I graduated from the public school system.

[Aaron]

Needless to say, it was a huge ****ing joke. Currently attending college to become a nurse, and I was completely unprepared for 'the real world' of education.

If anyone has any questions for me, feel free to ask. I can tell you first hand how bad it was, and what many of the issues are.

I don't think the issues fall on the teachers anymore as much as they do on the parents, who could care less about their kids educations nowadays. My parents took an inactive role in making sure I did my work on time. I'm lucky enough that I was disciplined enough to study, had I been a worse kid I could have gotten in trouble.

Many kids with parents like mine weren't so lucky, and they gained little from the public school system.

It happens.

[Sarah]

I went through the public school system too, then I went to NYU to be an accountant and now I'm a housewife. None of that prepared me for this job.

Oh yeah, my grammar and spelling is horrid!

[Lubbock]

None of that prepared me for this job.

If you think you were unprepard for Housewifery, just wait until you meet Motherhood head on.

Everything I know, I learned since my son was born.

[Thirty five years ago.]

[Sarah]

If you think you were unprepard for Housewifery, just wait until you meet Motherhood head on.

Everything I know, I learned since my son was born.

[Thirty five years ago.]
Even though I have been pushing for that job, I'm scared to death of it.

So does your son have kids of his own yet?

[Lubbock]

Oh, yes.

And son and the grandboys live with me.

You might say, I now have my PhD.

Really, motherhood consists mainly of common sense. I've you're got a good head on your shoulders, chances are your kids will turn out fine.

Mine did, and I raised him from age nine alone. Not that we didn't have our "moments" over the years, but he's something to be quite proud of at this moment in time, and I'm sure his children will be also.

[Naturalized-Texan]

There was nothing wrong with the public school system 50 years ago when there was local control of the schools, when teachers were professionals, and when there was no teachers union.

[Timberwolf]

There was nothing wrong with the public school system 50 years ago when there was local control of the schools, when teachers were professionals, and when there was no teachers union.
Amen to that, Tex...

[garlicguy]

There was nothing wrong with the public school system 50 years ago when there was local control of the schools, when teachers were professionals, and when there was no teachers union.

Bingo!:claps:

[Lubbock]

My grandchildren will be products of Public Schools --unless we win the Lottery. Oldest a 5th grader, and youngest one in 1st.

I hear horror stories about public schools and what's being taught. So far, I don't see it here. Looking over the oldest's history and social studies texts, it seems they are teaching it here petty much like I learned it fifty or so years ago.

I don't know if it's just because it's Lubbock, Texas, not some big East or West Coast city.

We're not as politically correct here as other parts of the country, I guess.

The say the Pledge every morning.

So far, Islam isn't being crammed down our throats like some stories I've read of things that are going on in some school systems.

Neither Heather Has Two Mommies, nor Daddy Has a Roommate are in the library, either.

[buckeyepete]

Needless to say, it was a huge ****ing joke. Currently attending college to become a nurse, and I was completely unprepared for 'the real world' of education.

If anyone has any questions for me, feel free to ask. I can tell you first hand how bad it was, and what many of the issues are.

I don't think the issues fall on the teachers anymore as much as they do on the parents, who could care less about their kids educations nowadays. My parents took an inactive role in making sure I did my work on time. I'm lucky enough that I was disciplined enough to study, had I been a worse kid I could have gotten in trouble.

Many kids with parents like mine weren't so lucky, and they gained little from the public school system.

It happens.


It's called growing up, son, and becoming man enough to admit that YOU were probably your parents worst nightmare when it came to schooling. You were probably looking for that next piece of poontang and didn't even think of that next math assignment. AND, it was your parents problem for not nailing your punk little ass to the kitchen table and MAKING you do your work.

Go ahead and blame your parents. But, every morning when you look in that mirror, cuss your parents for your failure as an independent, self made MAN.

Blame the school system, your parents, and anyone else you want to, BUT, LOOK IN THAT MIRROW, MF'ER AND SEE WHO THE REAL PERSON WAS THAT MADE YOU SUCH A PIECE OF SHIT!

Go home boy, and thank your Ma and Dad for giving you the oppertunity to further your education and the freedom to denounce them as unworthy.

You should be ashamed. I detest the likes of your kind of scum.

Yours truly, PETE

[Eagle1]

public schools are craphouses

but as long as parents are involved with their kids, discussing school over dinner and spending time with them the kids will be just fine.

it seems that the crappy schools are only turning out crappy kids because of crappy parents

[Eagle1]

nailing your punk little ass to the kitchen table and MAKING you do your work.


ahhhh, but the real trick is finding a way to do no work and still get an A

then you are on easy street

[Aaron]

It's called growing up, son, and becoming man enough to admit that YOU were probably your parents worst nightmare when it came to schooling. You were probably looking for that next piece of poontang and didn't even think of that next math assignment. AND, it was your parents problem for not nailing your punk little ass to the kitchen table and MAKING you do your work.

Go ahead and blame your parents. But, every morning when you look in that mirror, cuss your parents for your failure as an independent, self made MAN.

Blame the school system, your parents, and anyone else you want to, BUT, LOOK IN THAT MIRROW, MF'ER AND SEE WHO THE REAL PERSON WAS THAT MADE YOU SUCH A PIECE OF SHIT!

Go home boy, and thank your Ma and Dad for giving you the oppertunity to further your education and the freedom to denounce them as unworthy.

You should be ashamed. I detest the likes of your kind of scum.

Yours truly, PETE

Never once did I say I was a bad student. I made straight A's, and was smart enough to get a decent scholarship to attend a good private Catholic school. Way to overreact.

The parents ARE the problem, nowaday's. They DO NOT take an active role in the education of their children, especially if my school is testament to that.

My parents, while not taking an active role in my education, made sure when I was little that I was a reader. I am a reader, and I think the skills I learned from reading are why I became actively involved in my own education.

I never once said my parents were unworthy, but they aren't perfect either. Had they grounded my brother, or took more of a role when he came home constantly with F's, or even whipped him every once in a while, I think he wouldn't be the **** up he is now.

Grow up a little, and stop with the immature attacks.

[HomeschoolrsRUs]

I graduated from the public school system,

My husband works for the public school system,

Which is why we have homeschooled our children beginning to end :D

(For my son, he graduated out {from both high school and his college dual enrollment program} early last December. My daughter has 1-2 years left to go, depending on whether she decides to work hard and graduate out early too :smirky: )

[TeenageRepublican]

Well, unlike Aaron and others, I'm still in hell (aka public school).

[TeenageRepublican]

Actually, it's a Charter school, I don't know what difference that makes. But half the teachers are looney and the other half are liberal. I still manage to be a A,B, and C student.

[Rhino]

It's called growing up, son, and becoming man enough to admit that YOU were probably your parents worst nightmare when it came to schooling. You were probably looking for that next piece of poontang and didn't even think of that next math assignment. AND, it was your parents problem for not nailing your punk little ass to the kitchen table and MAKING you do your work.

Go ahead and blame your parents. But, every morning when you look in that mirror, cuss your parents for your failure as an independent, self made MAN.

Blame the school system, your parents, and anyone else you want to, BUT, LOOK IN THAT MIRROW, MF'ER AND SEE WHO THE REAL PERSON WAS THAT MADE YOU SUCH A PIECE OF SHIT!

Go home boy, and thank your Ma and Dad for giving you the oppertunity to further your education and the freedom to denounce them as unworthy.

You should be ashamed. I detest the likes of your kind of scum.

Yours truly, PETEStruck a nerve, did he? Are you going to relate your personal story that was the real cause of that tirade, or were you just content to froth a bit?

[Aaron]

Actually, it's a Charter school, I don't know what difference that makes. But half the teachers are looney and the other half are liberal. I still manage to be a A,B, and C student.

I could really care less if teachers have liberal views. But when they shove them down our throats, as I received at my school, it becomes annoying. My biology teacher tried explaining one day that homosexuality is genetic. I could care less if it is or isn't, but she didn't have any proof. If it is, then cool, if not, then whatever.

Also, I am sick of people blaming teachers for all of our school's problems. It isn't the teachers that changed, the material has and will stay the same for the most part. It is the attitudes that people take towards education, and superiority in general.

I wish I could get a good enough job to have my children homeschooled and away from that stuff.

[TeenageRepublican]

I could really care less if teachers have liberal views. But when they shove them down our throats, as I received at my school, it becomes annoying. My biology teacher tried explaining one day that homosexuality is genetic. I could care less if it is or isn't, but she didn't have any proof. If it is, then cool, if not, then whatever.

Also, I am sick of people blaming teachers for all of our school's problems. It isn't the teachers that changed, the material has and will stay the same for the most part. It is the attitudes that people take towards education, and superiority in general.

I wish I could get a good enough job to have my children homeschooled and away from that stuff.

The liberal teachers do shove it down our throats. I'm the only one that has spoken out against them in the middle of a teaching session. Good times...:biggrin:
I get along with the looney ones. Mostly because I'm a bit looney myself.

[mkafrica]

Speaking of graduating from public schools here in the States, I've got one worse...

I graduated from a French public school... *sigh*

[Oldeshooter]

I graduated from high school 47 years ago, there was nothing wrong with the public schools at that time. Then government interference, teacher unions took control and they went into the crapper as Naturalized-Texan stated. A problem today is many students don't want to learn and don't have two parents to guide them. My dad would beat the shit out of me if I came home with a lousy report card. Today too many students don't have a father in the home and moreso don't know who he is.

[Naturalized-Texan]

I graduated from high school 47 years ago, there was nothing wrong with the public schools at that time. Then government interference, teacher unions took control and they went into the crapper as Naturalized-Texan stated. A problem today is many students don't want to learn and don't have two parents to guide them. My dad would beat the shit out of me if I came home with a lousy report card. Today too many students don't have a father in the home and moreso don't know who he is.
You graduated 10 years after I did. I taught high school math and science in the mid-1950s, before the teachers unions converted teachers from professionals to nothing more than union laborers.

[Forget_the_Truth]

im not well "educated", i left school as soon as i could, I hated it there

[CzechPrince]

Besides my few years in Catholic school, I've been in public my whole life, and they were good schools.

[Aaron]

If I'm not mistaken, Fairfax, Virginia has the best public schooling in the nation. Good for you I guess, haha. I lived in a dinky suburban town south of Chicago named Romeoville. We didn't exactly have a good school system. But our school was half hispanic, and most of those kids are dumber than rocks.

[CzechPrince]

If I'm not mistaken, Fairfax, Virginia has the best public schooling in the nation. Good for you I guess, haha. I lived in a dinky suburban town south of Chicago named Romeoville. We didn't exactly have a good school system. But our school was half hispanic, and most of those kids are dumber than rocks.

I grew up south of Fairfax until my family relocated further north into Fairfax county.

The kids being half Hispanic have nothing to do with how good a school system is either.

[Wolfcounsel]

Not to change the subject or hijack the thread, but I'm having a difficult time trying to show my second grader granddaughter how to draw pictures representing the definitions of the following words:

SINCE
BEEN
NODDED
NOW

I kid you not!:evilgrin:

I'd ask Picasso, but he's dead.

[CzechPrince]

Speaking of graduating from public schools here in the States, I've got one worse...

I graduated from a French public school... *sigh*

European schools tend to be tougher than American ones though. How well did it prepare you and what was your overall impression of it? Although even in France, many people still send their kids to Catholic schools.

[Rhino]

I'd ask Picasso, but he's dead.Nobody would be able to understand it anyway.

[mkafrica]

European schools tend to be tougher than American ones though. How well did it prepare you and what was your overall impression of it? Although even in France, many people still send their kids to Catholic schools.

I'm better at studying and time management, IMO. My senior year, I had class from 7:20 to 5:30 Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, from 7:20 to 3:00 on Wednesday, and I had a 4 hour test every Saturday from 7:20 to 11:20. And I also did track, had practice for 3 hours after school every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

I was shocked to learn that most people in the States got out of school by 3 every day (or so it seemed, lol).

Also, I believe that my level of math and science was a year or two ahead of most AP classes in High School. I had already studied everything we went over my first year in college. Unfortunately, they wouldn't let me test out of it and get credit for it. That really stunk, lol.

Oh, and the one thing I did like about it, which is different than here, is that the last week of school was a series of 8 4-hour tests on every subject we'd studied in the previous two years. (ie, biology test on everything studied in biology from my junior and senior years.) I actually learned something that way. :)

(Most notable learning experience in high school... Don't try to isolate dihydrogen from hydrocloric acid, so that you can see what happens when you set the hydrogen on fire, unless you're actually prepared for it... I had to buy a new set of test tubes for the class, lol)

[BarryC]

I attended public school through 5th grade. That means the last time I was in one was in 1974. My parents put me and my brother in a Christian school, starting with the beginning of my 6th grade year. http://www.parsippanybaptist.org/patriots.php
I graduated from high school in that same school in 1981. I see from looking at their website that the teacher I had for all my high school math and science courses is still there. Amazing.
But about the public school, I remember the principal being a nice guy. Violence was unheard of in that school. In fact the foul language that's common almost everywhere today was even unheard of in that school. I never heard the F word or the S word till I started working at Roy Rogers when I was about 19. Previous to that I worked on my pastor's farm, picking and selling vegetables and so forth.
Anyway, back to the public school, I remember we even sang every day. I still have the songbook around somewhere.
One day in 3rd or 4th, or maybe 5th grade I brought my new Swiss Army pocket knife and my Cub Scouts pocket knife to school, attached to my belt with the belt clips. I did that because I thought it was a really cool thing to do. I thought I looked cool with my knives attached to my belt. I had no intentions of actually doing anything with them. I just wanted to look cool. I still remember it to this day. I was sent (very nicely) to see the principal. He took the knives from me, again very nicely, and returned them at the end of the school day before I had to get on the bus to go home. I didn't understand the reasoning of why they were taken from me, but I accepted it just fine. I never brought them again.
It wasn't until I was in Christian school till I ever heard of Marajuana (and only once). It must have been in one of my high school years. The principal actually caught his 3 sons with it in school!
Anyway, those are my experiences.
Barry
Needless to say, it was a huge ****ing joke. Currently attending college to become a nurse, and I was completely unprepared for 'the real world' of education.

If anyone has any questions for me, feel free to ask. I can tell you first hand how bad it was, and what many of the issues are.

I don't think the issues fall on the teachers anymore as much as they do on the parents, who could care less about their kids educations nowadays. My parents took an inactive role in making sure I did my work on time. I'm lucky enough that I was disciplined enough to study, had I been a worse kid I could have gotten in trouble.

Many kids with parents like mine weren't so lucky, and they gained little from the public school system.

It happens.

[BarryC]

Darn it! I went to a lot of trouble typing up that reply, only to find out the guy who started the thread is banned!

[mkafrica]

Oh well, you still shared with the rest of us. ;)

[Riverboat]

I taught high school math and science in the mid-1950s, before the teachers unions converted teachers from professionals to nothing more than union laborers.I don't know what union you're referring to. The one to which I belong attracted me because the members want to hold teachers to a higher standard. The political affiliations run the gamut, but we all want to improve the system. At a minimum, we refuse to get run over by the caprices of the administration.

[BarryC]

Since Riverboat revived this thread, I thought I'd post some more. My grandmother, who died about 10 or 11 months ago at age 102½, taught school for 47 years. She was really smart, and had all of her faculties right up to maybe a week or two before she died. She was reading 2 or 3 books a week and could tell you all about them afterwards. She also remembered all her dreams and told us about them. She also would remember things that the rest of us were supposed to remember, and she would remind us.

Anyway, she graduated from high school in 1922, if I remember correctly. After that she went to the New Jersey State Normal School in Trenton. The school was later renamed the State Teacher's College, and then Trenton State College, and then finally, The College of New Jersey. She started teaching after she graduated from that school. I think she retired from teaching in 1976. She taught mostly 3rd, 4th and 5th grades. My dad had her for all three of those grades.

[Riverboat]

BarryC, it sounds like you're describing my own beloved grandmother. She only taught a few years in Louisiana. She married a World War One veteran who wanted her to stay at home. Stay she did, but being a housewife certainly didn't dull her faculties up to the last few weeks of her life which ended one hundred years after she was born in 1896. She instilled a deep respect for books in me, and gave me a set of books by Mark Twain which I read. Thanks to her I have loved reading all his works ever since.

Thank God for our grandmothers! Grandfathers, too.

[jayson]

BarryC, it sounds like you're describing my own beloved grandmother. She only taught a few years in Louisiana. She married a World War One veteran who wanted her to stay at home. Stay she did, but being a housewife certainly didn't dull her faculties up to the last few weeks of her life which ended one hundred years after she was born in 1896. She instilled a deep respect for books in me, and gave me a set of books by Mark Twain which I read. Thanks to her I have loved reading all his works ever since.

Thank God for our grandmothers! Grandfathers, too.

Looks like I missed the boat by one generation. This describes my great-grandmother to a tee. She met and married my great-grandfather after WWI in which he served.

They both lived to 99. He died a few years before her, just a few days shy of 100. In 1998 she, too, died within a few days (6 precisely) from 100 years old.

They both kept their wits and senses about them right up until a week before their deaths. My great-granddad built everything, even their home, with his bare hands. These were the days prior to building permits and code enforcement, of course.

He would have a cup of coffee every hour on the hour and you best not be late in making the coffee. The amount of sugar this man put in it was astounding, to be honest. They had to have gone through a 20 lb. sack of sugar a week with his sugar consumption and her baking. If you think this is exaggeration, you obviously never met my greats.

These are folks who had meat with every meal, ate eggs and bacon every morning and consumed more black coffee than what is probably good for you... and they both died a few days shy of 100 years old.

Makes you wonder if all this health advice is really benefiting us at all...

[2thePoint]

He would have a cup of coffee every hour on the hour and you best not be late in making the coffee. The amount of sugar this man put in it was astounding, to be honest. They had to have gone through a 20 lb. sack of sugar a week with his sugar consumption and her baking. If you think this is exaggeration, you obviously never met my greats.

These are folks who had meat with every meal, ate eggs and bacon every morning and consumed more black coffee than what is probably good for you... and they both died a few days shy of 100 years old.

Makes you wonder if all this health advice is really benefiting us at all...

Yes, it does make you wonder. But human biology is not exactly the same in real life as it appears to be on paper, and it's very difficult to cite direct links between specific foods and health. The only thing anyone can say for sure is that one size doesn't fit all when it comes to diet.

The human body can get amazing mileage out of just about anything, but we have to consider devolution (the degrading of our genes, environmental toxins, etc.) as affecting our ability to convert food into useful energy. Your great-grandparents lived before irradiation, mega-processing, food designed for long shelf life, chemtrails (that's right, I opened yet another can of worms-- free the worms!), and sedentary lifestyles. They weren't heavily vaccinated as children, the water wasn't fluoridated, and they didn't drink soda out of aluminum cans.

But above all, they had the genetic code to live long.

I think of my aunt who was a voice teacher. She was a walking pharmacy all her life, always on a truckload of pills for a gazillion ailments. She didn't eat right and never exercised. She was sick all her life-- but lived to her 80s. Go figure.

[PrezLeefun]

Until college I had only been in NYC Catholic Schools. I had a wonderful education, because of scholarships and help from family and church.

Had I gone to public schools I probably would have dropped out.

[Lubbock]

Yes, Boat. Thank goodness for grandmothers and grandfathers.

BarryC could almost be describing my grandmother, long since passed away. After graduating from the Ladies College in Chickashay, Oklahoma, she met her first husband in Sherman, Texas, where she was teaching. He died with what we presume was meningitis after just a few months of marriage.

She was teaching school in Demming, New Mexico [and I've never been just clear on how or why she was in New Mexico] when she met and married my grandfather. He was a widower with thirteen children, and he was a deputized US Marshall out of Judge Parker's Court in Arkansas.

Grandmother never went back to teaching after she married granddad. They settled in Castro County, Texas in about 1910, and even though she died when I was just fourteen, I can remember how spry and lively and informed she was, and how she read anything and everything, and never stopped learning. An agile mind. I can remember the importance she attached to education.

I can also remember, when "the kids" moved her off the ranch, into town [Tulia], settled her in a little two bedroom bungalow, and bought her a television [then a little round screen in a big mahogany cabinet], what a marvel that was to her.

In the last ten or so years of her life she became a real consumer of current events. She subscribed to Life and Look and The Saturday Evening Post, and never missed a news cast --national or local [KTUL in Tulia, where you got the noonday Ag report and the hospital admissions, as well was who was at Wallace Funeral Home].

I can remember the visits to grandmother's four or five times a year, when my parents would come from Tulsa, Aunt Nan and Uncle Frank would come into town from the dairy after morning milking, and Aunt Opal and Uncle Buster would come in from the ranch. Everyone would gather around grandmother's dining room table, the coffee pot was always full, the cigarette smoke was thick, and the grownup talk was wonderful.

You couldn't have pried me and my cousin out of the house with a crowbar.

The things we learned. Family history to World history.

In June of '96, Uncle Buster [mother's twin] was the last to leave us.

As my cousin and I were walking away, arm in arm, from the gravesite at Rose Hill Cemetary in Tulia, with our kids trailing along behind us, my cousin leaned down and said to me, "Well. That's it. The last of it. You and I are now the older generation."

I hope the older generation has done as well by our kids [now into their thirties] when it comes to giving them a sense of family history, their place in the family, and their place in the world.

[HomeschoolrsRUs]

Well, neither of my grandmothers (or grandfathers for that matter) were teachers, but my mother is currently a substitute teacher and my husband has worked for the school board of our local county for 26 years. Times have changed, teachers have changed, students have changed, parents have changed -- the thing that REALLY needs to change -- education -- has not. We're still doing it the same old way. Nobody wants to allow education to evolve (pardon my use of this word, nothing religious intended) because it threatens the status quo, and nobody wants THEIR apple-cart overturned.

My mother said she noticed that much of the time students are in school, they are being taught NOT by teachers but by substitutes -- who have no college degree in education, who get paid much less than regular teachers. She actually saw a study (I asked her to see if she could locate it, or find a name or reference for me -- if she does, I'll post it) that said that 1/4 of a child's education is taught by substitutes not "real" (certified) teachers.

This is NOT your grandparents public school system anymore. :shake:

[BarryC]

I don't remember ever having substitute teachers in the public school (K- 5th grade). But in the Christian school I went to after that, I remember that one of my teachers was the principal. Some days he was just too busy to teach our class, which was history. So he would go get the projector and put on an Allistaire Cook America history film. The other kids complained all the time, but I paid attention to it each time, and enjoyed watching.

We moved here to South Jersey in 1985. So my sister went to school in the Christian school here for 8 years. It's a funny coincidence, but her history teacher was the principal, or "headmaster". Some days he was too busy to teach the class. I've heard her tell about that. But I don't know what he set up for them on days like that. Maybe a movie too. But I know she always complained about him for one reason or another, I guess about his teaching methods, or lack thereof.
Barry