Why History SHOULD matter

Posted Thursday, October 16, 2008, at 9:09 AM

Do not take the following blog as an attack on Senator McCain as it is not it is an attack on the education system in this country.

Last night during the debate John McCain said something that absolutely caused me to yell at the screen. It wasn't an attack on Obama or anything he said about becoming President. No, during the debate he said that he was a state's rights, state's first kind of guy, that he was a Federalist. This flew right through me. For you to understand why I should tell that I am an American History teacher. Yesterday I had just grilled to my students the difference between a federalist and an anti-federalst. A federalist is someone who is happy or content with the balance of power between the states and the federal government. An anti-federalist is someone who believes the states should have more of the power. This is what John McCain is. As an American History teacher I was just beside myself.

Our education system needs a major overhaul. No Child Left Behind has not worked. I knew this the day I went to help my mom in her kindergarten class and the kids were taking a standardized test. There is just something inherently wrong with a system that requires 6 and 7 year olds who just started learning to read and write to take a standardized test. The other major problem with NCLB is that it requires states to pay for the program or face fines if they don't.

There is too much testing and good teachers are penalized if their students don't do well. I have known students who had solid As and Bs but when it came to testing the froze up. They had terrible test anxiety. Is it fair to this student to call them below basic because they don't do well with tests? Hardly. Testing really proves nothing. To see how a student is truly doing in school watch them in class, to find out how well a teacher is teaching observe them in class.

Class sizes need to be dropped. I teach 6 classes a day, of those 4 have twenty or more students and three have twenty five and more. Those three by the way have 27, 25, and 28 students. With that many students in a class it is hard to do one on one with students.

Most teachers will tell you that the higher the class size is the more students fall through the cracks. When it comes to education it is up to the educators and parents for a child to succeed. If a child has a parent that regularily tell them that school doesn't matter in the larger scheme of things how likely do you think that student will make good grades in school, or even show up.

Parents (not all by any means) need to take a bigger interest in what their child is doing in school. Teachers need to concentrate more on those children that don't seem to care about school or feel that school has left them behind.

The school that I teach at has been penalized because of the lower level schools inability to teach our children. We are expected in three years (grades 10-12) to reverse the problems that happened the 6 or mores years before. This is a part of NCLB and it needs to be changed.

Whoever is elected president I just hope puts education first and we can finally solve the problem that we see in America today. It all starts with education.

By the way I am not the only educator in my family. I am a high school teacher, my mom is an elementary teacher (she has since left the kindergarten room and become an art teacher), my dad is a college professor, my older brother was planning on becoming a teacher before his death, and my little brother is in his final years of college to become a teacher. This is truly a family matter.

Comments
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Amen Mike, something we can agree on. By-the-way, you may not have even realized that your gripe of the education system (my gripe as well) is that it has been jeopardized by big government trying to run it all.

Why not let schools decide, or educational associations decide which is best. My child has been a victim of the the schools trying to test them so much that they might be able the get them into these federally mandated programs.

Basically, the feds say that for a school to continues to recieve X amount of dollars, they must have X number of students a particular program. The school needs the money so they over test these kids trying to catch enough of them off guard to throw them into these programs. It's like going fishing, the more often you fish, the more fish you will catch. Duh.

Back to you maybe not realizing that you just supported an anti-big government idea, which is usually a non-liberal idea. Maybe it's actually more of a Federalist VS. anti-Federalist ideas, I don't know. But what I do know is that we should not and cannot let the big government control us.

Whether McCain said what he said has any meaning..it's hard to prove, as both politicians are liars and cheats, they'll say anything if they think it might win more votes. A politician is a politican whether they are a liberal or a conservative. You can't trust 'em. SO why let them control you.

-- Posted by Justin76 on Thu, Oct 16, 2008, at 2:17 PM

I honestly think McCain was simply mistaken. Federalist and Anti-Federalist aren't exactly bit 21st Century words and it's unlikely unless you are a historian, teacher, or student that you would know. And that in the end is my point.

-- Posted by MichaelHendricks on Thu, Oct 16, 2008, at 3:26 PM

Let's have a party. I join the others, here, in agreeing with you, except for one small thing. You stated, above: "A federalist is someone who is happy or content with the balance of power between the states and the federal government."

It has been a few years, but as I remember, and I just checked my Webster, "Federalist" is the mindset of preferring Strong Federal Government, and "Anti-Federalist" prefers a system where the States are the strongest part of the Governmental system. I think the phrase 'balance of power ...' threw me. Neither facet agrees to a 'balance.'

Other than that small bit, You and I agree, especially about the school system earning failing grades. If I remember my psychology, I believe fifteen students is about the ideal learning size. But, then, it has been a few years, and I may not remember rightly. I do remember that when that idea was presented, the tax-payers, and local governments about swallowed their gum, when they realized they would have to double the teaching staff.

Excellent article. In Messiah, Shalom to you. Arley Steinhour

-- Posted by Navyblue on Thu, Oct 16, 2008, at 6:25 PM

As a History teacher do you teach the History of markets? The crash of 1873? The Crash of 1914? The Crash of 1929? The crash of 1932? The crash of 1969? The crash of 1974? The Crash of 1982? The crash of 1987? The crash of 2000? The crash of 2008? Notice a trend here?

Kids need to learn the financial history of our country. I am a student of history. History is our guide. Do you understand our countries financial history which shapes our politics?

I do.

-- Posted by wallismarsh on Fri, Oct 17, 2008, at 8:15 AM

Yes I do understand our country's financial history. It is cyclical even one decade everything can excellent with no end in sight the very next decade the country slips into a recession that it doesn't seem to be able to get out of. The government can help or hinder the progression (usually a hinderence).

But in saying that is also not the role of the government to sit and wait out a decline. Humans panic, it is part of our human nature and when we see the bottom of the dow dropping out we worry what's going to happen and sometimes there is a snap judgement on what to do.

We are in a recession there is no doubt about that. What is saving us from being in a depression to this point is that we are not experiencing a drought which was seen in the 30s.

But we are in global system today and the fact that all the markets in the world are struggling is something to pay attention to.

-- Posted by MichaelHendricks on Sun, Oct 19, 2008, at 2:59 PM

Not to be too picky, but I think you are a little off base Mike. Your definitions of Federalist and Anti-Federalist are so simplistic and innacurate that I feel you must be attempting to confuse the issue. Furthermore if that is an accurate example of what you are teaching your students, I am not surprised by the failings of the education system.

Keep in mind, I am no McCain apologist but I can't imagine he left the Republican Party to join the Federalist Party. Much more likely he was using federalist with a lower case "f" to denote that he advocates the division of power between the central federal government and state governments, and I have never met a government agent who is "happy" with the balance of power, they seem to always only want more. He was trying to imply that Obama would by contrast, increase the power of the Federal government, weakening the states governments.

Again, as I am no great proponent of McCain's either, I have no faith in either politician to actually protect states rights. NCLB is a prime example of what happens when you have too much power in the central government. BIG government only sees BIG problems which can only (by it's reckonning) be solved by equally BIG solutions. The problem is these BIG solutions (NCLB, Medicaide/Medicare, Social Security, Fannie and Freddy, $700 Billion Bail Outs) is they become too large to control effectively and give birth to all sorts of unitended consequences.

-- Posted by SWNebr Transplant on Tue, Oct 21, 2008, at 11:00 AM

Having had two children recently complete their secondary public education,a third nearly through the system (a top school system in Minnesota), and a wife who is a teacher, I still couldn't say if the education system is helped or hindered by the government. I am not sure because the biggest problem is no discipline in the classroom. We need more parents raising respectful children who will follow instruction and rules, and to support the teachers and administrators in their fair handling of problems. Until then, education will continue to be a large black hole in which money and good ideas disappear.

-- Posted by Viking on Tue, Oct 21, 2008, at 12:35 PM

Viking makes an EXCELLENT point!!

-- Posted by doodle bug on Wed, Oct 22, 2008, at 2:19 PM

Good thing that youy do not teach math. 4 + 3=7

You said you teach 6 classes per day.

-- Posted by gary on Thu, Oct 30, 2008, at 10:04 AM