Education past, present and future

Introducing people of all ages to mythology... in pre-college educational curricula, youth orgs, the media, etc. Share your knowledge, stories, unit and lesson plans, techniques, and more.

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Clemsy
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Post by Clemsy »

Yeah. It's really bad for teachers in Michigan, Wisconsin and just about anywhere in the deep south.

It's surreal.
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

ralfy
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Post by ralfy »

Formal education is usually linked to industrialization, as seen in nineteenth-century Prussian education and the U.S. public education system.

As industrialization weakens due to predicaments such as peak oil, environmental damage and global warming, and financial crisis due to increasing debt, then it is likely that education will eventually become localized and involve sustainability, e.g., home or community schooling, with an emphasis not only on the humanities but also on permaculture, etc.

Clemsy
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Post by Clemsy »

Hopefully, ralfy, that will occur. Unfortunately, the exact opposite is happening in the U.S. right now. If anything, the factory assembly line, industrial education model is being reinforced through the Common Core "State" Standards (CCSS) and the high stakes testing environment that is attached to it.

U.S. public education is, right now, a seemingly never ending fall down the rabbit hole.
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

ralfy
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Post by ralfy »

At the very least, the three predicaments are already taking place. Oil prices have increased by three times during the past decade, with production not catching up with demand. Per capita, oil production peaked over four decades ago, but we are feeling the effects only recently because of increasing resource demand from the BRIC and the rest of the world. Food prices have also gone up, leading to social unrest in many countries.

As the financial crisis continues, as seen in high prices and unemployment, the effects of global warming are being felt, with heat waves, floods, droughts, melting sea ice, etc., leading to much human harm, property damage, and food crop destruction.

creekmary
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Post by creekmary »

Yea clemsey!!! Go! I had to teach my own child basic math and phonics. I would read his books and go over his homework and the methods made no sense! It's not about the kids. It's not about teaching. It seems to be promoting particular methods, testing, numbers, blame. How well you follow the proper agenda. Something. It's not about teaching kids to read, for example, but testing the efficacy of some particular method.

Kids in Plano, Texas, very competitive environment, were killing themselves by the bunches one year. School shouldn't be toxic.

Fight the good fight! :)

Susan

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

There is systemic education over here and actual children over there. They rarely go together.

~
Last edited by CarmelaBear on Sat Nov 02, 2013 1:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

Taxes are imposed by the wealthy upon the rest of us. It is a matter of sanctioned violence by wealth-captured government, which we follow like lemmings.

Public education is compulsory and governmental. It is ultimately controlled by those who educate their own children in private schools, because they claim the exclusive right to force children and adults into confined spaces. Public schools are very similar to internment camps.

~

Clemsy
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Post by Clemsy »

The results are in for spring K-8 testing in NY. These were the new Common Core assessments in which 3rd graders were subjected to three days in a row of testing, at 70 minutes each. And that was just English/Language Arts. The Math tests were just as "rigorous", the new word de jeur.

As expected, scores plummeted statewide. According to these tests only 31% of NYS K-8 students are proficient in reading.

Totally bogus.
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

Ouch!

:(

creekmary
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Post by creekmary »

We sent the boy to public but taught him at home. He was recruited by Brown, Dartmouth, Duke...everybody...and followed his friends and some little blonde to State. -sigh- I guess you just can't fight mother nature or teach sense. But I think actively consciously providing outside enrichment is so important. The methods and methods currently a la mode don't make sense and don't do more than make some textbook salesmen happy.

Susan

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

You did good, Susan.

:)
Last edited by CarmelaBear on Sat Nov 02, 2013 1:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

creekmary
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Post by creekmary »

I encourage my sister in law to start her own school. She's a teacher, used to assist at some fancy private day school, was really enthused about some new teaching theory, has a lot of family clout in a teeny little tribe that still counts as federal and has tons of land, and is working as a receptionist for another tribe. She was ready to quit one time. I said "Do it!! Start your school! You could do it!" But she was sensible and sucked it in and is still employed.

Why not?

Susan

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

creekmary wrote:I encourage my sister in law to start her own school. She's a teacher, used to assist at some fancy private day school, was really enthused about some new teaching theory, has a lot of family clout in a teeny little tribe that still counts as federal and has tons of land, and is working as a receptionist for another tribe. She was ready to quit one time. I said "Do it!! Start your school! You could do it!" But she was sensible and sucked it in and is still employed.

Why not?

Susan
That's me. I've tried to start a lot of things, and once the word gets out, everything around me starts to crumble. I'm afraid to jump in the water to rescue someone, because I tend to attract sharks.

I do things like pick up trash on the street, sweep the floor, clean the toilet. Sometimes even those kinds of activities can turn out badly. Sometimes I know too much to try at all. The generalizations have their limitations. I have a hard time understanding how some things can be possible at all.

Where class stratification is the rule, as in England, upward economic mobility is more common than in the U.S. Here, every black and every poor person is called upon daily to prove beyond any doubt that they do not fit a criminal stereotype before they can receive the most common forms of respect.

I am poor, and a remarkable number of people either assume or suspect or worry that I might be a violent criminal because of the extreme frustrations involved with poverty. I don't have enough time to educate Americans that I am not carrying out some calculated plot to kill or steal or sell sex or drugs or do whatever their imaginations conjure up. Those who admire my achievements assume I must be secretly rich, because Americans think only the rich can think and read and be good at something. It all comes out of the soup we call "society".

My own imagination is busy trying to find a solution to problems that will not make life worse for everyone, and most especially me.

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

CarmelaBear
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Post by CarmelaBear »

When I describe myself as "poor", I do not mean that I am not within six degrees of resources. With smarts and savvy, I'm able to get along in a middle class social milieu, but I have to walk a tight rope.

Some positive, and highly inaccurate assumptions accrue to my benefit, and I am careful to preserve the illusion. The same can be said of the belief in my dangerous potential (the "Where's my gun?" thing), which reminds people that they need to keep slimy hands in pockets. All the while I am making it clear that I am only one real change away from becoming a person of substance, worthy of a second look. I am rather proud of the fact that there are always one or two people who take note of my incremental progress toward my seemingly impossible personal and political goals.

That I am preoccupied with my own challenges has made me a tiny bit expert at understanding those of others. It is a good side effect of the medicine I use to get over myself.

~
Once in a while a door opens, and let's in the future. --- Graham Greene

creekmary
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Post by creekmary »

I used to love to read this guy Colin Wilson. He presented odd theories. "The top 5%". Anyway, 5% of people are leaders. Take the troublemakers out of the POW camps and keep them seperate and the rest are no problem. I never did find out if a new batch of troublemakers formed from the resulting population to fill the void or if it was just something inate. But, some people just have it in them to do things. I think other people hang back to see if they get eaten by sharks first. Sometimes you do. Sometimes, like that little old lady in Catoosa who stopped construction of the Black Fox nuclear power plant pretty much single handed, you get a little of both. Great things can be accomplished. No experience is wasted. Dad quote - "do SOMETHING. Don't just stand there and get run over. Even if it's wrong, you learned something NOT to do."

I know lots of things NOT to do :)

Susan
"never let reality impinge on a good idea" - me

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