PBS and no child left behind

My younger sister was enjoying PBS kids the other day when I walked into the room. As the show ended, PBS began to flash its sponsers on the screen. I was shocked to find that a main sponser of the programs in general was a grant from the NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND grant. I was appalled, but then I realized it made sence considering they get alot of government funding. Any thoughts on this and this new breed of education?

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The NCLB act is basically "DON'T BE SMART OR WE WILL CRUSH YOU!" You see, if you have a class and they all have 1,000,000 IQ, and then a new student has an IQ of Bush, so around 60-70, all the smart kids are punished. "How dare you want more then 2+2=4! This only the senoir year of college, can't leave anyone behind."

So say you are a teacher, and you have normal kids. Some get As, some get Cs. But then you get a student who actually thinks the ABCs are ABCDF. Now instead of teaching the next thing in line, you have to go back 5 steps even if it is teaching 4th grade stuff to 9th graders because one of them is a stoner(justin), doesn't care(justin), or may actually be one of the rare 3% with a real brain disorder(no one that I know of).(Not ADD or "Brat Syndrome" as I like to call it)

So, say the kid is a stoner, you can't drug test him and get his ass thrown in jail due to school rules. So instead of teaching geometry you have to teach 2+2=4, 4+4=8, 8+8=16.

So say the kid is Justin/doesn't care. He shows up every now and then, sleeps during class, cuts school to get a fix. So instead of reading The Chamber by John Grisham in class you have to read "Mary had a Little Lamb".

But say they actually have a real brain disorder, they have special classes for them. We had one at my alma mater. Some people would pick on them, but not bad people, just mental disorders of some type. No need for NCLB.

Justin. I used his name several times. He was a friend. But then he did drugs, got expelled Junoir year, dropped out senoir year to get his Good Enough Degree(GED) because school interfered with his pot smoking and coke snorting. Now, according to NCLB any class he was in would have to go back to about 2nd grade level teaching in a senoir class. Maybe even more incase you had to do something hard like talk and walk at the same time. So, instead of punishing the stoner who doesn't care about school, you have to punish the rest so the stoner/kid who doesn't care doesn't get a low selfesteem from bad grades.

James I think you might be on to something...good way to put it

Yeah, stupid people belong in stupid classess for stupid people, not in normal classes. I say stupid because most of the people in questin are not actually stupid...they are stupid for not giving a flak and making all suffer due to thier stupidity. Send em to after hours or something....tutor sessions.

See my point...it's not that they are dumb....yeah in some cases..but most cases they dont give a flip...its thier fault. Thats the ones that are stupid.



[edit on 24/5/2005 by SportyMB]

I saw the same thing at the end of Sesame Street.

Someone should remind Bush that having a FEDERAL Department of Education is unconstitutional, and so is NCLB. The government should keep its grubby little hands out of our educational system.

I'm going to homeschool my son.

Exactly! The stoner kids don't care, they are stoners, they just waiting for school to end, well, some do, some don't, so they go and smoke/snort/shoot up. So why should anyone with a brain be punished because they use it? I mean, get some kids bored in class because get this, they actually know things! They learned 2+2=4 the first time it was taught, and don't need to learn it again in highschool. So they act up due to boredom, or if me read a book and get yelled at for not following along with the 2+2=4, 4+4=8, and so forth.

Ok, in my case, I suck at math. I can read Stephen Hawking, I know the Civil War, science is no big deal, but math is my weakest point. So, should the whole class who understands the area of an imaginery object be punished cause I don't care! What is an imaginery object? A Sharp Circle is a Circle that isn't round but has sides, yeah, I don't get it either. But the answer would be a number that doesn't exist, like the Square Root of -4.(That I understand, no number times itself equals a negative number, so the SR of -4 does not exist, why we learn this in school IDK, seems pretty obvious to me)

But I didn't care, because there is no such thing as a circle with sides, and well, it was freaking stupid! After a long and heated debate with the teacher, and a couple days in detention, I just stopped caring. Now, should the whole class be taught 2x2=4, 4x4=16, just because I don't care what the area of a Sharp Circle is? No, it's me who isn't learning it, and me who will suffer later in life if they actually find a reason for me to know it, not them.

But I guess Bush remembers what it was like to be in school and everyone learning things you didn't understnad, like the a square won't fit in a round hole and a triangle won't fit in a square hole.