Ok, I think Shrub is a piece of shit, but in fairness, he was saying that parents need to be involved in kid's lives for the schools to do thier jobs. I have no problem with that. And part of that does involve turning off the TV. It also involves watching some TV, and maybe even playing some games with kids. And all the money in the world isn't going to compensate for that.

I agree. I am NO fan of Bush, but he's right on the money here. I have parents who don't know their child's teacher's name in December. Kid isn't getting his work done, you send home a notice for the parent to sign, it doesn't come back, you call, the parent says he was 'too busy'.

I live in Kalamazoo, Michigan. A recent study of abseentism at the local public high schools revealed that on any given day, just about a quarter of all students were absent. A random sample of students showed that, not surprisingly, there was a very high correlation between student performance on math and english standardized tests and the attendnace of the student.

Clearly it is difficult to teach kids to read if their parents are so uninvolved in their lives that they are not even at school for literally four or five weeks out of a school year (OTOH, the schools had no districtwide policy on attendance, so the school was not providing any sort of disincentive to persistent truancy).

Bush is right; video games and TV are an immense distraction and waste of time. So is most of the time yer average teen spends on a computer, for that matter.

BUT . . . this fact shouldn't be used as an excuse by the administration not to do more and think harder about education. It's a cop-out.

I don't think people realize just how disconnect some parents are. This is a small, but I think revealing example -- kids next door in my very poor neighborhood come home one day and inform me of the new Playstation games their mom just bought for them. About an hour later, the daughter knocks on my door -- wants to borrow a dictionary because the family doesn't own one (and this was a family of 7 with two kids in high school, and three in imddle school).

Seriously messed up priorities.

Edited by author 01-13-2002 11:59 PM
I think he's right on. I attended three high-schools (suburban, one substantially lower-income than the other two). At each one it was amazing how much overhead the schools carry. None of the teachers I knew ever saw anything useful from the administrative offices - for that matter, all of the good teachers seemed to be waging a constant war with the administrators, who were almost all held in [well deserved] low esteem by everyone else. Oddly enough, though, the best stuff always showed up there - at the same schools where teachers were buying paper out of pocket, the administrators were getting new computers every year.

A friend of mine who spent a year or two working at the San Diego county school administrative office was also amazed at how much money was spent for people who contribute nothing - the average pay for a twit (he had abundant evidence to back this up) shuffling paper, generating "action items" and filling a chair at meetings is well over that of the average teacher. It wasn't surprising to hear how teachers were souring on the field entirely.

Sadly, the biggest problem by far is society's support, not overhead. School districts are comically inept, money-hemorrhaging beauracracies, but anyone who wants to get a good education can do so almost anywhere. Most students don't.

Studying, learning, even being smart is uncool (an impression regularly reinforced by popular entertainment). Parental discipline is extremely rare and there are almost never any real incentives to take challenging courses; worse, most will almost always take their child's side against the school - it's not unheard of for parents to threaten to sue a teacher for a bad grade ("Ashley might not be able to get into get into a good college if you flunk her just because she cheated!").

Many teachers give up trying and give easier work, provide tons of extra credit and allow students to sweet-talk their way into higher grades. The whole system devolves to a parody of what it should be; most students develop a hyper-cynical attitude and try to game the system while the few motivated students are bored out of their skulls.

Some wake up at college and apply themselves; others try the same tricks which either work or fail disastrously, depending on whether they went to a diploma mill like Harvard or a school which still makes some attempt to educate.

This problem won't be solved by any amount of money. The real solution won't come from the government at all - it has to come from social changes. Until education is valued more and cutting corners or cheating reacquires a stronger social stigma, we're going to have self-esteem camps instead of schools.

And he did such a good job of his underaged alcoholic daughters, too.

Yeah, the sentiment is right, I doubt he wrote it ot rought it up though.

For many years been raising two kids with no tv during the schoolweek. None. Ever. Don't have a single videogame player, either. (They get game play in, off computer or friends. Kids are resourceful.) I just want to say, early on, the household was the piss and moan capital of the world. Very tough sledding. You make a rule like that and stay with it, you are going to be a major parental ASSHOLE. They're good students, though. The 14 year-old just spent holidays restoring frescoes in Assisi. Okay, not that good. I'd do it again. They'd move in with Homer.

Chico - I'm not sure about games but I liked one parent's approach to setting limits with younger kids: strict bedtime *unless* they wanted to stay up reading.

(The difference in reading ability was apparently quite pronounced by the time they hit middle school)