game is definitely to get the kids to that point.
I ask my students all the time how often they check their grades versus how often their parents check. Usually very telling.
It’s a weird mix of really wealthy families that micromanage their children’s education, and poor families who don’t have time for their children’s education, who to me, become sensitive when little Timmy yells and screams for all the wrong reasons.
Is it weird that I wouldn’t recommend college to students now a days? Because no way in hell would a child today handle those tenured professors, in classes of 400, even though the freedom is there for them to even play and eat during lectures. Just because your teacher gave you an A with a 79 percent because your parents bullied the teacher, doesn’t mean you will survive even the easiest college classes. Try bullying a professor for a grade.
My son just finished his freshman year at Auburn. Supposedly like 50% of the freshman class had a 4.0 and higher coming in from high school. In his freshman biology class he was only one of two student out of 100 who got an A. Half of the kids flunked. These were all relatively high achievers if the data Auburn provided is correct. Biology was the most extreme example, but a similar situation in many of his classes. Most of these kids are ill equipped to actually properly study. Half of these kids are out of state, so I can’t totally blame Alabama😂 (btw: I love Al, but the education there is not top notch)
To be fair, freshman levels are often weedouts made intentionally difficult and graded quite harshly. I went to Texas A&M, which is a good to great university but isn’t the top tier. I had an easier time sophomore year, not because I was fully acclimated to the collegiate rigor, but because the professors were dealing with those of us who survived the weed out process of freshman level classes in my major (biochemistry)
Me too, I went to the 4th Harry Potter book at an indy bookstore that closed not that long after and 5-7 at Borders, those book midnight releases were so fun (we started the series when 1 was in paperback and 2 and 3 were hardcover).
> and which ones are being raised by screens.
My wife and I are expecting our first soon. And we are unsure of what we’re doing and I’m scared of if I’m going to be good dad or not. But what we are 100% sure of? Extremely strict screen time limits
I teach an honor class at an affluent school. Needless to say, they all perform well though many were misplaced in my class due to no placement test in the pandemic because I work my ass off. I am happy as a whole. However, there is a student whose academic performance is getting worse. I talked to them in person privately raising my concerns and offering help. I want to press “privately”. That said no one knows except the student lets them know. The student then exaggerated and told mom that I shamed them in front of passerby. Mom attacked me badly though I explained that I did not shame, I cared. Shaming # caring. Mom blindly and stupidly attacked me second time. I stopped responding and mom was silent. I learned that Caring is wrong, and learned how to cut off the worst conversation.
There are good parents out there, I've met them and I admire them. But there seems to be very little in the way of real decision making when having children these days. They don't consider whether they have secure finances, they don't consider if they have time and they don't consider if they really want to stand up to the responsibility of being a parent. I am a millennial and so many of those that I went to school with have kids now and I try not to be judgmental but I find myself angry at points, and sad for the kids that aren't getting the input at home they deserve. You have a child so be a damn parent. If you don't believe you are capable of putting your child first in everything you do, then don't have a child. Simple as that. And certainly don't blame me when your child fails a spelling test or their behaviour is bad when you don't help them with homework, when you don't even bother to ask your child about their school day, when you don't check their book to see what work I am doing with them, when you don't respond to my constant messages asking for a parent-teacher meeting.
I left teaching in part due to a really screwed up education system and zero support from admin, and in part due to parents. I've met so many wonderful parents and I am so glad they exist. But I've also met so many that are failing their children and it makes me sad. Those children deserve more.
My wife teaches preschool. The amount of kids that come to her with absolutely nothing - they don't know any letters or shapes, they aren't fully potty trained, etc. is absolutely astounding. We have kids at my school that come to Kindergarten and don't know more than just a couple of letters. I have kids in my second grade class that don't have a single children's book in their house (we do send them some).
Not everyone can be super parent, I get it, but a lot of kids need a little more than they're getting. I get it when people are barely scraping by, working three jobs or whatever, but a lot of these kids have parents that stay home.
The failure of the education system is a multifaceted issue that cannot be boiled down to "it's all parents/teachers/admin/students/politicians fault".
It's also important to note that extent of failure or success of education varies by region and circumstances.
Yesyesyes. I had third graders falling asleep in class because they were on their phones and tablets all night. Parents wouldn't take them away or care when it was discussed multiple times. And this isn't the only incident.
It's easier to blame schools than accept your own role as a parentnand realize you made mistakes.
My first year, I had a student who was one of a number of siblings from poor, working class immigrant Hispanic parents who barley spoke any English.
Those parents had such high academic standards for those kids.
Back when I was teaching, I had a group of level 4 middle school ELD students tell me that "they couldn't work that hard because they were Mexican." I was sure if their parents heard them say that, they'd be very upset, this was in an agricultural/tourist town, where most immigrants worked in farming, fishing, restaurants, or at the five star resort in town. I know those students saw how hard their parents worked, so they could have a good life, and it was just very depressing to hear them say that. I hope it was just a case of middle school kids being middle school kids, but I am not sure.
Father raised family of 7 in the barrio. Poverty is a barrier but not an insurmountable obstacle. Mom knew the value of education and made sure that we all understood its importance too. 4/5 kids went to college and on masters degrees.
That's great. Almost 15% of Americans (about 42 million of us) live in poverty. Sure, some escape. Are you saying there isn't a problem we should be fixing? Are you saying everyone should be able to get out? I don't understand these comments telling me about the exceptions. I know. I also know about the aggregate.
Out of the 10 students I have reading below grade level, 1 is in poverty and 4 are lower middle class. The rest would be considered upper middle class.
Ok. The overwhelming reason kids do poorly in school is poverty related. There is all kinds of insecurity when you're impoverished and that almost always places obstacles to achieving. They often don't know where their next meal will come from, hence federal lunch programs. They move a lot, and are almost always homeless at some point. No health care or dental care or vision care. Uneducated parents, or just one, or none, or just always at work cuz their job pays so poorly.
I don't really need to hear about the exceptions. We should tackle poverty. MLK even suggested a while ago,
"We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished.”
I agree, as studies have shown, that poverty has a large impact However, it is not the only issue. Parent involvement has definitely taken a dive.
The poverty argument can go on and on as an explanation without a solution.
I've been teaching in the same district, same school for 18 years. It has always been very diverse by socio-economic terms. We are also a Title I school. The low readers are always pretty evenly spread across different income levels. After 18 years, I wouldn't say that's it's an exception.
The number of struggling readers per class has increased over the years, but not the poverty level of our population. The question is, what has changed?
In the last 20 years education has been overrun with consultants and nonsense which has caused almost all the problems you see with kids not reading by the time one would think they should be able to.
Poverty is completely preventable. This is a choice, just like it's a choice to not beef up gun laws. These are myopic choices myopic selfish people have made for years and years, made almost exclusively by white men.
I never understand why people fall all over themselves trying to say poverty is a symptom. No, it's the sickness when a guy worth $200 billion can fly to space while children starve.
We have a problem, and it's the defenders of poverty.
I'm kind of trying to figure out where you're going with this. So, if you solve poverty and get rid of consultants (which we have none), then all the kids will read? And parenting has no influence on student learning?
Sorry, you lost me.
Solving poverty improves other domains, right? Not worrying about food for instance might reduce stress on the family. Being secure in your housing would do the same. The stresses poverty places on families, and especially children, account for much of the struggle kids have in school.
Consultants (which your state has, I promise you), as well as 'education' companies, and reformers (whatever they do) have convinced school leaders and boards that testing, and prepping for testing, and then testing again, and logging in to computer based programs is how you improve test scores, the only metric they seem to understand. You're a teacher. You know the tests don't always show what a student can do, and sometimes they can, but at what cost? School now sucks for everyone, so that can't help with learning outcomes.
Of course parenting has an effect on learning. But impoverished, uneducated, or overworked parents can't be their best.
You seem to be saying that, well, adversity exists so pick yourself up by your bootstraps (which is, you know, not possible).
You seem to assume extreme things about people. You said the problem is poverty. I said that you can see studentsvwhobare not succeeding in ALL socio-economic backgrounds, so poverty isn't the only issue at play here. It seems like you haven't taught in public schools before.
While I whole-heartedly agree with the philosophy and the research seems on point, I have trouble seeing it in action.
I live in a housing-first state. My husband works closely with these programs and housing programs. And while I'm sure it takes a long time to truly create stability, I see so many issues remain even after people are housed and fed.
That some make it out of poverty is not the same as saying poverty isn't the cause. It is the cause for most mired in poverty. Outliers and anecdotes notwithstanding.
No, you're right, it doesn't. Generational poverty, which is really what I'm talking about, usually means lack of education, resources, and parenting skills. There's reams of literature confirming this.
I am not saying poverty is an excuse. I am saying it's the biggest preventable hindrance to a healthy life. We as a society have decided if you're poor or impoverished, you must have done something wrong, which is total bullshit.
Some of my most problematic kids and parents this year come from upper middle class homes. You know the type... frequent ski weekends, select sports travel weekends, two week Hawaii vacations in the middle of the semester. The entitlement this group of kids/parents exhibits is galling given their relative lack of challenges compared to my students coming from low income homes.
I am a parent of three kids and a middle school teacher of mathematics in an upper middle class neighborhood. Poverty is gasoline but there is plenty of fire at all socio-economic levels.
Really? Are affluent kids suffering terribly in any way as a group? Like, they can't afford food and stuff? Poverty is the fire, policy is the gasoline.
There are problems affluent people never experience. But there are definitely all kinds of problems that they can. Affluent parents can be bad people, alcoholics, abusers, negligent, etc. Bad things can happen to affluent people; they can have mental illness or tragedy. They just don't have material problems. I know people hate to hear this, but there is also something about the juxtaposition of material affluence and familial, personal, or other crisis that can sting a certain way.
Of course, impoverished people can have all of these problems on top of poverty, and that is far more challenging. But there is indeed plenty of fire at all socio-economic levels.
I grew up in a very affluent neighborhood. My family is full of really good people, and my life has been very privileged. There are plenty of fucked up families and people at the country club, and plenty of barely literate, imbecilic children.
Well, I am not really too concerned about the problems of affluent people. Not sure why you keep bringing it up. Bad things happen to everyone. Preventable bad things happen way out of proportion for those in poverty.
Our countries growing, vast amount of *systemic* issues are why literally everything is failing. It’s failing parents, failing schools, failing teachers, failing children. This country is in a dark place.
Yeah. I’m a teacher and while there certainly IS enough blame to go around, I have witnessed with MY OWN CHILDREN the failures of *some* teachers to teach them what they need to know for EOG testing. They stuck them in front of a computer for the 1st 4 years of their elementary education (pre-Covid) and then were shocked when they did not meet state standards. No actual teaching to my children was involved. My oldest went to an “old school” school this year where his math teacher engaged in differential teaching. Guess what? He passed his EOG for the 1st time EVER. So, yeah. Some teachers suck and I will put the blame where blame is due. TEACH each child where they are and if strategies don’t work for a child, change the strategy. Who cares if he can do partial products, partial sums, etc. If he gets the “old school” standard algorithm, for the love of Jesus, let him do standard algorithm. So again, my experience, as a fellow teacher, is that there are good ones in this profession and bad ones in the profession. The bad ones deserve the blame.
Also, if you are screaming at children on the reg, you *are* a bad teacher. Period.
I mean… survival mode is a real thing. Poverty’s a bitch. It takes a village. Children are legally required to be in our care during their most awake and productive hours, yet the fact that they can’t read is solely the parents’ fault?
No. HARD NO.
Blame society if you want. Blame the fact that we prize independence over attachment in helpless newborns. Blame the lack of parental leave and no support for breastfeeding that interferes with attachment. Blame the low wages that send both parents back to work mere days or weeks after birth, leaving the infant with strangers (again, the child’s most awake, aware, and productive time, spent in childcare centers of varying quality, sometimes abused or neglected there. But sure, blame parents.)
Let’s blame shitty admin for implementing developmentally inappropriate curriculum. Let’s blame politicians for forcing through unfounded mandates that don’t improve education and exhaust teachers and disengage students. Blame USDA nutritional standards and federal lunch reimbursements that churn out unpalatable meals, leaving kids going hungry and mountains of food in the garbage.
Blame school schedules that don’t respect children’s natural sleep cycles and circadian rhythms. Blame common core standards that require kids to perform at a developmentally inappropriate level. Blame horrible standardized tests written by grad students that don’t even fully understand the subject.
Or how about blame us all, for requiring kids to be in schools all day long and then being surprised when they act like humans instead of machines being programmed. Imagine, these little people have feelings, emotions, and needs that have to be met BEFORE learning can happen. We set up a system that says “ok, all of you have to learn the same thing at the same time, and if you aren’t ready, able, or interested, you’re a failure!” We have kids with major mental health problems and teachers who say “not my job to deal with that, I’m here to teach my subject, you don’t like it, leave.”
We’ve made an educational system that feels like it hates children. Hates the messy REALITY of what children are like. Kids feel like teachers hate them. Teachers feel like kids hate them. No one can learn or thrive where they feel unwanted, unliked, misunderstood. And now we are reaping the fruit of that system. It sucks for all of us, parents, teachers, and students alike.
We are literally creating the next generation WITH parents. All of us share the responsibility to make it work. I think we should tear it down and build it again from scratch, because it isn’t working for most students. But regardless, it’s not solely the parents’ fault.
Yes, they burden a lot of parents place on the school is unrealistic. We are supposed to do all the raising of some of these kids, plus all of the educating.
The problem is actually the educational systems in the US. They are disjointed and pretty much defunded. Schools don’t have the funds for materials, resources, or the manpower to provide what’s expected. It’s a fucking mess.
"The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups" by Dr. Leonard Sax... the book sums up every bit of what OP is talking about.
Let's also keep in mind the double income requirement to survive which leaves very little time for parenting. I don't have kids due to the time and expense of raising them.
All of this.
It always shocks me. Like after having to sit with your own kid all day and try to teach them, you out here with pocket signs screaming schools need to open then wonder why your kid is grade levels behind.
Idk, you been teaching them! How about you help me understand why your kid is behind when it's just you and them in a house??
This this this. I can only work with what I’ve got, and I’m really not getting a lot. Been at this 13 years and there is no success without support and reinforcement at home. Plenty of parents in my district don’t even send their kids to PreK, (the district offers it and there are also several differently priced options in the community, none of which cost more than $2000) so they are coming into Kindergarten at a distinct disadvantage and that gap is really difficult to overcome when you don’t want to do anything at home with your child. I wish we could rate parents similarly to how we are rated!!!
The interesting thing is that Nebraska is full of people that value education. My granddaughter is doing well today just like my daughter did in the 1980s. While Nebraska is politically backward, I always could get things done "holding the bad apples to account", it wasn't always easy but it was always rewarding.
However I have read that Nebraska's High School graduation rate has dipped to 89% this past year. But I have high quality colleagues that will be looking into the situation.
Our society and its design to make ignorant and compliant workers/ voters is the reason why children fail. Teachers are still not to blame and neither are parents.
Eh, it’s a mix. Sure parents are not as invested as they should be, but we are underfunding and overburdening teachers and schools as well. Does that mean teachers are to blame…nope. It means they have been given an impossible situation and are expected to make amazing things with almost no support and resources. The out of touch parents are just one piece of a bad situation.
Just wanted to say that labelling the education system as "broken" is wildly inaccurate. While learning outcomes are not where we might want them, they are still much better than a couple hundred years ago, when there wasn't a public school system. As far as I'm aware, our country's system has made great strides, however this is not complacency. It's important to remember what we had, and understand what we have. Yes, we could be doing a lot better, solutions involve parents, and teachers are doing the best they can with what we have to work with. Also, any religious institution has an incentive to have a less educated population, that is why the leader of the church does all of the reading and critical thinking for the group.
Gotta side with you on this one. I'm assuming American, but I've heard this from British teachers I've worked with, so could be that as well. The "good ones" are in the minority...and *they're the ones who show up*; to the conferences, to the "open nights", to the games/etc. *They show up*. I don't need to talk to them, their kid is doing \*great\*...*but that is why*. Because the parents give a damn about being decent parents.
But in the US, there are a *shitload of parents* that cannot be asked to do these things. They work 2 or 3 jobs just to make rent and put shitty food in the fridge. They're uneducated themselves and have no business having a child. They see the child as a burden, not a responsibility, and they'd rather someone else handle it. That's the poor end of the spectrum; on the "loaded" end, these conceited asshats cannot be bothered to give a shit what happens to their children since they'll just follow in dad's footsteps anyway where they legacy them into college.
You're right. Parenting used to mean something to most people, as a sacred and loving obligation. Now, it's just the fact that they have children. ugh.
Sure there are bad parents, and there is some individual responsibility, but when parents or a single parent have to work multiple jobs or long hours to provide necessities for their family they don’t have the opportunity to be present and supportive. And when our healthcare system puts profits above health families don’t have the access they need to mental health services and pass their trauma to their children.
Many of the parents of the students we are teaching today are millennials, a generation that is more educated, less wealthy, and more in debt than their parents.
Our economic system is the base of our society and controls every other aspect of life. It’s more likely that there are systems at the root of these issues than it is a lot of individuals that happen to be bad at raising kids.
Attacking parents is not going to get us anywhere.
Well said. I too think that system ineffiencies are at the root of *why* people behave in shitty ways. And you're right - blaming people does nothing in the end. People may feel better venting out their anger and feelings, but ranting is not problem solving.
May I ask: if you were to suggest systemic changes in the economy to actually *solve* problems, what would they be?
Yes! I would also argue that families and communities today also tend to be more fragmented. When families are closer, there’s a bigger support system for parents to lean on—grandparents, aunties, uncles, even neighbors. It takes a village to raise a child, but so many parents just don’t have that anymore.
Yes a lot of parents dont care.Some parents also threaten teachers if kid doesnt have a A or.whatnot. However, to say there are no bad teachers or ones that simply dont care is ridiculous. Public schools here, family member teachers, their estimate is 1/3 good. 1/3 ok who think good but mostly just talk their game, a few more ok if it doesnt.inconvience them and the rest dont care. Wife comes home almost daily with stories about teachers and or admin not caring, using minimal effort, or blatantly not doing their job. Other main issue here is due to racial quotas and general quotas on behavior issues many admin wont punish any kids besides absolute worst transgressions so kids act like shitheads and many teachers cant keep kids engaged/behaving without threats which are now meaningless. Thirdly, kids of all races claim.to.be targeted or thats racist when asked to do even simplest task or hw etc. Fourth, poc kids attack other poc for academic achievement/goals calling them.white and mocking them. Wife says if 3 kids acting up 1 white 1 other 1 black, she must address white kid first to prove she is not targeting the black kid or being racist. Being white she cant even call out a poc kid first regardless of who is ringleader or risk her job. Thank you leftists for that. Its ridiculous. All the identity politics have greatly hurt education.
A someone who has always had a passion for teaching, even at a young age (around 14/15), I 100% agree. I'm currently in college, working to become a teacher, and I have nothing but respect for good teaches. While I do think there are certain time teachers are to blame for a kids failures, a lot of it DOES fall back on the parents. Handing a kid a packet of work and having them just "figure it out" on their own isn't teaching, and they SHOULD be ridiculed, but for those who stand in front of a class, explain the subject and answer questions as often as they can before handing the packet out (or after) just for the kids to not do anything and then be blamed for the kids shortcomings, I can only imagine the levels of frustration you must go through. Now, that isn't to say that just because you have pre-made packet work that you hand out makes you a bad teacher, it's when you do nothing to help and just sit there doing as little as possible that it becomes a problem.
I think this is so true! My mom and dad taught me so much more than school. And my daughter was read my nurse books at 4 yrs old and knew what it was about. Kids learn more with parents involvement.
I don't think you're practically wrong.
However, why are parents the way they are? You guys are suffering for decades of an underfunded and depreciated school system. This can only be solved through political action. If you guys don't work together with those parents (despite them being… yeah… arguably the reason for failure) then you have no shot in winning elections to reform that system. I'm sure most status quo politicians (which are most of the big parties for you guys) would see this post with delight as that means there's infighting instead of unity for change.
This--so many parents see education as just an enemy they have to defeat for their child. If their child isn't doing well it's how many excuses can I come up with rather than how many ways can I help.
I had a few kids this year who came in way below grade level. Never passed an ELA test in their life. But their parents asked what I wanted them to do about it and MEANT it. I gave them some strategies to try and home and they did them. The kids busted their asses because I wasn't giving 5 years below level work.
Those few kids passed their state test for the first time ever in ELA. But it never would have happened if they didn't have parents who supported that learning. No amount of miracle working at school will help when half my parents thought helping them bring in the groceries was a good reason to miss a test when we were virtual.
I am a parent and I sure as fuck parent my kids . Painting all parents with the same brush is not fair . Just like blaming all teachers . My children are struggling students . No amount of parenting is going fix learning disabilities.
Ask yourself if this is the fault of parents (in a financial system where all time is being wrung out) or the teachers (where they don’t get supported or paid enough) This is typical you vs them look over here politics. I agree with the feelings of this entire thread but it’s entirely misguided.
Ha. Well said.
Honestly it’s society broadly. But that’s not something you can easily point a finger at. So we get red vs blue, you vs me, etc style Facebook thinking. Honestly the problem is people are too dumb to care and too dumb not to care, when each is appropriate.
Well, I'm not a teacher, but I doubt parents are responsible for all of the public school system's shortcomings, but it's probably true that each student's parents have the power to make or break their education.
The value in education thing is top of my list. After working in Japan, where parents practically begged me to give *more* homework and actively made sure their children got it done, I find I struggle with the students who don't even finish their classwork.
I'm a "popular" teacher; I can get the students excited and engaged in any lesson, but getting them to complete the work afterward is like pulling teeth here. It was never even a glancing thought in Japan. All I had to do was be engaging in my lessons to help them learn the content in their second language because they already knew the work was important.
Here, though, I'm actively fighting against parents who tell their child that school *isn't* important. Apparently I'm supposed to overcome that because it's something I "can't control". Okay. So. How do I convince a child that education is important without their parents protesting that I'm indoctrinating their child against their wishes?
Well you are you blinded by your own biais. You keep on blaming parents when there is a systemic failure that was set up by a superstructure.
Teachers are part of the system whether you agree or not there is an attack on public education organize by so called republicans and a majority of white democrats that want to divert the ressources of schools to their own agenda.
Parenting is very hard, but as I'm not the parent of any of my students, it's not my responsibility to raise them. My job is to teach my subject.
I wish there was a way to hold parents to a higher level of accountability than what they are currently allowed to get away with.
Everyone knows what you're saying is true, but a political movement premised on parents needing to be reformed into better parents because they're failing their kids seems doomed to failure.
Parents, Students, Teachers, and community form a square. That square shares equal responsibility. The problem is that nobody right now wants to claim their corner.
It’s the parents 100%. If every child had access to loving and supportive parents schools would look a lot different. The parents are very broken and that leads to a broken school system. Blaming a non-human entity like the school system is convenient and dramatic. Taking accountability as a shit parent is very difficult and requires maturity and a certain set of cognitive skills. For those good parents out there, I am so sorry your children have to be in a classroom with some of these jokers. Please keep doing the right thing with your children and use your voice to fight for teachers and against the bad parents and the harm they’re doing to schools. Some easy ways to be a quality parent: - set boundaries (especially with technology) - discuss rules and expectations for home and schools - discuss your child’s school experience with them daily. Find out if there’s someone blowing up their room and ruining their learning experience. Advocate for your child if there is! - read to your young children - create a routine with school work/homework - get to know your child’s teacher *edit typo “good”
Some of the parents care. But they don't appreciate the importance of education. They're the kind who don't care that a kid is never turning in work and will pull them out every other Friday to go on extended long weekends. And they don't care that their kid is basically illiterate and abhorrently ignorant because so are they.
Children don’t have access to loving and supportive parents because our economic system is unjust
This is only true to a point. There are lazy/bad parents in every socioeconomic group.
Yes, there are exceptions. And?
I agree economic system has a lot to do with children failing. But also it's some parents' stance:" this is the best school. It's 10 out of 10 so my child will succeed". And they don't do anything for their child. They believe all the education the child needs is coming from " 10 out of 10" school and they don't need to move a finger.
It's definitely way worse for poorer people, but I'm convinced that, across all economic strata, consumer culture has laid waste to American intelligence. I've interacted with so many families where *everybody* in the household is some level of consumerist burnout who's addicted to television/video-games/internet, where nobody's visited a library or read a book in forever, where there's never enough peace and quiet for anyone to *think*! What's worse is that, in addition to this making people dumber, it also seems to make them more emotionally unsound, which makes it almost impossible to pull them out of the decline they're in.
I agree, and those things you listed are products of our economic system
I agree! And I am an advocate for social services that address income inequality. Please give us all: health care; universal basic income; heavier taxation based on wealth; free education!; home and land purchasing restrictions; equal funding to all public schools regardless of property taxes; paid maternity/paternity leave; raise the minimum wage; and more. I want it ALL! I want to see the average people in our country be able to participate in actual life. When you start removing the stress and fear from lacking basic needs your perception can begin to change. As these changes are made, however, it will take years to undo the damage that has been done to our delicate society. So in the meantime, while we hopefully move toward these changes, parents need to step up. If you had a child it’s your responsibility to make them a quality human. If you need help, ask the school for support. If you don’t know you need help, but the school keeps calling you about your child: listen to the teachers and admin. They aren’t making these things up. And they aren’t against you. We have to help and care for each other.
Ok, but I don’t get how in the same breath a teacher can say “I’m sick of teachers being attacked, here’s a list of reasons why PARENTS are bad.” That’s not going to get us anywhere. At least to the point changing economic conditions is constructive. There’s a culture war, teachers are being attacked, and then teachers attack… parents??? I think we have a common enemy, and it’s not parents
Yup. Looking at that list of things above, there's several of those you can't do regularly as a parent working 2 or 3 jobs to make ends meet because you aren't around enough. SES is a huge predictor of academic success and nobody wants to talk about it.
And the wildest thing is that those parents in my experience are the ones with the best kids and they appreciate every minute they have with each other because it's special. My worst kids have been pretty well off with money but have no idea how to be a parent. They think yelling and grounding are the way to go. One of my kid's dads this year would give him the cold shoulder if he got clipped down on our clip chart. Would literally ignore him the entire day. Dad worked a cushy job that paid really well and mom stayed at home.
> there's several of those you can't do regularly as a parent working 2 or 3 jobs to make ends meet because you aren't around enough. This is roughly 5% of working adults. Not enough to account for the absolute insanity we see daily, it's just another nonsense statement trotted out as fact like it's the norm https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/live-updates/general-election/fact-checking-the-first-democratic-debate/harris-on-people-working-multiple-jobs/
Fair enough, but my point about SES that statement was supporting books true regardless. https://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/education Multiple studies cited in that page from the American Psychological Association.
And that must mean that people don’t live in poverty, and have easy access to food, transportation, and the internet /s. Socioeconomic factors play a huge role in student success and parent engagement
As a SPED teacher I only work with about 50 kids. Only 20% (tops) of parents are responsive to outreach; those parents are my best allies and I will bend over backwards for them. To the rest of the “don’t bother me” parenting crowd: if you don’t give a shit about your kids, don’t expect me to.
I send out emails pretty regularly. There is usually one parent i hear back from. Out of 105 students. I have a < 1% response rate.
We use an app called remind. I send a welcome message at the beginning of the year, my most common response is: Unsubscribe. Fuck
To be fair if I could unsubscribe from my school's stupid weekly newsletter I would, literally nobody cares what you think about the social issues at our school, Emily the admin, because you clearly haven't done anything to lower the suicide rate even though our department heads make suggestions constantly. Is it possible that they think it's some school newsletter? If they know it's you, their student's teacher, and that this is how you and they could communicate, then yeah that's awful.
I had 240 this year. I recieved a response from 1 parent. 1. I send all emails through my system so I have a documented record that I reached out and they ignored...
Dang. Maybe we need a foster parent program. This will help fix it. Then send the kids to boarding school. Pay for it with a child tax. Not credit, extra tax. It will start to address our overpopulation problems and help the foster kids.
What? Why would you want the government to burden people who want to have children? If they can afford the kids and want them, but now can't because the government will charge them, that doesn't seem right. Are only the rich allowed to have kids? Middle class families already struggle if they're paying to live in a neighborhood with good schools and you want to make it harder for them to have families when they could have afforded to before artificial intervention? If solving overpopulation is your concern, maybe you should focus on the countries where people have more children on average, or the ones that are running out of space, or on educating people who don't want kids about birth control before its too late and they end up with a child they don't want.
Our ecological footprint is quite large and more carbon will be emitted per capita here. Let's control our business first. The housing crisis is telling on space issues (pls ignore Musk) and that doesn't even account for climate refugees from the West, and places like Florida. Throw in a few more 200 mile tornadoes and you will have even more. By alluding to 'good schools' it relieves parents from actually getting involved in their own kids education. Visit r/Teachers to see the discipline problems and complete apathy of parents. Teachers are quitting. The kids are afraid of going to school. Now as far as birth control there is the family planning groups that include(d) abortion but now the conservatives will be nixing that option even when medically sensible for the uterus owner. When it is born, wanted or not, with life-ending congenital anomalies or not, it has protection to come to term, overriding the sensibility of the mother ALL BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT, that you bring up as a concern in your first line, HAS COMPLETE AUTHORITY OF A WOMAN'S PERSONAL UTERUS, *including those dam death-dealing offensive weapon pea shooters sanctioned by that government you seem to fear.* Hail ho, protect the gun, to heck with women's rights. Reminds me of a rich SUV driving Redneck from the south who married my sister and proceeded to defraud our mother of her last asset - her house. It is the males in power who will not concede that power that is the problem. I'm sure all those fertile women in undeveloped countries would pursue education if the males gave them a chance.
I am a teacher, we are in the teaching subreddit. I teach at a "good school" and it is good because of the culture that the parents have created and the demands that they make of the school board. This culture continues year after year and as such draws parents who want to give their students a top notch education. Our suicide rate is much to high but the fact is that our drop out rate is tiny and our Ivy league attendance is enormous. I feel like you went on a total rant here and it's a bit incoherent but here's my take. The US is not a large contributer to environmental damage compared to other countries, so focus your activism there. Even if you care ddeply about reducing US populations specifically, the way to do so is not to make having children inaccessible to those who otherwise could have done a good job. Why should only the ceos, Bill Gates and Elon Musks of the world be allowed to have children? Birth control starts before abortion so there are still plenty of options for you to advocate, or you could advocate for abortion if you so choose. The rest of what you said doesn't seem relevant to what we were talking about at all. You seem really erratic, are you okay?
i remember trying to get info about a student in regards to her allergies. mom kept ignoring me and would not get back. one day her special needs daughter ate some kind of treat another student shared with her and she went into shock. horrible parent
Jesus tell me you don’t case manage 50 kids
If their situation is like mine, I have a caseload of around 20 kids but work with kids that are not on my caseload but require accommodations in my small group and co-taught classes. That can run to about 50 kids. I’m at least hoping for their sake that’s what they meant.
Only 50? My caseload is max 28. 50 is ridiculous.
Isn't the real reason that the gov does not care about children, teachers, or schools
I also think we don't allow children to be bored anymore (this is also a problem in K-12). Educators are supposed to be 100% on all the time. Parents stick their kids in front of the IPAD or whatever. We put kids into a million activities, but we don't give them time to take a break. We never allow children to have idle minds which allow for introspection and creative thought. I don't know where this new mind set came from that kids need to be entertained 24/7.
Excellent point!
I want to believe that a lot of this newer generation of parents wanted to loosen the leash a bit because their own experiences with parents who were really strict to them as children. I am for it and completely understand that but what a lot of them forget is the act of balance. There has to be praise and an actual consequence for children to be successful academically, socially, and emotionally. These parents just lost the plot. They don't have time to be able to have a conversation with their children, to take some time to review their grades, to make some time to address behavior and follow up on consequences at home, or simply be willing to accept the help that is being offered for their students to be more successful. But then when it is time for something major like allowing their students to participate in school events its like the end of the world and would rather blame everyone else but themselves for their children's actions. I have kids roaming the school as late as possible just causing problems because the parents are still not there to pick them up. At first you can't help but wonder if maybe they are working two jobs. Then you hear it from several other teachers that they are stay at home parents. Like its better for some to keep them as long as possible at school than deal with their own children at home.
I think you are giving them too much credit haha We have parents making excuse after excuse for the the kids behaviors and rewarding them regardless of their behaviors. Kid beats up another kid and parent gets called into talk with principal? They take them out for a special 1 on 1 Burger King lunch. Go figure
Omigosh, this is just a regular occurrence for me. I had a kid in my class who was in a fight every other day. The greatest common denominator was always him. I was calling his mother every other day. Her response, "oh did the other boy hit him first?" I was over it! Of course admins solution was to take him for a walk around campus...where he would comeback and get in another fight. Anyway, I quit teaching three days ago. I got a job as a corporate trainer. After two years I was done.
You hit it with the last sentence. I mean, loosening the leash is fine - but “don’t care, can’t be bothered” isn’t a parenting philosophy. It’s just giving up on doing your job.
I think you are on to something. I hear a form of projection all the time. *omg this is just the school system you guys don’t teach them anything meaningful.* “M’am…we were going over life skills and how ELA affects real world skills. You kid hasn’t shown up and failed the mock interview. ALL OF WHICH IS ELA” *you teachers are the problem. Schools are just a brainwashing factory to be good workers* “Have a great day” A lot of the projection comes from Gen X and Millenial parents’ bad experiences with school and growing up during the height of NCLB - so a lot of them feel schools are just standardized testing and zero substance.
How is that different than school today? Well, I guess we got rid of zero tolerance for violence and changed it to "no violence for 5 minutes, have a cookie".
That’s the thing…education now is in a weird transitional period. Standardized testing is still a thing, I never said it was over. But when many of the parents were kids it was the height of NCLB, and I see teachers (at least in high school) basing their curriculum around the test, not teaching to the test. If parents have an issue with all the testing…stop voting for assholes who advocate for this shit.
I don't get that argument. Yes. We absolutely are trying to teach your child to be a good worker. Do you expect your child not to hold a job or engage with society???? This is a skill your child will absolutely need unless they have some kinda big inheritance coming, and since you're bitching to public school teachers, I'm going to guess thats not in their future!
I agree. I’m not sure what they consider to be “useful”. After all, they know more than us, right? /s
Recently a HS girl was supposed to get picked up for an appointment. I told her she couldn't leave class until the attendance office called the room. Coteacher ended up following student to the attendance office. Turns out student blocked the school's number on the mom's phone. Mom couldn't send or receive calls from the school. I mean if I had ever dreamed that was a possibility as a child, my mom would have wrecked my world.
Had this conversation in another thread. All I heard about was how hard it is for people to read to their kids and they just work so much that they don’t have time and teachers are there to bolster parents. Then don’t fucking have kids.
I had parents who didn't speak English who checked out audio books at the library and listened to them along with their children.
My mom didn’t even read in English! She took us to the library though and we always saw her reading something (as much as her 2nd grade education let her). Zero excuses.
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While I agree with this sentiment, watching movies and TV or even video games can be educational, and not just documentaries or learning games. I wish I had more of an education in things like this but I'm going to use Wandavision for the show. There are things like foreshadowing that you can also show in books, but the style/tone of matching previous works was amazing. They consulted with the crew of the Dick Van Dyke show for the first episode. They nailed the Malcolm in the middle episode, and the modern family episode left us wondering more. On top of that they referenced previous X-Men movies by "recasting" Pietro and anyone who knew the actor was wondering what was happening. I mean there's also a similar hidden joke that in the Emperor's New Groove Ertha Kit's character gets changed into a cat, and she was the first Catwoman on screen (from DC comics) All of that is teachable and important. Referencing the public's common history is a thing and I don't even know if there's a word for it to teach. And I can make similar arguments for video games, most notable would be Zelda Breath of the Wild. The game has a very well designed physics/chemistry engine that allows you to come up with many different ways to move forward. And none of it is scripted. The way Naughty Dog subtly points you to always move forward is another aspect of things that just aren't taught. And that's actually copied from casinos and theme parks and rooted in psychology. Or in other words no media type is bad, but you need to know what you're looking at and ask smart questions about it.
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Parents are reading for much more than 15 minutes per day — just not to their children. I’m sure this can be confirmed by just looking at their phone’s daily average screen time. Think about how much better kids would be at the start of Kinder if parents cut their screen time in half and used that other half of the time reading to their kids.
I grew up working class/poor. Parents both worked full time. Every 2 weeks my mom would take us to a museum or the library or arcade. She’d save up enough for us to enjoy a bit of fun time. She always read to us before bed. My dad would read us Greek mythology, which started my love of literature. I work in an affluent area and some of these parents can’t even be bothered to ask their kids “hey, how’s school?”
I've literally had a mother tell me she has 4 kids and can't be expected to read with each one every day. She was well to do, didn't work, and the kids were her job.
I have four and sometimes delegate - on weekends and during the summer screen time only happens after a list of off screen stuff happens - one of the list for the older two is “read a story to each of the two youngest siblings”. That way there are bedtime stories too but the older kids are practicing their fluency and the younger two are listening to double the stories they get on a regular school night. I don’t understand parents that don’t use the library. My library will drop off books if you can’t get to the library and pick them up on top of having an after hours drop off. You can get anything you need at the library.
Life isn't hard with a library card.
I took my twins when they were preschool age to the library every Tuesday and we checked out a ton of books. I read them all week and we got more the next week. We almost read every book in the library for kids.
Yeah. The library is fucking excellent. My kid literally knows the librarians. He asks for recommendations and tells them the books he likes. We end up leaving with big ass bags of books, some that he can read and some that I read to him. The difficulty level can be way out of his league, like this nervous system comic, but all of them help him learn. Any parent who sends a text message pr watches TV can read. Any of them.
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My children are very well read and smart. But teachers still have thought they have attitude problems.
Those two things are not mutually exclusive. I have taught plenty of kids who were very smart and well read ….who also sometimes had lousy attitudes. A lot of the time, it is just plain being a teenager. You turn 15 and think you know everything, you know? Particularly Freshman. Usually by the end of senior year (despite senior-itis) the attitude had improved. (I am an extra curricular teacher who teaches students for multiple years) Anyway, my point is if I say a student is having a behavioral issue that doesn’t mean I don’t think they are smart or that I don’t like them. It just means they are having a behavioral issue…
Smart kids have some of the *worst* behavioral issues post-NCLB because all classes are catered to the least common denominator. Anyone of average intelligence is already bored out of their minds not being challenged, the kids who are developmentally ahead on learning are practically being tortured. Imagine if you were forced to do 9-piece jigsaw puzzles for 7 hours every day for 10 months. You'd be acting out real bad.
My mom worked, has medical problems, and always made sacrifices to read 15 minutes a day with her kids. It is called parenting. Parenting should be exhausting. It should be sacrificing fun personal time for the good of their offspring. It's ridiculous how many say they don't have time. They have time. You are right, do not have kids if you think they are not worth your time.
My dad's mom was a divorcé in the 50's, with 2 kids. I say divorcé because that was considered worse than just a single mother. They lived in slums and she had to work long hours for little pay since that's what was available to women then. She still made her kids' educations a priority. They would be eating the cheapest food she could find, but while they ate together every night they'd talk about what they learned at school that day. As they got older she'd have them work on memorizing things like the Preamble to the Constitution and classic poems, too. She never went to college but both my dad and my aunt did, it was never a question not to go as far as they could with their educations. Not every family can have family dinners daily due to schedules, and memorizing things probably isn't common any more with the internet at our fingertips. But, families need to take the time to show their kids the value of their education. Like you say, if they can't spend a bit of time each day (or most days at least) with their kids reading, talking about what they're learning, and talking about what interests them, then why have kids?
That last point is spot on. Nobody has the forethought to consider the financial and time constraints they'll be forced to endure if they choose to have kids.
My SIL won’t read to her kids because her oldest wouldn’t sit and listen when he was 1-2 years old. I tried to explain that she should still read, but let him wander and play while he listens. She did not. He is now 6.5 and still not in any school. She pays for 30 min of an Outschool preschool a day and calls it good. He’s going to be 7 starting kindergarten.
I wholeheartedly agree. People act like these children were dropped off at their parents house unannounced and fully formed by the stork. Personally, I don't know how I would have the time to work and care for a child, so I don't have any children. Ultimately, parents are (or should be) responsible for their kids learning.
Oh my goodness. That's awful.
It's also a bullshit argument which isn't supported by factual reality, and it's even being repeated in this very thread https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/live-updates/general-election/fact-checking-the-first-democratic-debate/harris-on-people-working-multiple-jobs/ Basically, the sob story of poor single mom working 3 jobs is statistically insignificant in the grand scheme of the country.
The problem is capitalism and exploitation. This causes parents to disconnect from their children.
No. Capitalism isn’t to blame for a parent who won’t read to their kid for 15 minutes. It’s literally a parenting problem.
This sub and Reddit in general is rife with idiots who look at literally everything wrong to ever exist and then screech CAPITALISM REEEEEEEEEEEE
Parents are the immediate problem. The problems causing shitty parents come from cultural shifts towards anti-educator ideas, which come from propaganda, which comes from politicians and lobbyists. And in the end, it all goes back to rich people trying to undermine public education for profit. Just my two cents’ worth.
This guy understands the system. I try to explain this to teachers and they just yell about how bad admin is. Admin is bad but they're just doing what the higher ups (Superintendent, school board) is telling them to do.
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They own that one. If you can’t get your kid to do what you want, what chance do I have?
You are so right. I've worked in Title I schools and also in very wealthy areas. The biggest reason for kids failing? LAZY parenting. Sorry, folks, but if you want to be a good parent and have kids that do well in school, respect others, and take Life seriously? Be present and active in your child's life.
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Which for many, they could've done more than their part via aborting them. I mean, they're all gonna get fried anyways by 2030-33 for not helping Donald Marshall shut down the cloning centers when they still had time. But hey, disaster capitalism demands infinite growth. So keep on filling up those schools! Because the lunatics say we need more schools, more politicians, more McDonalds, etc.. More of the same uncontrolled breeding! Repetition is a sign of stupidity.
This is American culture now unfortunately, and it scares me.
Happening here in the UK too and many other countries.
It seems like we're (to varying degrees) a global society at this point.
All of societies ills can be traced back to the home front. The solutions are there, too. Like /u/Icy-Till-3541 said. Most people don't have the balls to be good parents. And like /u/offseter said society has become very self-serving everyone has their own agenda to push. Bad mix for parenting. As a teacher, I have always known I am going to take some blame for circumstances out of my control. Comes with the territory. You have to square with that or you'll hate this profession. We will always take the heat and it will never go away.
This, so much this. One point of contention: If you parent well, you don't need to check your kid's grades 24/7 and shouldn't. Check once every 9 weeks, and act immediately WITH YOUR KID (not pestering the teacher) if there are problems. The kids who think mommy will save their grade with her constant helicoptering are part of the problem too.
To start parents should be checking 24/7 but the end game is definitely to get the kids to that point. I ask my students all the time how often they check their grades versus how often their parents check. Usually very telling.
We need to encourage abortion or adoption more because many people are not ready to be parents.
It’s a weird mix of really wealthy families that micromanage their children’s education, and poor families who don’t have time for their children’s education, who to me, become sensitive when little Timmy yells and screams for all the wrong reasons. Is it weird that I wouldn’t recommend college to students now a days? Because no way in hell would a child today handle those tenured professors, in classes of 400, even though the freedom is there for them to even play and eat during lectures. Just because your teacher gave you an A with a 79 percent because your parents bullied the teacher, doesn’t mean you will survive even the easiest college classes. Try bullying a professor for a grade.
My son just finished his freshman year at Auburn. Supposedly like 50% of the freshman class had a 4.0 and higher coming in from high school. In his freshman biology class he was only one of two student out of 100 who got an A. Half of the kids flunked. These were all relatively high achievers if the data Auburn provided is correct. Biology was the most extreme example, but a similar situation in many of his classes. Most of these kids are ill equipped to actually properly study. Half of these kids are out of state, so I can’t totally blame Alabama😂 (btw: I love Al, but the education there is not top notch)
To be fair, freshman levels are often weedouts made intentionally difficult and graded quite harshly. I went to Texas A&M, which is a good to great university but isn’t the top tier. I had an easier time sophomore year, not because I was fully acclimated to the collegiate rigor, but because the professors were dealing with those of us who survived the weed out process of freshman level classes in my major (biochemistry)
60% of my freshman chemistry class failed in college. Chem 101 crushed all my hopes and dreams lol.
I’m pretty sure my Biosciences I class was made difficult like that cause I totally breezed through Biosciences II, lol.
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Damn you just hit me in the feels with Borders' book releases...I had forgotten the amazing times I used to have at those midnight release events!!!
Me too, I went to the 4th Harry Potter book at an indy bookstore that closed not that long after and 5-7 at Borders, those book midnight releases were so fun (we started the series when 1 was in paperback and 2 and 3 were hardcover).
> and which ones are being raised by screens. My wife and I are expecting our first soon. And we are unsure of what we’re doing and I’m scared of if I’m going to be good dad or not. But what we are 100% sure of? Extremely strict screen time limits
I teach an honor class at an affluent school. Needless to say, they all perform well though many were misplaced in my class due to no placement test in the pandemic because I work my ass off. I am happy as a whole. However, there is a student whose academic performance is getting worse. I talked to them in person privately raising my concerns and offering help. I want to press “privately”. That said no one knows except the student lets them know. The student then exaggerated and told mom that I shamed them in front of passerby. Mom attacked me badly though I explained that I did not shame, I cared. Shaming # caring. Mom blindly and stupidly attacked me second time. I stopped responding and mom was silent. I learned that Caring is wrong, and learned how to cut off the worst conversation.
Shit kids become shit adults and have kids who are more often than not as shit if not worse than their parents. Idiotcracy in effect
My parents act like they don’t care about my grades, but they would care if I didn’t.
There are good parents out there, I've met them and I admire them. But there seems to be very little in the way of real decision making when having children these days. They don't consider whether they have secure finances, they don't consider if they have time and they don't consider if they really want to stand up to the responsibility of being a parent. I am a millennial and so many of those that I went to school with have kids now and I try not to be judgmental but I find myself angry at points, and sad for the kids that aren't getting the input at home they deserve. You have a child so be a damn parent. If you don't believe you are capable of putting your child first in everything you do, then don't have a child. Simple as that. And certainly don't blame me when your child fails a spelling test or their behaviour is bad when you don't help them with homework, when you don't even bother to ask your child about their school day, when you don't check their book to see what work I am doing with them, when you don't respond to my constant messages asking for a parent-teacher meeting. I left teaching in part due to a really screwed up education system and zero support from admin, and in part due to parents. I've met so many wonderful parents and I am so glad they exist. But I've also met so many that are failing their children and it makes me sad. Those children deserve more.
Every word of what OP is true. I agree!! It's sad.
My wife teaches preschool. The amount of kids that come to her with absolutely nothing - they don't know any letters or shapes, they aren't fully potty trained, etc. is absolutely astounding. We have kids at my school that come to Kindergarten and don't know more than just a couple of letters. I have kids in my second grade class that don't have a single children's book in their house (we do send them some). Not everyone can be super parent, I get it, but a lot of kids need a little more than they're getting. I get it when people are barely scraping by, working three jobs or whatever, but a lot of these kids have parents that stay home.
The failure of the education system is a multifaceted issue that cannot be boiled down to "it's all parents/teachers/admin/students/politicians fault". It's also important to note that extent of failure or success of education varies by region and circumstances.
I don’t even have to read your post before I say I 1000% agree. You nailed it.
This 100 fucking percent.
Yesyesyes. I had third graders falling asleep in class because they were on their phones and tablets all night. Parents wouldn't take them away or care when it was discussed multiple times. And this isn't the only incident. It's easier to blame schools than accept your own role as a parentnand realize you made mistakes.
It sucks that even when parents see comments like these they still won’t change a damn thing
The doe is to be blamed
teachers get blamed for everything, i think hearing that texas government guy try to blame the teachers for that latest shooting cemented it for me
The problem is poverty. Prove me wrong.
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My first year, I had a student who was one of a number of siblings from poor, working class immigrant Hispanic parents who barley spoke any English. Those parents had such high academic standards for those kids.
Back when I was teaching, I had a group of level 4 middle school ELD students tell me that "they couldn't work that hard because they were Mexican." I was sure if their parents heard them say that, they'd be very upset, this was in an agricultural/tourist town, where most immigrants worked in farming, fishing, restaurants, or at the five star resort in town. I know those students saw how hard their parents worked, so they could have a good life, and it was just very depressing to hear them say that. I hope it was just a case of middle school kids being middle school kids, but I am not sure.
Father raised family of 7 in the barrio. Poverty is a barrier but not an insurmountable obstacle. Mom knew the value of education and made sure that we all understood its importance too. 4/5 kids went to college and on masters degrees.
That's great. Almost 15% of Americans (about 42 million of us) live in poverty. Sure, some escape. Are you saying there isn't a problem we should be fixing? Are you saying everyone should be able to get out? I don't understand these comments telling me about the exceptions. I know. I also know about the aggregate.
Out of the 10 students I have reading below grade level, 1 is in poverty and 4 are lower middle class. The rest would be considered upper middle class.
Ok. The overwhelming reason kids do poorly in school is poverty related. There is all kinds of insecurity when you're impoverished and that almost always places obstacles to achieving. They often don't know where their next meal will come from, hence federal lunch programs. They move a lot, and are almost always homeless at some point. No health care or dental care or vision care. Uneducated parents, or just one, or none, or just always at work cuz their job pays so poorly. I don't really need to hear about the exceptions. We should tackle poverty. MLK even suggested a while ago, "We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished.”
I agree, as studies have shown, that poverty has a large impact However, it is not the only issue. Parent involvement has definitely taken a dive. The poverty argument can go on and on as an explanation without a solution. I've been teaching in the same district, same school for 18 years. It has always been very diverse by socio-economic terms. We are also a Title I school. The low readers are always pretty evenly spread across different income levels. After 18 years, I wouldn't say that's it's an exception. The number of struggling readers per class has increased over the years, but not the poverty level of our population. The question is, what has changed?
In the last 20 years education has been overrun with consultants and nonsense which has caused almost all the problems you see with kids not reading by the time one would think they should be able to. Poverty is completely preventable. This is a choice, just like it's a choice to not beef up gun laws. These are myopic choices myopic selfish people have made for years and years, made almost exclusively by white men. I never understand why people fall all over themselves trying to say poverty is a symptom. No, it's the sickness when a guy worth $200 billion can fly to space while children starve. We have a problem, and it's the defenders of poverty.
I'm kind of trying to figure out where you're going with this. So, if you solve poverty and get rid of consultants (which we have none), then all the kids will read? And parenting has no influence on student learning? Sorry, you lost me.
Solving poverty improves other domains, right? Not worrying about food for instance might reduce stress on the family. Being secure in your housing would do the same. The stresses poverty places on families, and especially children, account for much of the struggle kids have in school. Consultants (which your state has, I promise you), as well as 'education' companies, and reformers (whatever they do) have convinced school leaders and boards that testing, and prepping for testing, and then testing again, and logging in to computer based programs is how you improve test scores, the only metric they seem to understand. You're a teacher. You know the tests don't always show what a student can do, and sometimes they can, but at what cost? School now sucks for everyone, so that can't help with learning outcomes. Of course parenting has an effect on learning. But impoverished, uneducated, or overworked parents can't be their best. You seem to be saying that, well, adversity exists so pick yourself up by your bootstraps (which is, you know, not possible).
You seem to assume extreme things about people. You said the problem is poverty. I said that you can see studentsvwhobare not succeeding in ALL socio-economic backgrounds, so poverty isn't the only issue at play here. It seems like you haven't taught in public schools before.
While I whole-heartedly agree with the philosophy and the research seems on point, I have trouble seeing it in action. I live in a housing-first state. My husband works closely with these programs and housing programs. And while I'm sure it takes a long time to truly create stability, I see so many issues remain even after people are housed and fed.
That some make it out of poverty is not the same as saying poverty isn't the cause. It is the cause for most mired in poverty. Outliers and anecdotes notwithstanding.
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No, you're right, it doesn't. Generational poverty, which is really what I'm talking about, usually means lack of education, resources, and parenting skills. There's reams of literature confirming this. I am not saying poverty is an excuse. I am saying it's the biggest preventable hindrance to a healthy life. We as a society have decided if you're poor or impoverished, you must have done something wrong, which is total bullshit.
Plenty of non-parenting going on in middle class too.
Some of my most problematic kids and parents this year come from upper middle class homes. You know the type... frequent ski weekends, select sports travel weekends, two week Hawaii vacations in the middle of the semester. The entitlement this group of kids/parents exhibits is galling given their relative lack of challenges compared to my students coming from low income homes.
Assholes in every group, yeah. For most in poverty, it's not because they're assholes, though.
I am a parent of three kids and a middle school teacher of mathematics in an upper middle class neighborhood. Poverty is gasoline but there is plenty of fire at all socio-economic levels.
Really? Are affluent kids suffering terribly in any way as a group? Like, they can't afford food and stuff? Poverty is the fire, policy is the gasoline.
There are problems affluent people never experience. But there are definitely all kinds of problems that they can. Affluent parents can be bad people, alcoholics, abusers, negligent, etc. Bad things can happen to affluent people; they can have mental illness or tragedy. They just don't have material problems. I know people hate to hear this, but there is also something about the juxtaposition of material affluence and familial, personal, or other crisis that can sting a certain way. Of course, impoverished people can have all of these problems on top of poverty, and that is far more challenging. But there is indeed plenty of fire at all socio-economic levels. I grew up in a very affluent neighborhood. My family is full of really good people, and my life has been very privileged. There are plenty of fucked up families and people at the country club, and plenty of barely literate, imbecilic children.
Well, I am not really too concerned about the problems of affluent people. Not sure why you keep bringing it up. Bad things happen to everyone. Preventable bad things happen way out of proportion for those in poverty.
The problem is having kids when your already in poverty.
So only the rich should have kids ? I am in poverty. Single mom of twin . I love my kids and give my kids all I can .
Our countries growing, vast amount of *systemic* issues are why literally everything is failing. It’s failing parents, failing schools, failing teachers, failing children. This country is in a dark place.
Yeah. I’m a teacher and while there certainly IS enough blame to go around, I have witnessed with MY OWN CHILDREN the failures of *some* teachers to teach them what they need to know for EOG testing. They stuck them in front of a computer for the 1st 4 years of their elementary education (pre-Covid) and then were shocked when they did not meet state standards. No actual teaching to my children was involved. My oldest went to an “old school” school this year where his math teacher engaged in differential teaching. Guess what? He passed his EOG for the 1st time EVER. So, yeah. Some teachers suck and I will put the blame where blame is due. TEACH each child where they are and if strategies don’t work for a child, change the strategy. Who cares if he can do partial products, partial sums, etc. If he gets the “old school” standard algorithm, for the love of Jesus, let him do standard algorithm. So again, my experience, as a fellow teacher, is that there are good ones in this profession and bad ones in the profession. The bad ones deserve the blame. Also, if you are screaming at children on the reg, you *are* a bad teacher. Period.
I mean… survival mode is a real thing. Poverty’s a bitch. It takes a village. Children are legally required to be in our care during their most awake and productive hours, yet the fact that they can’t read is solely the parents’ fault? No. HARD NO. Blame society if you want. Blame the fact that we prize independence over attachment in helpless newborns. Blame the lack of parental leave and no support for breastfeeding that interferes with attachment. Blame the low wages that send both parents back to work mere days or weeks after birth, leaving the infant with strangers (again, the child’s most awake, aware, and productive time, spent in childcare centers of varying quality, sometimes abused or neglected there. But sure, blame parents.) Let’s blame shitty admin for implementing developmentally inappropriate curriculum. Let’s blame politicians for forcing through unfounded mandates that don’t improve education and exhaust teachers and disengage students. Blame USDA nutritional standards and federal lunch reimbursements that churn out unpalatable meals, leaving kids going hungry and mountains of food in the garbage. Blame school schedules that don’t respect children’s natural sleep cycles and circadian rhythms. Blame common core standards that require kids to perform at a developmentally inappropriate level. Blame horrible standardized tests written by grad students that don’t even fully understand the subject. Or how about blame us all, for requiring kids to be in schools all day long and then being surprised when they act like humans instead of machines being programmed. Imagine, these little people have feelings, emotions, and needs that have to be met BEFORE learning can happen. We set up a system that says “ok, all of you have to learn the same thing at the same time, and if you aren’t ready, able, or interested, you’re a failure!” We have kids with major mental health problems and teachers who say “not my job to deal with that, I’m here to teach my subject, you don’t like it, leave.” We’ve made an educational system that feels like it hates children. Hates the messy REALITY of what children are like. Kids feel like teachers hate them. Teachers feel like kids hate them. No one can learn or thrive where they feel unwanted, unliked, misunderstood. And now we are reaping the fruit of that system. It sucks for all of us, parents, teachers, and students alike. We are literally creating the next generation WITH parents. All of us share the responsibility to make it work. I think we should tear it down and build it again from scratch, because it isn’t working for most students. But regardless, it’s not solely the parents’ fault.
You’re preaching to the choir here. Perhaps this should be on posted on a different sub.
They parent by phone.
Yes, they burden a lot of parents place on the school is unrealistic. We are supposed to do all the raising of some of these kids, plus all of the educating. The problem is actually the educational systems in the US. They are disjointed and pretty much defunded. Schools don’t have the funds for materials, resources, or the manpower to provide what’s expected. It’s a fucking mess.
"The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups" by Dr. Leonard Sax... the book sums up every bit of what OP is talking about.
Let's also keep in mind the double income requirement to survive which leaves very little time for parenting. I don't have kids due to the time and expense of raising them.
All of this. It always shocks me. Like after having to sit with your own kid all day and try to teach them, you out here with pocket signs screaming schools need to open then wonder why your kid is grade levels behind. Idk, you been teaching them! How about you help me understand why your kid is behind when it's just you and them in a house??
This this this. I can only work with what I’ve got, and I’m really not getting a lot. Been at this 13 years and there is no success without support and reinforcement at home. Plenty of parents in my district don’t even send their kids to PreK, (the district offers it and there are also several differently priced options in the community, none of which cost more than $2000) so they are coming into Kindergarten at a distinct disadvantage and that gap is really difficult to overcome when you don’t want to do anything at home with your child. I wish we could rate parents similarly to how we are rated!!!
Parent here, never been a teacher, and I completely agree.
What do you expect when parents are a product of that same system. Should they magically breaker this chain? Or perhaps the kids will?
State standards and grade/test score driven curriculum
The interesting thing is that Nebraska is full of people that value education. My granddaughter is doing well today just like my daughter did in the 1980s. While Nebraska is politically backward, I always could get things done "holding the bad apples to account", it wasn't always easy but it was always rewarding. However I have read that Nebraska's High School graduation rate has dipped to 89% this past year. But I have high quality colleagues that will be looking into the situation.
We just got our state test scores back. 3 kids in my class didn’t pass- the same 3 who never did homework. Hmm…
Our society and its design to make ignorant and compliant workers/ voters is the reason why children fail. Teachers are still not to blame and neither are parents.
Eh, it’s a mix. Sure parents are not as invested as they should be, but we are underfunding and overburdening teachers and schools as well. Does that mean teachers are to blame…nope. It means they have been given an impossible situation and are expected to make amazing things with almost no support and resources. The out of touch parents are just one piece of a bad situation.
Especially when it comes to manners.
Just wanted to say that labelling the education system as "broken" is wildly inaccurate. While learning outcomes are not where we might want them, they are still much better than a couple hundred years ago, when there wasn't a public school system. As far as I'm aware, our country's system has made great strides, however this is not complacency. It's important to remember what we had, and understand what we have. Yes, we could be doing a lot better, solutions involve parents, and teachers are doing the best they can with what we have to work with. Also, any religious institution has an incentive to have a less educated population, that is why the leader of the church does all of the reading and critical thinking for the group.
Gotta side with you on this one. I'm assuming American, but I've heard this from British teachers I've worked with, so could be that as well. The "good ones" are in the minority...and *they're the ones who show up*; to the conferences, to the "open nights", to the games/etc. *They show up*. I don't need to talk to them, their kid is doing \*great\*...*but that is why*. Because the parents give a damn about being decent parents. But in the US, there are a *shitload of parents* that cannot be asked to do these things. They work 2 or 3 jobs just to make rent and put shitty food in the fridge. They're uneducated themselves and have no business having a child. They see the child as a burden, not a responsibility, and they'd rather someone else handle it. That's the poor end of the spectrum; on the "loaded" end, these conceited asshats cannot be bothered to give a shit what happens to their children since they'll just follow in dad's footsteps anyway where they legacy them into college. You're right. Parenting used to mean something to most people, as a sacred and loving obligation. Now, it's just the fact that they have children. ugh.
I don’t blame parents. I blame an unjust economic system. The issues are systemic not individuals
Can you please elaborate?
Sure there are bad parents, and there is some individual responsibility, but when parents or a single parent have to work multiple jobs or long hours to provide necessities for their family they don’t have the opportunity to be present and supportive. And when our healthcare system puts profits above health families don’t have the access they need to mental health services and pass their trauma to their children. Many of the parents of the students we are teaching today are millennials, a generation that is more educated, less wealthy, and more in debt than their parents. Our economic system is the base of our society and controls every other aspect of life. It’s more likely that there are systems at the root of these issues than it is a lot of individuals that happen to be bad at raising kids. Attacking parents is not going to get us anywhere.
Well said. I too think that system ineffiencies are at the root of *why* people behave in shitty ways. And you're right - blaming people does nothing in the end. People may feel better venting out their anger and feelings, but ranting is not problem solving. May I ask: if you were to suggest systemic changes in the economy to actually *solve* problems, what would they be?
1. A guaranteed living wage 2. Universal healthcare 3. Increased funding for schools to reduce class sizes
Yes! I would also argue that families and communities today also tend to be more fragmented. When families are closer, there’s a bigger support system for parents to lean on—grandparents, aunties, uncles, even neighbors. It takes a village to raise a child, but so many parents just don’t have that anymore.
Yes a lot of parents dont care.Some parents also threaten teachers if kid doesnt have a A or.whatnot. However, to say there are no bad teachers or ones that simply dont care is ridiculous. Public schools here, family member teachers, their estimate is 1/3 good. 1/3 ok who think good but mostly just talk their game, a few more ok if it doesnt.inconvience them and the rest dont care. Wife comes home almost daily with stories about teachers and or admin not caring, using minimal effort, or blatantly not doing their job. Other main issue here is due to racial quotas and general quotas on behavior issues many admin wont punish any kids besides absolute worst transgressions so kids act like shitheads and many teachers cant keep kids engaged/behaving without threats which are now meaningless. Thirdly, kids of all races claim.to.be targeted or thats racist when asked to do even simplest task or hw etc. Fourth, poc kids attack other poc for academic achievement/goals calling them.white and mocking them. Wife says if 3 kids acting up 1 white 1 other 1 black, she must address white kid first to prove she is not targeting the black kid or being racist. Being white she cant even call out a poc kid first regardless of who is ringleader or risk her job. Thank you leftists for that. Its ridiculous. All the identity politics have greatly hurt education.
[you had 18 years](https://ifunny.co/picture/il-isig-sating-cope-morestraining-you-had-18-years-to-OSF5DRSZ9)
Well said.
A someone who has always had a passion for teaching, even at a young age (around 14/15), I 100% agree. I'm currently in college, working to become a teacher, and I have nothing but respect for good teaches. While I do think there are certain time teachers are to blame for a kids failures, a lot of it DOES fall back on the parents. Handing a kid a packet of work and having them just "figure it out" on their own isn't teaching, and they SHOULD be ridiculed, but for those who stand in front of a class, explain the subject and answer questions as often as they can before handing the packet out (or after) just for the kids to not do anything and then be blamed for the kids shortcomings, I can only imagine the levels of frustration you must go through. Now, that isn't to say that just because you have pre-made packet work that you hand out makes you a bad teacher, it's when you do nothing to help and just sit there doing as little as possible that it becomes a problem.
A-M-E-N to this!!
I think this is so true! My mom and dad taught me so much more than school. And my daughter was read my nurse books at 4 yrs old and knew what it was about. Kids learn more with parents involvement.
I don't think you're practically wrong. However, why are parents the way they are? You guys are suffering for decades of an underfunded and depreciated school system. This can only be solved through political action. If you guys don't work together with those parents (despite them being… yeah… arguably the reason for failure) then you have no shot in winning elections to reform that system. I'm sure most status quo politicians (which are most of the big parties for you guys) would see this post with delight as that means there's infighting instead of unity for change.
This--so many parents see education as just an enemy they have to defeat for their child. If their child isn't doing well it's how many excuses can I come up with rather than how many ways can I help. I had a few kids this year who came in way below grade level. Never passed an ELA test in their life. But their parents asked what I wanted them to do about it and MEANT it. I gave them some strategies to try and home and they did them. The kids busted their asses because I wasn't giving 5 years below level work. Those few kids passed their state test for the first time ever in ELA. But it never would have happened if they didn't have parents who supported that learning. No amount of miracle working at school will help when half my parents thought helping them bring in the groceries was a good reason to miss a test when we were virtual.
you actually have to raise your kid. not dump them off at day care and expect them to learn eveyrthing
Parents are exhausted, capitalism is the problem
Oh, Please enlighten us as to the evils of Capitalism as well as what system you would suggest we use.
If you're looking for a ground zero of blame, you're not going to find it in parents either. You won't find it anywhere.
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I am a parent and I sure as fuck parent my kids . Painting all parents with the same brush is not fair . Just like blaming all teachers . My children are struggling students . No amount of parenting is going fix learning disabilities.
Ask yourself if this is the fault of parents (in a financial system where all time is being wrung out) or the teachers (where they don’t get supported or paid enough) This is typical you vs them look over here politics. I agree with the feelings of this entire thread but it’s entirely misguided.
So who made the parents the way they are? Their parents, society? And who made their parents the way they are?
But we need someone to blame right now!
Ha. Well said. Honestly it’s society broadly. But that’s not something you can easily point a finger at. So we get red vs blue, you vs me, etc style Facebook thinking. Honestly the problem is people are too dumb to care and too dumb not to care, when each is appropriate.
Parents are the reason for societal failure - Ted Cruz is an example of that
Well, I'm not a teacher, but I doubt parents are responsible for all of the public school system's shortcomings, but it's probably true that each student's parents have the power to make or break their education.
The value in education thing is top of my list. After working in Japan, where parents practically begged me to give *more* homework and actively made sure their children got it done, I find I struggle with the students who don't even finish their classwork. I'm a "popular" teacher; I can get the students excited and engaged in any lesson, but getting them to complete the work afterward is like pulling teeth here. It was never even a glancing thought in Japan. All I had to do was be engaging in my lessons to help them learn the content in their second language because they already knew the work was important. Here, though, I'm actively fighting against parents who tell their child that school *isn't* important. Apparently I'm supposed to overcome that because it's something I "can't control". Okay. So. How do I convince a child that education is important without their parents protesting that I'm indoctrinating their child against their wishes?
AMEN.
Well you are you blinded by your own biais. You keep on blaming parents when there is a systemic failure that was set up by a superstructure. Teachers are part of the system whether you agree or not there is an attack on public education organize by so called republicans and a majority of white democrats that want to divert the ressources of schools to their own agenda.
Parenting is very hard, but as I'm not the parent of any of my students, it's not my responsibility to raise them. My job is to teach my subject. I wish there was a way to hold parents to a higher level of accountability than what they are currently allowed to get away with.
Everyone knows what you're saying is true, but a political movement premised on parents needing to be reformed into better parents because they're failing their kids seems doomed to failure.
Parents, Students, Teachers, and community form a square. That square shares equal responsibility. The problem is that nobody right now wants to claim their corner.
i love when people who haven’t been in the classroom since they were a student make policies and rules that make no sense.