Education System Too Liberal?

reply to post by AngryCymraeg


Sorry, didn't mean to come across as hateful or smart ass. This subject hits a bit close to home. I should have said, that in her case, it's a reflection of the teacher, not the system of home schooling.

"I have a problem in reading. I was not going to great schools, because my parents did not believe in public education. They wanted the education to be influenced by their religion, so I was going to these halfway education-slash-Christian schools that were like pop up shop style education," said Perry.

Who says the education system is too liberal? When I was in school in TX I had to listen to the teachers spout on and on about how they didn't believe in teaching a certain subject and how it was against their religion so they were only going to briefly touch on it. I also thought for a very long time that people worshiped Buddha because his mother gave birth to him while standing. Thanks 6th grade AP World History.

Discussing as the spouse of a instructor I think that the university techniques in the UK and USA are doing a excellent job.

When one enters a college or university, one chooses to pursue a course of study in a specific field, and expects to receive an education that takes into account current events and current trends. Some courses will be swayed toward the liberal agenda and some will be swayed toward the conservative agenda. That is to be somewhat expected since the instructors are human and have deep-set ideologies. That said, I do believe the liberal agenda gets the lion's share of attention, simply because colleges are staffed with academics. Liberal ideologies typically (IMO anyway) concentrate on social and economic theory, while conservative ideologies typically concentrate on the practicality.

Regardless, the students at this point are adults and are able to make up their own mind.

In primary education, however, the situation is different. In primary education, the students are not adults and are more susceptible to indoctrination. They are also not equipped with prior information with which to vet the information being presented. And finally, they are not at liberty to change education majors or even schools in most cases. They are a captive audience, and essentially helpless to refute the information given.

Primary education should not be liberal nor conservative. It should be about reading, writing, comprehension, mathematics, history... and it is failing miserably in the US! As a remedial math tutor in the local college for two years, I have had to help students with concepts as simple as multiplication and division! 70% or more of the students starting college here have no real understanding of basic algebra, and that is just the students who go on to college. Add in the ones who do not continue and the percentage of under-taught students is even higher. But most of these students "know" that climate change is caused by black smoke, or that the South attacked the North in the Civil War, or that computers are capable of independent thought.

All of those are false, by the way.

In terms of high school graduate competence intellectually, US students rank far far down the list. In terms of money spent on primary education, we rank very high on the list. In other words we spend a lot more money and get a lot less results than other countries. Not other advanced countries, other countries including newly-developing countries.

The reason is that we even have to ask the question posed in this thread. Education is not about political or social indoctrination, and I honestly wish we could convict every person who tries to introduce a liberal or conservative ideology into primary schools for treason.

Too much liberalism? Don't know, don't care. Too much agenda of any kind?

YES!



TheRedneck

reply to post by beezzer

The "liberal" part comes to play when only one ideology is accepted and all other viewpoints discounted.

And this doesn't apply to conservative viewpoint/ideology in any way, when only one is accepted and all others discounted?

Back to the OP: I mostly agree, and I've said it before: there are of course exceptions, but "liberals" (not extreme liberalism, which reduces diversity, as anything extreme on either end of the spectrum is in itself negative) tend to tolerate and accept differences and diversity of peoples and cultures, which is what college education aims to accomplish. An understanding and tolerance of these differences is key to growth as a society, culture, and world.

reply to post by TheRedneck


I agree there is too much agenda being pushed in the schools, especially in grade school. Reading, writing and math now shares the day with all the other social biased courses. As a parent, we have a responsibility to get involved in our children's education. Most parents do not, they let the schools decide what is taught.

Unfortunately, the schools are given grants by the federal government to implement certain programs. So when you have schools strapped for cash, what better way to make up your budget.

reply to post by Watcher777

Have you ever tried to get involved in schools?

When my son was in the 6th grade, the school had a reading program I was very excited about. He came home one day and told me he wasn't going to be able to get his reading award this year like he had been doing. The reason was that he had read almost every single book in the library!

Well, this just won't do... so I came up with an idea to fix it. I have quite a substantial library here, and quite a few books that would be appropriate for primary school. At the time, I also has some extra cash, a few hundred at least. That is enough to get a semi full of books at local yard sales and flea markets. That would then in turn probably prompt enough interest to get a full book drive working; we could have stocked that library with thousands upon thousands of books! So I decided I would donate all my books that were age-appropriate, and hit the yard sales and flea markets for as many more as I could find. I needed two things form the school... agree to accept the books, and it would be nice to have a list of what was already in the library so I didn't duplicate.

I never got to asking for the list. I approached the principle and asked if I could donate some books to the library. I expected this to be a rhetorical question, but instead she wanted to know if these books were on some sort of approval list I had never heard of, why I was giving these books away, what my motive was, etc., etc., etc.

I shook my head, said something along the lines of I'm sorry I bothered you, and left. It was plainly obvious she didn't want and wouldn't accept my gift.

Need to talk to the teacher? Good luck! Some still meet with parents around here, but some want you to make an appointment, are very restrictive about what hours they will see you, and sometimes don't even show up after making the appointment.

Not to mention that just walking through the front door at a high school, any adult not recognized as being on staff is immediately assumed to be the next coming of Charles Manson... at least that's how it appears.

As far as the Federal government is concerned with schools, the NEA should be disbanded and every member convicted of a few million counts of contributing to delinquency of minors, one for every student in the school system since they became a member. Every bad thing that happens in schools can be traced to a Federal program.

TheRedneck

reply to post by TheRedneck


Trust me, I have had MORE than my share of problems with the public school systems. When my children were in grade school they attended California schools, do you know what they promote there? Full on sex education in fifth grade, everything from oral sex to what types of contraception to use, this is to nine and ten year olds. I went to the meeting to see what they were going to teach the kids before they started. Not only was I shocked by the curriculum but the fact that only four parents even showed up to see what was going to be taught.
Needless to say I opted my children out of the curriculum. I agree whole heartedly the federal government needs to stay out of public education...among other things

Anyone who thinks that the current education systems of ANY country are doing a fine job are deluded.

Currently, many Western Governments spend more money on education per child than at any time in history. Children today have more access to information than at any time in our history, with more tools to access that information and better and better teaching methods supposedly being used all the time.

The average teenager has instant access to the entirety of human knowledge from their phone, or their home computer, any time they want it.

For the first time in history, this generation of children are going to have lower IQs than their parents.

Schools right now around the planet are doing a terrible job of educating the children that attend them.