A few days ago the news broke on the teachers union strike in the city of Chicago. I've read and watched on TV several different approaches to this story. Some have declared it is all about money. Chicago teachers want more and more money. Other reports, such as USA Today, report that its more about testing. Regardless of the media coverage it has become very evident that the entire U.S. education system is in need of an over-haul. All sides are partly correct. Below I outline exactly what will make our educational system competitive and functional.
MILITARY BASED UNIFORMS
Yes. I said it. "Military". "Uniforms". Words that most associate with a reduction in freedom, or communism. Under my plan, all grade levels will wear the uniforms of one of the branches of the United States military.
9th Grade = Army
10th Grade = Marines
11th Grade = Navy
12th Grade = Air Force
This is all about discipline. As a former teacher of 14 years in an inner-city, and what I call a Suburban-Inner City school, I can tell you that the behavior of our children, especially middle and high school, is close to barbaric at times. Blow jobs in broad daylight, on school grounds, neighborhood fights, gang fights, assaults upon teachers, vandalism, and much more. These are daily occurrences that get swept under the rug by administrators. We have to get control of our youth. Leaders can not expect teachers to prepare students to pass difficult exams, to be Einsteins (will explain later) and forced mathematicians and scientists with chaotic behavior. Despite inappropriate relationships by teachers with students, the arrest rate and violent, incivil behavior is at an all time high and eclipses our so-called, "bully," problem. Uniforms help to discipline. Removing popular culture in the form of clothing is a teachers aid. Plus we need to send a strong message to children and teens that adults are in control and as students they are there to learn, not engage in chaos. The costs would be low, but this is also another form of funding for our military. And the fun is not removed from school. There will still be prom, homecoming, games, etc. Students can even earn rewards during their senior year that allow them to wear jeans, t-shirts, etc. The gate-keeping for this form of school control must encompass a strong system of non-recruitment. Students are not recruited for the military. These are just uniforms. Teachers don't have to be former military and students don't have to join the campus JROTC.
Student behavior is the number one impediment to learning in the school environment. The non-teaching American see's teachers as complainer's, whiners for more money, yet these individuals receive no administrative support from student threats, violent acts and incivility.
(see HBO - Hard Times At Douglas High) For many teachers and students, the classroom and school environment and culture is hell. And many politicians and administrators have the nerve to say, "well you just need to get tougher." LOL, LMAO, REALLY?!!! And when that teacher gets tough, even defends him or herself, they are then put on suspension or fired. The entire system is not just flawed, its a joke. No other industry operates where employees and management physically fight, yell at each other and curse each other out every single day. Name me one company where managers are threatened by employees constantly and that employee is allowed to come back within 30 minutes, with no consequences? Why should a person who wants to teach have to work in that environment and why should they be the scapegoat for the solutions to altering that environment when they are not given the support or tools then reprimanded when attempting to do so?
CTE AS CORE CURRICULUM
Career and Technology Education has to become the primary focus of all schools including elementary and middle-school. The 3 R's; Reading, Writing and Arithmetic are always the foundation of learning, however these 3 R's must be merged into a universal system under CTE. Every school should be a magnet or academy school, offering various hi-tech to low-tech programs. And these programs can be operated and modified depending on district size. Readers should recognize the immediate impact these approaches have that I'll state now. Early exposure to the unknown, to the out-of-the-box, will almost totally remove many of the long held blockades to educational success such as, "Being smart means acting white." Why? These activities open the mind. They allow for a diverse background. And kids will grow up with these experiences so that by the end of their senior year in high school they view math, science, history and english as second nature. Under my plans teachers are no longer called teachers, but lab technicians. More on that later. I recommend two approaches: The Experiences Track and the Long Form Certification Track. Ugly names but good. Both programs are supported by federal Perkins funding, two local business, two local non-profits and school taxes.
THE EXPERIENCES TRACK
Every child should have deep and strong exposure to technology, science, the arts and much more, beginning in kindergarten. However, it needs to be relative. The Experiences track is where students, beginning with kindergarten, participate in a unique experience that is beyond what American students normally participate in, that leads to a broader mindset (see HBO - Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later). For example; Each school year has a fall and a spring semester. The fall semester is the visualization stage and the spring is the experience stage. The CTE program in this example is scuba diving. All freshmen in this senior class are learning scuba diving and must take the multiple classes where they learn about marine biology and all the concepts, such as Charles Law, Henry's Law, and others. In addition, they learn how math and scuba diving are related through ideas such as depth, pressure and differences in the U.S. measurement system and the metric system. Scuba Diving exposes them to planning, budgets, chemistry, physics, math and much more. All of this is put into practice at the district natatorium, local community pools and high school pools.
So what happens in the spring? This is the experience session. All through the spring the students actually go on diving trips. The put into practice what they have learned. Hands-on experience. Doing and applying. This is just one example. The experiences program is about this type of learning happening every school year from kindergarten until graduation and it is a part of the overall school/district curriculum. That curriculum includes all the three R's as well as team building, planning, manufacturing, distribution, and exhibition with exposure to the various careers that can be obtained with scuba training. Furthermore, students will obtain the opportunity to become certified upon graduation. Here is a listing of what a childs Experience Program would resemble from kindergarten to high school. These are just ideas or suggestions for programs.
Kindergarten - Still and Video Production
First Grade - Robotics
Second Grade - Fishing
Third Grade - Camping & hiking
Fourth Grade - Web page design
Fifth Grade - Archery
Sixth Grade - Carpentry
Seventh Grade - Plumbing
Eighth Grade - Electronics and solar panels
Ninth Grade - mobile app development
Tenth Grade - Scuba diving
Eleventh Grade - Equestrian
Twelfth Grade - Kite building
LONG FORM CERTIFICATION TRACK
The only difference between this approach and the Experiences Track is that the Long Form Certification is a program that follows each class from kindergarten to the end of their high school senior year. An example is Book Publishing. Beginning with kindergarten, students are provided DSLR cameras. They learn how to load their cards into the cameras, turn it on, take photos, etc. The basics. Each student will use computer programs to put their photos in a photo album. The students are then guided by their instructor on how to layout the photos, upload the final to a service like BookBlurb or Apple iPhoto so their parents can buy the final product, a coffee table book. Each grade the number of photos decreases and the writing increases. Yet for every year, they are still uploading and having their final product published. It will then become a graduation requirement that those in the Book Publishing track must have a 100 page novel published. What are students learning? Pre-Visualization, planning, development, creating drafts, taking photos, using Photoshop, managing an online store and configuring prices, tax, manufacturing, distribution, marketing, and exhibition. On the middle school level all students are participants in the making of the yearbook. All of the photos are taken by them. All of the written content is their work. On the high school level, all of the novels are sold using the Amazon.com online self -selling tool, CreateSpace.com. Partial proceeds go back into the schools campus operating budget and the remainder is kept by the students and placed into a college, military or family medical fund. Even and IRA.
School district will be allowed to provide a variety of Long Form and Experiences Programs on their campuses. This is about re-invention. And teachers won't be teachers, but lab technicians. Under my plan every teacher will have a degree in a non-teaching field. They have to have or be working in that field. They must minor in teaching. Imagine long form mobile app programs where students graduate and have eleven or more app development credits. Imagine a bicycle engineering program where graduating seniors have a resume detailing the bikes they designed since first grade and how each year their designs were on showcase and sold and places like Wal-Mart and many mom and pop bike shops. These programs are about re-programming. Imagine not having African-American and Hispanic kids with tunnel vision solely focused on sports and music careers or seeing prison and dropping out as legitimate roles in life. When you crush those very negative mindsets you then have a stronger test taker. A stronger academically prepared student. A prime example of this program that is already in place, but was destroyed by the economic downturn is the Texas mandate called Achieve Texas.
My plan is close to the Japanese Academic and Non-Academic route, but I focus on the merging of the two. Politicians, consultants, post secondary educators and popular culture...all have caused the collapse of education in America. All but the popular culture have worked to force every American child to go to college. They want everyone to be Einstein. They want all to be great math specialists. Impossible. Not everyone is up for that rigor. With the Bush No-Child-Left-Behind approach, I watched elementary school parents and children cry because they were told their child couldn't go on to middle school because they didn't meet the standard of the state wide math test or science test. That is ridiculous. We are adding to the drop out rate with that approach. These same kids, who may not perform well at all on standardized tests, are excellent in performing the tasks they have learned in a CTE class. They can demonstrate how to repair a segment of a car motor. They can demonstrate how to create hi-end special effects for video production. The infrastructure of our country needs welders, carpenters, masons, electricians, a/c repairmen, etc. If you are stuck in the desert of Death Valley, because your car failed, who do you want repairing your vehicle; Dr. John Doe with 8 degrees in philosophy and a genius in qualitative analysis or Mack Doe who is a multi-year certified mechanic? We are facing a lack of common sense among the ranks of politicians, educators and consultants. They are a major threat to our system and they had been since the federalization of American education after the launch of the Russian Sputnik in the late 1950's.
Both programs are funded by the businesses, religious groups, and non-profits. Think of it as adopting a class. Those entities follow those kids from kindergarten to 12th grade graduation. Of course there are incentives from the government.
TEACHER AND STUDENT SECURITY
I'll start with the safety of students. In particular, I'll focus on the rise in the abuse of students physically and sexually at the hands of teachers. This is not acceptable. The crime of teachers having sex with their students should increase and life time bans should be nation-wide. But in terms of behavior, the teacher is always wrong in this situation, yet we need penalties for these students that, "come-on," to teachers. Adults aren't the only sexual predators. There are many students, especially in high school, who see someone they want and they pursue that person whether they are a teacher or not. Teens that are sexually active must be held accountable for their bad behavior sexually as much as the manipulative teacher.
In terms of abuse towards teachers, I am recommending we institute a Security Risk Management Certification. K12 educators already have legal aid, which on average is around eight dollars per check, that provides up to a million dollars of legal protection in the case of a lawsuit. But what I recommend is that teachers that take part and become certified in Security Risk Management training that protects them from being outright fired or put on suspension for defending themselves against violent students. That training includes martial-arts and law enforcement take downs plus restraint as well as vocal techniques for calming potentially violent students. Teachers will also have the legal support to engage in coordinated take-downs with campus law enforcement without the fear of lawsuits. As a teacher today YOU ARE NOT SECURITY! A teacher can not put their hands on a child or student who is engaged in a fight or altercation with another student or with the teacher. As insane as it sounds, you can't do it. The reason we have so many poor performing teachers is morale. Many went into the business to make a difference, but the kids beat them down daily. Just look at all the stories online and on the news about bus drivers being mistreated. Kids today are a big handful. They are not Leave It To Beaver kids. I apply this same Risk Management to bus drivers. Most of this behavior in the schools is kept under wraps by the administration. Most work to keep these incidents out of the press.
CONCLUSION
I believe I have some solid ideas and plans for our educational system. However, if the same destructive pattern continues, we will not have schools in the future. An American child will wake up each morning, turn on their HD TV with Wi-Fi, log into their school districts online courses and take classes via pre-recorded or live video. They will submit assignments and homework to a bucket, hit send. There will be no physical contact with a teacher and in some cases a teacher will be replaced by, not just a pre-recorded video, but an automated or artificial intelligence robot. These TV sets will have Xbox Kinect like technology that will allow the live teacher or artificial intelligence (AI) monitor the students performance, answer questions and survey their movements during physical education time. Tax payer dollars will cover the administration building and previously built schools will be sold and used for malls, corporate headquarters for businesses, country clubs, etc. No more contact with teachers. No more gang fights on school property. No more blow jobs in hallways and outside the school. No more investments in police, principals, sporting facilities. All gone.
I'm a believer in Horace Mann who believe in academics for all; rural, urban, all backgrounds and ethnicity. It just makes for a better, well rounded citizen. But not this insanity.
Ted's Plan for the U.S. Educational System
MILITARY BASED UNIFORMS
Yes. I said it. "Military". "Uniforms". Words that most associate with a reduction in freedom, or communism. Under my plan, all grade levels will wear the uniforms of one of the branches of the United States military.
9th Grade = Army
10th Grade = Marines
11th Grade = Navy
12th Grade = Air Force
This is all about discipline. As a former teacher of 14 years in an inner-city, and what I call a Suburban-Inner City school, I can tell you that the behavior of our children, especially middle and high school, is close to barbaric at times. Blow jobs in broad daylight, on school grounds, neighborhood fights, gang fights, assaults upon teachers, vandalism, and much more. These are daily occurrences that get swept under the rug by administrators. We have to get control of our youth. Leaders can not expect teachers to prepare students to pass difficult exams, to be Einsteins (will explain later) and forced mathematicians and scientists with chaotic behavior. Despite inappropriate relationships by teachers with students, the arrest rate and violent, incivil behavior is at an all time high and eclipses our so-called, "bully," problem. Uniforms help to discipline. Removing popular culture in the form of clothing is a teachers aid. Plus we need to send a strong message to children and teens that adults are in control and as students they are there to learn, not engage in chaos. The costs would be low, but this is also another form of funding for our military. And the fun is not removed from school. There will still be prom, homecoming, games, etc. Students can even earn rewards during their senior year that allow them to wear jeans, t-shirts, etc. The gate-keeping for this form of school control must encompass a strong system of non-recruitment. Students are not recruited for the military. These are just uniforms. Teachers don't have to be former military and students don't have to join the campus JROTC.
Student behavior is the number one impediment to learning in the school environment. The non-teaching American see's teachers as complainer's, whiners for more money, yet these individuals receive no administrative support from student threats, violent acts and incivility.
(see HBO - Hard Times At Douglas High) For many teachers and students, the classroom and school environment and culture is hell. And many politicians and administrators have the nerve to say, "well you just need to get tougher." LOL, LMAO, REALLY?!!! And when that teacher gets tough, even defends him or herself, they are then put on suspension or fired. The entire system is not just flawed, its a joke. No other industry operates where employees and management physically fight, yell at each other and curse each other out every single day. Name me one company where managers are threatened by employees constantly and that employee is allowed to come back within 30 minutes, with no consequences? Why should a person who wants to teach have to work in that environment and why should they be the scapegoat for the solutions to altering that environment when they are not given the support or tools then reprimanded when attempting to do so?
CTE AS CORE CURRICULUM
Career and Technology Education has to become the primary focus of all schools including elementary and middle-school. The 3 R's; Reading, Writing and Arithmetic are always the foundation of learning, however these 3 R's must be merged into a universal system under CTE. Every school should be a magnet or academy school, offering various hi-tech to low-tech programs. And these programs can be operated and modified depending on district size. Readers should recognize the immediate impact these approaches have that I'll state now. Early exposure to the unknown, to the out-of-the-box, will almost totally remove many of the long held blockades to educational success such as, "Being smart means acting white." Why? These activities open the mind. They allow for a diverse background. And kids will grow up with these experiences so that by the end of their senior year in high school they view math, science, history and english as second nature. Under my plans teachers are no longer called teachers, but lab technicians. More on that later. I recommend two approaches: The Experiences Track and the Long Form Certification Track. Ugly names but good. Both programs are supported by federal Perkins funding, two local business, two local non-profits and school taxes.
THE EXPERIENCES TRACK
Every child should have deep and strong exposure to technology, science, the arts and much more, beginning in kindergarten. However, it needs to be relative. The Experiences track is where students, beginning with kindergarten, participate in a unique experience that is beyond what American students normally participate in, that leads to a broader mindset (see HBO - Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later). For example; Each school year has a fall and a spring semester. The fall semester is the visualization stage and the spring is the experience stage. The CTE program in this example is scuba diving. All freshmen in this senior class are learning scuba diving and must take the multiple classes where they learn about marine biology and all the concepts, such as Charles Law, Henry's Law, and others. In addition, they learn how math and scuba diving are related through ideas such as depth, pressure and differences in the U.S. measurement system and the metric system. Scuba Diving exposes them to planning, budgets, chemistry, physics, math and much more. All of this is put into practice at the district natatorium, local community pools and high school pools.
So what happens in the spring? This is the experience session. All through the spring the students actually go on diving trips. The put into practice what they have learned. Hands-on experience. Doing and applying. This is just one example. The experiences program is about this type of learning happening every school year from kindergarten until graduation and it is a part of the overall school/district curriculum. That curriculum includes all the three R's as well as team building, planning, manufacturing, distribution, and exhibition with exposure to the various careers that can be obtained with scuba training. Furthermore, students will obtain the opportunity to become certified upon graduation. Here is a listing of what a childs Experience Program would resemble from kindergarten to high school. These are just ideas or suggestions for programs.
Kindergarten - Still and Video Production
First Grade - Robotics
Second Grade - Fishing
Third Grade - Camping & hiking
Fourth Grade - Web page design
Fifth Grade - Archery
Sixth Grade - Carpentry
Seventh Grade - Plumbing
Eighth Grade - Electronics and solar panels
Ninth Grade - mobile app development
Tenth Grade - Scuba diving
Eleventh Grade - Equestrian
Twelfth Grade - Kite building
LONG FORM CERTIFICATION TRACK
The only difference between this approach and the Experiences Track is that the Long Form Certification is a program that follows each class from kindergarten to the end of their high school senior year. An example is Book Publishing. Beginning with kindergarten, students are provided DSLR cameras. They learn how to load their cards into the cameras, turn it on, take photos, etc. The basics. Each student will use computer programs to put their photos in a photo album. The students are then guided by their instructor on how to layout the photos, upload the final to a service like BookBlurb or Apple iPhoto so their parents can buy the final product, a coffee table book. Each grade the number of photos decreases and the writing increases. Yet for every year, they are still uploading and having their final product published. It will then become a graduation requirement that those in the Book Publishing track must have a 100 page novel published. What are students learning? Pre-Visualization, planning, development, creating drafts, taking photos, using Photoshop, managing an online store and configuring prices, tax, manufacturing, distribution, marketing, and exhibition. On the middle school level all students are participants in the making of the yearbook. All of the photos are taken by them. All of the written content is their work. On the high school level, all of the novels are sold using the Amazon.com online self -selling tool, CreateSpace.com. Partial proceeds go back into the schools campus operating budget and the remainder is kept by the students and placed into a college, military or family medical fund. Even and IRA.
School district will be allowed to provide a variety of Long Form and Experiences Programs on their campuses. This is about re-invention. And teachers won't be teachers, but lab technicians. Under my plan every teacher will have a degree in a non-teaching field. They have to have or be working in that field. They must minor in teaching. Imagine long form mobile app programs where students graduate and have eleven or more app development credits. Imagine a bicycle engineering program where graduating seniors have a resume detailing the bikes they designed since first grade and how each year their designs were on showcase and sold and places like Wal-Mart and many mom and pop bike shops. These programs are about re-programming. Imagine not having African-American and Hispanic kids with tunnel vision solely focused on sports and music careers or seeing prison and dropping out as legitimate roles in life. When you crush those very negative mindsets you then have a stronger test taker. A stronger academically prepared student. A prime example of this program that is already in place, but was destroyed by the economic downturn is the Texas mandate called Achieve Texas.
My plan is close to the Japanese Academic and Non-Academic route, but I focus on the merging of the two. Politicians, consultants, post secondary educators and popular culture...all have caused the collapse of education in America. All but the popular culture have worked to force every American child to go to college. They want everyone to be Einstein. They want all to be great math specialists. Impossible. Not everyone is up for that rigor. With the Bush No-Child-Left-Behind approach, I watched elementary school parents and children cry because they were told their child couldn't go on to middle school because they didn't meet the standard of the state wide math test or science test. That is ridiculous. We are adding to the drop out rate with that approach. These same kids, who may not perform well at all on standardized tests, are excellent in performing the tasks they have learned in a CTE class. They can demonstrate how to repair a segment of a car motor. They can demonstrate how to create hi-end special effects for video production. The infrastructure of our country needs welders, carpenters, masons, electricians, a/c repairmen, etc. If you are stuck in the desert of Death Valley, because your car failed, who do you want repairing your vehicle; Dr. John Doe with 8 degrees in philosophy and a genius in qualitative analysis or Mack Doe who is a multi-year certified mechanic? We are facing a lack of common sense among the ranks of politicians, educators and consultants. They are a major threat to our system and they had been since the federalization of American education after the launch of the Russian Sputnik in the late 1950's.
Both programs are funded by the businesses, religious groups, and non-profits. Think of it as adopting a class. Those entities follow those kids from kindergarten to 12th grade graduation. Of course there are incentives from the government.
TEACHER AND STUDENT SECURITY
I'll start with the safety of students. In particular, I'll focus on the rise in the abuse of students physically and sexually at the hands of teachers. This is not acceptable. The crime of teachers having sex with their students should increase and life time bans should be nation-wide. But in terms of behavior, the teacher is always wrong in this situation, yet we need penalties for these students that, "come-on," to teachers. Adults aren't the only sexual predators. There are many students, especially in high school, who see someone they want and they pursue that person whether they are a teacher or not. Teens that are sexually active must be held accountable for their bad behavior sexually as much as the manipulative teacher.
In terms of abuse towards teachers, I am recommending we institute a Security Risk Management Certification. K12 educators already have legal aid, which on average is around eight dollars per check, that provides up to a million dollars of legal protection in the case of a lawsuit. But what I recommend is that teachers that take part and become certified in Security Risk Management training that protects them from being outright fired or put on suspension for defending themselves against violent students. That training includes martial-arts and law enforcement take downs plus restraint as well as vocal techniques for calming potentially violent students. Teachers will also have the legal support to engage in coordinated take-downs with campus law enforcement without the fear of lawsuits. As a teacher today YOU ARE NOT SECURITY! A teacher can not put their hands on a child or student who is engaged in a fight or altercation with another student or with the teacher. As insane as it sounds, you can't do it. The reason we have so many poor performing teachers is morale. Many went into the business to make a difference, but the kids beat them down daily. Just look at all the stories online and on the news about bus drivers being mistreated. Kids today are a big handful. They are not Leave It To Beaver kids. I apply this same Risk Management to bus drivers. Most of this behavior in the schools is kept under wraps by the administration. Most work to keep these incidents out of the press.
CONCLUSION
I believe I have some solid ideas and plans for our educational system. However, if the same destructive pattern continues, we will not have schools in the future. An American child will wake up each morning, turn on their HD TV with Wi-Fi, log into their school districts online courses and take classes via pre-recorded or live video. They will submit assignments and homework to a bucket, hit send. There will be no physical contact with a teacher and in some cases a teacher will be replaced by, not just a pre-recorded video, but an automated or artificial intelligence robot. These TV sets will have Xbox Kinect like technology that will allow the live teacher or artificial intelligence (AI) monitor the students performance, answer questions and survey their movements during physical education time. Tax payer dollars will cover the administration building and previously built schools will be sold and used for malls, corporate headquarters for businesses, country clubs, etc. No more contact with teachers. No more gang fights on school property. No more blow jobs in hallways and outside the school. No more investments in police, principals, sporting facilities. All gone.
I'm a believer in Horace Mann who believe in academics for all; rural, urban, all backgrounds and ethnicity. It just makes for a better, well rounded citizen. But not this insanity.
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