Beyond Woodstock- A Nation at a Loss
This is a most interesting Op-Ed piece I found in the New York Times this morning regarding the big picture of education in America. The resulting comments sound an awful lot like the continuing war in Woodstock...
A Nation at a Loss
A Nation at a Loss
Excellent Op Ed. Thank you for sharing.
Yes, something is "seriously remiss" in our public educational system as the article suggests and it is the result of it being held hostage by liberal educrats who want schools to be everything to everybody and by the teacher's union who opposes the ideals of competition and merit based reward. The result is the dummying down of our schools to where mediocrity reigns supreme and the cost of this failed system rises with unfettered ambition.
This week at the WMS was a perfect example of the absurdity. It was "healthy week" at the school! Get a load of this: My child's music class was cancelled on Thursday so that the kids could dance to a 1980's Richard Simmons video and today a class was cancelled so the kids could learn about Scoliosis with the intent of screening them for it in the future. I not only found this to be bizarre but also a waste of valuable educational time and taxpayer money.
Are we running a health clinic or a school? I'll add for your information that just prior to budget planning, Kirsten Rigney expressed in a BOE meeting her communication with a Day Kimball nurse who wanted to implement a program of health screening in our schools that included a 500 page medical questionarre. While Mrs. Rigney lacked the maturity and common sense to challenge such a proposterous idea, Mr. Baran smartly told her it should wait.
The blatant lack of common sense and the dilution of our core educational values by a system entrenched with liberals more intent on pushing their agenda of diversity, mediocrity, big government programs, and collectivism than on reading, writing, arithmetic, the value of competition, and the striving for excellence is what is eroding our schools....not inadequate funding as the teacher's union would like you to believe. Educational spending has increased dramatically over the last 20 years with little actual improvement in outcomes.
We wonder why our schools are losing ground, slipping in their edge to compete globally, and failing to gain taxpayer support? While our kids are "sweatin' to the oldies", kids in China are buckling down with chemistry and calculus.