Why Education is suddenly such a hot campaign topic

Why Education is suddenly such a hot campaign topic

I found this story and it greatly interested me. I mostly want to share it, but also discuss it a bit.

Some of the most interesting, and telling quotes from the article that I saw were:

Romney sees education as an expense, and Obama sees it as an investment

Without education, the masses are easier to control. If they're easier to control, they're easier to be lied to. Think about the people you know. Those who are educated don't fall for the BS that's constantly spewed about. They KNOW what the truth is and they know how to find the information that some want to keep hidden. The easiest way to control a group of people is to keep them ignorant of what's going on around them. The uneducated are easier to do that to.
Note that I didn't say the uneducated are "stupid", they aren't, they are "ignorant". Ignorant means you DON'T know, Stupid means you CAN'T know. Either way though, ignorance is bliss... at least for those who are in charge of the ignorance.

When it comes to education, the main difference between the two presidential candidates is Paul Ryan. The Ryan budget, which was presented to Congress in 2011 and which Romney originally said he would have signed, calls for a 20 percent cut to discretionary funding. Although the budget doesn’t specify how that decrease will be divvied up among departments, Obama has repeatedly claimed that Romney would cut education spending by a fifth, if not more.

We presently have class sizes that are out of control. They are out of control because there aren't enough teachers. There aren't enough teachers because the money is spent elsewhere... usually on "administrators". With the present pay scales, you could replace 3 administrators with 5 teachers for the same price. In some places, you could hire 3 teachers for the price of an administrator. These administrators are usually "central office staff" who almost never come into contact with students, hardly ever get evaluated the way teachers do and basically only work on things that were created for them to work on in order to justify a position.

Twenty years ago, there were about 5-6 people in a school system's central office. Now, that number approaches 20. There are 4 times as many adminstrators and about the same number of teachers, so class sizes don't go down, they go up. Schools will advertise their "student to teacher ratio" but in that ratio, they are including the administrators as teachers. When that many administrators exist who don't have contact with students, the numbers look much better than they are.

You can not have an effective learning environment with 30 kids in a room, let along 35, 40, or more. The kids are suffering due to the greed and nepotism of the "administrators". Is that what you want for your children? Of course not. But that's what you're getting.

In all likelihood, education won’t be the No. 1 issue for many voters on Election Day. But the Obama campaign is hoping that some of its pro-education messaging—helped along by the repeated talk of teachers and schools—will sink in.

For me, education IS the No. 1 issue. It always has been and always will be. Like the beginning of the article said, it's not an expense, it's an investment. If we want to invest in the future, we will invest in education. The best investment we can make it to lower class sizes, lower the number of administrators, increase per pupil spending on things like textbooks and supplies and put our emphasis where it belongs, on the students.

Romney is for education reform. America's education system is pitiful. I have yet to find an educated person that actually has a grasp of the truth. The system we have is one of indoctrination, not education. Public Unions are to blame by teaching agenda's instead of the truth. Our education system holds back quick learners so that slow learners can keep up. Kick politics out of education and move to teaching students at their individual pace and we will see true education instead of indoctrination to whatever party will give teachers the most entitlements.

My school has sixteen teachers and three administrators. It's insane...we could really use two teachers to reduce class sizes, like you said.

Another thing that drives me nuts is the hiring of non educators to fill central office positions. These folks do not have degrees in education, have never taught a class, and yet they are making policy decisions for the entire school district. It's insanity at the highest level.

I feel your pain, PurpleChiten....

S&F

And yet...and yet Republicans will vote the party line not because they like and want to vote for Willard The Rat Romney but because they want to vote against Obama...

There are some smarts for you!

Originally posted by jimmiec
Romney is for education reform. America's education system is pitiful. I have yet to find an educated person that actually has a grasp of the truth. The system we have is one of indoctrination, not education. Public Unions are to blame by teaching agenda's instead of the truth. Our education system holds back quick learners so that slow learners can keep up. Kick politics out of education and move to teaching students at their individual pace and we will see true education instead of indoctrination to whatever party will give teachers the most entitlements.

No, Romney is for cutting educational funding, that's not reform, that is destruction.

How long have you been involved in education, in what capacity and where do you get your information? If it isn't first hand, than you are being fed what you think by the company you keep, most likely faux news. That's not an accurate picture of education, that is a false perception of it trying to keep people uneducated and easy to control.

Originally posted by smyleegrl
My school has sixteen teachers and three administrators. It's insane...we could really use two teachers to reduce class sizes, like you said.

Another thing that drives me nuts is the hiring of non educators to fill central office positions. These folks do not have degrees in education, have never taught a class, and yet they are making policy decisions for the entire school district. It's insanity at the highest level.

I feel your pain, PurpleChiten....

S&F

It's definitely beyond ridiculous. We had a board member years ago that didn't graduate high school and showed up to all the board meetings drunk as a dog. The idiots kept electing him though and he kept making our school system a mockery.

There really needs to be a limit on the number of administrators. Too many chiefs, not enough indians

So spending more money and hiring more teachers will fix the problem? Get real. Many poor countries around the world have a much much better education system and students. Just google 'teachers helping students cheat in us'. It has partially to do with the quota and bonus incentives for the unionized teachers. They do not care about the students. Teaching also has a lot to do with parenting, society and culture which is another can of worms. Charter schools are much much better over government schools anyday. Increase the standards and revise the curriculum in addition to providing parents with more choices by letting the State control the education system instead of Federal Government.

reply to post by PurpleChiten


BS! He is for getting rid of the waste and teachers unions stranglehold on our election process. Teachers Unions are nothing but left wing campaign tools.

Originally posted by PurpleChiten

Originally posted by jimmiec
Romney is for education reform. America's education system is pitiful. I have yet to find an educated person that actually has a grasp of the truth. The system we have is one of indoctrination, not education. Public Unions are to blame by teaching agenda's instead of the truth. Our education system holds back quick learners so that slow learners can keep up. Kick politics out of education and move to teaching students at their individual pace and we will see true education instead of indoctrination to whatever party will give teachers the most entitlements.

No, Romney is for cutting educational funding, that's not reform, that is destruction.

How long have you been involved in education, in what capacity and where do you get your information? If it isn't first hand, than you are being fed what you think by the company you keep, most likely faux news. That's not an accurate picture of education, that is a false perception of it trying to keep people uneducated and easy to control.

No, Romney is for cutting the DEPARTMENT of Education. Not the same as cutting educational funding.

Sending money to Washington only to have it pass through a giant department and then get funneled back to the states is NOT cost effective.

I'm a teacher, by the way, and I support cutting the Department of Education.

reply to post by hp1229


The funding is abused by administration, not by the teachers. The administration decides how the monies will be spent and they hire more administrators instead of more teachers. It isn't the teacher's union that's the problem, it's the administration and the spending of the money.

If they put the money to use in the classrooms and spent it on children instead of on administration salaries, there would be a big difference.

The reason charter schools do better is because the money is spent in the right place. They don't overload themselves with administrators, they put the money to use in the school, they pay for the best teachers and they concentrate on the students, not on which buddies they can give "cushy" jobs to.

reply to post by PurpleChiten


I have found that those with traditional college degrees make the most willing of sheep.

In my experience, it's been those who've existed outside the system who can see that system the most objectively. But it would be very nice if there were more of us who could "talk the talk" with all of our adult teeth still residing in our heads.

I'm borrowing this from another poster because it seems very apropos in this situation:

Ladies and gentlemen, here we have a fine example of the Dunning-Kruger effect in action:

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes.[1]

Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. Kruger and Dunning conclude, "the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others".

This is a real psychological phenomenon that is all to common in real life and especially this website:

Kruger and Dunning proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will:

1) tend to overestimate their own level of skill;
2) fail to recognize genuine skill in others;
3) fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy;
4) recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they are exposed to training for that skill

reply to post by PurpleChiten


President Obama wants to effectively deny boy's, young men and men access to an education. If not enough girls want to take chemistry, title IX will be used in the same way it has been used in college sports to actively prevent boy's, young men and men from taking classes if girls, young women and women don't want to take them.

President Obama is a blatant and unrepentant bigot and anyone who supports the male hater in chief is an irremediable male hating bigot too.

The the rad fem/stormfront nexus that is ATS is probably cheering that the thought of American boy's being treated like blacks where in the 1930's. Doesn't matter that the gender gap in education is greater then when title IX was first passed, but so long as the "right" gender is ahead. Truly revolting display of ignorance and bigotry.

reply to post by korathin


That's not true at all. Where did you get such an idea??? .... faux news?

Originally posted by PurpleChiten
reply to post by korathin

 

That's not true at all. Where did you get such an idea??? .... faux news?

No. I get that from several news sources and from the President himself:

www.nationalreview.com...
www.huffingtonpost.com...
www.dailyherald.com...

www.cnn.com.../video/politics/2010/04/20/sot.biden.title.nine.cnn#/video/politics/2010/04/20/sot.biden.title.nine.cnn

www.huffingtonpost.com...

There is no more excuses, boy's, young men and men are being marginalized across America's educational system. The last place where males are doing somewhat ok is in STEM fields. And now the left and it's allies wants to begin institutionalized discrimination, the same type of discrimination that seen thousands of male sports teams closed down, the loss of thousands of scholarships geared toward males at a time when most colleges are between 60-80% female student body. It is blatant and intentional bigotry. And anyone who supports such bigotry is well, no point wasting breath on the rad fem/stormfront nexus.

reply to post by korathin


Those sources don't say anything of the nature of what you were saying.

reply to post by PurpleChiten


Education, or the polictical aspect of "education" is always a hot topic during election season. Sadly, none of the talk from all sides is about education but the funneling of monies from one group or the next in the name of "the children."

reply to post by ownbestenemy


Yeah, it never seems to actually go to help the children

Load of garbage.
Education in the US is a disaster and the left and right both know it.
We spend more money than any other country and have lousy results.
So the response on the left is to spend more and the response on the right is to spend less. Neither actually looks at the fact that our system is broken because there are too many ego's in the way and apparently our educational interests and politicians want all future generations of Americans to be stupid.

How about we try fixing the way we teach the kids so the money we spend actually counts?

reply to post by PurpleChiten


We have sparred on issues before. This one, education, is a sad state of affairs in my opinion. We have history that tells of us children, as young as 8 or 9, learning about Socrates, law, history, mathematics, the "arts", etc in the late 1700s -- yet today a student (I know because I have two of them who I have to diligently drill other knowledge into) who barely know grammar, arithmetic, comprehension.

Sadly, my two boys, if not for my rigorous extracurricular exercises would know all about "social" issue and nothing about the basic (reading, writing and arithmetic). That is the state of American "education" in its full monty so to speak.