In the USA, teachers are not at all well-respected by the general population outside the education community. The younger their students, the dumber the teachers are thought to be. This is insanely backwards, since education is the absolute most important factor that will lead a society towards progress and prosperity. Once all pressing health concerns of life and death are taken care of, only a challenging, secular, and diversified education can improve the welfare of all people in a society. In this way, teachers have a profound impact in shaping the citizens of tomorrow. It also seems that the teachers themselves have perpetuated this stereotype, as a certain chunk of them (from K-5, at least 30%) have chose to teach only because they didn't really know what else to do with their lives, regardless of whether of not they are ACTUALLY GOOD AT TEACHING...
I sincerely hope that in the next few years, President Barack Obama's emphasis on education helps more and more to make citizens of the USA wake up and recognize the importance of education for the future of our nation as a whole, and that whoever goes on to become the next president in 2012 (no! 2016! ) upholds this praise and significance that education is slowly being given in the minds of American people.
I'm Fremen, I've got a couple other blogs, and since I was into philosophy a while back (Vice President of my school's club), I thought I'd hop onto my cousin's blog and add some other material
For the past two days, I have stayed up into the wee hours of the night (so much so that they blended into the morning!) going on Wikipedia and starting with about 4 articles that branched into well over 50. I opened them in tabs (thank god for firefox, really) and have subsequently been shuffling through them, reading and absorbing, when I realized--why can't we learn like this in school? Couldn't there be a way to learn all the basics that are necessary in each subject area while having sufficient extra space to investigate as we wish into any topic that interests us? Of course, this is what often happens in college, and arguably is the purpose of higher education forms that are separated from career-preparation, but in middle and high school only the most academically interested of students end up discovering things for themselves on their own, while others are left in the dark and funnel their interest and attention at other, "damaging" or "useless" areas of culture and knowledge (as in....celebrity gossip, memorizing fashion designers or famous athletes....while useful to a point of you are really interested in those fields, these are always regarded as very far from academic disciplines).
It would be so magnificent if we could take the ideas of open education and alternative education and blend them nicely with the rigid, standardized-testing-based system currently in place that dominates American Education (the only kind I can speak for, more specifically the NY State Regents) to create a flexible education system with defined minimums for learning at each progressive grade level, classes (as previously stated) divided by academic ability, potential, and ease of learning, where the lowest classes would finish all required minimums for their level in intensive, encouraging work while each step higher would have a greater and greater opportunity to learn beyond the minimums what they wished in an organized manner
So I think America in general has become far too oversensitive to making everybody and everything so excessively "politically correct" that people are afraid of anything that divides anyone, in any way, anywhere, ever.
The problem is, division is completely and totally essential for the very best elementary education, especially at a public school level
today i went off on a rant with my art teacher (finishing up a project after school was done during finals week .... xP) about education and reforming ours (ahem all of america's) and i think i'll start small with..............ny state haha. but yes so my plan now (i wish i wish i wish):
1. double major in college, math/sociology, fill in any remaining time dance/latin/art/south asian languages/writing/random sciences
2. grad school for education, possibly also for business