Its been a tough week in my battles with the Volusia County School System. I hate to admit it, but our children are facing outright educational abuse. Educational abuse you say, yes, that is what I say. So what is educational abuse? Its when we send a constant barrage of messages to our children that we as a state, and as a community, don’t care much about their education at all. Not every one is at fault, but we are all responsible and some serious changes need to be made – on all sides, teachers union, teachers, administration, parents, and the state as a whole. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘education’
Stop the educational abuse!
Friday, March 6th, 2009We must cure our “investment deficit disorder”
Sunday, February 1st, 2009First of all, please check out the link to the New York Times Sunday Magazine article
This is a great piece that explains some of the economy’s troubles and offers some glimpse of the solutions we can employ. One quote that struck me was the phrase, “investment deficit disorder”. How apt a notion that we are currenlty suffering from a “disorder”. It gives hope that what we suffer from has a cure. Another quote about that subject compares investments to planting a fruit tree. Locally, we know that planting a citrus tree usually takes about 5 years before the fruits of the labor of planting and caring for the young tree are at all realized.
Public investments in education and transportation, two matters that are a priority in our locale, take some time to really bear fruit. That being the case, it is even more of an urgent matter to invest in them now. The news reported in the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday about students at DeLand High School being warehoused in the gymnasium at the clip of nearly 200 students for each of the seven periods because of the lack of teachers showing up to work and the lack of funding for substitutes was an outrage. Not only does this show a lack of investment in education, but it demonstrates a problem with the norms within which we make those investments and within which those investments work. (more…)