Why not use career veterans for teachers ?

A long time ago when I was still in school I clearly remember that many of the best teachers were WW II vets and retired military .

Back before schools became liberal indoctrination centers they were very good about hiring veterans .
Such teachers seemed to have no problem at all getting your attention and holding it . I suspect that the biggest reason schools didn't have the problems that they have today is because these teachers would never allow a situation to get completely out of hand before they tried to put a stop to it .

Think about it , if you hire retired career sergeants these guys ( and women now ) have seen every stupid trick and heard every dumb excuse that these fine young minds can think up .

I also think students with discipline problems wouldn't be as much trouble if their teachers used to be U.S. Marine drill instructors .

And it would be easier to train these people up a little more and let them keep their side arms , adding a pretty decent layer of security to the schools . Know that I'm talking about people who were in for a while and have track records of mental stability .

For anybody who has problems with this I want you to know that these people also brought with them the concepts of duty and honor , strange ideas by today's standards . They actually taught that the strongest of us have the duty to protect and defend the weaker , and they believed it and expected us to believe it too .

I know all this a little simplistic , it takes me so long to type that I'm not being as detailed as I ought to be ,just please give it a little thought .

reply to post by thudpuddy


It's a very good idea, someone in the government beat you to it though:
www.proudtoserveagain.com...

Troops to Teachers is a U.S. Department of Defense program that helps eligible military personnel begin a new career as teachers in public schools where their skills, knowledge and experience are most needed.

reply to post by thudpuddy

I think that there should be veterans in our schools. You and I are not alone in our belief on this. Many schools (I am most familiar with my own local districts but having once lived someplace else I know it was true there as well) give preference to veteran status in their hiring system. If two applicants for the job are equally qualified the veteran gets the job. I also believe this is appropriate as a thank you for their service.

Sometimes I wish people actually knew how many vets actually are serving as teachers. Schools are not the universally accepted hotbeds of liberal indoctrination that I see referenced all over the internet. There are kids that grew up as with Reagan as their beloved President who now teach. There are vets in the classrooms and administrations. I know that there are likely some places that are quite liberal, but other places really, really are not.

I'm sure in every town in America there are veterans, retired police, and concerned citizens who would take any required training and count it an honor to guard our children. Many if not all of them would volunteer.

its a good idea but still has flaws. if your wanting security out of it they should be autherized a pistol, but hand to hand contact can only go so far

Actually think this is a great idea, one of the best high school teacher i had was a Vietnam Vet (ignoring his random shell shock when a book was dropped on a desk, ~cough~ on accident)....He was great, the student body respected him, he got the material across and had a ton of real life lessons that we actually listened to.....

Put them in schools, allow them the skill they already have, the skill at small arms use, and it would solve a few issues at the same time.

edit-it is like putting a sign in front of your house saying 'secured by Bob's security'....just makes the bad guys look for an easier target....Knowing that they might run into a few combat vets, who I know would fight hard for the kids, would be enough of an incentive to cause most bad guys to look for easier hunting grounds.


edit 2-If you are worried about the qualification to teach, i'm sure they are just as capable to teach social studies or history as well as the assistant football coach ~not offense Coach Risenhover~

Originally posted by Dispo
reply to post by thudpuddy

 

It's a very good idea, someone in the government beat you to it though:
www.proudtoserveagain.com...

Troops to Teachers is a U.S. Department of Defense program that helps eligible military personnel begin a new career as teachers in public schools where their skills, knowledge and experience are most needed.

Okay , now that you mention it I do remember that program , but I thought it got dropped because I don't think schools are as good about hiring vets as they used to be . They tend to be a little to old-fashioned for today's educators .

A very fine thread and thoughts.
I absolutely agree the strong are here for the weak,
I think it could be a great idea for the students and also the teachers, with what you propose.
If it's what you want you should deffinately give it a go.

The teachers my children really respect are those that have the ability to see from their level and get down there sometimes, but are tough enough to call to attention when needed too.
Mine seem to learn better when there is a common ground there, not just something to be taught by rote. Kids can see when they are given respect and will act occordingly.

Two things they have difficulty with at the moment (at least here), is with punishment of behaviours but aslo allowing enough free flow of education so as not to stifle or kill the spirit of the child learning, by setting too many boundaries.
Education is a trip of self discovery and should be seen as such, with suitable encouragement for advances of thought and talents and emotion. Doesn't matter what they are.

Deciding just what to teach kids would be an astronimcal duty, and you find with time it changes to suit outcomes already achieved, a bit like second guessing what's required for later, type thing.

Education today is certainly not as rich as it once was, it's more up to the individual (the word they shudder at) to decide where they go from there.

When I was little one of our regular school trips was to the local elderly home, and I can tell you we all looked forward to that. We made friendships, heard stories, swapped letters, made gifts and generally got introduced to a beautiful extended family, some of whom didn't have family. Some of the kids didn't have grandparents.
There is not enough of that anymore in Western society, at least this is my opinion.

I don't like ages of usefulness defined so heavily, it's ignorant of history and experience.

reply to post by watcher3339


You're probably right about much of the country , but I got raised in southern California and by the time I got to the eighth grade I don't think I had a single vet as a teacher , or was even aware of one .

Originally posted by MrBigDave
I'm sure in every town in America there are veterans, retired police, and concerned citizens who would take any required training and count it an honor to guard our children. Many if not all of them would volunteer.

Funny you mention that....years ago when I got out and was looking, I applied for a few teaching positions, not for the money, but because there is nothing more in our society that I respect than a teacher......No other position wields as great of a responsibility....I know a lot of soldiers and officers that would love to have the chance to influence the next generation into strong young men and women of character and respect.

reply to post by thudpuddy


I would think that most people who joined the service did not join thinking they were going to be a teacher when they got out...it's a career path that you necessarily don't jump into...incenctives should not be made to encourage folks that ordinarily may not meet the requirements of teaching to satisfy a particular threat...the education system is screwed up enough...

reply to post by thudpuddy


program was not scraped. i have a sgt in my guard unit now that is doing it. but i had a few teachers that have been veterans, i think the last one i had was in middle school though.

Originally posted by chrismarco
reply to post by thudpuddy

 

I would think that most people who joined the service did not join thinking they were going to be a teacher when they got out...it's a career path that you necessarily don't jump into...incenctives should not be made to encourage folks that ordinarily may not meet the requirements of teaching to satisfy a particular threat...the education system is screwed up enough...

I have to politely disagree, every serviceman is trained as a teacher, we spend just as much time teaching as learning. At all levels, soldiers are constantly training and teaching, we learn the role to our right, left and above in case tomorrow they are not there....and train the lower level in case tomorrow we are not there.

Servicemen and women are actually very skilled teachers and normally enjoy the act as it stokes the ego, just a bit...but we enjoy passing knowledge along to help others.

reply to post by thudpuddy
There's nothing to stop Service Vets becoming qualified teachers and competing for jobs like anyone else. It'd be a surprise if there aren't already a lot in the system.

There's plenty to stop an unqualified 'anybody' from teaching due to the world we now live in. Lessons have lesson plans, topics have schemes of work and teachers are pressurised to get better results every year. Their departments are ranked and then the schools are ranked against districts, counties etc.

Now much of that is a whole other thread discussion...my point is that if a service vet was plunged into the education system without being equal to their colleagues...they'd be spat out by students, staff, Heads of Dept, parents and governors.

Par for the course, I suppose. People are already clamoring for the militarization of schools, so why be coy about it? And career veterans have spent their entire lives following the orders of the state; taught never to question them and punished for so doing.

That actually sounds like a pretty good fit for our so-called "education" system, when pretenses are dropped.

Vets do not make great teachers...

I have a couple of friends who have been teaching after their retirement and how the whole structure works in most schools they tend to have problems. One friend who was a highly qualified teacher and nurse was just doing part time for like 15 bucks an hour since he really didn't need the income and wanted to be involved. Well after 7 years he was basically banned from a district. His crimes were...

1. Enforcing written rules like no hats and cell phones in class...
2. Expecting kids to actually do their school work....
3. Not looking the other way when bad kids were bad.....would write them up...etc
4. Calling parents to try and inform them of what their child was doing wrong/or not doing, as in failing.

He was told to just let it all slide and he said things like, "it's your written rules, rewrite them then". The other teachers didn't ever want to make waves and feared more for their jobs than doing the right thing. In the end some parents complained that he was too hard on their kids and even after showing them where their child was failing, by school standards, the school/district bend over and banned him...now this was Arkansas, so it might be different in other places, but really put a sour taste in his mouth after all said and done.

I know of at least 7 retired military teachers at our local high school and three active military that take care of the ROTC program. They're in the schools, some are good, some aren't, just like all the other teachers.

Any retired military person can go into teaching. They get a GI bill that pays for the education and they're free to pursue that if they want. The troops to teachers also influences them to go that direction.

It's not a matter of the schools getting them to do it or anybody allowing them to, it's a matter of them choosing to do it. It's all there for them, laid out and ready to go, but they have to choose to take that route.

Why would a military person want to go into education when we don't respect teachers and pay them accordingly.

Constant criticism of the US educational system and teachers in general, here on ATS, probably won't encourage many civilians to go into education, much less military veterans.

In light of the popularity of this idea, I have to also put in my two cents. I wasn't thrilled with the Orwellian imagery of this story, and I don't care for this idea whatsoever.

Originally posted by thudpuddy
A long time ago when I was still in school I clearly remember that many of the best teachers were WW II vets and retired military .

Back before schools became liberal indoctrination centers they were very good about hiring veterans .
Such teachers seemed to have no problem at all getting your attention and holding it.

I also think students with discipline problems wouldn't be as much trouble if their teachers used to be U.S. Marine drill instructors .

And it would be easier to train these people up a little more and let them keep their side arms , adding a pretty decent layer of security to the schools . Know that I'm talking about people who were in for a while and have track records of mental stability .

(I took out lines from your quote for space. Ones I didn't feel needed addressing.)

The reason you had those vets was the GI Bill. While many most likely were excellent teachers, it was most likely incidental to and independent from their service. I imagine war stories would and could be teachable moments, when appropriate.

The reason you are seeing less vets these days has been the lack of such financial support in recent generations. I don't particularly have anything against discipline, but I wonder where the intersection of civilian public school and military style corporal punishment finds its happy medium. I worry about PTSD, loaded fire arms, and cocky teenagers, on the one hand. on the other, I can foresee former guardians of the empire indoctrinating young wet-sponge minds with revisionist theories.

It gives me Goebbelesque goosebumps and conjures up images of the movie "Starship Troopers".

My main reason for chiming in with my opinion is that I am a teacher. And as educator, it also gives me a case of déjà vu...you mention your experience as a student in this idyllic, postbellum America with vets for teachers, prior to all the liberal nonsense. You're half right....the liberal nonsense never fixed the enherant problems in the system from your day, they were a poorly placed bandaid. The post-WWII, conservative, Skinner-types had it mostly wrong. They thought it was all rote memorization of material and learning through formation of good behaviors.

The hippies came along with their outdoor semi-Socratic circle jerks and multiculturalism for multiculturalism's sake...factoids highlighting abstractions in diversity.

Now we have NCLB and Vouchers that are pure garbage and have defined education in the 2000s and 2010s. It's teach to the test, but now the test is a standardized Frankenstein, focusing on the post-WWII era rote learning and including a few mystical Native American tales for reading comprehension. It's a half-assed hack-job of a repair and throwing war-hardened military into the mix haphazardly will not help it get better.

Originally posted by pointr97
I have to politely disagree, every serviceman is trained as a teacher, we spend just as much time teaching as learning. At all levels, soldiers are constantly training and teaching, we learn the role to our right, left and above in case tomorrow they are not there....and train the lower level in case tomorrow we are not there.

I'm actually inclined to agree with you....to some extent.

It is true that the best way to really learn something is by teaching it to someone else. However, everything in the military is itemized, centralized and flow-charted. While I think Vets have learned a certain style of teaching in the military, overall it would require the breaking down of complex, interdisciplinary materials into simple, grocery list style memorization techniques. Great for, say, learning the state capitals, or times tables, or the periodic table.

......but, then what? I mean, in the military there is a hierarchy, whereby the enlisted men and women are drilled, day in and day out on the effective completion of disparate sets of tasks to their expected standards without deviation, debate, analysis or question whatsoever. Once you learn to take apart, clean, and put your gun back together again, what's next?

It doesn't matter....someone will always be telling you what's next (i.e., what to do with the gun). learning the years of statehood in order by heart is fine, but you won't be able to memorize a critical analysis of the Monroe Doctrine (And in this case, I can already picture how that one would be memorized in a classroom run by an unflinching robot of empire).

I'm not doubting your earnest belief in the power of vets to take on the role of teacher, but it should be for those who come to the position out of ability, merit and fulfillment....not based on an entrenched view of learning through re

(Continued) ....through repetition of itemized tasks.

It's not to say that there is no place for that type of learning (again, times tables, Fahrenheit conversion formulas, world rivers, etc.), but there is the other kind of learning, the critical, analytical, abstract-metaphorical, experiential, interdisciplinary kinds that make people excel in their areas of expertise or become successes across boundaries.

Technically, this military style of learning/teaching exemplifies teach-to-the-test in a nutshell, so (as scary as it sounds to me) it meets the current business model of primary and secondary Ed - and, hell, I'll throw in tertiary while I'm at it. It's easy to teach to a test...it won't really make you learn much, though.

On a final note, i'll give an example that ties in my background with all this, so you can see why im coming from where im coming from:

In Second Language Acquisition, my area of primary focus in education (ESL, foreign language, etc.) terms like "Vocab drills" are fossils of a not-so-by-gone era. keep in mind, things I learned as the newest discoveries in pedagogical methodology were actually not that new. i was reading case studies and research from the early 90s during my MA in the subject just a few years ago.

What does that mean? Simple- turn around time in any discipline is SLOW. In the mid to late 90s, I was a middle and high school student being taught with methods that had already been proven ineffective in academic research. Ironically I would not find this out until nearly two decades later, and from what I've seen of materials being used currently, little other than social networking and multimedia tweaks (cosmetic stuff) have been done to fix it.

Anyway, case in point, back to the "vocabulary" and "grammar drills".... You know:

Yo hablo, tú hablas, él/Ella/usted habla.......etc.

The word drill" comes from a method first used by the military: The Audiolingual Method of language learning, whereby the pupil simply repeats, memorizes and is tested on closed sets of expressions that he or she memorized prior (teach to the test):

"¿Dónde está la biblioteca?"
"Le livre est sur la table."

"¿Dónde está la biblioteca?"
"Le livre est sur la table."

"¿Dónde está la biblioteca?"
"Le livre est sur la table."

"¿Dónde está la biblioteca?"
"Le livre est sur la table."

"¿Dónde está la biblioteca?"
"Le livre est sur la table."

"¿Dónde está la biblioteca?"
"Le livre est sur la table."

.....wash, rinse, repeat....this is my rifle, there are many like it......it sticks eventually, right?

By the end you will learn these and other expressions. You will be able to say these statements and know them by heart, probably even pronounce them really well...but language isn't something you learn by rote...it's analytical and experiential...like any other complex, multi-component set of fluid concepts.

You need to conjugate an -er verb correctly to speak Spanish. You need to put together a gun quickly to fight in a war.

But, just knowing how to conjugate the verb paradigm correctly doesn't allow you to speak effectively in spontaneous circumstances. Just being able to put a gun together doesn't mean you will survive an ambush or overtake an enemy.

Main point, the "Audiolingual Method" was an American Military designed approach to language learning based on repetitive drills in a manner that processed information as itemized task lists.

Does this method allow memorization? Yes.

Other than that, however, it does not have any educational merit as a holistic style of teaching. It's been empirically invalidated decades ago, yet persists in high schools across the country as we speak, and in more than just Spanish or French classes.

This is why I struggle to agree that **ANY** vet back from a tour of duty with a satisfactory psych eval, strapped and loaded, and with experience in he robotic drills of military task completion and rote memorization will be automatically a good teacher and asset to a school, classroom or student.