Not ALL the influence, but who should have the most say when it comes to classroom instruction?

Not ALL the influence, but who should have the most say when it comes to classroom instruction?
I think it should be like the Supreme Court. A group of people, each voted on by their peers from a wide range of socioeconomic areas. 1 from Boulder, Co...1 from Chicago's West Side, 1 from Orlando, 1 from Providence, etc. I came from a well off West Coast family that owns the largest family owned business in a certain West Coast state, but was put on the street at age 13 and hitchhiked cross country. Some of those lessons from formative years were extreme, but they worked. When I was in 3rd grade, 1 night we all sat at the dinner table. I went to reach for my food, but my mother said no, not for me. Everyone else could eat but me. I first had to recite all the capitols of U. S. states, Canadian provinces, Central and South American nations correctly. We sat down at 6pm. I finally was able to touch my food at 3am, just my mother and I at the table. She had emigrated to the States. Her exact words were, "There's the American version of education and then there's mine. You'll learn both." To this day though, it's rammed into my head. Augusta, Helena, Tallahassee, Belmopan, Quito, Santiago, San Salvador, Caracas, Carson City, Edmonton, Victoria, Halifax, etc. By 5th grade it was a big laugh in our class. I'd challenge the teacher of social studies... any capitols, anywhere in the world, you choose... best out of of 10. If I win, we all go early. If I lose, only I will stay late. I'd sit down with a 😏😏look and tell her, "You know you're going to lose, right?" And it won't be close." I'd be laughing. It never was close. It needs to a group of people representing each demographic economically. Everyone learns differently. Effective but different.
Educational policy should be a shared effort among trained teachers and parents, since they are the ones closest to the children being educated. Politicians and professors should stay out of education, and concentrate on what they were "hired" to do. Until they are educated, students don't know what they should learn, or how they should learn it.
@OtterMan68 Thanks for MHO
It would be interesting to put it up to a countries renowned college. Harvard in the US for example. Have young adults set standards for those children just behind them. Far better than some current systems.
@dustybiker2 This has been done and the result was turning schools into political education camps.
It could be argued it happened either way. The books I was handed in school were not neutral by any means.
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My perception is that the sociopolitical agenda is set by local school administrators and school boards and not by politicians in Washington or state capitals.
there is a LOT of public ed policy set in D. C. In FL, Gov DeSantis is removing control from local school districts and handing it over to the state, and TX is following.
School boards are elected; therefore, they are politicians.
The professionals.
Did you see this story about a hard-right campaigner who got onto a school board to fight against the left-wing indoctrination she'd been told was going on, only to look for her self and find the accusations were bullshit?
“Over the years our American Education System has been hijacked by Leftists looking to indoctrinate our kids into the ‘progressive’ way of thinking..." was her pitch. Then she read the curriculum.
"The pervasive indoctrination she had railed against simply did not exist. Children were not being sexualized, and she could find no examples of critical race theory, an advanced academic concept that examines systemic racism. She’d examined curriculum related to social-emotional learning, which has come under attack by Christian conservatives who say it encourages children to question gender roles and prioritizes feelings over biblical teachings. Instead, Gore found the materials taught children “how to be a good friend, a good human.”"
"So, in the spring of 2022, Gore went public with a series of Facebook posts. She told residents that her backers were using divisive rhetoric to manipulate the community’s emotions. They were interested not in improving public education but rather in sowing distrust, Gore said."
https://www.propublica.org/article/texas-granbury-isd-school-board-courtney-gore
America needs more honest people, like her.
The higher level the planning the more should be involved in the decision. That there should be public education at all is the highest level and so that should be up to everyone. The general topics and resources availible to educators is the next highest level decision so that should be left to everyone in a region or state. The time and location is the next highest level so that should be up to everyone in a town or county. The more specific topics within the confines of the general topics are the next highest level so that should be up to the school boards. And how to combine the resources and time and location to teach those specific topics are the lowest level so that should be left to the educators.
Good question! So many hot button issues associated with this topic!
I’m a KISS kinda guy. Home skooling programs have come a long way in my lifetime. Parents who want what’s best for their kids can manage their education and socialization directly. In order to qualify for college or university, the curriculum and content has to be state approved. And the public education system has gone so far downhill that the average kid skooling at home can cover in a year what the average public skool kid takes two to cover. Class sizes are increasing and teacher qualifications are decreasing. Someone was bitching about teachers not wanting accountability. Who WOULD want that level of accountability for what is barely a living wage? Ell oh ell!
What i like best about home skooling is it shortens the rope the idiots will use to hang themselves. I say shut down public education entirely, remove warning labels from everything, ban lawsuits by idiots, and let natural selection take its course.
Teachers tend to regard boys as defective girls because teachers are predominantly females and the few male teachers who are left find it an uncomfortable work environment.
Probably Education professors and psychologists are even worse than female teachers. So it would be safest to scrub both those groups.
You can' reasonably include students and politicians.
So that leaves PARENTS. Now I did answer two or more. Employers are the major consumer of education as they want to hire graduates who can do what employers need them to be able to do.
For example be able to write a concise easily understood email. During my school years it was pretended we were all going to write novels.
I am 54. I remember when I was a young kid watching Saturday morning cartoons which were intermixed with school house rock and various educational briefs. One thing that was always expressed was how the U. S. was at the BOTTOM of the industrialized world for primary educational achievement. GUESS WHAT... fast forward 45 YEARS AND THE U. S. STILL HAD A DEATH GRIP ON THE BOTTOM SPOT.
"Education professionals" have utterly FAILED US AND OUR KIDS. By turning schools into indoctrination institutions you have lost the faith of regular Americans (whom you hate).
It's time for a major revamp of education.
if you don't think the government plays a HUGE role in education, check out how many laws and regulations there are on the state and federal level that affect k-12 education.
Spend much time in a classroom did ya? As a teacher? What do you know about those PISA tests?
@DrPepper12 who decides special ed rules? Title I? State testing?
@OtterMan68. TBH I have no idea what the federal and state regulations are re: education. Whatever they are they aren't working for the vast majority of students.
ERISA and PLP 242 and court decisions.
I'm frightened for you if you don't know the answer for state testing. JFC
What will work oh pedogogist of the future?
Parents have shown they lack the skills to properly educate their children. They can’t even take 10 mins to read to their kids at night or make sure they do their homework.
Two friends are teachers and they say parents are the worst part. Always looking to blame them and never taking accountability for their kids.
Parents should have the most input. Teachers have their own agenda. They don't want to work hard and they want no accountability. That is why our public schools are failing. Politicians are just professional liars and they will support whoever votes for them. Professors are mostly liberals. That is why college is a joke today. Parents are actually interested in their kids getting a good education.
a parent may know what's best for his child, but do they know what's best for an entire class, little less an entire school?
And don't parents have agendas?
and some want a right wing leaning education, and some want a left wing leaning education, and some want more LGBTQ inclusive education, and some want religious education. That's fine if they homeschool, but is it fine for everyone else's children?
i should religion should be banned from schools generally. if you want your child to learn about religion, teach it yourself. don't force the rest of the children to hear about your delusion.
the rest should be decided by the people paying for it obviously.
Education should have influence over education. An objective platform of impartial research which conveys subsequent results of those findings. Nothing more, or less. The greedy, lying claws of all these factors listed is what rots academia today.
ALL OF THEM. Employers and public officers too. If funded by property taxes then residents too. EVERYONE is a stakeholder in public education.
"education"
hmm, 2% of you said students. So much for the idea that education is for the benefit of the kids. Too much education might interrupt the supply of mindless drones to corporate America.
Parents, then teachers, students and politicians, but none should have more than 35-40% influence on educational policy.
Lol. Once again women being dumb bitches you can't trust to run a dollar store.
The people
I chose adults because I consider the adults to be the people
so everyone? Should education policy be put up for a popular vote?
I don’t see why it shouldn’t be and have elections like everything else
In case you were wondering he's talking about you:
"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance"
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