I counted the number of students who were in the same 3rd grade class I was in back in 1969-1970.
There were 38 students and the picture-frame had 15 blank spaces. That suggests that somewhere there were classes with 53 students in them.
Preposterous?
It was a different era. There were lots of kids. High schools in the Cleveland, Ohio area were running two-shifts because they could not build new ones quickly enough.
Most families were two-parent families. I only knew of one kid who "didn't have a dad" in my class of 38. That number was skewed because it was a Catholic school and Catholics believed, at the time, that divorce was as shameful as getting caught with hookers (Matt 5:32).
The teachers had standards and they expected you to toe-the-line.
If you caused a problem in school, the teacher had a great deal of authority to "handle it" right then-and-there.
And if word got back to your parents that you had been disruptive, dad would-and-did whip your butt as soon as he came home from work. For one thing, your parents paid MONEY to send you to a Catholic school. While $200 dollars a year might not sound like a lot of money today, you could buy a brand-new, VW Beetle for $1995 dollars in 1969 so sending one kid to Catholic school was 10% of the cost of a new car.
There were fights on the playground but there were no knives pulled or tire-chains employed, at least at the grade-school level. I think the teachers were practical enough to realize that boys have a different way of establishing pecking-order than girls and they let us sort it out.
Today
Today, there is EXTREME pressure to not touch a child. God forbid that you should paddle them.
Today, there is EXTREME pressure for schools to not suspend kids. The thinking is that the SCHOOL is endangering the child by suspending them if they live in a single-parent home. If mom is working, then kid will be unsupervised and, somehow, that is the school's fault.
One principal told me that they were forbidden by the school board to suspend a kid for more than 10 days in a single school year. FORBIDDEN!!
The kid could bring a weapon to school and the principal could not drop-kick them out if they had already hit their ten days. They could assault a teacher. They could sexually assault another student in the rest-room. They could do drugs on school property...and the teacher and the administration's hands were tied. Oh...and don't even think about reporting it to the police.
In many places, class-loads are restricted to 25 kids or fewer per classroom. And it doesn't make any difference.
The kids have this all figured out. The good ones still learn. The bad ones...well, without guard-rails they go flying off into bad places.
Not to mention the damage done to the growing minds and emotions of the other kids. Rape. bullying and living under threats of violence is never fully healed.
ReplyDeleteA country that doesn't protect their kids and national boarders isn't going to survive.
We tolerated ourselves into this situation.
Little-by-little.
DeleteStill, it is striking how much we lost. One teacher. No aide. 38 3rd grade kids. That was not considered exceptional.
We lost a lot.
One factor that really cuts against modern teachers (not saying it is a bad policy) is to mainstream kids that can't handle classes. 38 kids, cutting out the 9% of people under 80 IQ and the disruptive portion of the people between 80 and 90 IQ, probably makes for easier classroom management than 25 kids where 3 of them require 1:1 attention and a few more are eternally bored and behind.
DeleteI think you hit the nail on the head.
DeleteI want to add that there are things teachers can do to help themselves.
I have been in classrooms where the teacher did all of the cool things they had seen in educational magazines. They had an art center. They had a music center. They had a reading center. The teacher's desk overflowed with all of the crap that she didn't have room for at home.
The kids' seating was crammed into less than 40% of the classroom space because that is all that remained. There was no way to use space to isolate problem kids.
And the room stank. She had scavenged couches for the "reading center" from furniture that people were throwing out. They stank of cat piss and weed.
I was not surprised to learn that she was totally incapable of maintaining order in her classroom. She had totally sabotaged herself.
I find myself questioning whether it's a deliberate attempt at guiding society, or simply misguided intentions? I understand there are some fundamental differences in beliefs and attitudes/opinions about the topics, as to be expected, but at what point do we conclude the math ain't mathing?
ReplyDeleteKids today are incredibly less-educated than former generations. I mean, astoundingly. It's the rare individual you meet today that can string together a coherent sentence, nevermind argument (consisting of a paragraph or more of thought), in writing! Verbally? Fuggedaboutit. I've seen videos of modern 'debate' teams from major school districts. Monkey's flinging poo would be more intelligent discourse.
Test scores empirically back this up. Take a look at one of those historical examples of 'high school test' for a grade level from yesteryear, and compare/contrast to today.
So, is it just a shifting of the winds, modern thought, all that, or was it deliberate? I honestly cannot believe, the whole-sale dumbing-down of kids globally, is not coordinated.
And yet...do you believe that the human forces of chaos are competent enough to coordinate a global collapse like that?
DeleteI think that the world looked to the US as a leader after WWII. If the US was doing it, then it must be the best way to do things.
Funny story, a police department somewhere was teaching its recruits to hold their pistols sideways when shooting. When questioned, they point out movies where gangstra dudes were sticking their guns out the car window while doing drive-by shootings and hitting every time they pulled the trigger. "Must be the right way to shoot."
In the US, uber-feminists pushed a version of women's liberation that disrespected traditional roles. With the government entitlements, men became dispensable.
The "noble savage" model of parenting, that is, your child always knows best, was very attractive to the exhausted mom. Once invested in that parenting model, she had way too much sunk costs to change her direction. Kids are now raised as "savages" and are virtually uncoachable.
No answers, just bewilderment in my now 70+ years. My spiritual foundation is putting on the full armor of God (Eph 6:10-18) against evil, yet I seem to be lacking in the practice of fighting back in this world, evil just seems to be winning (ref. the continuing demoncrat/deranged behaviors). Are we simply doomed to be scattered to the winds like God's people have been for thousands of years because we have abandoned Him? Hope seems to be only in the realm of salvation and not to be satisfied in this world.
DeleteI don't think we, as individuals, can "save society".
DeleteWe can find and nurture "tiny sparks". I have my granddaughter. One of my readers taught an entire, extended family how to garden. For some of my readers, their mission is to care for a spouse during their time of need.
A pretty good essay here ==> https://openbiblemessage.org/2023/01/chosen-remnant/
I look at the teachers unions today, where their money goes (to the left), the huge percent of kids who can't read or do math well and how long this 'new' education has been going on... this looks like the results of a long term plan that went well for the planners.
DeleteI went to a Scottish primary school in the 50s. We were 90 children in the year-group, split into two classes of 45 - the sharper half and the duller half. (The "mental defectives", poor souls, were looked after in a separate building a few hundred yards away. It meant that they didn't impede our progress, could be taught at their own pace in some suitable way, and were protected from bullying.)There wasn't a discipline problem that I can remember though the precaution was taken of having separate playgrounds for boys and girls. This meant that the running around and shouting faction didn't keep bumping into the standing and nattering faction.
ReplyDeleteThe teachers used corporal punishment, though rarely. You held out your hands, palms upwards, one above the other, and you got a couple of whacks with a leather instrument known as "the belt" or "the strap" or "the tawse". Its main effect was to inflict a little humiliation - to make you feel a chump for getting caught. The exception was one teacher who was, gasp!, English. She used a cane rather than a strap.
The Head Teacher taught a class himself: his "heading" was done in the late afternoon when we'd all gone home. Who ran the school during the teaching day? His secretary and the janitor. That was it: no Deputy Head, no other adult at all except on the days when the School Nurse would attend for purposes I can't remember. Jabs, maybe? Checking for infectious diseases? Checking for infestations?
It all worked well at some modest fraction of the cost of doing a much poorer job today.
I think there are two issues that need addressing and a third which can't be helped.
ReplyDelete1) As a Catholic school kid in a class of 30+, no misbehavior was tolerated. A cuff upside of the head, rulers or yard sticks if deemed necessary to correct the behavior. I remember one classmate being expelled in 3rd grade.
2) We went at class speed, not at the learning rate of slowest in the class. Not fair to someone who fell behind but not the nun's problem. Here ESL kids make up 20% of the class and 80% sit on their hands because they just get bored.
3) IMHO most of the parents don't value a good education. They enroll their children in all sorts of extra-curricular activities but don't get the kid tutored when he is failing math or English. They never check homework is being done or ask what went on in class. This is a big problem IMHO.
In 1969 I bought a new Pontiac for $2,932.00 to look sucessfull in my occupation. When I was in school the guys would take our shotguns and rifles to school on the school bus, put them in our lockers, and hunt home through the fields and woods. After school we might lean them against the school fence and beat the crap out of each other but nobody thought of shooting the other guy. It's a different world and I don't see it getting restored.---ken
ReplyDelete