What happened to our schools

What happened to our schools

Yesterday I saw and advertisement for a new story. Apparently a lot of children are taking Ritalin™, a drug for Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD). It is believed that many more children are taking Ritalin™ that have ADD or ADHD.

Officials are concerned about the number of children who are being 'diagnosed' with ADD and given drugs.

This reminds me about kindergarten teachers in Texas several years ago. They wanted to raise the age when children could start school because the younger children 'were so hard to handle'!

You may wonder how these two items are related.

When I went to school it was all about the students. The teachers did what they had to, to teach the students. Today it seems that teachers are more concerned with their selves than their students.

If a student acts up lets diagnose him/her with ADD and drug him/her so we don't have to deal with it. Lets raise the age that children can start school so we don't have to deal with immaturity.

In fairness, the great majority of teachers are hard working dedicated people, to whom we owe a huge debt. A debt that can not possibly be paid off.

However, in the 1930's when my mother started school, any child who turned 6 by 31 December would start 1st grade in September of the same year. This was still true in the 1960's when my brothers and I started school. Today, for most schools, you have to be 6 by the first day of school to start. In Texas the kindergarten teachers wanted the children to have turned 5 by the last day of the previous school year (in May) to start kindergarten in September.

Specialists in Cognitive Development (i.e. brain and thinking development in children) have shown that children can be effectively taught at ages much earlier than we believed back in the 1960's and earlier. Based on the research we should be getting our children into school earlier not later!

Education is the most important function of government. Preparing our youth to take the reins of government should be of the highest priority. What good does it do us to defend our nation against aggressor nations and terrorists if there is no one to take it over.

Schools do not exist to give teachers jobs, they are there for the children and the teachers are there for the children. We should not be thinking in terms of how to make things easier for our teachers, we should be thinking in terms of making things better for the children. Drugging children because they act out is not the solution. Teachers need to realize that it is their job to deal with all kinds of children while simultaneously teaching them.

Where are the parents?

Of course, one of the biggest problems with our schools today is parents. Parents must recognize that it is their responsibility to educate their children. Parents must recognize that it is their responsibility to socialize their children, Teachers can assist in this process, especially in the education department but teachers should never be the primary.

Teachers are overwhelmed because students do not get the attention they need from their parents. Parents are too busy or too concerned with their own problems to educate their children. Some parents have been seduced by silly fads about raising children (most notably the idea that punishing a child will stifle creativity, nothing could be further from the truth).

The result is that teachers begin to look for easy ways out, after all, if the parents don't care, why should they?

Amen