EDUCATION 8-17-07

In reflecting on education and the constant problems it seems to me after 35years working in the business going to school for 12 years at Ogden. Four at Louisiana College doing about 75 hours of graduate work at Northeast University that the real problem is everybody has the answer to all the problems but nobody really does. An example is the current “no child left behind” idea. It has turned into a testing program that really doesn’t answer but one question, what did the student score on a test. Nothing about self-esteem, learning the value of work, ethics, and about the many other values to an education. Another example is that you cannot paddle a child or you will be sued. A person can be sued for anything anytime. It doesn’t mean you will be found guilty. I was threatened by a lawsuit when I was a principal. I promptly called the District Attorney since by law in Louisiana He is the School Board lawyer and I left it all up to him. In the eighties {I forget the exact year} the United States Supreme Court put out a memorandum that they would not accept any more student “paddling” cases. Each School Board had to do three things, set the size of the paddle and they would all be uniform in size, tell the student why He or She was being paddled and offer to let the student have a witness of His or Her choosing. Now it does not matter what a lower court decides it will not even be heard by the Supreme court. I wonder how many Superintendents or School Boards passed this information each year to the teachers?

Louisiana had one of the best anti drug programs in the eighties in the country. Other states was looking at ours it was so good. Mrs. took as Her main program to work with and guess what it was? Just say no to drugs. In order to get Federal Funds for our District the District had to use Her program. The Feds; did not even look at our program or anyone else’s for that matter and good drug program went down the drain. Waste program is what the Federal Education Division of our National Government should be titled. More of Government waste in education at a later reflection on education.