Re: Ideocosmology

["Richard W. Tarara" <rtarara@saintmarys.edu>]

-----Original Message-----
From: hake@ix.netcom.com <hake@ix.netcom.com>
> In my opinion, if students entering postsecondary education are
> deficient in learning skills, study habits, reading, arithmetic,
> algebra, science, English, critical thinking, drawing, etc., etc. then
> we in the colleges and universities can, at least in part, blame
> ourselves.


Perhaps so, but it seems to me the situation is MUCH more than ill-prepared
elementary and secondary teachers.  Good teachers have difficulty teaching
under some of the conditions faced in today's schools.  The issues are
complex to be sure ranging from the self-selecting group that goes into
education, to the blue-collar atmosphere of most public schools, to the
diminishing of parental participation in the education process, to misplaced
goals of 'equality' that place developmentally handicapped students in
regular classes where they not only fail to learn but tend to disrupt the
learning process for other students, to children with behavioral problems
tied to fetal drug addictions or total lack of parental discipline,  to an
anti-intellectual atmosphere in the society at large, etc., etc., etc.
Improving teacher preparation is certainly something we should do, but
having considerable contact with the inner workings of today's elementary
schools, I fear that is far, far from enough to reverse the current trends.

rick