"DEFEND ARE VETERAN'S"

[Nevernose]

185. Sorry if I was a little negative

I posted that in the hour I have between day school and night school, and I'm a little burned out. I think this is the last year I'll teach night school, because I'm constantly on he verge of collapse.

Anyway, although what you're saying is more high-end than one of the more common gripes, it is in fact a common gripe: we have no vocational programs left, or at least not many. And it never occurs to the Education Czars to ask, "Why do ye have to know this stuff?"

Apparently calculus is extremely important in "the real world," but understanding things like basic economics is useless. I'm an English teacher, yet I have to explain what a 401k is several times a year, or how mortgages work, or how credit scores function. We can't teach leadership skills because we're too busy teaching totally useless shit.

Schools in poor neighborhoods are funded poorly, but as you said, that's only part of the problem (and probably the biggest part). Another key problem, though is home life. If you have a few minutes, google "thirty million words" and some of the research that's gone into it. We have decades of solid research that shows what we're doing with children at home has a far more profound effect on education and intelligence than most people realize.

The only solution to the multifaceted problem you mention that I could come up with, personally, is to mentor foster children on the weekends. Ah, the life of a bleeding heart liberal!