The State of Edjucashun inn Amerika (w/ BOTB results)

Abandoned School (Photo credit: Atelier Teee)

        Recently I was on the internet making some motel reservations and while doing so I read through the reviews on the travel sites I visited.  I was amused by some of the grammar and spelling errors in these reviews.  After reading some of the funnier ones to my daughter, she wondered why some of these people didn't bother to read back over what they'd written to correct errors.  My suggestion was that it probably didn't matter because this was probably the way they wrote and they wouldn't even notice the writing errors they had made.

        I suppose that some of the poor writing could be attributed to people having written their reviews on their phones or whatever devices people use in lieu of actual typing on a keyboard.  I think that a lot of people actually have truly bad grammar and spelling skills and these reviews reflect that level of poor education.  Whatever the case, I wonder about the education of today's young people.  Do we fault the schools?  The parents?  The culture?  The kids?   And now Common Core is being instituted in schools throughout the United States.   I wonder if they'll include "Text speak" as part of the language program.

        At least teach kids how to spell...

Battle of the Bands Results:  The Banjo Song

        Speaking of spelling, there was some annoyance about the spelling out of the word "banjo" in the song used in my most recent Battle, "The Banjo Song".  The spelling out of words in songs is quite common so I was surprised that some of the voters did not like this song gimmick.  It's mostly a novelty idea from the standpoint of songwriting.   Spelling words in songs does not particularly annoy me though I'm not overly fond of ditties such as the folk song "Bingo" or the "Lollipop Song" that I used to hear my sister sing.  "Lollipop" was a reworking of the George M Cohan song "Harrigan".

          The bottom line is that not many of the voters in this contest even liked "The Banjo Song".  Not only did they not like the song, many did not like the artists whose versions were presented.  Tough contest.  Neil Young won by default I would say.  A few--myself included--are Neil Young fans.  I'm an avid Neil Young fan.  But I also enjoyed the version by The Big 3.  As many of you know, I like a wide spectrum of music and often go against the grain of the more common tastes of the majority of the population.  What can I say? There's no accounting for taste sometimes.

          My vote went to Neil Young.  Of course.  And even if I had voted otherwise, Neil Young would have won handily.

         The final tally:

    Neil Young and Crazy Horse 15 votes

     Big 3       4 votes

     My next Battle of the Bands pairing will take a real turn.  It's an incredibly beautiful tune first done by a jazz artist.   Be here on August 1st to vote on the next Battle.

      Do you think modern media has had an adverse effect on language?   Are many kids today coming out of the educational system knowing less than kids in the past?   Should we be concerned about Common Core?

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Are Our Schools Doing a Lousy Job of Raising Our Children?

education (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)

          

          This post will continue the debate about guns as the cause of violence.   Mass shootings inevitably lead to an outcry against the accessibility of automatic weapons.   My argument is that guns are not the problem--people are.   In my post Should We Ban (Insert Topic Here), I suggested that before the nation takes an overly reactionary response in attacking the Second Amendment rights laid out by the founding fathers of the United States, we might want to consider some other things that could be contributing factors to the violent incidents that have been seen in the United States.  Should we blame guns or something like the topic of this post?

Are Schools Doing a Lousy Job of Raising Our Children?

       I would imagine more than a few eyebrows were raised by the ridiculous question that is the title of this post.   Schools raising our kids?   Shouldn't parents be raising kids?   And what kind of job are they doing?

      The best they can would be my answer to the last question where it comes to a good many parents. Parenting can be a real challenge and there is no clear cut one size fits all manual handed to new mothers and fathers when they receive their child.  Raising kids is often a trial and error work of blind faith.

       Part of that blind faith comes into play when we send our children off to school.  Often we assume that the educational system has the best interests of our children in mind.   The question is whose mind and what mind?   Is this collective interest in sync with the minds of the parents?

         Don't get me wrong--I am not scapegoating the teachers.  For the most part they are just pawns caught up in the system.   My biggest concern is administration--there is way too much power in the controlling aspect of the educational system and too little left for the ones actually dealing with the kids.  Teachers and students are the ones victimized by screwy state programs and one-size-fits-all standards.  Performance measured by testing is detracting from the actual job that teachers should be doing.   Schools are becoming more like factories mass producing cookie-cutter uninspired graduates.

          Now I know this is not true across the board, but I hear more complaints about stressed out teachers who are burdened with more nonsensical work to appease the system as they have to deal with students who often don't care about education.  And frequently the parents are oblivious to the actual problem.  They'd just as soon blame the teachers before looking at themselves as parental figures or the ersatz childcare of television and video games.

          Many kids are left to sort things out for themselves with the dubious help of equally misguided peers and bad cultural icons.   When youth goes wild it seems easy to blame the ones who have had the biggest hand in raising them--the schools.  And when we think of schools we think of teachers.   They must be doing something wrong.

          Let's not forget that administration is a hefty part of the typical school system budget.  Pundits of educational theory come up with silly ideas that sound good in their brains and in the boardrooms.  Administrators fall for the nonsense and the politicians dish out the big bucks.   The teachers and students are the unfortunate beneficiaries of the great governmental hoax.

           After all, what do any of us know?   Government is here to take care of us all.  They will tell teachers how to teach and what to teach.   They will tell us what to eat and what to do.   Then the administrators will make sure it all gets done according to the governmental rule book.  

           There is still something missing here that is the common denominator of all the issues I've been bringing up.  I'll eventually address what that is sometime in May.   We shouldn't be blaming the educators for the way our kids our turning out and some of the anger that can eventually lead to violence.   But we might want to take a closer look at the ones who are tying the hands of those educators.

         To what extent do we need government telling us what we can do?    How much influence over nationwide education should the federal government have?   To what extent should state government dictate what needs to be done at a local level?     Do you think many kids become frustrated with school life?

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