Oh yes-every word so true,every problem so eloquently and succinctly stated.
My favorite point,bureaucracy instead of meritocracy.

We are stuck with this Union albatross,that now runs bully ads in political campaigns;pushing hard on accountability and making the public aware is one angle available to all.
As an idealist who feels teachers are good people that are not well trained and get mediocre results as a result,the only thing I can get mad at is the Union and the only solution to getting better results is accountability requirements.
That we still have at our disposal.

Yes, while I think the monopoly the public education system enjoys is one of the main causes of the low achievement of our children I also think it is not the full story.

A large number of parents simply don’t know what would be reasonable to expect from their children and from schools. For better or for worse, in the last 30-40-50 years the progressive, child-centered teaching philosophy has been swallowed hook, line and sinker by everybody: parents, teachers and even some grandparents.

A generation has already grown up with these ideas so a large number of people have only the faintest idea that achievement significantly higher more than the current one is remotely possible.

If you talk to a lot of parents what you will find is that under the thin veneer of wanting their child to have the best education in reality what they want is their children to have fun, to be socially liked and to have good reasults without having to work too hard.

They are sooooo afraid and so anxious about sending only positive messagees to their children in order for their children to have a high self-esteem that they constantly dole empty praise to their children for their smallest actions.

Their commitment to achievement only lasts until their child doesn’t look good anymore or they may need to take away time for sports to dig in and catch up with learning.
In that respect their approaches and mentalities are the same as most teachers’.

As much as the discovery hurts, I think TDSB in her posts from months ago was describing reality: a lot of parents either don’t care about academic achievement or for them caring about academic achievement means something completely different from what it means to us, that is SQE and the majority of posters on this blog.

The solution would be to have a variety of schools, with different philosophies so that different parents can choose and commit to different schools. The school doesn’t live up to its philosophy, the parent can change schools. The student doesn’t live up to the rules and the commitments, the school can deny his re-enrolment. Simple!

Seriously Malkin, the parents are divided.
It probably varies depending upon area, but generally I think there are three or four categories.

First there are perhaps 10-15% that think to various degrees roughly along the lines of SQE.

Then there are a good 40-60% in the middle that don’t know what to think - they have a feeling that things are not quite right, that their kids could learn more but they don’t trust themselves enough to dig deeper - so they go with the flow. Perhaps not from the beginning, perhaps only after sending their kids to Kumon for a year or two and after making sure that they can read then get tired of going against their child’s opposition opposition “my teacher explained it differently .. my teacher says my work is very good already, so why do I need to do this?”.

Then there are the 10-15% that are solidly in the child-centered camp and are delighted as to how much fun school is and how much easier while their children know so much!

Finally there are the I don’t care or very trustfull parents, “school is school, my child goes to school like everybody else and what will happen will happen”. 

So, sorry, at this point I believe that even if by miracle a principal would allow an experiment with good curriculum, good teachers in the sense we understand it, in most regular classes it would very likely backfire against the school.

Thanks for posting the video. It was nice to be reminded of the words of this inspirational speech. I used it a few years back when I was working with grade eight students on the importance and power of public speaking. We used a number of valedictorian addresses and political speeches to analyze messages, language and effect. This was one of my favs!

The full text of the interview cited here can be found at

http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/comphist/sj1.html

I found it helpful to read the entire thing, because it places the snippets above in a little more context.

I found it particularly interesting to read what Jobs had to say about his own schooling, the importance of curiosity and discovery. In a sense, Jobs succeeded in spite of school.

He also points to the decline of parental involvement in schools which (present company excluded) may have some significance here.

An important comment by Jobs has to do with the ability to get rid of teachers who have lost their fire for teaching, but also the creation of conditions (financial?) to attract the best people. In 1995, in the U.S. this just wasn’t so. Not too sure if this has changed much.

So while unions were on Jobs’ radar in 1995, there were other important things that need to be added to the mix if we’re going to get this right.

There are structural, organizational and ideological dimensions about school that are in need of attention. Unions are such a small part of what needs to be done to ensure that we have the schools that we want and need in this century.

Even though this interview took place in 1995, just as Apple computers were making their way into our schools, and just as the internet was moving forward (there weren’t even graphic interfaces like the “web” at that time), there is still value in going back and hearing Jobs’ words and insights!

Stephen,I agree and I am sure Malkin does too;there is more to schools problems and their direct improvement than unions.I was livid that they were so brazen to directly be involved in an election.

Schools are in great need of ideological and structural debate and if we all keep at it,we will see improvements that directly effect the lives of students.

As we all know with the parental support some kids have they will get through any landscape,that is only 40 percent of our children.
The other group needs explicit direct and research based instruction to finish grade 3 in a way where they can take advantage of rich curriculum that leads to great enhancements in learning.

We must stop the proliferation of personal opinion teaching and defer to what the research is telling us about instruction that leads to results,that is a big problem,flawed ideology.Egos need to check their coats at the door.Publishers need to be scrutinized.

When you can pay $5,000.00 to a so called non profit to have “who?“tell the Ministry they are okayed for an Ontario list I can`t imagine I am the only guy in the room who sees the sultry practice.
These are some of the things the parents need to know about,if a child is not learning math,is it the teacher or the textbook?
Many many textbooks have been blessed by this organization that are flawed and lead to very low results.The whole thing sickens me,it`s so transparent.
I was in a First Nations school where I trained the teachers on assessment and instruction,they showed me the books they had been using,now knowing what they knew about research based instruction the Principal said,we have been serving up materials to our students that will never work now that I know all this.I am going to have the teachers bring them all to my office.
I suggested she try to get her money back.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/technology/a-classroom-software-boom-but-mixed-results-despite-the-hype.html

Great article-if you read the comments,teachers are writing in and discussing how students don`t know the basics because of the computer focus in schools.

I’d like to make two comments:

First
>>
An important comment by Jobs has to do with the ability to get rid of teachers who have lost their fire for teaching, but also the creation of conditions (financial?) to attract the best people. In 1995, in the U.S. this just wasn’t so. Not too sure if this has changed much.
<<
Unlike US, teaching jobs are well paid in Canada.
So we can attract the best people very quickly.

Let’s break the monopoly!

Let’s open teaching jobs up for competition to people who have content knowledge and willingness to teach and in a few years we will gradually have much better elementary teachers.

Let’s stop forcing progressive dogma on how teachers choose to teach and on the list of approved teaching materials!

Secondly, I’m posting a link that even though it’s american, I think is very relevant.
In the absence of feedback most teachers think they are doing a very good job. In the absence of feedback it is hard for a parent to know what’s really going on.

We need objective standards and good tests to evaluate how much our kids learn. Only then the confusion will start to clear up.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers-value-20100815,0,258862,full.story

It might actually be a good thing if the idea of “value-added” teacher assessment were opened up in earnest here in Ontario. For me, it would force us into a conversation about the actual value that we wanted from our system.

If it’s just a case of better test scores, that’s easy. I don’t know many teachers who couldn’t offer the public better test scores. Just get rid of everything else in the system that isn’t directly related to the test and you’ll see scores rise dramatically.

But we have attached other “values” to our public education systems—values beyond objective academic performance. And I think that, before we jump into assessments of just how much value individual teachers are bringing to their work, we need to be very, very clear about the values that we wish to promote.

I’ve actually stated elsewhere that I’m disappointed that we can’t have the passionate conversation about this that they have had in the U.S. since the article cited first emerged over a year ago.

I ask again that we be very careful about assuming that American and Canadian situations are synonymous.

Agreed…on so many levels, including teacher preparation.