In My Opinion, in order for our educational system to improve, we must first acquire MORE teachers that are passionate about teaching. Those who don't teach, just from the book, but from the heart of the subject. As a country, we do a poor job of selling the value of education to those going through the educational system. Thus, many professors, as well as students, just go through the motions of "teaching" and "learning" until the bell rings, and in escence, they teach and learn nothing. Of all the courses I took in college, and I can recall only 2 professors that were really INTO their courses they taught and the students in those classes enjoyed and interacted with the professors. Then I recall a loser, my business statistics professor, who started his introduction to the course by kicking a metal trash can across the room, and when he had everyone's attention, told the class to look around at their neighbors because "8 weeks from today, 1 out of 3 of you will not be in this class". And, he was right. Had he not graded on the curve, I would probably been one of those. I made a B in the course, and to this day, can recall very little about that course.
The educational system needs to find more professors that have the real transference skills and real passion for teaching. You can tell when a student is "learning" ... they have that special, focused, "intent" look in their eyes. We need MORE of that.
Lastly, education needs to be available to everyone; THAT is becoming less & less the case. I'm just amazed at the number of high school students that don't have the basic reading & writing skills to enter the higher education levels. Our current President, and his wife, have come closer than any president in decades, to attempt to make education affordable & available to everyone.
Mac,
We totally agree on the points you make. Right up until your last sentence. The only thing Obama has done is keep the interest rates on student loans low. I have seen no initiatives from him to actually improve the quality of the education students are getting.
The only thing Michelle has done for education is take away ******* sack lunches and ******* them to buy "the government cheese" from the cafeteria. Yes, she is against childhood obesity. Who isn't? And yes, she is trying to do something about it, but having the government tell parents what they can and cannot put in a sack lunch for their ******* is not the right way to do that.
As for education being available to everyone, it is, through high school. In the Philippines, you have to pay tuition to go to High School. What is not affordable or available to everyone is college (which is becoming more and more necessary every day in the work *******). But there are multiple problems here.
1. College education and healthcare costs are the main things that have far outstripped the rate of inflation in this country over the last oh say 20 years. We cannot have
2. Frankly, when some ******* graduate high school, they have absolutely no idea what they want to study. I was lucky and so were some of my friends. We knew what we wanted to study. But a lot of our friends were totally clueless. So, their parents said "You must go to college.". So they did. And they majored in Liberal Arts or Business, hoping that later on, they would know what they wanted to do and could switch majors. Some did. Many never figured it out and graduated with a Liberal Arts degree or a general Business degree.
3. Too many student-teachers teaching college courses. We pay professors money (through our tuition) to teach, not to write research papers or to have them work on a Doctorate for themselves.
4. As you said, apathy on the part of professors who long ago burned out on teaching. And complacency on the part of students, sometimes generated by the apathy of their professors.
5. Yes, a major problem is that ******* graduate high school TOTALLY unprepared for college and how difficult the classes will be. I LOVED Chemistry in high school. Walked out of the class with a 97 average for the year. Figured it would be good to take as a science course when I got to college. It took me 3 tries to get a C. THAT was a wake up for me.
One of the things that drives me crazy is school districts screaming that they are not getting enough money. Then they do stuff like happened down here where a Principal spent $55,000 to bus students to a movie. Oh, not all the students. The movies was geared more towards boys so the girls had to stay in school and get educated. The majority of teachers (Chicago excluded) are not paid nearly enough and many of them have to buy their own classroom supplies. That would depress anyone in the profession. If the money went where it was designed to go, we would not have the problems with our education system that we do. There would also be a lot more teachers who are "into it", because they would feel they are compensated properly and supplied properly.
