Re: American Education (answer to Greg Burch)

From: Dehede011@aol.com
Date: Wed Aug 28 2002 - 21:37:27 MDT


In a message dated 8/28/2002 5:42:56 PM Central Standard Time,
novaeris@hotmail.com writes: No matter how much a teacher may want to
enlighten his/her class, they are restricted, sometimes almost completely, to
the guidelines set forth in the school's curriculum.

       I think John Taylor Gatto, after teaching thirty years, would agree
with you.
       I think teachers are almost totally locked in by curriculum (your
point) administrators including the school board, the law, their academic
training and who knows what else. You know, trying to reinvent the wheel is
really difficult.
       I was trained as an industrial engineer. I got myself an MBA in
practically the same area of study. After 16 years of experience, getting
raises, getting promotions, I went into consulting to manufacturing and spent
the last twenty years of my career.
       I really worked hard trying to be a good industrial engineer but about
the time I retired in '99 I came to realize that as a profession we had made
some fundamental errors way back in the beginning and that practically no one
was aware of our errors. But, you could trace the effect of the errors by
all the convolutions people went through trying to work around them.
       BTW, the mistakes go so far back that perhaps the founder of the
profession Frederick Taylor made them -- I just don't know. But I can
sympathize with hard working committed teachers because trying to see the
forest while surrounded by trees is really tough.
Ron h.



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