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As teacher resignation letters increasingly go public -- and viral -- new research indicates teachers are not leaving solely due to low pay and retirement, but also because of what they see as a broken education system.
In a trio of studies, Michigan State University education expert Alyssa Hadley Dunn and colleagues examined the relatively new phenomenon of teachers posting their resignation letters online. Their findings, which come as many teachers are signing next year's contacts, suggest educators at all grade and experience levels are frustrated and disheartened by a nationwide focus on standardized tests, scripted curriculum and punitive teacher-evaluation systems.
Teacher turnover costs more than $2.2 billion in the U.S. each year and has been shown to decrease student achievement in the form of reading and math test scores.
"The reasons teachers are leaving the profession has little to do with the reasons most frequently touted by education reformers, such as pay or student behavior," said Dunn, assistant professor of teacher education. "Rather, teachers are leaving largely because oppressive policies and practices are affecting their working conditions and beliefs about themselves and education."
The study quoted a teacher in Boston: "I did not feel I was leaving my job. I felt then and feel now that my job left me."
(Score: 4, Informative) by Gaaark on Friday April 07 2017, @05:44PM (17 children)
My wife is an Educational Assistant in the school board: she gets the worst kids in the school, because she has a Behavioural Sciences education and background.
She gets the kids the TEACHERS can't handle.
She is wishing that she could retire because kids are getting worse and there is little support:
-she has kids who are biting (so they have to wear kevlar sleeves), punching and kicking, stabbing adults and kids with pencils.... the kids are suspended, the helicopter parents phone the school board and the kid is back in school.
-she is TEACHING the worst kids in the school and has 8 of them at a time on her own (without earning a teachers salary and benefits).
She cares, which is part of the problem: she has kids who tell her that they wish SHE was their mom... breaks her heart. But you phone Childrens Aid over some of the things they hear, and little to nothing is done a lot of the time.
She cares and does the best she can, but with little support, parents who don't give a feck/are high all the time/ just have no parenting skills/on welfare and get money for pumping out kids who they don't give a damn about....
...the kids take their shit lives out on her/confide in her on their shit lives and she gets no support.
THAT is why she wants to quit/retire.
Teachers should be striking for control of the classroom: if a kid bites/hits/stabs, they get suspended. The parent complains? TOUGH SHIT! School systems are about educating, not baby sitting/reform school.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @06:18PM (16 children)
Suspension is an old method that requires parents who care. The parent takes the child out behind the woodshed and beats the child's ass with a stick.
Suspension was never a punishment. In the absence of old-style parenting, it is a reward. Misbehave if you want a vacation.
About the only good thing left about suspension is that it removes a distraction from the classroom.
Meanwhile, the suspended student only gets worse. This is a pipeline to prison. Depending on your political outlook, you either want to keep the kids in school (ruining things for the others) or you'd rather skip ahead to execution. There is no good solution in the absence of good parents and/or good brains.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Friday April 07 2017, @06:29PM (13 children)
I think that you don't understand parenting at all. Beating a child's ass is not a sign of caring. Usually, it is a sign of frustration. Always, it is a sign of bad parenting skills (which is probably why the child was suspended in the first place). What it does is teach children that violence is a solution to all their problems.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @06:36PM (10 children)
I have 7 boys.
Mine tend to be unusually well behaved, including less violent than typical. I don't actually need to beat them much, and almost never beyond elementary school age, because they learn quickly that bad behavior will not be tolerated. Consistency is important. It's also important to respond quickly -- the younger the child, the faster one must respond.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @06:51PM (9 children)
It takes effort, but that is what produces a superior human: Reasoning with him even when he has not yet fully attained the age of reason. By telling the child that his behavior is making him and you look bad, or by telling him that his snack time is coming up "when the big hand gets here", or whatever, the results are a human being who learns to introspect, and to review and revise his own sense of being in the world.
Your approach simply produces someone who respects external structure, and will therefore only know to be abusive to people who do not follow orders, regardless of how stupid those order are. Your children are and will be stunted.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @07:16PM (1 child)
says the lady who has never raised boys or even had a brother... eh, probably an only child with no kids
I'm not saying I don't reason with them, but that isn't going to cut it without something to back it up.
Also, a lot of you anti-spanking fanatics are into really cruel emotional manipulation. It may be superficially "non-violent", but OMG it can get evil. I don't do that shit.
(Score: 2) by http on Friday April 07 2017, @10:22PM
You aren't willing to do the work to teach children respect? Cut off your balls (or slice out your ovaries), and never adopt.
If you think hitting them will teach them a lesson, then you think they can absorb a lesson - and concurrently, that you're not willing to actually be a parent and teach it. The lessons taught by spanking is very different from parenting.
Please either smarten up or kill yourself. Sooner, rather than later.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @07:17PM (1 child)
Your approach doesn't really work with very young children (such as age 2) because their brains are not yet developed enough to reason as older kids do.
You must use age appropriate techniques: distraction onto something else, promise of some token reward if they do as you say, and many more. Very young children are not just unexperienced adults. Out of curiosity, do you have children?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @08:26PM
What you say is just not true. It takes patience and a lot of work, but children do learn to appreciate reasoning very early on if you actually do try to reason with them. And you're right, it does take very primitive forms at first and hell of a lot of repetition, such as by telling a small child that he can have 2 treats if he behaves or only 1 if he doesn't (hey, the kid still has to eat), etc. You have to establish rules to the game (e.g., you have establish a contract) and then absolutely follow through with those rules.
Especially important is following the rules yourself; if you as a parent break a rule—and especially if a child calls you out on it—then you, too, must pay the agreed price.
Maybe my kids are just smart, but I doubt that's the only reason. Very many children are quite stupid, and I'm never surprised to find that their parents are the sort who bark authoritarian commands based on quasi-circular, obscure logic that follows no meaningful patterns: "Get over here! When I tell you not to touch something, you don't touch it!"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Zz9zZ on Friday April 07 2017, @07:27PM (4 children)
You are really dumb if you think there is never a time in almost every child's life where they need a spanking.
To say the person's children are and will be stunted is a fucked up assessment based on some knee-jerk reaction you apparently have. The most fucked up kids I've ever seen are the ones who get away with everything because their parents are too afraid or lazy to discipline their kids. I'm not advocating spankings or physical violence, those should be extremely rare. If you are spanking your kid every week then you're missing the bigger picture, I'd even say once a month is too much. Each child has a different personality so the approach must be adjusted to match.
I just got to witness a good friend give her kid a fake threat spanking, you could tell she was annoyed but the kid wasn't 100% sure it wasn't going to be real and the fake swats made his voice go up a notch and I could tell he will think twice about crossing his mom again. Kids require structure, and any good structure requires consequences. In any given situation a child might decide that what they want is more important than any threats of timeout / losing toys / whatever. But spanking? That is almost universally unwanted every single time.
It would be nice if we lived in a fairy tale world, but humans are still animals and physical confrontation is still a part of reality.
Don't beat your kids folks! But don't be afraid of discipline either. Force is rarely necessary, there are tons of non-physical punishments that should be tried first and spanking etc. should be the last resort.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Friday April 07 2017, @07:47PM (3 children)
Well, I must be really dumb, because my wife and I raised 3 well behaved kids, now all in professional jobs, without spanking.
On the other hand, I still remember and resent the spanking that I got from my Mother when I was in elementary school.
Or perhaps it's you that is dumb?
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @08:26PM (1 child)
It's nice that things worked out with your daughters. You were lucky that none of them were much trouble to begin with, and lucky that you had the luxury of time-consuming methods. It's easy when kids are eager to please and actually care about social norms.
Also, congratulate yourself for providing the kids with low-conflict DNA. Not everybody can do that you know.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @09:25PM
Get real!
Everyone who disagrees with you "has daughters".
I mean, you're actually complaining that you have so many kids for which to care; they are your kids, pal—it's not like reproduction is an airborne disease. Just because you created more human beings than you could handle without abusing them doesn't mean that anybody else has to provide you with approval for your foolishness.
It sounds like you and your progeny come from the shallow end of the gene pool.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Zz9zZ on Friday April 07 2017, @10:15PM
I specifically included "almost every child's life" in there. We have only your word that you have 3 well behaved kids, I would prefer some objective assessment before accepting your holier-than-thou pronouncement. Personally I was spanked only once as a kid and I damn well deserved it for throwing a fit in the store.
Other people already addressed some of the other points, but you are very naive if you think "positive reinforcement" always works with every kid. When parents are on the ball and can be consistent from the start it is much easier to set expectations and use non-physical punishments to address behavior problems. Sadly humanity is not at the point where all parents have this knowledge, skill, or the time to properly implement. Also we're not at the point where every child is able to be raised that way, there are definitely stubborn trouble making children and sometimes there simply isn't time to give them the adult treatment which respects their personal sovereignty, so a quick spank sets them in line.
Hey, since you're so smart and talented maybe you can go straighten out North Korea. They are behaving like spoiled little children and are going to ruin the fun for everyone! Please fix the POTUS while yer at it too.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday April 08 2017, @12:27AM (1 child)
When i was young and you misbehaved at school (really misbehaved) you could get the strap.
Then when you got home, you would have gotten the belt.
Just the THREAT of "wait til your father gets home" was enough to make us (mostly) behave at school: AND the fact that we respected our parents in that they worked hard and treated us what i consider 'fairly'.
I didn't get 'whacked' too much: all we needed was the threat.
When my daughter was old enough to start pushing boundaries, we slapped her hand. After that, all we needed to do was "the count", as in "That's ONE"... she never made it to TWO.
Much better than the parents today who either are trying to be best friends, or worse: ignore the kid while they do drugs.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Monday April 10 2017, @01:13AM
There are more options.
Just look at the way dog training has developed over the last few years. Whereas in the past, it focused on punishing bad behaviour, now it focuses on rewarding the desired behaviour. The new techniques work much better.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Friday April 07 2017, @07:15PM (1 child)
The school districts in my region of the US usually use in-school suspension instead. Students are "suspended" but actually go to special classes where they study responsible behavior instead of their normal classes (or, that's what I'm told - never seen one myself). Out-of-school suspension is pretty rare now; most things bad enough to warrant it tend to instead call for a criminal charge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @09:00PM
It sounds good on the surface, but one of the reasons for this is that suspending them and sending them home (at least in my state) automatically triggers consequences for the school. I'm at a loss to recall what those are off the top of my head (I think it automatically triggers a review of an IEP or something like that), but I've got a special needs kid who has been in in-school suspension before. I once made the comment to an educational advocate about how we really didn't have in-school suspension for us back in the day, they would just send your ass home and tell you when you can come back, and she told me the reason the schools keep them there. The primary motivation wasn't because of the kid. I'll have to ask my wife what that reason was because she has a much better memory than I for details like that.