Where are the really smart people.  We all know people that were super intelligent in Middle School and High School.  Where did they go? 

The problem with asking a question like this is that the people that have the power to change this are already mixed up in the system or of the education system that stole the brain power of America. 

When you steal the brain power of America you take away its heart and soul.  Have you ever heard of the program called “No Child Left Behind”.  Well, as Ronald Reagan would say, in trying to help change the education problem in America it only helps to intensify and magnify the problem.  Because, don’t take the last statement out of context, it works within the framework of the existing educational system. 

I will address two problems in this paper.  First, contrary to public opinion the public school system in most cases is not the problem.  Society is the problem.  When the baby boomers were young.   A cause for discipline at school was a cause for some type of discipline at home.   Premise, ‘the school and the parents were on the same team’.  Through the sixties and seventies there has been a lot of progress made in the areas of personal freedom.  Not only that we are finding that parents today want to be friends with their children instead of parents.  That leads to great conflicts between the schools and the products of society, mainly the children and their parents.   Parents end up being pulled in two directions.  First, what is best for their child and second, what they think they need to be their child’s friend.  The answer is to spend more family time together, linking the family to their child’s success through the proper type of family values that will carry the children through their trials and tribulations into their own families.

Is there any wonder why children that are in authoritarian families excel in school?  While students in democratic homes can not focus on the tasks at hand.  And that brings up the rise of a sophisticated society in America. 

Many people will wonder what a sophisticated society is as people wonder what a complex personality is as defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. 

I listen to interview of the candidates and I hear questions asking Mitt Romney about what are you going to do.  (A great leading question allowing for the candidate to explain what he will do).  Then I hear questions of Mike Huckabee about why did you do this in your past, why did you do that in your past. 

This is obviously an attempt to boost one candidate and slander another candidate.  With the host entertaining the old ideas of who will win and maybe what can they do for me if they win? 

I hear the conservative talk show hosts talk about ethics, morals, and the constitution.  Then when they have the chance to really support someone that would be the candidate of choice.  They search out every exception to that candidate’s record and expound upon it. 

Ragon B. Steele

All of us want better schools, teachers, parents, society, and senators and in a strange way the students want better schools also.  The question is how to do it.  I think we must look further than political solutions to what has happened to our society and what motivates students to respond to instruction. 

The “evolution of society” has resulted in a different type of student than we were faced with in the 1970’s and the 1980’s.   The many changes that occurred in the 1960’s have resulted in students that are not motivated by the same ideas and strategies, as were students previously.  It is even said in some educational circles that the structure of the brain is different than that of students of previous generations. 

Some of the changes that have occurred in society that have changed education are.

1. Children are exposed to mature and adult information at a much younger age.
2. Parenting has been changed by a combination of things such as permissiveness, divorce and both parents working.
3. Technology such as games and multi tasking reducing attention spans and students ability to focus.
4. The lack of sociological and peer pressure on students to achieve.

It would make more sense to attack the issues that are causing the problems with the education program.  Before I go on, let me just briefly mention that the problem in education does not stem from poor teachers, inadequate classroom time, or the length of the school day.  The problems stem from factors that are being ignored or are politically inappropriate to deal with.

NOW why not to increase the school day!

1. If you remember students learned more in the 1960’s and the 1970’s when the school year was 160 days long.  I wonder why?
2. To lengthen the school year would only penalize the students that aspire and are motivated to do the required work in regulation time.
3. The cost of lengthening the school year cannot be justified by the questionable improvement in the quality of education.
4. There is no additional money allotted for the school districts to pay for the lengthening of the school year.
5. Teachers, by an overwhelming majority are not in favor of lengthening the school year.
6. Why not send the students that do not test high enough to a newly created summer school. This would surely increase their motivation to achieve much like the drivers license and the state reading test.
7. Costs would not be limited to teaching salaries.  They would include busing, air conditioning, custodial, insurance, supplies, administrative and others.
8. Adding summer school would put motivation and also in parents, especially if parents had to pay!

I hope this expresses some ideas in a logical manner that will be considered in the legislative session.  Please contact me if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Ragon Steele

Teacher

Oklahoma Union Schools

918-255-6551 school

918-331-0772

You know the only people that talk about Viet Nam are those that were alive during that era.  I hear people talk about the Viet Nam War.

1.   I hear reporters talk about the roll of regular army and the roll of reserves and the national guard during that period.

2.   I hear reporters discuss the issues of the era.  Most don’t know what they were. 

3.  I see the attitudes of the day being created by he misinformation that is projected by those same media people.

Now, a story about the Viet Nam War.  Most of us were college students or college bound.  At the time of the late 60’s and the early 70’s the draft was dictating to the youth of America what to do and where to go.  It was a true test of American values.  There was such a sub culture movement with the hippies, the anti war group, the Black Panthers, the anti capitalist groups, the anti establishment groups. 

Each of these groups had a “new set of ideas and ways for the American society”.  I remember that you went to college to avoid getting drafted.  I know that many of our High School Buddies went to Viet Nam immediately.  They went to Viet Nam because the United States believed it was fighting the evils of communism and its expansion.  In fact those efforts indirectly helped the fall of communism  in Russia because of the expense that the Russian government poured into the war effort on a world front.  Now, history will show that those who served in Viet Nam were directly linked to the fall of communism. 

Will the media of the world ever concede this fact.  No, it is doubtful, why?  I will give you one example.  When the Viet Nam War was going on I was in the middle of college, on a wrestling scholarship and wanting to win a national title.  All my energies were consumed yet the thought of the draft and the war brought me to join the United States Army Reserves. 

 I found out that in the reserves you could be a high school teacher and wrestling coach and skip the Unit Meetings for the winter months (during wrestling season).  Oh, my did I just describe President George Bush? 

 Do you see what I am talking about,  it is hard to separate fact from fiction because most people alive today don’t know what it is that was happening.  Make no mistake.  We spent many a night discussing the effects of all the opposing sides and philosophy of thoughts.  And………………..today we are suffering the results of a society that has changed dramatically. 

I would like to leave you with a paraphrase that a friend of mine wrote to me just recently!

Dorman wrote, I don’t know how I survived Viet Nam.  There I was standing as a marine in the jungle of Viet Nam and the three guys in front me were shot.  Then the two guys on the side of me were blown up,  then the two guys that were behind me were blown up.

I can’t believe that there are so many people that want to make Americas policies that have never seen the blood or shed it!

I was asked to write my ideas about God in the classroom.  The idea of creation is approached usually in the science classes across America.  I would caution that I have heard preachers telling congregations that there is no prayer in the schools of America.  I for one am a teacher in the Oklahoma school systems and there is prayer in schools.  There is Fellowship of Christian Athletes meetings and before school there is praise and worship in classrooms.  So, I am sure I am approaching the topic from a different direction.  And I am saying first of all quit with the false alarms by people that don’t know what they are talking abou.  This is what turns people off.  Honesty is exactly what people want and that is so apparent with the political process today.

So, what about God in the classroom.  There must by a reason that God is not listed as a creation possibility.  I think that the only way to approach this problem is to list the reasons that God is not listed as a reason for creation. 

1. Teachers not truly convinced that God is the source of creation.
2. Teachers fear disciplinary action for presenting God as a source of creation.
3. Teachers are ashamed of their position on God.
4. Teachers are not truly believers.
5. Teachers are saying that they believe, when in fact they are doubters themselves about creation.
6. Teachers are weary about society and what its effect is on education.
7. Students are not receptive to the notion that God is the creator.

I would submit to you that the response that Governor Mike Huckabee had to the creation issue is the best answer  I have heard.  

He said:  Yes I believe in creation.  I believe in the account in Genesis about creation.  God created the heavens and the earth.  You either believe it or you don’t. 

If you are a believer of the creation theory and you are also a teacher it is imparitive  that you present the idea in a way that is consistent with the scientific process or in a totally revolutionary way as an opposing idea that students can consider the differences of opinion.

I hope you can share your ideas about this idea, concept, philosophy, etc.

So did we really bring it on ourselves and who are those people called ourselves.  We can identify those people responsible for the difficulties of education as ourselves because they are all connected in integrated within the same sociological structure.  The structure is complicated in that it envelopes many different areas of society and the different ways those people think. 

For example, government workers think differently than entrepreneurial segments of society.  The technology sections of society and the athletic areas of our educators think differently, and politicians, conservative and liberal have different goals for education.

Religious leaders and local school boards have their own goals for our schools and it goes on and on and on.

I’m sure this will get the attention of both current and past teachers.  Society, parents, the government, No Child Left Behind, and current attitudes of teachers and administrators have resulted in a high stress job with ten times the work of teachers of the past.  Of course there is an explanation for this.

The No Child Left Behind Act is an ethical and honorable attempt to correct the education programs in the United States.  The fact of the matter is that teachers are working ten times as hard to teach their classes in today’s public schools as they did in the seventies.  The question is why, the question could also be why don’t we drill for oil in Alaska and or why are discussing same sex marriages or why are we as a society having so many single parent families or even why are so worried about the spotted owl when the core values of a society (United States) are eroding at the fastest pace since the constitution was written. 

It is obvious that the policy makers (even the well intentioned ones) do not know what is going on in the classroom in today’s schools.  Let us consider this in a logical step by step progression. 

Teachers today are of course required to teach core values and manners.

Teachers of today are required to keep order in a class where students do not want to mind and there are no consequences

Teachers of today are required to make special lesson plans for students that do not fit in to the mold of the regular students.   What ever happened to learning to fit in-possibly a fatality of the sixties revolution

Teachers of today are required to maintain order in a world that many children live in that has the turmoil of a broken home

Teachers of today are required to Work with students that have brains that are developmentally different that those of twenty to thirty years ago. 

Society has produced students that have a very short attention span and that have different expectations and goals than those of the past

Students in today’s schools have different value systems and attitudes toward honesty, and cheating. 

Reading has become a thing of the past because of the modern world technological advances.

Etc.etc……………..