It doesn't make sense.

I was speaking with a fellow educator the other day and we were talking about educators who have somehow lost their passion (maybe never had it) for teaching. One of the things we were discussing is how so many teachers have become very mediocre in their 'profession' (if you want to call it that). I don't understand why people continue to do a half-assed job. Why don't they go elsewhere and do that? Oh wait, if you do that in many corporate jobs, you'd be fired before you were hired good.

It saddens me when I see or hear about educators that don't teach (or at least pretend to teach). The kids talk about them and often times they don't realize how that educator is saying they are stupid or dumb by not attempting to teach them. Most of the kids don't care, they just want to get a good grade and pass the class. What many of them fail to realize is the proof is in the pudding. How can you be number one in your class, in honors or AP classes, and when you take the ACT test, you score just the same as all the other students.

I don't get it. It doesn't make any sense. Either the teachers aren't really teaching these kids on that level, or the kids aren't applying themselves. I don't know. My friend and I were discussing this because she just got an AP class on her schedule because the former teacher wasn't really teaching the kids at an AP level. The former teacher got mad that this change took place.

What is really going on in America that people who are trusted to educate no longer seem to care. It seems like the focus is on passing kids and getting them to graduate. It doesn't really matter if they learn anything. I am always baffled how a country that is supposed to be so great, is lagging as it relates to education. Maybe if more money was spent to improve education and educate parents, there wouldn't be a need for so many prisons. Oops, then so many companies would lose a lot of money. That's another issue, another blog entry.

If America really wants to see improvement, we need to wake up. There are so many other countries surpassing us by and we don't seem to mind.