Home Economics
As I started to make my son's Halloween costume, a strange creature named Vivi from a game called Final Fantasy, yes I am making it myself, and yes, I know I am ahead of the curve as my Halloween and Christmas and Chanukah shopping is already in full bloom, I was thrust back into my public jr. high school home economics class where I learned how to sew with a sewing machine. Now, if you asked me what I learned in jr. high I would reply: photosynthesis, JFK's assassination and how to sew a dress from a Simplicity pattern. Like bike riding, I was amazed this morning at how quickly I was sewing nice, straight seams, moving with ease as I navigated my homemade pattern. Laying a zipper, making a hem, waistband and even a dart all came back to me with little to no trial and error. I remembered back to a day when I was taught those skills along with rudimentary cooking, music, drama and the basic food groups of learning, science, math, english, history, foreign language and even art, that now being a discarded basic and a vanishing breed of even extra-curricular activities. I remember learning how to draw in 3 D, to make a square into a cube, a room with walls and windows. Skills I use on a daily basis. Lost to current students in the downsizing of education. Even the name of the class, home economics is lost as everyone struggles to find their way in this tech driven/ business society. Any mother or father for that matter who has taken care of her own home economics, cleaning, cooking, mending and minor carpentry skills will lament the lack of respect and remuneration given to those fields yet they are vital to the sustaining of any race of people and are crucial to a public body growing and developing.
I AM NOT SAYING THAT I FACE THAT DAILY ECONOMIC CRISIS, SO ALL YOU SOON-TO- RESPOND-WITH-YOUR-COMMENTS FOLKS TAKE A CHILL PILL AND JUST GO WITH ME HERE.
I am not, for a second, trying even to relate to the daily struggle of a low-income mother trying to raise and educate her children in today's crumbling economy. I am only saying that my ability to sew this outfit, pants, hat, and jacket, with facing and grommets and zippers is only because I was TAUGHT. It reminds me how far we have fallen in giving our children the skills they need to succeed either in the big business world or in the big household world. We are FAILING. In music, art, home-ec, cooking, shop (remember shop?) as well as the basics, according to every study we are FAILING. We are Americans and we are getting an F in educating our children. Wake up and smell the global competition. Twenty other countries beat us in science; we are listed 24th in math. We need to let our elected leaders know that education should be the most important issue in this election. Without it, our children, the future of this great nation, will be unprepared and will watch jobs being given to people from other countries.
I am glad that I was given these skills as part of a basic, public school education. I want that for all children. So that whether they end up a political leader, scientist, teacher, artist or homemaker they all are given the best education possible so that they can develop their God given talents and abilities and flourish and thrive as adults.
Maybe if Obama wins, I will sew him a nice tie to wear for his inauguration.
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Education is the most important issue any time...any where. Right now the immediate need is to make sure children learn how our democracy is supposed to operate and how it has been stolen by special interests. They will become voters and uneducated and uncaring voters helped put us in the mess we have today.
This is a lesson adults with a vote also need to learn fast !
It all starts in the home. If we don't instill a desire for knowledge we raise nothing more than drones, programed by a poor education system to serve the needs of the corporate structure.
How about instead of trying to educate everyone in the country at a PhD level-- whether or not they want to go to school for 20 years--- we bring back jobs that don't require such a high level of education?
I'm talking union jobs, manufacturing, heck, even better-paying farm jobs. What's wrong with making a living wage in a "low-skill" job setting?
Sorry, Jamie, education isn't the highest priority-- getting rid of NAFTA and other free-trade rules, which are what have MADE our economy crumble, are higher on my list.
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"We need to let our elected leaders know that education should be the most important issue in this election."
With healthcare and Iraq floating out there, I sure can't agree with your above statement.
With a proper education held by the decision makers, there would not be a healthcare problem and we would not be in Iraq. Those two issues only underscore the need for better education so we don't repeat bad policy.
amen
You have more faith in education than I do. It can't turn conservatives into progressives or bad people into good.
darcy, try to see "education" as a way to develop and hone critical thinking. Yet, to encourage critical thinking in schools is anathema: they must submit to the authority of the teacher and their texts without really knowing the real basis for this authority.
Young persons live in a digital, networked/social world now. This world is not governed by authorities who threaten them with a bad grade or the social disgrace of not receiving a diploma. This world they spend 4 to ten hours a day in is more horizontal than authoritarian; "true" is more like reliability (concurrence), not whether some textbook or some teacher said so. Thus, they spend part of their lives in a world of authority (precluded from asking challenging questions) and the other part in a non-authoritarian environment where the rewards are almost exclusively of a social nature (e.g. how many "Friends" do you have on Facebook).
Next, they move into "The Real World" where we as a society DESPERATELY need them to challenge policy and goals for our country. It ain't happnin. Most high school graduates, I fear, move into the working world waiting for some authority to tel them what to do.
I agree with darcy. I would add that we have incredible infrastructure needs in this country and we have people that need work. Put people to work dealing with such issues as what they used to call urban blight. Make sure that streets and sidewalks and subways are clean every day (I live in Harlem). Make sure the clocks in the schools are all on the same time - there are high schools on the Lower East Side where every clock says a different time. Make sure the bathrooms in the schools are decent and more than decent. There are high schools in the Bronx where there is no toilet paper and the sinks are stopped up and the doors are broken in the girls' bathrooms. Plant gardens -- everywhere and anywhere there is a free space. And oh by the way, how about the environment? It's hot and getting hotter. Polar bears are the canary in the mine. Put people to work on projects that will help the environment and then make sure they can get off work to visit their children's schools. People need to work. With work families are stabilized. Teachers and schools can do more when kids walk on clean streets, with clean air to breathe, where adults have work and feel respected and where they know they are contributing to something bigger and they are part of the mainstream of society. Put people to work. Fix things.
When "Dumb and Dumber" became a hit, I sensed something had changed in America. Then kids calling anything great or funny "stupid" as a compliment. It's become reflected in the dumbness, coarseness, and shallowness of our culture, and entertainment these last few years. Every day more acts that can only be described as mindless are being perpetrated in our society. Much more than I remember in America past. Prisons are full of F students, and the drop out rate is skyrocketing, leaving a menial job or crime as the only viable option.
All this is occurring at a time when the world is getting more competitve every day, and other nations like China and India are focusing on developing an educated workforce--while ours gets dumber. I went to public schools in a working class Black community and got an quality education due to strict parenting good enough to get me into UCLA. Now all my friends have to send their children to private schools to get a quality education. We cannot have a society where only the kids of the affluent get a quality education, while the kids of the working and middle class majority get a substandard one. That is a recipe for a national disaster, and societal calamity.
When we watch Jay Leno interview people on the street, and they don't know the most rudimentary things, we laugh instead of becoming concerned. We're obsessed with winning but are no longer pursuing the excellence necessary to achieve that..
"Now all my friends have to send their children to private schools to get a quality education.
That sentence struck a chord with me. When my oldest child was in elementary school, he was clearly not being challenged and often expressed his boredom by acting out. When we asked the teacher what could be done to challenge and engage him. This was over 10 years ago, but I will never forget her answer: She said flat out "If you want to make sure he gets a good education, send him to private school." ...and these are the people who are being entrusted to teach our children. If the teachers have so little faith in the public education system, we really need to make some changes.
It's long past time to re-examine the goals of public education. We should strive mightily for a national dialog on public education's purpose. This has been narrowly stated by 'No child left behind', which set up a framework to state goals and measure how well they are met. But, as noted above, there can be more to public education than the three R's. At the very least, it should center on developing the ability of the student to 'pursue happiness' or to live a full and fruitful life. Happiness can be had by enjoying an opera broadcast, by creating a painting, by flying a kite and by baking a pie as well as by achieving a promotion at work.
Defining the purpose of public education deserves our very best thinking. Once we have a clearer idea of what public education should do, we can translate it into specific educational programs. Where present emphases are judged misplaced, they can be shifted. Where testing is deemed flawed, the efficacy can be measured against the re-defined goals. Where individual schools have problems in meeting standards, additional services can be better defined and provided. The use of zero base budgeting can serve to scrape away the moss grown thick on our present structures.
Our collective image of what a person graduating from high school should know and be able to do defines us as a nation. It should inform the public educational system.
The future is a terrible thing to waste.
One more point, and I'm going to do the PC no no. I think we need tracking put back into the mix and stop this insane effort to make MMD students or budding craftsmen take Algebra etc classes. When I was in 7th grade, schools made rational decisions with parents for which direction their children were taking in life. To keep pushing ALL kids into what used to be called college prep classes as if everyone is going to college is nuts. What is wrong with learning how to become a plumber, electrician, or office employee? What is wrong with having two levels of biology class: one focused on theory to support advanced study in college and the other to prepare a parent to understand basic health and community issues?
And, if you want a real picture of schools, today, I encourage peole to substitute teach for a day. I think you'll see that 80% of teacher time is being given to 20% of the kids whether it be trying to teach a child who is MMD Newtonian Physics for The NCLB Test or a child who is acting out due to home issues. With smaller class sizes, teachers might be able handle even that, but my child has learned that there is no sense of urgency to get anything done, "because someone in her class always gets as long as they need."
In theory this is good thinking, but the problem with early tracking is that it's doesn't allow for the "late bloomer" or the child who is being held back by issues in the home. However, these problems are deemed a fair tradeoff in many countries where the family never has to worry about educational costs.
I have to agree with you there, from personal experience. I also think the teaching methods can make a student "good" or "bad" at a subject. Some kids need a different approach at math or English to grasp it. I was told I wasn't good at math, so I just gave up on it, and barely passed high school algebra. I was forced to take it again in college, and something clicked. I ended up passing Calculus.
One can hardly disagree with you Ms Curtis, but the question still remains as to how we as a society go about keeping education as a high priority. I think we see following the current waste of effort, NCLB, that just having some powerfull and well financed regulatory agency under the sway of a ever stronger centralized administration is not such a good idea.
Perhaps if we altered the way the US funds its education, and left communities come up with solutions instead of them being imposed from top down (how many times have we seen that even experts are sometimes exactly wrong as to how it can be with the individual child) and lets recognize that even from the standpoint of evolutionary psychology the child, removed from their neighborhood, begins the formation of an identity that we would call a pack or gang, for survival if nothing else. Bring back the small school, close to the student's own neighborhood, and let's be sensible when it comes to allocating what money there is for education so that the bulk of it doesn't go to get every child to a top flight college education when it's obvious that lots of kids would be better off and actually happier with a curriculum where their natural abilities and proclivities are enabled in preparations for at least starting a career in the trades and a life that can be rewarding and appreciated.
I respectfully disagree. The problem with NCLB is in the stupid standards and implementation -- not the fact of a national standard itself. I am in favor of national standards. "Community-based solutions" is in danger of being a nice way of saying "religious education in public schools." (Just like "states rights" is a euphemism for certain things.) I don't want some of our kids at the mercy of Kansas church leaders when it comes time to learn their science. National standards of course should be variable according to any tracking. But a high school diploma should be capable of serving as a documentation of a certain skillset no matter where in the country you were educated.
National standards are important. France has them, England has them -- combined with a national curriculum designed by the nations best scholars and an appropriate national test. NCLB relies on a patchwork of tests designed poorly with no guarantee that they align with a good curriculum.
That said, we should recognize that not everyone wants to go to college or is qualified to go to college. We are failing our children with this lockstep model. We should seek to maximize human potential. The smartest people I know were woodworkers, one with a Harvard degree. We need people to fix our toilets, fix our streets, fix our government. We have tons of illegal immigrants here doing jobs our citizens could do if the schools still had shop classes. It seems like a conspiracy to make our children good for nothing.
"We The People" need to take the first steps in volunteering as education mentors and help the youth develop skills to learn. Responsibility starts with parents, then extended family and then to those that have time to tutor as a volunteer. It requires change!
Bravo. Our kids (and some of the adults) can't apply critical thinking. They can't spell or write grammatical sentences, let alone hope to learn a second language. They can't cook, or clean - things I had to learn because my mother had to cope with a broken ankle and then a broken wrist at two different points in my life. (I can't sew a pattern, but I can sew a button onto a shirt.)
Is it a 'federal' problem? Only in the sense that we seem to be expecting the federal government to be solving it for us instead of being self-sufficient.
What seems to have gotten lost in this discussion is the effect of the economic situation on the education of our children. Not so many years ago, it was possible to live a middle class life on the income of one parent. Now, the norm is two working parents and a struggle to maintain a lifestyle comparable to the last generation. That doesn't leave much time or energy to raise our children right. It's no wonder the schools now stand in for parents in so many ways. Take a clue from Scandinavian countries where healthy child development is a priority. It starts with generous policies for parental leave after the birth of a child, followed by preventative health care as a basic right, childcare assistance, and social policies that allow people to pay more attention to raising the next generation than raising money to pay the next set of bills.
"Now, the norm is two working parents and a struggle to maintain a lifestyle comparable to the last generation
Not true, if it were, we would all be living in row homes like our grandparents, you remember, three bedrooms, one bath, but still somehow they managed to raise five kids there while grandmom stayed home and took care of the house. And what do we have now?
3,000 sq foot four bedroom, 2 1/2 bath house with one child, two new cars (plus one for the kid when he/she is old enough) in the driveway that just have to have all the options, satellite, cell phones, computers PDA's,etc. Now if we went back to how our grandparents lived, one breadwinner would be suffice in most of the country and we wouldn't have to worry about keeping up with the Joneses. But then we would be labeled "losers." Yea, but my grandparents slept well at night (being debt-free does that to people). Now, how many people do you know that wants to live like their grandparents did? Or even their parents (prior to the computer age)? Not all progress is good progress, but our comsumer-greedy- all-about-me society has to have the latest in order to fill succesful. Until we wake up and figure out what is really important, nothing is going to change.
Where do you live? When I travel across the states I am amazed, stunned, by the poverty in this country. I live in the Bronx, one of the poorest counties in the USA, vast areas of poor neighborhoods -- but then I travel through Jersey or through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and I think, "And they think the Bronx is poor?" I just can't get over the poverty in America, urban and rural and small town poverty. We don't all live in expansive suburbs. Just get out and look around.
DISCIPLINE, DISCIPLINE, DISCIPLINE !
EXAMPLE, EXAMPLE AND EXAMPLE !
AT HOME AND IN SCHOOL !
Sadly, your argument died after the first word...
SO many parents simply will not discipline their children. Every excuse under the sun is their justification.
"We don't want to crush her sprit..."
"We want him to think independen
"Our child is not like other children, he/she needs to be free of the confinements of traditional childreari
And so on. From loud, obnoxious behavior in public, to disrespectful and distracting behavior in schools, the "freedom" children simply ruin any chances at a decent education for the rest, because extra time and attention has to be given to "encourage" the me-ONLY Generation to participate in education, hopefully keeping their mouths shut long enough to learn something. Teachers are now required to be referees, security guards, and parents, rather than simple educators.
And the parents, who SHOULD be the ones raising their stupid children to learn something, just shun their responsibilities, while criticizing the Educational System when stupid Johnny can't even multiply 9x6 without a calculator (he never even learned the old "9 fingers trick" of multiplica
And it will only get worse...
Education will never improve if we allow such trends to continue. You reap what you sow. School authorities and teachers assocations should insist on doing the right thing and never give up ! That is what education or schooling is all about. Parents who insist on spoiling their kids should take them to schools where such behaviors are allowed.
Let those students who are well-behaved have a chance and not get infected.
You are talking about upper middle class parents.
I agree that this is a most serious issue. But I am not sure what the Feds should do about it. No Child Left Behind is clealry not the answer. Big Federal "prescriptions" that make for useful slogans and sound bytes in an election will not help. Thank you, Ms. Curtis, for getting us to think about education. Thought is a good first step!
"Twenty other countries beat us in science; we are listed 24th in math. We need to let our elected leaders know that education should be the most important issue in this election. Without it, our children, the future of this great nation, will be unprepared and will watch jobs being given to people from other countries.
No child Left behind is the answer. It was bipartisan. Students have improved dramatically under a system that demands testing for student academic progress, highly qualified teachers [look at how many substitutes your schools use sometime], and outcome based decisions that hold teachers accountable.
Want to find the culprits? Look no further than the teacher's union. They want to be considered "professional" but there is no such thing as malpractice in education.
Please. Under NCLB, it is mainly the economically privileged students who have improved, which is exactly why Republicans think it's so great. NCLB does nothing to address the primary issues causing poor academic performance in urban schools, and it does nothing to help attract quality teachers to hard-to-staff areas.
Total B.S.
NCLB does nothing but "Teach-to-the-test" to the exclusion of all else.
Using NCLB we don't turn out citizens, we turn out drones who are only suited for mindless factory work because they DON'T KNOW ANYTHING, except how to pass a prescribed test (of course maybe that is the idea.)
Ask any college professor or TA how well prepared these kids are, they will tell you they are EMPTY SHELLS who don't know how to learn, and most can't even speak or write properly.
Schools should NOT be run like FACTORIES. This insane idea is a result of the corporatist mind-set of the last 30 years which thinks "Business can solve anything."
That is why we now find ourselves "outsourcing" our students to India and China, JUST LIKE A BUSINESS>
Americans deserve it. We have chosen, as one of the two standard bearers for the Presidency of the Untied States, someone who graduated almost last in his class of nearly 900 students. Rather than simply discarding this guy for President, he is likely to become the next President of the United States. Until the American people simply ignore people of such low intellect for the position of President of the United States, why should they be counted on to properly educate their children?
McCain has shown throughout his career, right through today, that his bottom dwelling performance at the war college was no accident -- that it reflects his real intellect. Being a courageous prisoner of war does not change his abasolute lack of the intellectual skills necessary to be President -- but so what? After all, if he can be President, so can another child who's not bright enough for the job either.
To give some insight as to how lopsided our society is here is. After hurricane Charlie in 2004 75% of our schools in Charlotte County Florida were destroyed. The oldest school in the county was/is the Charlotte High school in Punta Gorda Florida. Totaly destroyed except the facade. The decided to keep the facade and rebuild a new school bigger better and certainly up to date. Great right? Along with the high school nearly all the primary schools needed to be torn down with new ones built in their place. Again great. There were modulars brought in to create classrooms so kids could get back to school. Great again, kids are learning, teachers are teaching. What was the very first thing they needed to complete? Mathrooms, science rooms, any classroms? Nope. The damn football field. They just had to have the football field done so the team could play on their own field, and give them some pride. I like the fact that the school has a strong sports program but I would have loved to see some classrooms done first. It is a screwed up sense of importance.
Customgreen: Yep, that's Florida for ya! I'm a Floridian as well, and that story didn't shock or surprise me, LOL.
Churchill said, "Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it." If you really want to know what the consequences will be of this demise in education in America, look to this site: http://chn
Then, as law becomes custom, institutions will find nothing wrong with shutting down an entire school system rather than to integrate it as mandated by new law. The City University of New York was free for years until in the seventies the population of the city and students began to change toward the dark side and suddenly tuition was necessary.
We must get rid of No Child Left Behind period. The tests are done by McGraw Hill, good friends of the Bush's along with one of Bush's brothers who has made a ton of money providing Educational Software. The Charter Schools that are opening up everywhere, Bush's brother I am sure is behind the Educational Software that is providing these educational tools for these schools. That alone should scare the crap out of you.
If Bush is an example of a C grade average at Yale, that alone means we need to look at our Educations system.
To change the subject a bit, I have a Niece that is in her 3rd year of college, an honor role student through High School and College. This is great and I am proud of here, BUT, She doesn't know how to fry or boil an egg, she can't bake a cake from a Betty Crocker box.
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