Entitlement attitude? My goodness. Some people really have no idea what these schools are like when you actually give a shit about your education.
Kid Goes Off On Lazy Fat-Ass Teacher For Not Doing Her Job
- Thread starter hellblazer
- Start date
Stuck how?
He could choose not to attend, and do something else with his time.
I didn't like the quality of the education I got at the public school I attended, even though it's regarded as a "very good school system".
Guess what I did?
I stopped going.
The world didn't end, I didn't fail, and within 3 years I was doing exactly what I wanted to do and making more money than the teachers who told me if I left school, I'd be dooming myself to a miserable life.
Who told them that lie? Why do they believe it? Is it really a good idea to have people who literally cannot conceive of a life arc that is different from the one they took trying to teach kids anything?
I don't buy into this "no recourse" stuff for a minute.
It's your life, so either live it, or don't live it, but don't complain about it, at least not to me.
I understand. I went to public schools, I was fortunate I tested out and got into an advanced program (also government funds but better quality.) I think there is less and less of an excuse for not learning. Libraries and internet were my best teachers. My parents did their job too. Does it suck that taxpayers are paying for teachers that don't teach? Yes. Maybe this boy's speech will have a positive impact on that teacher or that school but is it going to help him personally? Probably not. In an ongoing theme of "life's not fair" we are all ultimately and personally responsible for our own education (and that of our children.)
Most very smart kids are not entrepreneurs. And most entrepreneurs would benefit from specialized education so they can get into businesses with a higher barrier to entry.
So for most of those kids you are either offering them shitty formal education or no formal education, both of which lead to a lot of unrealized potential. Maybe eventually with things like Khan Academy and Coursera that will change, although even that won't help fix low quality education for younger kids (who have zero options). But we aren't close to any of that yet and a lot of really smart kids get the short end of the stick and at no fault of their own.
When I was a kid I was spanked for telling a teacher that she was not explaining the subject in detail. oh wait... it was in a third world country
Entrepreneurship isn't for everyone. When I left school, I started in a trade, didn't own anything, wasn't trying to build anything, just acquiring knowledge and skills that had some value to somebody.
Give me a plumber's apprentice who knows his shit over a liberal arts undergrad who knows what time the dining hall stops serving dinner any day of the week.
and no, I wasn't a plumber's apprentice.
Real progress in this country and other countries is coming from STEM fields, something that we're lacking compared to other countries/cultures that value education.
For the really smart future chemist or engineer, there aren't really any other options than going to school. And if you are really smart and are in a shitty public school it is next to impossible for you to realize that potential.
I think it is a shame that there are lots of potential engineers, chemists, physicists - people who will be solving the big problems of tomorrow, who end up becoming a plumber because their school system sucked, they were constantly bored, and learned to hate organized education.
You guys need to see Waiting for "Superman" (documentry about US schools)
Waiting for Superman on Vimeo
Waiting for Superman on Vimeo
I guess plumbers don't fall under the STEM aegis, although I think if you scratch a mediocre engineer, you probably find a first rate plumber, or auto mechanic right below the surface.
Do public and private schools in the US really differ that much?
I went to both, public and private, and I found both systems to be shit. The only difference was that the there were only 15 students instead of 30 and that we had all kinds of new shit at that time (computers, beamers). The content we got taught was the same shit as everywhere else and the motivation of the teachers wasn't that good either. Abstract math formulas you would never use in your entire life, tons of lies written in the history books and boring, repetitive stuff in sales & marketing. Nothing you could ever apply in the real world.
I guess that's why I failed the last big math test with an F+. Now I'm dealing with numbers half of my day and I fucking love it. So I'm not sure if the system or the teacher really has that much of an impact, for me it was all about the content.
I went to both, public and private, and I found both systems to be shit. The only difference was that the there were only 15 students instead of 30 and that we had all kinds of new shit at that time (computers, beamers). The content we got taught was the same shit as everywhere else and the motivation of the teachers wasn't that good either. Abstract math formulas you would never use in your entire life, tons of lies written in the history books and boring, repetitive stuff in sales & marketing. Nothing you could ever apply in the real world.
I guess that's why I failed the last big math test with an F+. Now I'm dealing with numbers half of my day and I fucking love it. So I'm not sure if the system or the teacher really has that much of an impact, for me it was all about the content.
Absolutely, and I'm not saying that being a plumber or an auto mechanic is a bad thing.
I guess my point was, that everyone has potential that can be reached, their ceiling, whether that ceiling is becoming an engineer, the president, a janitor, a business owner, or a plumber. And having kids growing up in a poor school system lowers that ceiling and leads to a lot of unrealized potential.
Not everyone is going to be a chemist or an engineer, many will become plumbers. But every kid (because kids aren't responsible for their surroundings or situation) should have a fair shot to realize their potential in an encouraging environment.
Also, that isn't a socialist call for government intervention, as it's pretty clear that public schools aren't the answer.
Some of you guys were clearly more advanced than I was in high school. All I cared about was trying to talk girls into sneaking into the 3rd floor bathroom with me during 6th hour.
You were into watersports in highschool?
That's seriously advanced, brother.
Don't sell yourself short.
Soon as I watched that it reminded me of that old tesla song, signs..
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0tu_4Y_b_w]Tesla-Signs - YouTube[/ame]
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0tu_4Y_b_w]Tesla-Signs - YouTube[/ame]
Yeah fine, but the above statements are at best marginally relevant to the video clip, what you wrote in your post I quoted, and what I wrote in response to it.
I'm sure this doesn't keep you up at night, but ninety plus percent of all school teachers, public and private, never consider that with any more than a passing thought their entire careers.
Choose your words more carefully. Expectations and entitlements are two very different things and in this situation I suspect you are applying them incorrectly. You the matured taxpaying observer define education as an entitlement because you pay taxes which you consider theft, which go to sustain a monopoly that redistributes wealth away from its rightful property owners under threat of violence to pay the salaries of the teachers and blah. Yeah. So for you and other taxable property owners education is an 'entitlement' in that it's baked into the state monopoly and the teacher's salary is compensation for a service sustained by forceful redistribution of wealth so that others are 'entitled' to a benefit at your expense.
The student isn't thinking about it the same way you are. He is not paying property taxes to sustain his school. He does not have the perspective to see taxes as theft and experience it in the same way you do, he doesn't feel 'entitled' to receiving an education after being taxed for that purpose and subsequently feeling shortchanged by a crap teacher. He does not connect the economic dots the way you do. The student 'expects' that he will be given an education because that is what everyone in his life has ever told him to 'expect' and that is what he knows and identifies with the familiar ritual of attending school. He 'expects' his teacher to step up and be a teacher because his conceptual framework says that's what teachers do, particularly in the minds of students like him who seem to have something of a vested interest in his own education. In his own mind, and despite it not being the full picture, the student's 'expectation' of his teacher's performance as an educator is no more an 'entitlement' than would his 'expectation' of going to a petting zoo make him feel 'entitled' to pet some animals. Listen to his words. If he felt 'entitled' he would have alluded to the integrity of the tax system, the community not receiving a good roi for their taxes, his parents' paychecks being redistributed to his teacher, or something of that nature. Instead his arguments focus on calling his teacher out for not trying hard enough, not being an inspiration, and not putting enough effort into helping to build the future of the country.
You either know a whole lot of potently fulminating seventeen year olds or we have a very different appreciation for character traits. A temper tantrum involves swings of emotion and passion that overpower the coherence of the message evoking it. The student in the video is impassioned but he is coherent and his message is quite clear for people who are used to listening to frustrated seventeen year olds who aren't afraid to speak their minds and test the limits of power.
Also, what seventeen year old doesn't have something of an attitude that will not serve them well in the world? Fuck I still have some of that attitude. Hope I never lose it.
In any case I'll take a bunch of him over a bunch of smiling brown noses in my class any day of the week. :thumbsup:
lol @ tags
i mean, it can't be easy to stand up in a classroom and be motivated about teaching world/asian history to a group of teens.
my guess is that 3/20 of those kids are genuinely interested in learning, 10/20 just want a good grad, and 7 that don't give a shit at all.
that said, my guess is that most of the class is fine with being handed packets as long as they can pass notes, do homework for other classes, and text.
i mean, it can't be easy to stand up in a classroom and be motivated about teaching world/asian history to a group of teens.
my guess is that 3/20 of those kids are genuinely interested in learning, 10/20 just want a good grad, and 7 that don't give a shit at all.
that said, my guess is that most of the class is fine with being handed packets as long as they can pass notes, do homework for other classes, and text.
If we have schoolteachers, (and I don't give a fuck if they are gym teachers or special ed teachers, or even fucking janitors who work NEAR schools) that don't understand the concept of supply and demand and how it relates to their lives, they have no business trying to teach children of any age.
A misunderstanding of basic economic principles lies at the heart of a great deal of personal misery in people's personal lives, and I think it's perpetuated endlessly by willful ignorance to the subject.
lol I agree man - even more so after having been out of the classroom for a couple years and making more money than I was when teaching. US school system is so fucked up right now. So very fucked up.
The best teacher I had in HS was a science teacher who basically taught whatever the hell he wanted if he thought it was useful to know and still managed to tie it into curriculum. A little econ, a little product design, a little architecture..I've always taken a page out of his book. Problem is these days it's harder to pull this kind of thing off and it also takes, you know, a little extra work? Which unfortunately more and more teachers seem less interested in doing, particularly since the teacher's unions are more interested in protecting shit teachers from being fired than they are in productively coexisting with school districts to maintain high standards of excellence inside the profession. :angryfire:
There is some level of real market support for those services, it's just that the government insists on acting as middle man and deciding what that support supposedly is.
They more firmly touch some things than others, but indirectly they touch nearly everything.
If someone does affiliate marketing with Amazon, for example - their US customers (many who are government employees) are using US currency to order via the government backed internet, and then the products get shipped over the public roads. Amazon uses DRM and supports copyright laws, they donate money to politicians, Bezos' Blue Origin has received millions from NASA, etc.
For physical products, at the very least there is no choice but to use the tax payer funded roads in some capacity for shipping.
About 90% of US students go to public schools. Therefore US teachers might try to argue that 90% of them have no choice but to work at a public school.