In my opinion, it is population dependent. At my last school, it could be very effective. But it was a rich school with high performing students.
When kids are hungry, cold, and living in fear, it is not effective.
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That may be true some times, but it can also be laughable when educators forget that life goes on when students leave the institution. I feel like this is the case in my school district, where the opinions of long time community members are dismissed as āuneducatedā whenever the opinions of the community run contrary to the education establishment.
Fortunately for the education establishment, my town has an abundance of educated voters who require a translator to help them sign the affidavit that allows them to immediately vote in our elections.
It is not.
All of the homework Iāve done on education policy in Maine seems to assume Maine will always continue on as it did last century. If that were true, it might have been a great policy.
The average student in my jurisdiction is different in nearly every metric you can imagine compared to 25 years ago.
I have written to the school board and my reps to suggest a consideration of Indianaās use of force policy for public school employees. We have an acute safety and classroom order situation that our education model is exacerbating, which I also believes exacerbates educator recruitment difficulties.
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I think this is a particularly important point.
Thank you for your thoughts.
We had this discussion often when I was in Brooklyn - what can we do when kids leave the heated school that feeds them and has armed school police and metal detectors? In my experience, the vast majority of my colleagues were concerned with the home lives of our students. Most were in the profession for altruistic reasons. Also, in NY, student performance directly affected our teacher ratings which affected our employment.
This is a part of the complexity I mentioned above. The community hires a Superintendent as their expert, then disregards that āexpertsāā opinion. Or, the board of education (elected parents with little or no education background) donāt take the guidance of their elected expert.
Not to mention, said expert is earning in excess of $400K per year and would like to keep their job so they donāt stand up to the elected board.
Frankly, you donāt strike me as a problematic taxpayer or parent. I suspect most teachers would view you as an ally.
It is taught in teacher college, commonly called Maslowās Hierarchy of Needs - a great example of education making things sound more complicated than they need to be.
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Altruism and limited resources donāt mix very well, as weāre learning here in Lewiston.
A greater factor is what I call āYellow Privilege.ā The Asian parents keep their children motivated to excel in education. Their children get continuous positive reinforcement. What chance do the white, black, and brown children have against Yellow Privilege?
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Again, it is a complex situation. Taxpayers want more value for their taxes, administrators want to keep their jobs, teachers feel overburdened.
My district wanted to go to a nine period day so their children could take eight classes and have a lunch - many were taking eight classes and skipping a lunch. Our union pushed back because it would reduce the periods to 41 minutes, kids were already stressed and overburdened with homework, and we knew some kids would now take nine classes.
Admin caved and we went to nine periods.
I think āpositive reinforcementā is a misnomerā¦
IDK about you, but when I hear this term, I think of someone positively supporting efforts regardless of results.
I do believe most asian parents āsupportā these efforts, but not by praising efforts, rather they praise only the pinnacle of success. In other words, they praise only results, not the effort.
Thereās even a Family Guy sketch where the asian dad says
āYou doctor yet?!ā
āIām only 12ā
āTalk to me when you docta!ā
But yes, I agree that parents being active in their childrenās lives is likely the number 1 factor in the success of the child. No one does it like Asian parents do, thatās for sure.
It sure does seem to come with a lot of mental health drawbacks, though.
I disagree, at least here locally.
Paying people to move here and have a lot of kids has been shown to be successful at electing more Maine Democrats, but not so successful at improving the town. It really is that simple.
There are many other factors in play, but thatās kind of the elephant in the room at this point.
Obvs, I canāt speak to specific examples, only generally.
And, I think your point is more germane to the title of the thread.
Like Trump on Roganās podcast, my weave gets a little wide at times, but I try to keep it all connected to the topic.
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I am not referring about parental positive reinforcement. I am referring to the āpositive reinforcementā similar to the bodybuilder seeing results from his efforts. The Asian students see that their efforts encouraged by their parents show results in their grades.
Success breeds more success.
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Iām not sure if you ever caught on to the Atari and subsequent developments, but you might be interested in trying out this computer simulation game.
The overriding problem parents have is what content is being utilized to reach academic goals, not the finer points of structuring curriculum. Iāve never heard a parent argue that 5 paragraph essays should be structured differently, or deprecated and replaced with 6 paragraph essays. Now I realize this is the internet, it has probably happened once or twice and somebody might search out the example to be super right about an off-topic slant, but the overarching concern is selected content exposure.
Like Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird.
Evil content.
The Trump Bible on the other hand - quality literature.
I am being intentionally polemic to prove a point. I do understand your position.
Why? Why does this exist?
I understand the point. I also understand we arenāt robots and opinions & opinions/emotions et cetera exist.
However aiming for objectivity should be the goal, IMO. And I donāt see a problem with sending questions outside of the scope of academic curricula home.
I agree on all that cannot be copyrighted.
But I donāt credit Trump. I credit Zondervan for not allowing their literary piece of trash be used.
I suppose I am too