My Humble Opinion

Perhaps it is that I'm considering retirement but I see everything through dark glasses here at school lately. Behavioral problems up, academic performance down. Trying our darnest and getting no where. Only 16 out of 48 juniors repeating the state graduation equivilancy exam passed this spring. What is wrong with our school? This is supposed to be one of the good ones. This semester the big push has been to use graphic organizers. While I realize they can be used as good tools in education, graphic organizers are not going to solve our academic problems. It goes so much deeper than that. Way too large a percentage of our kids don't care a fig if they pass or not. They see education as a farce. I think values are not taught in the home as they once were. In my parent's home, education was important and if you got disciplined at school you got double at home. If you got bad grades, there were consequences that were upheld over the long haul. Ken and I took the same approach. Fortunately, our kids are doing the same with their kids. But today, many parents fight the school over any effort toward disciplining their children. I am frightened about the future of education. Yesterday, the sophomores were taking a core 40 test, another test meant to measure how we are doing. Some teachers challenged the kids by offering exam exemption in their unrelated classes if the students performed at least an 80% on the test. In actuality, no grade is normally given, the test is simply another measuring tool. However, so many kids blow off tests like that so some wise teachers offered a reward. Good for them. I hope it made a difference. I was proctoring that test. In the large lecture hall where I was proctoring, a boy refused to take his CD player's headphones out of his ears. I politely asked that he give me the player until after the test. His response was, "Away! Go away. I'm fine". I calmly changed the words, asked again and received the same response. I walked to the other proctor and whispered the situation to her. She approached the boy and made an attempt to get him to comply. He responded the same to her as he had to me. Then she gave him the choice of surrendering the player or going to the office. He chose to go to the office. In checking his record, I found he had 20 discipline referrals to the office this school year, one of those on the first day of school. Why do we put up with this kind of thing?
Our academic and behavior challenges are not simply the school's challenges. Our challenges can be placed in the lap of every mom and dad in every home. The question is, how do we get moms and dads to recognize their responsibility in placing values in their children that would cause them to behave well and try their best to learn what is being taught to them? Instead of being concerned about their child's "rights", parents need to focus on their child's "responsiblities". My humble opinion.