YucaLandia
Jan 14, 2011, 7:05 AM
Post #12 of 12
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Re: [mazbook1] Corruption in eduction {detached from Re: [tonyburton] Required education in MX on
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mazbook1,
Very true. Problems that occur on a nationwide scale for decades rarely have a single cause.
Still, when the Education majors are basically the worst entering university students and worst departing university students for 40 years, and university Education departments are populated with instructors/professors who were also among the worst students in their university years, we sadly have an entrenched system of poor quality Education profs and administrators, who continue to create yet more new generations of mediocre to poor teachers. How can we expect teachers on either side of the border to do an excellent job of teaching students, when those same teachers were and are among the lowest academic performers when they were in school? US students' very low rankings for 3 decades seem to fit the cause and effect between poor performing teachers yielding poor student performance.
That said, (going back to the original topic of this thread), we're still stuck with coming up with effective solutions to solving the Mexican & American problem of how to change powerful entrenched unions of millions of mediocre to poor performing teachers, particularly when the teacher's unions are rated as being the single-most politically powerful groups in America & Mexico, due to: huge treasuries to spend on elections, populated by large blocks of voters who vote at very high percentage rates, and who typically vote the way the Union Bosses advise them. These factors basically make substantive educational reform nearly impossible, which seems to be why US student performance continues to fall, relative to even past US students. Entrenched politicians and teacher's Unions make a formidable combination to block change, where neither group wants to admit past errors and past weaknesses.
Comparing past and present performance, think about how student performance has fallen during the same decades of the information age that has made vast amounts of information more and more available, in easier and more and more palatable and fun ways. Imagine what we could have learned back in the 1950's -1970's if our very good schools and very good teachers had the tools and resources that are available to today's teachers and students.
Returning to the original premise: some of the same things that seem troubling in Mexican schools are not much different from the same entrenched (effectively corrupt) US schools, where powerful unions block reforms and block progress for decades on both sides of the border.
As a former teacher (10 years), and son of 2 teachers, and parent of 2 daughters, I am happy to note that there are bright spots in both NOB and SOB systems, like the NOB International Baccalaureate (IB) program and a large number of high performing public schools in the large cities of Mexico. The problems arise for the vast majorities of typical students, promising young individuals, mired in mediocre systems, with little pressure or support from family or society to excel.
When will the Mexican public and US public accept their responsibility for providing all children good educational opportunities, stop complaining, and instead take actions to fix their schools?
Are we willing to take on the current very powerful political and union bureaucracies?
Or are teachers sacrosanct, hence above reproach?
We can do better, both here and Mexico and in the USA.
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Read-on MacDuff
E-visit at http://yucalandia.wordpress.com/
(This post was edited by YucaLandia on Jan 14, 2011, 7:21 AM)
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