----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Bennett" <bennett.mab at gmail.com>
I certainly don't know how bad things are. I always assume that things are more or less the same as when I attended California public schools in the 60s and 70s, which it now appears was something of a golden age for public education. No one thought so at the time. When I hear how bad things are now, I find it hard to believe, but the worst tales are often confirmed by experience (i.e., talking to a 25 year-old professional who has no idea when the Vietnam war took place, and who believes that the Civil War occurred in the 1960s.)
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It depends where "here" is. The suburbs still have a functioning system.
The inner cities are a growing disaster. My kids went through the Oakland Public School system -- so my aquaintance with that system stretches back 20 years.
Here's what I'm noticing.
1. The gradual stripping of the curriculum of everything that isn't english and math.
2. The introduction of AP classes, which theoretically is a good thing for the "advanced" students, excpet it has become a kind of alternative curriculum path, one in which students essentially try to absorb material which they are not sufficiently mature to understand.
3. The best and most seasoned teachers are leaving en masse because, due to the testing, the one thing that kept them in the schools -- autonomy to create an effective and interesting curriculum -- has been taken away.
4. The stripping away of all foreign language study except for Spanish. This is reaching into the colleges/universities too.
It goes on and on. It seems to me worse than murder.
Joanna