You do realize that Compulsory Education was created for teaching children how to think. Thinking is the foundation of literacy.
My kids have been out of school for a long time.
Kindly explain Compulsory Education? I have grand kids.
just that your grandkid has to attend some sort of school, even if it is home school, religious, or private. John Dewey was a central figure in the reasons for a public education system in the US. Dewey was a pragmatist, that believed "Democracy and the one, ultimate, ethical ideal of humanity are to my mind synonymous."[ He thought that for democracy to occur it had to be practiced, discussed, and agreed upon to have a civil society. Dewey also believed that we could not have a democracy and a civil society without its citizens having an education, which taught government and communication. However, Dewey also believed that education and learning are social and interactive processes, not just memorizing facts or doing math. Therefore, students learn how to "think" not just what to think. The only way our nation grows is to have an educated society that understands government and thinks about how to reform it into something better.
I guess the problem is lots of folks believe education is merely teaching facts, when our education system was never designed to merely teach facts.
When I teach, I do a questioning process to find out what students already knows about a topic and what they want to learn. I then use the information they already know as a jumping off point for our unit. As we move along the road to achieving the mandated goal, we learn the vocabulary and facts we need to know, so we can have open ended discussions, debates, presentations, and sometimes arguments about the topic, using real facts and ideas that can be backed up by quoting or citing events or people, I normally play the pessimist.
every year I will have at least one parent that will get super upset about something their child has told them we had talked about in class.
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Pokeinfun - I had a teacher in high school who used to say "in this school, hard work, diligent study, and honest effort make success. If you want that progressive nonsense go to John Dewey High School, not Stuyvesant High School". John Dewey doesn't deserve credit for his invention of educational theory - all he did was adopt and adapt the Socratic method. You are also only telling half the story.
A significant problem with many theories of education as espoused by modern "teaching colleges" is that there is a built-in assumption that teaching "how to think" is synonymous with teaching the "right things" to think. Increasingly schools have become intolerant not just to what might be called fringe ideas but, in fact, have worked actively to retrain children away from what are judged to be the regressive beliefs of the children's parents and replace that with a half-developed pseudo-moral code. I thank God (literally) that I had a solid Catholic education before I was cast into the seas of the public schools and frankly back when I was school age the social engineering aspect of public school was much milder than it is today. This whole thread reflects a crack-pot theory about social impact of guns (i.e. that guns themselves, even images of guns and anything related to them are evil in and of themselves) - almost entirely from a leftist viewpoint - that is then foisted as the "responsibility" of the school to enforce, for the good of the children of course. There are many wonderful, dedicated teachers out there working hard every day in public, private, parochial, and homeschools but the educational industry as embodied especially in the education degree teaching colleges is off it's rocker and I cannot imagine a group of people I would less like teaching anything to my kids (or my grandkids) than most graduate-level education professors.
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No, not at all. I am saying that the schools at which professional educators are formed are steeped in left-wing (beyond Liberal) ideology. Thus while I am sure that the majority of teachers themselves reflect, at least broadly, the US mainstream in their politics they are also forced to get professional training that orients them with a left wing ideology. Some embrace it, a very few actively reject it, many - probably most - simply go along to get along because they are told by the professional administrators and others that they must do so in order to succeed professionally.
As a teacher, that is not a liberal, I would say you are wrong.
Of course I do. But now many "educators" tell the kids WHAT to think, and punish all disobedience. Now they are punishing "wrong" thoughts during after school hours.
They've wandered far from the Socratic method.
This does not occur as often as you think. Are there more liberals that are teachers than conservatives, sure a lot more. But, most schools are not suspending kids for not agreeing with liberal ideas. The places where kids are suspended for anything dealing a gun, are schools in liberal communities.
Do some teachers tell kids what to think? Yes, some things are facts and some facts are tested, they have to be tested. Math problems and spelling tests are right and wrong answers.
Do you have liberal teachers that think the world functions in some sort of world with rainbows and unicorns, tons of English teachers.
You are a professional and business owner, have you been to you local area schools to talk about your business and background, what makes you successful, or your values? Have you been in a life skills classroom and taught kids how to make bread? 30 minutes with a successful business owner can have more of an impact than hours with a teacher.
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