What is the language "British"?

[Gene Heskett]

On Wednesday 30 August 2006 00:44, Tim wrote:
>On Tue, 2006-08-29 at 23:05 -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> That should have been part of the language they got in the 5th grade
>> IIRC.
>
>That sort of problem was one we continuously encountered at high school.
>Something should have been taught years ago, by someone else, and nobody
>will make any attempt to teach it later on, even if they find out you
>weren't taught it.
>
>It can be quite distressing for some students to find out that they've
>been shortchanged, and there's no remedy.  e.g. English at high school
>was generally useless writing of book reviews, etc.  No actual teaching
>of using the language.  What they taught was useless to the great
>majority of the population (how many do that as a job?), and if you had
>any problems with understanding the language, well tough.  You weren't
>going to be taught how to understand or write the language, there.
>
>I stopped working in schools years ago, and I have no real desire to be
>a part of the current system.
>
I thought of running for the school board here, but after some 
conversations with equally frustrated sitting members, came to the 
conclusion that at the end of the day, I'd have raised my blood pressure 
past the nose-bleed stage, and not accomplished a thing.

Much of the problem is the federal mandates, often without adequate 
funding, and all the tax shareing rules that bring in the state and 
federal monies to run the system.  Then finding fuel for the school buses, 
and repairing or replacing same, personell squabbles etc.  Basicly, the 
weekly, about 4 hour long board meetings are so taken up by what I'd call 
piddly stuff, that very very little is actually done to see to it the 
student gets the resources he needs to learn.  I've sat in on a couple of 
meetings over the years here, and not once was a curriculum item mentioned 
without adding the disclaimer that they had no choice, its a federal 
mandate.  And most of that was 'for the slower students' with no 
flexibility for the quicker ones ever given consideration.  So we waste 
50% of our educational dollar on the 5% who can't or won't learn due to 
one handicap or another, leaving nothing for the gifted student who could 
graduate with honours if kept challenged, doing 2-3 grades a year when 
they apply themselves.  Truely, schools need the agility to keep the 
funnel into the top of a childs head full to the brim, but thats not 
happening, they can't afford to do it.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
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Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.