Monday, April 13, 2009

Warning: cartoon with *offensive* language

A friend sent this to me with the following note:

This is from a gal I know who teaches special ed. in New York. No kidding. And know what else she said? "I'd love to be able to say this!!! LOLLLLL"

I've debated the merits of homeschooling with her before, however, she's fully entrenched in the public school system and thinks everything is all the parents' fault. You know, much of it probably is-- especially the ones who use school as a way to get away from their bratty children. However, she can't see that the p.s. system is irretrievably broken. She doesn't WANT to see it. And, if she really feels the way she says in the cartoon, don't you think that perhaps SHE is part of the issue as well?

Ah, well. Can't fix everything or everyone, right? But the fact that a teacher felt the need to send this out to declare her feelings really threw me.


Sorry for the reeeallly bad word, but the cartoon is telling, at any rate.

6 comments:

  1. that is pretty funny. I ams sure there are many teachers that would love to say that.

    The word makes me sad that I can't share it with others but my ps teacher father in law thought it was very true. My father in law was always at odds with the school district and some parents for (gasp) teaching the kids grammar in the 7th grade (When they took away his text books, he wrote a grammar booklet and gave it to the kids at his own expense!). He was very against us homeschooling but now that our kids are teen and pre teen ages, he has slowly come around. :-)

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  2. I can see benefits on both sides and you are right, many parents send their children to school because they can't deal with them.
    The problem is not the child, but the parent. Their children are probably glad to go to school to have a break from them!
    She must be a teacher for money. No true teacher would dream of sending that cartoon to anyone, particularly a special ed teacher!!!

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  3. This is what happens when a PS teacher is handed a class of 36 students for 53 minutes a day and forced by those circumstances to teach them all the same way. Some of those kids would learn the material if the teacher spent the entire class doing yoga on her desk. Some of those kids would not learn the material in that situation if their lives depended upon it - and sometimes their physical safety DOES depend on them not learning the material - when the bullies are leaning on the "geeks," whose learning and performance suffers?

    I have two homeschooled children diametrically opposed in their learning styles - and neither one would do as well with a 1:36 teacher/student as they do at home where the ratio is 1:2. My social butterfly cannot concentrate with the distraction of other children near her. My perfectionist refuses to do anything that she cannot do to her perfect standards. No PS teacher has the resources to isolate the social butterfly until her work is done, nor to break down a task into parts small enough for the perfectionist to perform them without a meltdown. And antihomeschoolers claim that my doing these things for my children is depriving them of...what? I am ensuring they LEARN THE REQUIRED MATERIAL, and separately from that, I am ensuring they learn to compensate for their weaknesses and solve their dilemmas.
    In a PS, my kids would be labeled "dumb" - because they don't learn the material IN THE PS ENVIRONMENT - NOT because they CAN'T learn it.

    My kids are at or above grade level in every subject. What's dumb here? My kids or your system?

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  4. My son would never make it in the PS system. Not because he;'s not bright- he really is a smart guy, but way too distracted and wiggly. They'd have put him on ridalin by kindergarten! Yes it's hard to teach him most days- but at least I'd never feel like sending such a cartoon to anyone!

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  5. I did poorly in school, both parochial and PS. But then, I did not know then (although the PS people did), that there are different levels of intelligence.

    Our children are taught according to the reading IQ, where a lecture should suffice. Unfortunately, it didn't, and still doesn't, for large numbers of students. I found out that I was a tactile (learn by doing, not reading) learner. Whilst I could not turn back the clock, I DID apply this method of study when I was in college. Result? A BSIT with a 3.55 average (A-), and an MBA (3.88 average).

    To say that a educational system is correct, whilst the children are "dumb," is sheer ignorance. What parents need to do is identify what IQ the children have, and use that in their studies.

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  6. Here in Louisville, Ky. we were ignored as best they could. Our rally was held in front of the Court House in Jefferson Square. Our media had video of less than 30 seconds and that was when the crowd was just forming. They said there was about 1,000 but it was closer to 3,000. Our Courier Journal News Paper gave us room in the middle section. No mention was made on the front page. Fun was had by all with many notable speakers plus the gal that wrote and sings"Press One for English" who was born here. We even marched to the Ohio River and dumped Tea Bags.

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