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I am all for some progresive education. Get the kids intrested, have them actually participate. Get their little grubby hands dirty with it. We need to do away with "Everybody is a winner for participating " trophys and really teach the kids.
Here is an article about some of the worst types of "Progresive Schools".
http://www.buzzfeed.com/hillaryreinsberg/10-bizarre-schools-from-around-the-country
Why as a parent would you do this to your child? Some of these schools dont use Books!

Parents should do some teaching before kids get into schools...
They should also interact with their schooling in some way even if it's just homework and projects...
Schools take a lot of crap unfairly IMO...

I agree with Purple. The learning doesn't simply stop because the school day has, nor does it wait for the school day to start.

It's just easier to make them all feel special and to just shove all responsibility onto someone else. Schools just happen to be an easy target for this. Then when you think about it, if a parent is completely unreasonable it is much easier to call the child special instead of a distraction to the others that are actually trying to learn.

Yes they do. I also belive its a parents responability to make sure they kids are getting a proper education. On the other hand some of these schools from that article DONT USE BOOKS! for godz sake. They think education includes "how to pet animals".

Nicorex wrote:Yes they do. I also belive its a parents responability to make sure they kids are getting a proper education. On the other hand some of these schools from that article DONT USE BOOKS! for godz sake. They think education includes "how to pet animals".

Some of those schools are really odd...

purplefood wrote:Parents should do some teaching before kids get into schools...
They should also interact with their schooling in some way even if it's just homework and projects...
Schools take a lot of crap unfairly IMO...

Agreed, we do that, and my son reads at a 3rd grade lvl, Math at a 2nd grade lvl and he just finished 1st grade. His hand writting sucks though, so he should be a shoe in for a doctor But I will say, schools/teachers will never be 100% perfect and so whatever you think they are falling behind on, its up to the parent to build that part up. Again, my sons writing and some spelling we work on weekly at least, because his teacher NEVER corrected the children when they misspelled rock or something, and that bugged me. But again, parents doing their jobs

It's only bad when you get a geography teacher that spells it as rook.

Nicorex wrote:I am all for some progresive education. Get the kids intrested, have them actually participate. Get their little grubby hands dirty with it. We need to do away with "Everybody is a winner for participating " trophys and really teach the kids.
Here is an article about some of the worst types of "Progresive Schools".
http://www.buzzfeed.com/hillaryreinsberg/10-bizarre-schools-from-around-the-country
Why as a parent would you do this to your child? Some of these schools dont use Books!

Tazers bro. Motivation through science!

Some of those schools seem really really dumb...

Some of them sound interesting however, if a little specialised.

I spend a decent amount of time at my kids school as a volunteer and PTO member, and here is what I have observed.

1. There are a lot of kids to a handful of teachers, as a result everything is very regimented. Line up here, sit there, no talking, etc.

2. Due to the kid:teacher ratio; if your kid doesn't learn through the traditional methods, the teachers will be unable to teach them in the style that best suits them.

3. Teachers and administrators are really feeling the pressure of standardized tests and the funding it entails. Therefore, the classroom activities are very regimented to specific subject areas and discussions.

4. There is a large emphasis on homework. All grades have homework every night, K-12.

5. ESL kids are given the same testing and homework as native speakers. This leads to complications as parents can not help the child (No English), Teachers can not help the child (No teachers that speak their native language) and the kid has to sink or swim on their own.

6. The school is trying really, really hard to get community and parent support. Typically, of the entire student body, I see the same 12 parents doing all the community/parental support. Educating kids is not really valued in our community, despite the rhetoric.

7. The schools are trying to cut costs everyway they can, and asking for parents/volunteers to do things that really should be a teacher's job. Things like... teaching one-on-one and tutoring kids in trouble.

8. The school struggles with kids outside of the "normal" range. They either do not challenge them enough, or have no support network for those in need.

Those are just anecdotal observations, and in no way consistute evidence on a larger scale. I see effective education as a stool with three legs; Schools, Parents, and Kids. If one of those three legs is not standing; then the entire thing falls apart.

Easy E wrote:I spend a decent amount of time at my kids school as a volunteer and PTO member, and here is what I have observed.

1. There are a lot of kids to a handful of teachers, as a result everything is very regimented. Line up here, sit there, no talking, etc.

2. Due to the kid:teacher ratio; if your kid doesn't learn through the traditional methods, the teachers will be unable to teach them in the style that best suits them.

3. Teachers and administrators are really feeling the pressure of standardized tests and the funding it entails. Therefore, the classroom activities are very regimented to specific subject areas and discussions.

4. There is a large emphasis on homework. All grades have homework every night, K-12.

5. ESL kids are given the same testing and homework as native speakers. This leads to complications as parents can not help the child (No English), Teachers can not help the child (No teachers that speak their native language) and the kid has to sink or swim on their own.

6. The school is trying really, really hard to get community and parent support. Typically, of the entire student body, I see the same 12 parents doing all the community/parental support. Educating kids is not really valued in our community, despite the rhetoric.

7. The schools are trying to cut costs everyway they can, and asking for parents/volunteers to do things that really should be a teacher's job. Things like... teaching one-on-one and tutoring kids in trouble.

8. The school struggles with kids outside of the "normal" range. They either do not challenge them enough, or have no support network for those in need.

Those are just anecdotal observations, and in no way consistute evidence on a larger scale. I see effective education as a stool with three legs; Schools, Parents, and Kids. If one of those three legs is not standing; then the entire thing falls apart.

I would say that all the above apply for my home school district, except there a no parent volunteers (that I've seen anyway), little to no homework, and about 1/5 of most class populations are kids whom do not speak English as their first language.

The reason that no homework is given is that the kids will generally not do it, and the parents will not make them do it.

Thus the kids start to fail, and then the parents come in and get mad, and shout and scream and demand a better grade for their child, and blame the teachers.

So the teachers have by and large given up on handing out homework, it’s just not worth it to them.

Hell, my 10th grade math teacher was let go because so many parents complained about the ammount of homework he gave their kids. He was a good math teacher too, he just wasn't tenured so they fired him and got someone else.

I see no problem with schools 4-6. School 7 seems no different from any of the number of tennis academies around the country.

Yeah, the article is pretty toothless and judgemental with nothing to really base its decisions on.

So, there are no books? Gee, I guess their is no other devices to read with nowadays?

Just keep your kids at home and send them here for their education http://www.davidicke.com/

State schools just turn your kids into sheeple!

George Spiggott wrote:Just keep your kids at home and send them here for their education http://www.davidicke.com/

State schools just turn your kids into sheeple!

I'm pretty sure you're just joking around George, so it's okay, but my general policy is to disregard the education-related opinions of anyone who uses the term "sheeple."


Except for maybe one or two exceptions, most of the schools in the article don't look bad. Some of them look like they'd be great if you want to get good at something specific (like being a firefighter or winter athlete). The sad thing is, there are probably some pretty zany, questionable schools out there that would have made for a better article overall.

I was reading a Newsweek article about the top High Schools in the US. I think it was the May issue.

I had a tough time believing it was the best, when they school is a private boarding school with admission based solely on academic performance. Even an idiot like me could make a successful school with that criteria.

Hordini wrote:I'm pretty sure you're just joking around George, so it's okay, but my general policy is to disregard the education-related opinions of anyone who uses the term "sheeple."

Phew! That seems a damn fine approach to life.

George Spiggott wrote:

Hordini wrote:I'm pretty sure you're just joking around George, so it's okay, but my general policy is to disregard the education-related opinions of anyone who uses the term "sheeple."

Phew! That seems a damn fine approach to life.

It's been working out alright so far.

What about parents that have no business teaching kids? OR ones that teach them something that is the polar opposite of what should be tought?

hotsauceman1 wrote:What about parents that have no business teaching kids? OR ones that teach them something that is the polar opposite of what should be tought?

Their kids are going to struggle, even if they're lucky enough to have good teachers, other family members, or friends to help them along.

I'm guessing those aren't the kind of parents that are able to send their kids to schools like the ones in the article though.

My sister's school has a strange rule that you can only take library books designated for your grade. I understand there's only so many books, but that seems counter productive. Luckily, I keep all my books from when I was a kid, so she's just reading those instead.

George Spiggott wrote:Just keep your kids at home and send them here for their education http://www.davidicke.com/

State schools just turn your kids into sheeple!

The School of the Future actually doesn't seem all that weird except in that its sponsored by Microsoft. The FDNY school isn't bad either, there are plenty of highly focused high schools.

@ Goliath: I was torn between posting that one and this one:

Only about 1% or less of all kids that go to Ivy League Schools (Or many others top 50+ schools such as military academies) are home taught.

Combine this with a good 70% of all Christian evangelicals that home school there kids. You can see were the education is going.

Alexzandvar wrote:
Combine this with a good 70% of all Christian evangelicals that home school there kids. You can see were the education is going.

There's only like 1.5-2 million homeschooled children in the US. Wheaton College claims (granted they have an interest in overestimating) there are 90-100 million evangelicals in the US.

Perhaps you meant that ~70% of homeschooled children are from Evangelical backgrounds?

I did okay. But my being homeschooled wasn't for religious reasons.

Anyone listen to the "Mens room" radio station? They had a discussion about UK kids. Granted they didn't say the age grp they asked the questions but......40% of UK kids do not know where bacon comes from and like 20% did not know where milk came from...was on this past week...Thursday I believe...these are the guys have a caller guess what race a certain individual is in a law enforcement incident....Black White Mexi or Jew is the name of the contest (KISW is the name of the station)

KISW? I used to listen to them a bit when I lived in Seattle twenty years ago. Sounds like they've gone downhill.

"40% of UK kids" sounds like trolling. Maybe the study was talking to preschoolers? And the DJs made it vague in the interest of promoting discussion/argument? As they usually do.

dogma wrote:

Alexzandvar wrote:
Combine this with a good 70% of all Christian evangelicals that home school there kids. You can see were the education is going.

There's only like 1.5-2 million homeschooled children in the US. Wheaton College claims (granted they have an interest in overestimating) there are 90-100 million evangelicals in the US.

Perhaps you meant that ~70% of homeschooled children are from Evangelical backgrounds?

Yes.