Why is it?

We can teach our children football,
We can make them believe the religions we tell them to,
But we can't teach them to believe in education?

 

My district is voting on two school millages today. At approximately 1:30pm, I was voter #39. Apparently, no one cares any more.

 

I truly dont like how they are making schools combine like they did back when I was a senior. They combine two schools that hated each other. Obviously going to cause fights and what not. Then they moved junior high into a day care and all grade schools 1-6 most are closed and I think they all going to 1 school now. So now its like if you have a kid you got to do some research on where to send your darn kid. lol Confusing around here They haul kids 40 minutes from that other town to go to school each day.

 

Very simple, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink

 

Amen.

 

We should do what the Japanese do,grab their heads and force it into the water they either drink or drown!

Maybe a bit too far:-D I had Japanese friend in school and he said it was easy coming over here 'UK' as he was already 2 years ahead of everyone and the working hours were like a holiday camp.

 

In the day and age of PS3's, Wii's, PSP's, Gameboys, Xbox, etc, kids are being bombarded with millions of actions per second. Jump on this, move that, shoot this but when it comes to school, they just have to sit there and listen. They become totally bored with the whole process that they really want nothing to do with it and would rather sit at home and play a game.

It's sad because when they get older, a lot of them will lack the basic skills to get a decent job.

 

Just talking to the boy about the very same thing recently. I want him to get an apprenticeship, he wants to work at my place. Not if I've got anything to do with it. The place is reliant on the building sector and that's far too unstable as it is. There's a dearth of tradesmen in the UK at the minute and most of the yoots don't have the inclination to learn a good, steady trade.
As has been mentioned, I too rue my past.
God, I sound like my dad.

 

We all do at some point. .

 

There's also the flip side of the coin though, while many of us regret not learning well in school, society has reached a rediculous apex in the fact that you now need university degree's to earn minimum wage, hell I even saw a job opening for a pool lifeguard that not only required a life guard cert, but a uni degree as well. What amuses me is in many cases they don't even care WHAT uni degree you have.
I'm a good example of this, I learnt a trade with my father, I'm a carpenter. My knowledge is large and my skill is (IMO) pretty good. This was all well and good when I was living in England, but once I moved out here my skills meant exactly nowt.
Why? Yes I was train for 5 years, yes I have over 10 years on site experience and yes I had my own business in the trade..... but I never got a piece of paper to say what I can do, so once I moved here and no one knew me, some 18 y/o kid who just did a years college in my field is more qualified than I am.
Personally I think there is too much emphasis on pieces of paper, what also gets me is the complete lack of life skills and simple basic knowledge of "Manly skills" that kids are lacking these days. Ask a 16y/o how to put up a shelf or unblock the drain or change a tire or oil, many of them have no idea where to start. So what I see happening with all this "Education" is eventually we are going to end up with a wealth of doctors and scientists and computer wizzards.... but no one to build them houses or fix thier cars.

Bottom line.... sadly most kids are not interested in manual labor, they all want a desk job that earns lots of money, god fobid they get thier hands dirty.
Trouble with this is those desk jobs are growing thinner and thinner to the point where highly qualified people can only find low paying simple jobs.

In the end we will have the most highly trained and uber qualified staff in MacDonalds.

 

Even today, it seems, you need a degree for manual labor.
The problem with that is many things require experience to completely understand.
Ex. Mechanical Engineer:
Someone with a masters degree may know the math, but can't trouble shoot their own equipment.

An educator will have education
a trainer will have experience

To many instructors go from getting their degree to teaching.

I myself have been taught incorrect information from an instructors lack of experience.
I call him on it, he thinks I'm an arse.
So, I asked if he had any jobs in the field he was teaching.
He responds with a "yes"
Eventually I was forced to explain to him that an internship isn't a job.

I have heard similar story's of the teachers ineptitude
and oddly, he still teaches university level courses
because he has a degree.


Recently I did some digging
and noticed that there are more classes on how to teach technology
then there are for technology in technology education degrees.