<h2> How does this work to get an IEP or 504 plan? Does it take a long time? Can the process be expedited if you take her to a private psychologist to get a recommendation for classroom accommodations?</h2>
<p>I had the luxury of being able to pull my children out of school if I didn’t like the system. I didn’t because they allowed me to choose my children’s teachers and curriculum. The curriculum choice came after we couldn’t get sophomore schedule to our liking and I very politely, and rather resignedly, said “This just isn’t going to work. We’ll just homeschool again.” All of a sudden our child had a choice of any course. I was really surprised by the response, and can only speculate it was because the child’s standardized test scores were pretty high, the school was really small, and the scores may have impacted the averages which were reported annually. We were a difficult family to accommodate and I would have thought they would be delighted to see us go!</p>
<p>What would happen if all the parents refused certain teachers or certain coursework? Do the schools really have that much power over our children?</p>
<p>I had my child changed out of an advanced history course I considered inadequate. I went to the head of the dept and showed her the course materials that had been sent home. The Head of Dept was horrified and immediately moved my child. She asked me if any other parents had complained about the materials. I said they had. I said I had suggested a group of parents approach the teacher to discuss our concerns but they had all declined to do so. I did talk to the teacher before I scheduled a meeting with the dept head. The teacher failed to see there was a problem. The Dept Head asked if I could inspire some rabble rousing with the idea of having the teacher ousted. I answered it seemed unlikely I could inspire any response.</p>
<p>I am really glad my kids are long done with all that. It wore me out. Good luck to all of you still coping!</p>
<p>“More than one - I have three kids! And yes, that time was wasted.”</p>
<p>Most of my kids’ teachers were okay, some were great, but there were definitely these too - and yes, class time was a TOTAL waste. I struggled against being really upset when this happened. We managed it the same way you did, Bay. Only once did I have to hire a tutor…AP Pre-Calculus for my music major. :/</p>
<p>We never ever spent more than a hour a day on math and then only in periodic short bursts when my son was fixated on it. It only took 6 months to go from 2-digit addition to beginning algebra, but then we didn’t waste time on unnecessary repetition and “problem sets.” One explanation and one or two on-the-fly answers to the hardest problems at the end of the section and then we were off to the next lesson.</p>
<p>This is why I wrote that your average certified teacher could not teach a 6-year-old algebra: most have pre-conceived notions that repetition and lots of repetitive homework problems are the key to learning – they are not, for such kids.</p>
<p>“I’m bored” was a phrase that was banned in our household – it showed lack of imagination; with shelves of books and stacks of CD-ROMs, there was always something to explore. The teaching was certainly not necessary, it was simply a pleasant block of one-on-one time between us and a natural extension of an ongoing dialog which followed on the heels of endless questions. Such kids treasure being talked to as young adults and didn’t get that from many others, who had a tendency to “talk down.”</p>
<p>We used to vacation around the country four weeks a year, with a heavy emphasis on visiting museums, zoos, and “living villages.” It was always a delight to see familiar things through a pair of fresh eyes.</p>
<p>It’s a great joy to nurture such a mind, but a royal pain in the behind to deal with endless advice from outsiders about “not pushing” your child and keeping them with their age group and other assorted mumbo-jumbo about how they can’t really understand what they have learned simply because of their age. As a parent, one does what one can when presented with a statistical outlier that will never be “normal” no matter which path is taken.</p>
<p>BCe, I duly note that you did not provide any relevant answers to my easy to answer questions. It is obvious you raised issues without much research nor understanding. As I said, it is OK, most people do that when it comes to comparing our education system with the ROW. </p>
<p>May I respectfully suggest you read a bit about the subject of education systems around the world to avoid confusing your educated guesses with facts.</p>
It takes time to set up an IEP or 504. First, you have to have a PPT meeting (the planning team), and they decide if the student will be tested, and what testing will be done. Then once testing is done, the PPT meets again to decide whether the student qualifies for an IEP or 504, and if so, what accomodations will be made. If a student is performing at or above grade level, it is very difficult to get a 504, let alone an IEP.</p>
<p>I paid for testing last spring, and was railroaded by the teachers. She was not doing well in several classes, the worst of which was Social Studies. When the outside psychology spoke with the school she was told D’s work was improving, and she was getting an “A” in that class (I honestly don’t know when that was, because I don’t recall her ever having an A). They instead felt she was “odd” and had “strange ideas.” The psychologist found she had a processing disorder, but just barely outside the “normal” range, and therefore she wasn’t likely to qualify for a 504 plan. Instead, she needs counseling. </p>
<p>This fall I had her screened for Irlen Syndrome, and just the screening process was eye opening. We found that she is in fact sensitive to bright light, particularly flourescent lighting, and the symptoms often mimic dyslexia (which the MS pricipal said she couldn’t possibly have, because according to DRP testing, she reads above grade level). She does far better with canary paper, or with the colored overlays they gave her. After the screening, we made several connections - she learned to read in a different school district (through grade 2), where instead of white boards they had all blackboards. The classroom where she did the worst in 6th grade has whiteboards over every wall except one which is all windows - and she was constantly in the nurse’s office with headaches. She prefers to sit near the front of the class, but when her Geometry teacher moved the seats last week, she got a headache sitting near the back (he allowed her to move back to the front - he’s one of the helpful teachers).</p>
<p>It’s difficult with a child who is both intelligent, and struggles. All many care about is whether they are on grade level, not whether they are learning at an appropriate individual pace. If a child is able to compensate, then it looks like nothing is wrong. I don’t blame the teachers for not noticing the reading difficulty, I didn’t either; but am offended that they belittled her when I brought it up. They may be the professionals, but I know my D best.</p>
<p>alh,
In public schools (like ours), students/parents are specifically and in writing, prohibited from requesting certain teachers. Of course, the reason this rule had to be reduced to writing and enforced with an iron fist, is obvious: we have bad teachers, and no one wants to take their classes.</p>
<p>We can complain all we want about bad teachers, but nothing can be done about them. They may not be fired unless they commit a crime. So usually we don’t complain, we react to the bad news with horror on the first day of school, and then we hire tutors instead.</p>
<p>Of course, I had the choice to move to a private high school (not homeschool, because I cannot teach high school math), but I did not, for various reasons I thought were in my childrens’ best interests. I hope I did the right thing.</p>
<p>If you are able to hire a tutor for public HS, you can hire a tutor for homeschooling - math or any other subject. When my kids got to algebra, geometry, etc they read the text, did the problems, checked themselves with the teachers edition, corrected the problems. They met with a tutor once a week to go over any concepts with which they had questions. Other homeschool students did algebra, geometry, calculus on-line through epgy. That is less a waste of the student’s time imho than sitting in a class where no learning takes place. Of course, there may be advantages to school that outweigh the various disadvantages. At least one of my kids really loved HS, loved all the competitions: academic, sports, etc.</p>
<p>I guess we all hope we did the right thing. I think one of my children shouldn’t have been in public school. OTOH most would look at him and think he obviously wasn’t in any way damaged or disadvantaged. So where was the harm. I could have done better with that one. I do have regrets.</p>
<p>We have a standard curriculum for a particular subject in our elementary
schools and teachers at two of them added on their own materials which
resulted in big improvements in what the students new. The improvements
were done by teachers on their own time.</p>
<p>The other school didn’t have these improvements and the teachers weren’t
interested in implementing them - they were under no requirements to do so.
Some parents switched to private schools over this impasse - the school district
wouldn’t budge on rearranging kids to attend other schools. I can understand
this as it would cause transportation problems. It would also cause problems
because other parents would want choices in where they sent their kids to
school and in which teachers they would get.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>We did this too. Typically 2,000 - 3,000 mile trips around Canada, the mid-west
and the Southeast. We went at times when school was in session - hotels and
travel costs were generally lower than during school vacation times.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I’ve done research into Singapore’s education system in the past for debates.
I’ve lived there (we have a residence there) and looked into their school system.
I’m giving you my experience.</p>
<p>Have you been there? Have you looked into their school system? History?</p>
<p>How do you get from the third-world to the first-world in 40 years with no
natural resources? There’s only one way that I know of.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>You can suggest anything you want. I’ll just ignore your ignorance.</p>
<p>Xiggi, I think Bce’s response was quite acceptable - living in a country does indeed give you insight to the culture and what’s different. I don’t think it’s any great revelation that several Asian countries really do have a different attitude about education ingrained, or that the more integrated a child’s education between home and school, the better they tend to do.</p>
<p>However, I agree with you that in several other countries that out-perform the U.S., this ethos is not shared. Eg. Canada - where I’m originally from, and a country ranking in the top 10 on PISA etc. - there is certainly little difference socially in terms of the wide range of parental involvement or lack thereof.
During PISA, the researchers found it interesting that Canada and the U.S. produced such dramatically different results given that both spending and degree of westernization were similar. There was a sub-study on the subject that in essence pointed mainly to the DIFFERENCE IN ATTITUDES TOWARD TEACHING AS A PROFESSION as being the possible variable that dramatically altered the level of performance between the countries. The paper argued that the American disrespect for teaching not only had an impact on the quality of the teaching environment, but that it also had an impact on whether talented prospective teachers would actually pursue the vocation.</p>
<p>Thought you’d be interested in that – seems germane to some of the attitudes expressed on this thread.</p>
<p>I was fortunate in that my son’s American teachers happened to be generally exceptional, and that in the rare instance where one might not have been fully engaging, I had taught him to teach himself anyway – because it’s as much a student’s responsibility to LEARN as it is a teacher’s responsibility to TEACH ;)</p>
<p>It was funny when I read the comment about unschooling – because inherently that’s what I ALWAYS did with my son. I just didn’t know there was a name for it.</p>
<p>He was an early reader/explorer/curious guy so in some ways he took the lead. But we also avoided commercial television entirely for his first five years. (Ironically, today he jokes that his “first degree” was a BA-Mom ;))</p>
<p>At any rate, the best way to get great service from a teacher, IMHO, is to let them run their classroom they way they want but support them where you can; teach your kid how to learn DESPITE the teacher style and not to whine about it; get involved with your PTA to improve the quality of life at your school; lobby for coherent policy and funding from your state; and treat day-school like a “fraction” of the educational experience your child needs in his or her life If everyone did every thing on that list, frankly, I suspect the gap in our educational performance would close pretty quickly.</p>
<p>@collegealum314- It’s not about freaking out. It’s reality. Most normal 6 year old kids can pick up things that they are taught. It’s just whether a parent actually puts in the effort or not. They can be taught the techniques of algebra and such. BUT they don’t really understand it. They can replicate the algebraic problem solving but do so without context. And without context, information is meaningless. And I assure you, it’s meaningless to the kid.</p>
<p>Unless the kid is absolutely a rare REAL genius, it’s a waste of time cramming a kid with USELESS information that have no context to the kid. I see waaaaay too many parents do it. Then they assume their kids are smarter than other kids, when in reality they aren’t. Conversely, I’ve seen kids that were NOT exposed to math and reading early, but were actually truly gifted. Heck, my brother didn’t read until after 1st grade and didn’t learn algebra until the 8th grade. But he was/is truly gifted. He tested extremely gifted in spatial acuity. And eventually went on to get a Ph.D at an elite university along with co-founding a biotech company. </p>
<p>My point is that there are better ways to improve a young kid’s mind that will have a better effect in later years, when it really counts. I assure you. I know what I’m talking about…</p>
<p>My kids have had some truly exceptional teachers and some really, really awful ones. Most of the elementary ones were good, and most of the high school teachers were at least competent. However, the middle school teachers for all 3 of my kids were abyssmal. Perhaps it’s because the upper elementary content is more advanced than what their education has prepared them to teach?</p>
<p>This is a sore subject for me, because over the last 20 years I’ve found it necessary to spend hours every day supervising homework, assisting with homework, tutoring, and generally supplementing my children’s public school education. (We can’t afford the private schools in this area, and with homeschooling they’d miss out on participating in their EC’s, which are not easily or affordably done outside of school.)</p>
<p>When my first born regularly came home with assignments to do for which he seemed woefully unprepared, I was confused. He would insist the teacher hadn’t taught the class the material or else had given confusing explanations. Iinitially I started to doubt my assessment of my son’s intelligence. “Now son,” I’d say, “the teacher wouldn’t assign this work if she hadn’t taught you what you need to know to do it.” Well, long story short, he was telling the truth, and the same scenario repeated itself with my D. Fortunately, my husband and I were available to fill in some of the gaps, and the older two were both smart and motivated enough to compensate for the rest. </p>
<p>My third is not naturally smart or intuitive, and really does need to be explicitly taught everything. So in her case, I did attribute some of the homework confusion and unpreparedness to her lesser intellectual ability. But oddly enough, when we’d call a classmate to clarify an assignment, lo and behold those children (who were normal) were just as clueless. Thus, I concluded the teaching was the problem. Consequently, my life is even more consumed than before with being teacher-mom, and teaching D what she doesn’t learn/learn correctly/learn adequately at school. I’m blessed to be able to do this, but I confess feeling bitter that it’s necessary. I’d prefer to be pursuing my own career and interests rather than bolstering the career of the teacher.</p>
<p>In education, the employees like to insist that people outside the organization need to partner with them to do their job and should share the responsibiity for the results. No one outside thier respective companies helps my family members sell insurance, market chemicals, analyze financial statements, or get drugs approved by the FDA. And I know no one even within my family does my dishes or washes my laundry. So why do we parents have to constantly “help” the teacher? It contradicts the principle of societal division of labor, which is the basis for public schools. (Caveat–parents should to send their children to school bathed, rested, fed, and wiith the necessary supplies.) </p>
<p>What do I mean by “not teaching”? The possibilities are endless. Let’s see, the teacher could be on the computer planning her wedding or doing holiday shopping and could tell the kids to read their library books or sit quietly; the teacher could just have the students read the textbook and answer questions every single day; the teacher could show non-educational videos and you-tube clips because that keeps the kids entertained; the teacher could be more focused on a personal agenda than teaching such that he spends class time trying to be funny, be the kids’ buddy, fix their adolescent angst, or right the wrongs experienced by the teacher when he was in school, eg. take those football players or cheerleaders down a notch. And my pet peeve: it’s too much trouble and preparation for the teacher to do a particular lesson in school, so she sends it home for the parents to do with the kids and calls it parental involvement in education.</p>
<p>Actually, BCE, I came back to this thread to apologize for my earlier overly snarky remark. Despite your last comment about my ignorance, I will leave the olive branch on your front door.</p>
<p>This said, it would perhaps be best to compare what we indeed know and what we ignore. This discussion started when you equated the success of an education system with parental support. Here’s your quote:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I objected to this because, while parental support plays a small role in all systems of education, this is hardly the main element of what has been dubbed the “Singapore Educational Miracle.” The government, known for its authotarian style, took a hard line approach when it (re)organized the education system for the 4 to 5,000,000 citizens. It adopted technology at an early stage, scouted the world for best practices, including best vocational practices, and imposed a top-down system. </p>
<p>Singapore can rely on a top-down system because of the quality of its civil service. Unlike the egalitarian Western public sector, Singapore follows an elitist model with high salaries for its top public servants and executives. For decades, it has spotted talented youngsters early, lured them with scholarships and kept investing in them. People who didn’t or don’t make the grade are pushed out quickly. </p>
<p>In Singapore meritocracy reigns supreme and works its way down the system. Teachers, to revert to the original discussion and my comments on the parental involvement, need to have finished in the top third of their class. This is similar to Finland’s and South Korea’s approach. Headmasters are often appointed in their 30s and rewarded with merit pay if they do well but moved on quickly if their schools underperform. Tests are endemic.</p>
<p>In a nutshell, the differences between our system and the successful ones abroad is striking. The positive evolution or revolution are not traced down to a better educated army or parents barging into schools to be heard. One could easily claim that our grandparents and parents were better educated in the basic skills of reading, writing, and math. Why have we been slipping for generations?</p>
<p>To give a last parallel between Singapore and the US, consider the often lauded Singapore Math. Based on the success on the TIMMS tests, many looked at the textbooks used in Singapore for a possible solution to our deepening problems. On the surface, the textbook looked appealling as its conciseness (that also hid its depth well) seemed easy to adopt. Unfortunately, the experience in the US (at the Montgomery County Public Schools) fell short on many counts. </p>
<p>What was the biggest problem? The Singapore Math manuals provided little guidance on how to teach a particular lesson as the program expected teachers with a very good understanding of mathematics. Something that seemed beyond the level of the U.S. teachers who attempted to teach the SM.</p>
<p>This is all goes back to the basic issue that changes require long-term investmentss, and that no great will be accomplished until we (the US) make wholesale changes in how we design and control our education system. For the past sixty years, we have abdicated the decision to the providers of the service and attempted to accomodate their demands, which have been mostly based on maintaining a status quo. </p>
<p>Countries that have had the courage (or the ability) to make difficult choices such as transforming their groups of teachers into an elite group of well-selected candidates are now reaping their just rewards. Until this happens in the United States, we will need to have special edition of all our textbooks that contain not only guidance but all answers to the problems given to the students. </p>
<p>Do teachers in Singapore need those canned answers? Hardly! </p>
<p>PS I could spend hours going over what the results of TIMMS or PISA mean in the comparative analyses of education around the world, but this would serve little purpose. Ditto for my analyses of dozens of schools systems around the world. Since you dismissed my suggestion based on my ignorance, perhaps you’ll find the information at a source closer to your heart. TIMSS the respected organization that shed much light onto the math achievements of Singapore is headquartered at the International Study Center at … Boston College.</p>
<p>Kmcmom, the element described above is not only germane to this discussion, but is one of paramount importance. </p>
<p>The real question is how to we get there, or revert to once was a high level of respect for the profession. Such question does not have a simplistic answer as … Well, just show more respect! The deterioration of the relations and the growing lack of respect did not happen overnight. Some parallels can be drawn with other professions that were once admired but now viewed with scorn. Attorneys come to mind.</p>
<p>I think that you are talking about using Algebra in the real world and sometimes
this requires explanation. In Jacobs Algebra, the text assumes a high-school or
college student as the reader and makes reference to things that a 6-year-old
wouldn’t be familiar with. I think that all textbooks have references that most
students wouldn’t know about that would have to be explained by the teacher.</p>
<p>A curious student would simply ask her parents about the reference in the old
days or look it up on the internet today. I think that most parents today recall
the “what and why” phases of their kids.</p>
<p>However, learning without context is useful.</p>
<p>I took an Honors Calculus III course at Boston College many years ago and it
was almost completely context-free. That’s what theory courses are like. If you
teach kids the theory, the expectation is that they can apply the theory to concrete
problems without having to resort to patterns or plug-and-chug.</p>
<p>For kids that are even more curious about the apparently arbitrary rules about
how arithmetic works, there’s this little book:</p>
<p>“Why does $2 imes 2 = 4$? What are fractions? Imaginary numbers? Why do the laws of algebra hold? And how do we prove these laws? What are the properties of the numbers on which the Differential and Integral Calculus is based? In other words, What are numbers? And why do they have the properties we attribute to them? Thanks to the genius of Dedekind, Cantor, Peano, Frege and Russell, such questions can now be given a satisfactory answer. This English translation of Landau’s famous Grundlagen der Analysis-also available from the AMS-answers these important questions.”</p>
<p>I found an interesting statistics problem on a tennis forum a few years ago and I spent about three days on the problem and showed it to people at work (mostly with Phds and Masters Degrees in Computer Science) and you’d be amazed at how this kind of problem can gnaw at curious people. I managed to solve it without resorting to numerical methods using an approach that Euler wrote a paper on in the 1700s. I was fortunate that some university in Canada (I think) had a program that hired students to translate his papers to English. I did find a few errors in the translation but found the paper useful.</p>
<p>This sort of thing happens in my industry - discoveries that were useless at the time become
useful decades or even hundreds of years later. There’s a lot of research out there where
something is discovered that doesn’t have any current applications or research that is only
partially finished. You don’t know if it might be useful later on.</p>
<p>Our kids took Chinese and Piano lessons from a young age. The Chinese is useful from time
to time. The piano lessons? They play from time to time but it’s not anything that they’d use
in their careers. But they had a lot of fun and enjoyment in learning to play.</p>
<p>Do I think that all kids can learn algebra at 6? No. Our daughter was quite different from
our son. She learned it around 11. She learned arithmetic on a more normal schedule. We
provided the same resources and attitude but she absorbed things at a different pace. She
had different strengths and weaknesses compared to our son.</p>
<p>As for the genius comment: how would you know if you didn’t try?</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I think that you can read research reports and then you can look to see what’s happening
on the ground. I’m aware of the other stuff as I’ve been there and have seen it firsthand.
Would Singapore’s approach work without strong parental support and an educated
populace? I didn’t say that parental support was the only thing but that fixing education is
very, very hard without it. We have certainly tried throwing money at the problem in the
United States. The New Jersey experiments showed that you can spend multiple times
average expenditures and that this won’t compensate against affluent, educated parents
with districts that spend far less.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I think that this is a good model.</p>
<p>Those that don’t make the grade may not have access to the university system but
the TIMSS tests over the years have shown that Singapore does a very good job
overall with all students.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>We used Singapore Math with our kids. They were familiar with durians so they
had no problems adjusting to the cultural references in the book. They didn’t have
problems with the texts either. Their textbooks typically cost about $4 when we
ordered them. US textbooks we around ten times that. The Singapore Math books
were very thin and they were just books of problems. No explanations on how to
do the problems. It’s kind of like the Math Counts book that the NCTM put out.</p>
<p>Imagine a textbook that’s all word problems. Word problems seem to be a phobia
of US math students.</p>
<p>If the kids know their stuff, then they should be able to work through the problems
in the textbooks. </p>
<br>
<br>
<p>“The current educationists are experts in how not to teach.
Anyone who would put children in the same classroom merely
because they are the same age should be excluded. Learning
by memorization and routine is easily forgotten, while
starting with structure and concepts is not.”</p>
<p>“The teachers could not learn the “new math”. This has not
changed, but gotten worse. Few now going to college have
had what could be called a mathematics, rather than
computation, course. The old proof geometry is not common.”</p>
<p>Herman Rubin, Professor of Statistic and Mathematics, October 3, 2002.</p>
<hr>
<p>I nowhere state that parental involvement solves the problem and I thought
that was clear. Necessary but insufficient would be the term where I work.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>And for this, you need parental support.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Yes, I followed the reports in the 1990s.</p>
<p>Strange that you assume that I’m not familiar with the stuff that you posted.</p>
<p>“professions that were once admired but now viewed with scorn.”</p>
<p>People may say they scorn lawyers, but that is not what I’ve seen in my experience. Most parents are thrilled to say their child became a lawyer. It’s emblematic of high attainment. Male lawyers do a lot better in the dating market than male teachers do. People with serious business problems (or criminal problems) pay fortunes to their lawyers. The scorn isn’t there in practice for lawyers. It is for teachers.</p>
<p>Agreed. The only folks I knew who went into K-12 teaching were a tiny minority of topflight students who were extremely altruistic/neo-hippieish in outlook and a larger majority of those who graduated in the bottom half of their respective undergrad classes and viewed it as a “safe” or even “last resort” career path*. </p>
<p>The vast majority of topflight undergrads or kids who were “Ivy/elite college or bust types” in academic magnet high schools like the one I attended scoffed at the mere suggestion of going into K-12 teaching for two very good reasons. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>They saw how little respect and how much BS teachers were subjected to from parents, school admins, and educrats on school boards/Departments of Education/politicians. </p></li>
<li><p>They saw how little they’re getting paid relative aggravations…especially expectations of “free help/school supplies from their own free time/pockets” from society and the public pillorying from society**. Not surprisingly, it begs the question of why pursue K-12 teaching when there’s plenty of less aggravating career options which not only confers far greater respectability…but also pays a hell of a lot more to boot (i.e. Doctor, engineer, computer programmer/software engineer/IT, i-banker/finance, business exec, and yes…even some lawyers. From what I’ve seen as a student/guest at various schools and from teacher friends…teachers are often treated with the level of contempt reminiscent of how feudal lords contemptuously viewed/treated their serfs on the manor. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Heck, most of them would be willing to take a paycut to avoid the aggravations associated with K-12 teaching. #2 was a major reason why most of the topflight college grads who went into K-12 teaching out of extremely altruistic/neo-hippie outlook ended up quitting in absolute frustration and heartbreaking disappointment due to all the BS teachers have to deal with. </p>
<ul>
<li>Knew of several undergrads at some schools who “defaulted” into the elementary ed/education major after being booted out of other undergrad divisions for academic deficiency reasons…especially undergrad business which was already considered a joke major at those colleges. Also, an ex-GF of a younger friend kept whining about having to fulfill a math requirement…even though her college’s school of education allowed her to complete it with a remedial algebra course covering the most basic of what’s usually done in your average 9th grade class.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>** Parents, students, politicians, educrats, school admins, newsmedia, etc.</p>
<p>Okay, but which is the chicken and which is the egg here? Respect, like friendship, must be earned. You can’t simply order someone to respect you and have it actually happen. So do teachers get low respect because that’s all they have earned, or have they earned high respect but for some reason the public has withheld it?</p>
<p>Maybe my older son is a genius, never had an IQ test. He started teaching himself to read before he was three, simply by asking what everything said - he saw there was a code and was determined to break it. He taught himself multiplication from a clock that had the minutes numbered up to sixty along with the hours. He insisted on being the banker when we played Monopoly when he was four. We just went along for the ride. He’s at Google now, and we have no idea what he does there, because he can’t explain it in terms we can understand. :)</p>
<p>His younger brother, clearly also very smart, was never precocious like he was. (Nor were I or my husband.)</p>
<p>While most of our teachers were pretty good, there were very few who really impressed me with their brilliance. In elementary school, in particular, some teachers blew me away with their ability to get kids excited about learning though. I taught an afterschool painting class, and believe me, like the Sunday School teacher upthread, it gave me real respect for what teachers do.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, it’s just a fact that most really smart people (especially women who pretty much had the choices of teacher, secretary or nurse back in the bad old days) now go into other fields where they get more respect and earn more money.</p>
<p>This is also dependent on the baseline of respect provided not only by our virtue of being individuals, but also that of the profession to which he/she belongs. </p>
<p>That is, unless you’re going to argue that US society and Americans on average assigns the same baseline of respect to all professions equally whether one is a medical doctor, engineer/programmer, ibanker/finance, lawyer, corporate exec, K-12 teacher, etc. </p>
<p>An argument I’d think would be absurd on its face based on my own observations, teacher friends, and society-wide attitudes from politicians, mass media, parents, etc. </p>
<p>In practice, K-12 teachers, on average, are assigned one of the lowest baselines of respect.</p>
If everyone did every thing on that list, frankly, I suspect the gap in our educational performance would close pretty quickly.</p>