Great topic I have been so busy with work and school that I hope I dodn't miss you! My worry in the area of education is that children are told you can be anything you want to be if your try hard and stay on the good path! WHERE IS THE PATH, I was at a middle school PTO meeting and a suggestion was brought up to have a real career day and let the students pick what interest them and ask questions on the best educational route to take and the PRINCIPAL said it is to early for children to start looking into career choices. Take alook around your city or town and see how far the apple fell from the tree, I mean it seems as though children end up in career similiar to their parents. Educators and Parents need to wake up and start listening and make those PATHS TO THE RIGHT EDUCATION EASY TO SPOT AND FOLLOW!!
What good questions to contemplate. I would have to say, I think a good education opens people up to their fullest potential as human beings and helps them to gain an understanding of themselves, other people, and the world around them. I think a successful school is one that produces excited, enthusiastic learners, one that teaches its students to pursue knowledge and helps ignite the spark that will drive them to do that throughout their lives.
As you might guess, I agree with Michelle that NCLB is forcing our nation's schools farther and farther away from what I see as the "highest and best" goals for education. What frustrates the most about that is the fact that while I am fortunate enough to have the means to make up for whatever my kids don't get at school, and I would be supplementing their "schooling" in any case, the ones who are hurt the most by the shrinking of education are the very ones who can least afford it.
I somehow missed this topic but if you are still looking for opinions....
The world that we as parents grew up in is very different than the world our children live in. Innovative thinking is what our own government asked for to deal with the new threat of terrorism. We need children who are creative and educated with a healthy balance of both. Like someone said above, teaching to the test isn't helping our children at all. NCLB has put the kind of things like science, geography, all arts on the back burner while our students are taught to pass the tests to keep them at the standards. Except that the standards are on the things we needed. We need now, more than ever, children who are able to think outside the box and unfortunately, we are doing the exact opposite.
I recently heard a man, Michael Ballam speak at our PTA Convention. He is a university professor and he talked about the child who is told to draw a flower and when the child starts, he is told that he has to be told how to draw it and when to draw it. This happens the same until the child gets into college. He expects to be told how to draw the flower and when he's told that the flower is inside him, he ends up drawing the first flower he was instructed to draw. It wasn't his to begin with, he might have drawn it differently but by the time we expect them to think on their own, they're all drawing the same flower. I suppose that's a little Ayn Rand as well...
As parents, we have to make certain that we keep that alive in our children if it isn't being fostered in the educational system. I think that means supplementing things like music and art when it isn't being offered in the schools. Volunteering whenever possible to do the same in the classrooms. We've taken away a lot of their natural learning experiences by taking away much of outside play/recesses which also contributes to how they learn in the classroom and understanding concepts. We have to make their experiences well rounded. Since they don't offer as many opportunities in the classroom anymore, it is up to us as parents to provide it.
Something tells me that this project is done since the opening post is dated April 13 but I love the topic!
My daughter is an education major and seems to be constantly scrutinizing her younger brother and asking the same questions.
A good education is when children are treated with respect and where it's assumed that all students are capable of learning. Each child should be challenged and taught to think for themselves and how to find the answers to questions. Teaching to the test is destroying our educational system.
Our school district is right now going through an accredidation with an outside group and the hoops the kids and teachers are going through is just plain annoying.
Anything to help a student. I think education begins at home. No matter what educational system is used to educate the child the fundamentals/ingredients of education are and should be primarily taught by the parents. And the primary fundamentals/ingredients in my opinion are, good morals, a stable value system and lots of LOVE. During the primary years of a childs life, the emphasis of learning and getting involved in school should be done with the involvement of the teachers and parents and it should be fun and exciting. Responsiblity of the importance of education should be invoked throughout the primary years but seriously emphasized around the age of 9-10, 4th to 5th grade. This is a time when children begin to deal with emotional and physical change. Some parents take a back seat during this age period because they are sensitive to what is going on with the child. We as parents have to be aware of change in our children, and I use this period as an opportunity to direct the energy of my children in a positive way by staying in constant communication with them. It is not an easy thing to do and at times it is very challenging. In our household our children are our priority. Their sense of being and happiness are very important to us. My most memorable moments as a mom is when I experience my children doing something positive. For example, helping a fellow student with homework, or volunteering to help the teacher with a project, or sticking up for a fellow student that is being bullied. These are the values that are important throughout an educational life experience. When a child feels good about himself/herself achievement becomes a goal. If you instill good morals and have a good stable value system at home, the educational system the child attends does not matter. That child will achieve an abundance of knowledge based on what is taught at home. As a parent of three, I can attest that this approach has worked in my family. I tell my children that I have a job and they have a job. My job is to work and raised them to become viable, productive, and caring human beings and their JOB is to go to school and try to do their best. I hope this helps you with your project.
I think a good education would be having our children prepared academicly for the future. I read somewhere that students here(in the U.S.A.) are not as good at math and science as many other countries, which is sooooooooo scary because we spend quite a bit on education. There are lessons that our children aren't getting somewhere in school. The teachers at our school seem to focus so much energy on what the students need to know for the various state & national tests the students take, that I think it is affecting their overall education. When my son was learning to read at school he was taught to "guess" what the word was that he could not read yet. He had to "guess" which word might make sense in that sentence. I think that is nuts! What happen to phonics? I think a good education focuses on the basics while encouraging more mastery than guessing and test emphisis.
