The Eleventh Doctor, thank you for your point of view.  I can appreciate the insight from someone close to the situation as your wife is a teacher.  It brings out some of the struggles that teachers face.  I can certainly appreciate the majority of teachers because I know that they certainly don't do it for the money.  I also do know the joys of teaching and understand why most of them do it.

 

While I was in The Navy, I had the opportunity to be an Instructor for various subjects in some of our schools.  It was a lot of fun and very rewarding.  I also did volunteer work at one of the local elementary schools and served as a tutor/activity guy.  Sometimes I would just read to the class (3rd graders), other times I would take them out to play on the playground.  A lot of times though, I would work one-on-one with some of them that might be struggling in certain areas.  It was a very rewarding experience to see these children kind of "want" to impress me by how they could eventually do the problems that we worked on.  I even considered changing careers and becoming a teacher.

 

 

Quote:Get rid of the No Child Left Behind and Common Core crap.

 

If a kid can't keep up with the class, get a tutor. If that doesn't work, repeat the grade. I almost had to repeat a grade (I don't remember which one now but it was before high school) and I wish they would have made me repeat it. I think I would have done much better going forward had I been able to. Forcing kids to move up when they're not ready just to prevent 'hurting feelings' can do long term damage. More so than holding them back a year so they can actually learn/grasp the subjects.

 

Common Core..... I can't even go into how stupid it is. Teachers can't even actually teach anymore. At least not the things that will help educate and advance a student in life. 

 

That's all I can say without getting pretty hostile about the subject. 

 

This is a very true statement and is an example of government getting in the way.  For those of you who don't know who Steve Wozniak is, he is the one that invented the the first Apple computer (it was not Steve Jobs by the way).  He gave an interview a while back that really tells the story.  A brief summary about what he said is the fact that kids are taught that there is only one way, one correct answer and only one way to come up with that answer.  They aren't taught to think and solve.  They are taught that they must always come up with the same answer in the same way as everybody else.  They are also taught to never be curious and never explore.

 

This comes from a man that was educated prior to the establishment of the Department of Education and is one of the greatest minds ever (he is also my personal hero).  If you have about 3 1/2 minutes, here is an excerpt of his interview.

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