Why can't education be like it was in the 60"s

Teachers aren't allowed to hit kids anymore.

I agree. but we will never get back to it.

I am a mentor and parents listen to me. But I had to convey everything (dumb it down) for them to understand the big picture)

I think every teacher needs to be stronger.

Were you asleep in school? wrote:

Teachers aren't allowed to hit kids anymore.

That depends on where you live.

Not really. It sucked terribly in the 1960's. People identified as 'whites' had segregate humans by skin color at schools, water fountains, toilets, buses, and other public facilities.

For the most part, education in this country is better today than it was in the '60s.

Yuck you are a liar wrote:

Not really. It sucked terribly in the 1960's. People identified as 'whites' had segregate humans by skin color at schools, water fountains, toilets, buses, and other public facilities.

I agree that racial segregation was an atrocious practice. However I think a lot of talented children are short changed by being lumped in with trouble makers who don't value school.

It might be a good idea to separate people into various tracks earlier depending on their talents. A lot of money can be made in trades and the current obsession with college for all is diluting U.S. post secondary education.

In my school experience I just missed the cut for the advanced group of kids in M.S. H.S., I would always be bored as hell because I was the quiet good kid in the regular classes and would get B+'s thru A's without trying it would have been nice to have been challenged more earlier on.

The Ganesh wrote:

Teachers didn't take ANY crap from students, parents, or politicians. Nobody citizen groups were telling teachers to teach creationism in science class. Teacher unions were strong and teachers were respected and feared.

In those days, the best women went into teaching because they had few other career choices. Today women can be doctors, lawyers, and CEOs of major corporations - so the best don't all head to teaching. It's a tradeoff.

You might want to Google:

finland schools teaching respect

Rutsch Gefahr wrote:

It might be a good idea to separate people into various tracks earlier depending on their talents. A lot of money can be made in trades and the current obsession with college for all is diluting U.S. post secondary education.

THIS. IQ stabilizes at age 13 or so. Kids will learn a lot more after that, but they don't get any more (or less) "smart" in terms of raw intellectual firepower. You can pick out who's got the potential to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or scientist pretty early on. It doesn't mean we should stick them on a particular CAREER path, but we SHOULD ABSOLUTELY stick them on a particular LEARNING path. So the brightest kids learn more advanced subjects earlier, and especially ones that will be useful to the future movers and shakers of the world. The middle-of-the-road kids can learn at a more moderate pace, and learn skills that will be useful in office work or skilled trades. The duller kids will take in material more slowly, and learn skills that are useful in less-skilled trades.

Likewise, shuttle off the brightest to the elite schools, the average kids to the state schools, and the duller kids to vocational training/specialized community college programs.

You're an example of the problem with that. You just missed the cut off and spent the rest of your days bored and unchallenged. If the tracking test was earlier you may have just had more days unchallenged and bored. If you do poorly for reasons unrelated to intelligence on the tracking test, you are screwed. In reality tracking systems separate the rich from the poor (and therefore in general the whites from the blacks). The rich get test prep and tutors to make sure they do well on the tracking test. Therefore nearly all of the rich kids will get in the "good"/"intelligent" track. It ends up a separate but unequal de facto racial/SES segregation.

Rutsch Gefahr wrote:

It might be a good idea to separate people into various tracks earlier depending on their talents.

In my school experience I just missed the cut for the advanced group of kids in M.S. H.S., I would always be bored as hell because I was the quiet good kid in the regular classes and would get B+'s thru A's without trying it would have been nice to have been challenged more earlier on.

My sister is a teacher, and she always complains about the same handful of kids(some of whom got "classified" through private expensive assessments) and helicopter parents who drain all her time and energy from the rest of the class. They want daily written feedback, special reward systems, parents call constantly. And she is a regular ed teacher.

I don't know why she allows that crap.

some won't like it but wrote:

I don't know why she allows that crap.

Probably because that's her job.

10% of the kids require 90% of a teacher's time.

simply orange wrote:

In those days, the best women went into teaching because they had few other career choices. Today women can be doctors, lawyers, and CEOs of major corporations - so the best don't all head to teaching. It's a tradeoff.

Absolutely concur. My daughter and I were talking about this earlier this week, and remarking that MOST of the bright women in the 1960s could not aspire to occupations above teaching and nursing.

In the 1980s I worked for the dean of a prominent university's school of education. By then, at that and other universities, schools of ed were getting (on average) their university's students who had the lowest high school GPAs and lowest SATs. The least talented (academically) segment of the university's students was its ed majors.

A few years back, one of my daughters was in a TAG class at a well-regarded public elementary school in NYC. I visited the class on Parents' Day, and was seriously taken aback by the realization that the lowest IQ in the class was the one standing in front of the blackboard.

I also agree that the expectation of "college for everyone" does a serious disservice to many of the students who don't belong in college; to the students who *do* belong in college, but have to share the experience with those who don't; and to the college itelf, diluting its intellectual and academic focus.

I do understand the objections (based on race and SES) to "tracking" (in high school, and even below); but, as a person of mixed race and from a working-class background, I can honestly say that I was well-served (in the 1960s) by being in an "academic" track, sharing many of my classes with other kids who had three-digit IQs and who aspired (most of them) to continue to college--at a time when the solid majority of kids had no college plans (and shouldn't have), and were mostly marking time until they could leave school to join the military or the workforce.

In the late 1950's and early 1960's 12-15% went on to college. Then came Viet Nam and voila 40% of the male HS grads went into hiding in the school system by the early 1970's. Now we see figures putting 70% as going on to post HS education.

Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan got the gals going and Dr King helped the people of color to move into higher education. Now our engineers can design a better mousetrap and our finance geeks can finance it with fiat money growth credit swap projection financing but not one freekin' American has the skills to build it; Therefore some barefoot 13 yearold in Indochina gets the call.

fie

Honestly does our server at WeBeTacos'n'Crap really need an associates degree from Fredrick Russell Jones Community College?

In the 1960's NYC saw the advent of College Prep paths and even SP(special progress/ grade skipping) to move the bright one along. Now we have 674 programs to deal with underachievers and the social scared kids that were left behind. What happened to The S.S.John W. Brown type Schools?

We do need to go back to the best practices of the 60's- get rid of the racism in education (as was correctly mentioned earlier).

Go back to basics- chalk board and over heads- people talking.

Punish and kick out the bad kids. Find everyone's place- everyone is NOT a rocket scientist. Some kids will not be scholars.

Place the blame for failure where it belongs- bad parents- and stop blaming teachers and administrators.

Let the pro's- teachers and administrators- make decisions.

AND- raise standards for teachers to teach- they should ALL have to earn a Master's Degree and pass rigorous certification exams- NY State is a good model.

The "Everyone Should Go to College" mantra has turned college into HS.

We will never ever really do what's needed in because American society today is feminine. Our public policies are all based on feelings, how it makes others feel, what feels right. Even the questions asked by talking heads and such are feminine.

Pre-WWII we were a masculine culture. We did what needed to be done, yes sometimes people got hurt or got the short end of the stick, but that was their lot. If they didnt like it, they were free to change it but only through their own effort.

It's interesting that you have observed that.

I taught for 6 years as a graduate student while pursuing my Ph.D., and I am now a professor. It's amazing that my worst students are typically the ones that are interested in becoming a teacher. By worst students, I'm not necessarily talking about grades, I mean the ones with the worst attitudes about learning. They are frequently late to class, rude to me during office hours, they don't put in any amount of extra effort, and they do nothing but complain. They all want extra-credit points and to play games in class. I also thought that math teachers would go into the profession because of a joy and enthusiasm for the subject. But it is definitely the minority where I am.

There are exceptions to this of course, and I think they will become very talented teachers. But I feel really sorry for the future students of some of these people.

You guys are funny. Let's idealize the past. Every generation does it. Get over it.

It's a very PC answer and people will only talk around it, but you can trace the decline in US education directly back to desegregation.