I read with interest today several stories on education across some of the South Dakota websites, and the problems that are faced in educating out students.
First was an opinion piece by Hughes County “Moms for Liberty” chapter founder Maggie Seidel, telling us that schools are declining, we need to teach phonics and Superintendents are the devil. Well, maybe not the devil, but she says we need to grade them, because we can’t get rid of the bad ones. I don’t know that I agree, as while it took us a few years, Brookings was able to get rid of the one we had who tanked our school rankings & screwed up our accreditation.
I’m probably biased, as my wife has been both a classroom teacher and school administrator. But I don’t think Superintendents and School Administrators are the problem. In fact, their numbers are getting to be challenged, just like educators, because of the number of people leaving teaching (and not becoming administrators). My wife spent her time supervising nearly 150 or more educational professionals in a specialized discipline which dealt with everything from the care and education of children ranging from minor learning disabilities to terminal conditions. And trying to keep the school from committing errors that would end up in court.
Good teachers are led and empowered by good administrators. And we need more of both.
Second piece comes from the Argus Leader on why several teachers left the profession. According to the article, among their concerns, they cited the pay, burnout & stress, and the pay. I’m sensing a trend here.
The third article was a live report from Keloland.com. On a shooting reported at an Iowa High School.
Low pay, burnout, and the possibility of people shooting at you.
You’d think we were talking about COPS on Fox, as opposed to the environment people are trying to educate our children in.
Modern industrial schools are designed to create docile, compliant employees.
It’s a lose/lose as innovation takes a back seat to same store growth.
Yet, it was the American family farm model, in my opinion, that created the greatness of our country (and every other civilized nation) through quantum leaps in productivity and innovation. The guy who invented the diesel tractor didn’t do it because he liked bailing hay by hand.
When farms are productive, most of the bad things in society go away. The modern family farm is being denied resources to produce by wasted foreign aid, “lost” money by the DOD and Treasury, and short sighted empowerment of a youth class of pseudo-spies.
If you can somehow constitute the family farm model, however, you’ll have to placate the nannies who setup the surveillance state, who have no capacity for trust, and no tolerance for failure (of others).
How would you enforce human rights on remote family farms? Mass surveillance? Mass surveillance!? Isn’t that like giving candy to a toddler and expecting them not to eat it?
As an educator of 19 years, this is what I view is the most interesting opportunity/problem.
Freedom makes productivity, but only exists outside of mass surveillance because of the human inability to resist the most addictive substance on the planet, power over others.
That last sentence was pretty good for a guy who thinks smoking weed = liberty.
It isn’t?
tell us you don’t know what liberty means, without telling us you don’t know what liberty means…..
Last time I checked Moms for Bigotry was in a national tailspin after quoting Hitler, book burnings and especially the sex scandal in Florida.
Another case of Do As I Say Not As I Do! Moms for Bigotry.
Perhaps worth noting that Maggie Siedel was a senior advisor to Noem.
I think everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and I certainly can’t fault Maggie for wanting schools to be better. We all want the best for our kids.
I would just disagree that the problem is with Supers. I think we start fixing the problem by valuing and appreciating what our teachers do. We make their job easier – and yes – quit mandating things at the state level, and pay them more.
Pay for sure. When MN pays 15-20k more per year I know where I’d be looking. That goes for the state overall too, pay is very low here.
It’s not the money; it’s the spectre in the classroom continually interrupting the pleasure of the learning process. I’m speaking from experience teaching in schools in South Dakota and in India.
For me the intrusive nature and overbearing insistence on things not relevant to academics make being a teacher not worthwhile (in South Dakota).
Just do a quick study of the space cadets that ham-handedly guide education in this country and then tell me that these people have anything sorted out.
Disconnecting from the NEA and deregulating the DOED would do us all GOOD, in my opinion.
Can you speak of any specifics, or would that just highlight how you want your side of “overbearing insistence on things not relevant to academics” taught in schools?
Specifically, ‘Tools’ like Infinite Campus (if it’s still in use — I wouldn’t know because I left classroom instruction almost 10 years ago) don’t contribute anything to learning; they just satisfy some oblique personage that deals in records keeping. That’s just one example. I can state many more that are totally unnecessary to learning but are quite appealing to those who don’t teach, but rather mandate.
Sounds like you just dislike change, which is common as you age. We aren’t going back to the phone on the wall, we aren’t going back to inter-office mail envelopes, we never go backwards as a society. More people just need to accept this, all the fighting on issues like this may slow it down some, but we never go backwards, never have, never will….
Sounds like you are imprinted to go the way of a droll existence, leaving the substantial and complex issues to someone else. If you are a teacher, I hope that the change you speak of is one that provides your students with learning that is basic, fundamental, and timeless in an environment that invites everyone to the knowledge table. The students deserve that.
Considering the word salad of your last sentence, probably a good thing you’re no longer teaching.
Of course its the money. Why do you think that school districts that border Wyoming, Iowa, and Nebraska all hemorrhage teachers to those states? Why wouldnt someone get their traching degree here, teach for a year or two to build their resume a little, then leave for one of our neighboring states. Or if they’re able they will still live in SD but then commute across the border.
In the first place, if you go into teaching for the money, then you are subject to introspection.
Seriously Mark, look at that sentence and try again.
Ah so teachers should just accept substandard pay because they LoVe tHeIr jOb.
Might want to consider who it is teaching the teachers what, and how, to teach. To find a solution you first need to clearly identify the problem. When youth enter a Masters program at a state university as a moderate and walk away as a socialist, you need to stop and look at that. Our post-secondary education system in America is rife with extremist liberal progressives in their ivory towers teaching our next generation.
Judging by the language used, I highly doubt you’ve spent much time in those “liberal socialist institutions”. Becoming educated teaches one to consider facts and their own best interests in lieu of believing advertising, which is what your “news” show is. Critical thought can be used to evaluate things like:
1. Is the insurance model the best application for healthcare management?
2. Can the wealth continue to be concentrated at the top class of fewer people while still having the “American dream” be a reality for the rest of us?
3. Should we spend government dollars towards existing aging technology like oil, or invest in new technology to try and grow GDP?
The “socialist” answers to these are much deeper than the message the businesses (insurance companies, Vanguard, Blackrock, Big Oil) who fund those “news” agencies tell people. We can’t dismiss the entire premise by calling it “socialism”, we should consider what would work best for ME today? This tactic of do nothing isn’t working either.
So, if acknowledging something is broken, and accepting that we should try a change means we (the educated) are socialists, then so be it. I will take that over giving up my own best interests. Do you realize, all of those people at the top selling you the message of “socialism = bad” are taking government handout money like crazy socialists themselves? Time to wake up.
Spurious and rather presumptuous on your part but let’s just roll with my blue-collar ditch digger status. Preferable if you consider the history of the “intellectual class” such as journalist and educator’s under Stalin or Pol Pot. Becoming educated should be an environment that causes one to learn for themself. Thereby learning the facts to utilize in critical thinking. I also think you might be more in line with an oligarchy with your references to insurance, healthcare, concern with class wealth and sourcing of federal monies. Unfortunately the deep thinkers in places such as Venezuela have all left which has propagated a dictator.
Is it poorly trained students or poorly trained teachers? If it is a poorly trained teacher then who trained the teacher?
Outcome base education and rote learning do not produce educators. Not saying all teachers are bad, since my Mother was a teacher, but I am saying failing school systems have to have accountability somewhere.
I firmly believe in SD we get what we pay for when it comes to education and priorities therein.
Finally, there is a difference between “what would work best for ME today” and “doing what is right for my soul today and tomorrow”. I had an instructor once who said you have to love yourself in order to love others and I believe that. However, my definition of what make me the best person I can be is most likely different than yours.
Oh dear! Another conspiracy theory.
I have relatives and connections who are public school teachers. They work indoors in climate-controlled conditions.
They don’t work nights, weekends, snow days or holidays. They have summers off. They make enough money to take overseas vacations. One had season tickets to the Patriots every year but I don’t know if she still buys them. She recently bought a condo in Italy.
She has complained about the disciplinary problems they have had lately, with kids who were kept home from school during covid lockdowns.
But she never complains about the pay.
Both of my grandfathers were professors, and as an adult I realized that my paternal grandparents were absolutely clueless about how hard other people worked to earn a living. They expected everybody else to drop whatever they were doing to attend to them. On my mother’s side there was more comprehension, more consideration. But they still lived in what most of us would consider a fantasy land (huge house with live-in help, it’s a dream, right?)
I think the biggest problem with education is that too many teachers have absolutely no idea of what the world is like outside of their ivory towers. We expect them to prepare kids for a world they know nothing about. .
Do those relatives in education work in South Dakota?
My son-in-law teaches middle school here and I have not heard a single word of complaint from him.
My daughter-in-law was an elementary school teacher in Massachusetts who decided to do something different so she got a doctorate from Harvard and now she’s a professor of early childhood literacy. If you want a professor’s income, become a professor. (It’s her sister in law who teaches 3rd grade and owns a condo in Italy.)
Teachers who think they can make more money doing something else should do something else. If they think they can make more money teaching someplace else, they should move someplace else. That is what everybody else does, if their jobs don’t suit them, they get different ones. This is not complicated.
And when the inevitable consequence is that there’s no one left to teach those kids’ families will leave the community as why live in a place with substandard schools.
And more small towns will wither and die.
Anne is the queen of anecdotal evidence.
I think you mean queen of anecdotal evidence wrapped in a folksy layer of irrelevant nonsense.
You’re right, I did. Aw shucks, hyuck hyuck!
Since we’re being anecdotal, I know of no teachers or school administrators in South Dakota who have “live in help” or who own a villa in Italy.
Maggie is running her mouth all over. She’s as looney as Laffy Taffy and Lora Hubbel Spacecraft.
The quest for “teacher accountability” has led to our schools and the children who attend them, becoming a political football. Elementary and Secondary Education are fragile institutions, best managed at the local level. Please, let us show more consideration for this vital institution. Let’s try not to burn it down.
Too late.