My first-grade teacher beat my left-handedness out of me. My second-grade teacher was a sadist. My third-grade teacher was entirely forgettable. When I arrived in fourth grade after moving from Minneapolis to Altadena, CA, my class was learning multiplication tables, a topic of which I was completely ignorant. Finally, in seventh grade I had some interesting teachers, and an outstanding math teacher in eighth grade. Sixty years later, I keep in touch with him. Then in high school, I had excellent teachers. This was back when Max Rafferty was California Superintendent of Public Instruction, and Pasadena schools were among the top three in the nation -- Evansville, IL, Palo Alto, CA, and Pasadena, CA -- all founded by George Evans. I attended the same school where all the black and Japanese and Latino and ... students attended. I had a choice of six languages: Spanish, French, German, Latin, Russian, or Mandarin Chinese. I chose Russian. Max Rafferty's daughter Kathleen was in my Russian class (and so was Sirhan Sirhan, whom I counted a friend at the time). I had two years of calculus instruction. By black chemistry teacher was so outstanding that Caltech recruited him to be, at first, liaison to secondary education, and then with more responsibilities. They've named a building after Lee Franke Browne.
The parents of a student at the all-white school across town decided that black students at my school were getting an inferior education and filed a suit now known as Spangler v. Board of Education. That resulted in a Federal Judge named Manuel Real running Pasadena schools for twelve years. The "obviously superior" all-white school offered two languages (Spanish and French) and math courses ended with trigonometry. Pasadena schools never recovered. My alma mater (John Muir High School, where Jackie Robinson graduated) almost lost accreditation ten years ago.
John and David Pennington are absolutely correct. Here's my view of American education:
Pre-school is intended to prepare for kindergarten.
Kindergarten is intended to prepare for elementary school.
Elementary school is intended to prepare for middle school.
Middle school is intended to prepare for high school.
High school is intended to prepare for college.
College is intended to prepare for grad school.
Grad school is intended to produce professors and their serfs and indentured servants.
My son-in-law was required to earn a Master's Degree in Education in order to get a California teaching certificate. He refers to it as a "Master's Degree in Drivel." His dad was a teacher too. He said "I love teaching but I hate the union I'm required to join."
Even though learning to read and write Chinese takes four years, instead of learning to read and write English in one year (in a competent school), Chinese elementary-school students are studying Algebra. My native-Chinese colleagues from Beijing and Shanghai told me that even in first grade, their last "period" at school consisted of cleaning their classroom and taking out the trash. Along with CCP indoctrination, they are actually taught some responsibilities.
Here is a message from Dr. Tobias Zahn, bio-chemistry in Pforzheim, Germany. He did his doctoral thesis work at a research institute in Colorado and we spent time together snowshoeing in the Rocky Mountains.
A very interesting article and it closely mirrors my own experiences in school (my brother and I were lucky, my sister less so) and more so with our kids nowadays. Unfortunately, while the majority of teachers in Germany obtain a university degree, 'schooling' or 'Pädagogik' plays a very minor role, and my impression is that way too many teachers have the described dulling effect on children. Interestingly, I find that a brief encounter during enrolment or at a teacher-parent meeting (there's usually one evening at the start of the new school year and the teachers introduce themselves to a class' parents) suffices that you can tell which category a teacher belongs to. It's unfortunate that there's no process in place to sort teachers along those categories and allow only the, how shall I say, 'nourishing' ones to teach.
I have friends in Baden-Wurttemburg and Swabia. I enjoy visiting them in Karlsruhe, Sindelfingen, and Böblingen (but I've never visited Pforzheim). But I got lost trying to visit the Fernsehturm in Stuttgart for its famous Kirschtorte, and haven't tried again. I have a friend in Heimersheim near Alzey in Rheinland-Pfalz who is a retired "gymnasium" (high school) math teacher, whose hobby is transcribing old handwritten civil registry records of birth, marriage, death, etc. into his spreadsheet. He's been a very valuable help in my genealogy research. I am utterly unable to read "Sutterlin" script. He found my great-great-great grandfather's 1813 marriage license in Sprendlingen -- all in eminently-readable French script because Napoleon had arrived and enforced detailed record keeping, about which Germans became obsessed.
Agreed! We need teachers who are 'nourishing' or nurturing, as was my first-grade teacher, but not the ones my sister and brother had.
My time in the Realschule-Dormagen (Mittelschule) was after summer break in 1962 till the start of summer break in 1964. Those were my 8th and 9th grade years. My principal teachers--five men--were all WWII Wehrmacht veterans. I'm pretty sure my homeroom teacher had been an officer. They were all enthusiastic about teaching us and were always well-prepared. We also had not a single problem with classroom discipline. :)
Yes, our six years in Germany in the 1960s and six years in Switzerland in the 1980s were rich with personnal experiences and different from experiences in our native USA.. It helped to speak the local dialect of high German and high German. Then they become friends much quicker. I was there for military service, graduate studies and consultant to several Swiss nuclear power plants.
Currently our public school students are taught mathematics but they are not taught philosophy. Thus, they are not taught that there is something that is called a "fallacious argument. This mistake should be remedied>
That is an interesting observation and an excellent point. Thinking back, I recognize that we never dealt with any controversies. In studying the Civil War, for example, the over-arching point of view could be summarized as "Some folks were wrong about slavery, but we all have the right beliefs now." There was no discussion of the issues. We were in the middle of the war in Vietnam, but we never discussed the matter in school: it was simply a fact.
Roll the clock forward to the early 2000s, and my son had a social studies teacher who was anti-capitalist, a science teacher who taught the party line on Global Warming--it made my head spin. The saving grace for him was the debate team, where they were coached on the process of developing a position and arguments to defend it.
While I like the idea you put forward, I wonder where we'll find the teachers to do it justice.
This is an excellent article about education in the USA and Germany. My family has lived six years in Germany and six years in Switzerland and I earned a Dr. of Engineering degree from a German University.
There are so many things easily done better in many European countries, education being one of them.
I am glad that our two granddaughters have been in the Swiss education system in Italian from age three.
While many American educators and schools try hard. Some are tremendously successful, the United States can learn a lot about education from Europe, China, South Korea,, Japan, etc.
John Droz, thanks for your Newsletter - Critical Thinking and special thanks to your guest author on the subject of education in the USA and Germany.
This is an excellent synthesis of the problems in US education.
We fought mightily in Indiana against CC. Initially , we thought we had Gov Pence on our side when he supported eliminating this curriculum, however, it proved to be a bait and switch. There was a huge public hearing as the subject of the new Indiana Standards were debated as a replacement. Dozens of the gathered hundreds of parents, grandparents, educators and stakeholders spoke out against because we had done a deep dive into this curriculum plan, only to find very little difference from the Fed version. It was a quite a meeting- speaker after speaker gave impassioned pleas to the Governor to scrap these and start fresh. Imagine our disgust when two young, sharply dressed lobbyists from California, sitting on the panel with the Governor, stood and gave the briefing to Pence on the merits of the new standards.
Immediately following, the vote was called and it was over. It had all been merely a futile exercise in the theater of “democracy,” a fait accompli.
My daughters gained the permanent stain of cynicism towards politicians that day, and their children will NEVER darken the door of a public school. Pence is a disgrace among most all Republicans except among the well-heeled elites and millions of children have suffered.
GO CLASSICAL CURRICULUM, 100%! It’s inexpensive, tried and true!
Unfortunately, my experience in speaking at school board meetings and local superintendent is the same. The superintendent usually listened and seemed sympathetic, but in the end, went the liberal way. School board members were divided in whether they actually listened and acted interested and the other half obviously were not listening. Pence did no one any favors.
My first-grade teacher beat my left-handedness out of me. My second-grade teacher was a sadist. My third-grade teacher was entirely forgettable. When I arrived in fourth grade after moving from Minneapolis to Altadena, CA, my class was learning multiplication tables, a topic of which I was completely ignorant. Finally, in seventh grade I had some interesting teachers, and an outstanding math teacher in eighth grade. Sixty years later, I keep in touch with him. Then in high school, I had excellent teachers. This was back when Max Rafferty was California Superintendent of Public Instruction, and Pasadena schools were among the top three in the nation -- Evansville, IL, Palo Alto, CA, and Pasadena, CA -- all founded by George Evans. I attended the same school where all the black and Japanese and Latino and ... students attended. I had a choice of six languages: Spanish, French, German, Latin, Russian, or Mandarin Chinese. I chose Russian. Max Rafferty's daughter Kathleen was in my Russian class (and so was Sirhan Sirhan, whom I counted a friend at the time). I had two years of calculus instruction. By black chemistry teacher was so outstanding that Caltech recruited him to be, at first, liaison to secondary education, and then with more responsibilities. They've named a building after Lee Franke Browne.
The parents of a student at the all-white school across town decided that black students at my school were getting an inferior education and filed a suit now known as Spangler v. Board of Education. That resulted in a Federal Judge named Manuel Real running Pasadena schools for twelve years. The "obviously superior" all-white school offered two languages (Spanish and French) and math courses ended with trigonometry. Pasadena schools never recovered. My alma mater (John Muir High School, where Jackie Robinson graduated) almost lost accreditation ten years ago.
John and David Pennington are absolutely correct. Here's my view of American education:
Pre-school is intended to prepare for kindergarten.
Kindergarten is intended to prepare for elementary school.
Elementary school is intended to prepare for middle school.
Middle school is intended to prepare for high school.
High school is intended to prepare for college.
College is intended to prepare for grad school.
Grad school is intended to produce professors and their serfs and indentured servants.
My son-in-law was required to earn a Master's Degree in Education in order to get a California teaching certificate. He refers to it as a "Master's Degree in Drivel." His dad was a teacher too. He said "I love teaching but I hate the union I'm required to join."
Even though learning to read and write Chinese takes four years, instead of learning to read and write English in one year (in a competent school), Chinese elementary-school students are studying Algebra. My native-Chinese colleagues from Beijing and Shanghai told me that even in first grade, their last "period" at school consisted of cleaning their classroom and taking out the trash. Along with CCP indoctrination, they are actually taught some responsibilities.
Your son-in-law makes an excellent point: the Teacher’s Union!👍💥
I guess nuns weren’t so bad for 12 years, looking back 50+ years.
Thank you for sharing!
Here is a message from Dr. Tobias Zahn, bio-chemistry in Pforzheim, Germany. He did his doctoral thesis work at a research institute in Colorado and we spent time together snowshoeing in the Rocky Mountains.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A very interesting article and it closely mirrors my own experiences in school (my brother and I were lucky, my sister less so) and more so with our kids nowadays. Unfortunately, while the majority of teachers in Germany obtain a university degree, 'schooling' or 'Pädagogik' plays a very minor role, and my impression is that way too many teachers have the described dulling effect on children. Interestingly, I find that a brief encounter during enrolment or at a teacher-parent meeting (there's usually one evening at the start of the new school year and the teachers introduce themselves to a class' parents) suffices that you can tell which category a teacher belongs to. It's unfortunate that there's no process in place to sort teachers along those categories and allow only the, how shall I say, 'nourishing' ones to teach.
Kudos to good teachers everywhere!
Cheers,
Tobias Zahn
Pforzheim, Germany
I have friends in Baden-Wurttemburg and Swabia. I enjoy visiting them in Karlsruhe, Sindelfingen, and Böblingen (but I've never visited Pforzheim). But I got lost trying to visit the Fernsehturm in Stuttgart for its famous Kirschtorte, and haven't tried again. I have a friend in Heimersheim near Alzey in Rheinland-Pfalz who is a retired "gymnasium" (high school) math teacher, whose hobby is transcribing old handwritten civil registry records of birth, marriage, death, etc. into his spreadsheet. He's been a very valuable help in my genealogy research. I am utterly unable to read "Sutterlin" script. He found my great-great-great grandfather's 1813 marriage license in Sprendlingen -- all in eminently-readable French script because Napoleon had arrived and enforced detailed record keeping, about which Germans became obsessed.
Agreed! We need teachers who are 'nourishing' or nurturing, as was my first-grade teacher, but not the ones my sister and brother had.
My time in the Realschule-Dormagen (Mittelschule) was after summer break in 1962 till the start of summer break in 1964. Those were my 8th and 9th grade years. My principal teachers--five men--were all WWII Wehrmacht veterans. I'm pretty sure my homeroom teacher had been an officer. They were all enthusiastic about teaching us and were always well-prepared. We also had not a single problem with classroom discipline. :)
Yes, our six years in Germany in the 1960s and six years in Switzerland in the 1980s were rich with personnal experiences and different from experiences in our native USA.. It helped to speak the local dialect of high German and high German. Then they become friends much quicker. I was there for military service, graduate studies and consultant to several Swiss nuclear power plants.
Currently our public school students are taught mathematics but they are not taught philosophy. Thus, they are not taught that there is something that is called a "fallacious argument. This mistake should be remedied>
That is an interesting observation and an excellent point. Thinking back, I recognize that we never dealt with any controversies. In studying the Civil War, for example, the over-arching point of view could be summarized as "Some folks were wrong about slavery, but we all have the right beliefs now." There was no discussion of the issues. We were in the middle of the war in Vietnam, but we never discussed the matter in school: it was simply a fact.
Roll the clock forward to the early 2000s, and my son had a social studies teacher who was anti-capitalist, a science teacher who taught the party line on Global Warming--it made my head spin. The saving grace for him was the debate team, where they were coached on the process of developing a position and arguments to defend it.
While I like the idea you put forward, I wonder where we'll find the teachers to do it justice.
This is an excellent article about education in the USA and Germany. My family has lived six years in Germany and six years in Switzerland and I earned a Dr. of Engineering degree from a German University.
There are so many things easily done better in many European countries, education being one of them.
I am glad that our two granddaughters have been in the Swiss education system in Italian from age three.
While many American educators and schools try hard. Some are tremendously successful, the United States can learn a lot about education from Europe, China, South Korea,, Japan, etc.
John Droz, thanks for your Newsletter - Critical Thinking and special thanks to your guest author on the subject of education in the USA and Germany.
Awesome… I’ll pass this along to our Dean of Education at Michigan, who is also spearheading a K-12 school in Detroit.
Excellent will be in today's edition, Rich Kozlovich
This is an excellent synthesis of the problems in US education.
We fought mightily in Indiana against CC. Initially , we thought we had Gov Pence on our side when he supported eliminating this curriculum, however, it proved to be a bait and switch. There was a huge public hearing as the subject of the new Indiana Standards were debated as a replacement. Dozens of the gathered hundreds of parents, grandparents, educators and stakeholders spoke out against because we had done a deep dive into this curriculum plan, only to find very little difference from the Fed version. It was a quite a meeting- speaker after speaker gave impassioned pleas to the Governor to scrap these and start fresh. Imagine our disgust when two young, sharply dressed lobbyists from California, sitting on the panel with the Governor, stood and gave the briefing to Pence on the merits of the new standards.
Immediately following, the vote was called and it was over. It had all been merely a futile exercise in the theater of “democracy,” a fait accompli.
My daughters gained the permanent stain of cynicism towards politicians that day, and their children will NEVER darken the door of a public school. Pence is a disgrace among most all Republicans except among the well-heeled elites and millions of children have suffered.
GO CLASSICAL CURRICULUM, 100%! It’s inexpensive, tried and true!
Unfortunately, my experience in speaking at school board meetings and local superintendent is the same. The superintendent usually listened and seemed sympathetic, but in the end, went the liberal way. School board members were divided in whether they actually listened and acted interested and the other half obviously were not listening. Pence did no one any favors.
Granny: TY for that sad story. I will have a followup on my take about what the core problem is, on Monday.
An outstanding summary of public education. Thank you!