When you send your kids to public school, you are not supposed to worry about whether or not they are being sufficiently educated. At least that is what we tend to want to believe anyway. However, new studies actually show that because of excessive teachers’ absences, you probably should worry. These studies show that between kindergarten and twelfth grade, your kids will spend an entire year with substitute teachers. The reason? Well it isn’t simply because of a few teachers being home with the flu. Instead it’s because of schools’ use of substitutes to plug full-time vacancies — the teachers that kids are supposed to have all year — is up dramatically. Although this doesn’t seem like a big deal to some, consider that Duke University economist Charles Clotfelter, had this to say: “Many times substitutes don’t have the plan in front of them. They don’t have all the behavioral expectations that the regular teachers have established, so it’s basically a holding pattern.” More troubling is the fact that recent research suggests that teacher absences lead to lower test scores, even when subs fill in. This is important because new education law now penalizes schools for too few students meeting testing benchmarks.
So, what is the problem with these subs? Well, the Gorilla asked that question as well, and the answer is simple; in almost every state, substitute teachers are required to have little or no background in teaching. So in essence, subs act like glorified babysitters to our kids and very few actually teach the required lesson plan in the teacher’s absence. (We all know that we spent a lot of time trying our best to take advantage of a “free period”. At least the Gorilla did when he was a wee chimp-hey. After all, he’s only a primate!) Make no mistake though, it is not only parents and teachers who are unsettled about this issue, substitutes themselves want improvements. This is according to Jeffrey Smith, director of the Substitute Teaching Institute at Utah State University, which provides training to substitutes and schools. “They will be the first to say, ‘I wish we had more competent lesson plans left. I wish we had better control of the students,’” Smith says.
January 19th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Let me suggest that there may be a much better way to teach kids in their early years than in public schools.
We can create a living arrangement for “groups-of-families” where learning is more fun because it will be largely through osmosis.
With single family homes being so prevalent in our society, most kids are growing up with extremely poor stimulation in their early years. The barrenness of single family homes (where television is the baby sitter) is partly due to lack of grandparents and other adults being readily accessible.
Most young parents cannot earn a living and still provide all the stimulation their kids need.
There is a better way to teach in the early years. We can plant our youngsters in very fertile surroundings and let them interact (at random to some degree) with the older kids, who can be teachers of may things, and also with grandparents, and other adults.
Following is a brief outline of something we should try with the help of a charitable foundation and a competent university to do the planning. The sponsoring organizations should also carry out a rigoruous assessment of the successes and/or failings of the system design for the purpose of trying again and making improvments.
You get a 160 acre farm (80 might be enough) with some good land for growing organic veggies.
You build a high rise apartment building in the center of it—perhaps a round building would be good to try in a prototype or experimental system.
You include common areas where the families can interact and you get a lot of older, retired people, grandparents in the main, to live there along with young families. Many older people would love to work with children instead of so much traveling and playing so much golf, etc. The time of older people is a huge resource for all humanity which is not being properly employed. All that experience and wisdom (and potential time for kids) is going down the tubes when they die without having lived among families with small children.
You provide common areas with workshops and provide tools and materials, plus libraries, computers, chemistry/physics labs, etc., music facilities, dramatics facilities. etc.
You provide at least one large common kitchen/dining area where kids can learn to cook at an early age. There is a lot of science associated with cooking that would be great stimulation for them—boys as well as girls.
There is a lot of science associated with growing veggies and there could be retired people living there who would know the science and would make good teachers for the kids and other adults wanting to know about organic farming.
You reward kids for working to produce much of the veggies required by the resident families—perhaps sell some of the produce and to help them to understand how to make a profit through free enterprise.
You might want to have some livestock and do the growing and the butchering to help meet the meat protein needs of the group of families. There will be some crop science to learn in growing grass for pastures as well as some veterinary science to learn with a small livestock project.
You lay out some athletic fields and form sports teams with the resident children. Perhaps there could be some adult teams as well.
You have a small lake for fishing and canoeing which could also provide water for irrigating the organic veggies.
Are there any builders who would like to join with a university to help design and evaluate such a “groups-of-families” living system?
Are there any retired people with time on their hands who would like to join together in planning such an experiment?
Would there be sufficient rental income from the families to sustain the system once the experimental phase is finished?
There is much more to be said on the subject but I will stop here and say thanks to the Gorilla for providing this forum where we can hold forth on worthwihile subjects that might have some potential to benefit mankind.
January 19th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Among other reasons, this excessive use of substitute teachers is why I send my children to private school. If between my 3 children they have have 1 full day of substitute teachers this academic year it would be a lot.