do you have any particular thoughts about the school system
well um i
i think that in in uh recently with the i'm not sure if it's more a problem with American families or a problem with the school system they seem to be burdening the school system more and more with
problems any problems that a child might have whether it's actually a school related thing or not and i
i say agree with you a hundred percent there
yeah and and well it's gotten to a point where the schools are expected to take care of everything
oh
if uh you've some kid who doesn't have uh
who's from a broken family the schools are supposed to fill that void it's gotten way beyond teaching uh
you know teaching classes and uh maybe providing extracurricular sports activities or something like oh were kind of traditionally the school's roles
yeah
yeah it's interesting because uh we're just having conversation on this uh with a couple of people yesterday and i was expressing my frustrations that uh
some of the so many problems i i work in a high school are that kids don't have a a degree uh a of self-discipline which may be reflected
in society at large uh and you can't expect in a classroom for a particular course an hour a day to counteract uh sixteen or seventeen years of influence at home
right
um and it's seen more so because when you call parents up many parents won't even recognize
that there is a problem and will say they'll say oh well our kids my kid i've never heard anything about this before this is the first time there have been problems and
and you say don't these parents know that teachers talk and you know we do check with other teachers and other teachers find the same things for this child and you know how do you tell your parent's the parent hey wake up and smell the coffee
right
right
but um it it is a problem and i'm not sure just uh how how the school system could operate in a vacuum on it whether maybe through a commitment of the PTA
yeah
uh and the parents being informed better that in fact that the problems that are nationwide
yeah
are are problems um of society and that that the school can only do so much on it
well then then again when you have uh a society where a certain percentage of the parents are uh doing drugs in the home uh either unemployed and don't care about a uh just a have their own problems
um-hum
yeah yeah
how how do you expect the school to um or how do you expect the you can't really expect that parent who's quite frankly a loser in life as it is to to care about the the situation with their child and
that's right um-hum
you know what scares me too is that we have yet to see uh the biggest effect of the crack children
right
uh in the school system these are children that are born with low deficit attention deficit and gosh what's going to happen when these kids start coming into the school system that that's really scary
right
yeah
but there are i think there are a couple of areas where the school system can improve and this is something that i see too many times students get
diagnosed as slow learners and in fact they're not they're behavior problems
right
and so they get put in in in our school system in a class that's limited for skills children that have really have to master skills and that's not their problem
um-hum
um at the same time i've seen we we have a
uh an international population there's no bridge area for students coming out of the ESOL which is English for Speakers of Other Languages program the once they're past ESOL they get out they got thrown right into the total mainstream
uh-huh
right
and uh there really needs to be a bridge some sort of transition
right
for that so the school systems can improve both in standing up for splitting classes you know having learning disabled learning slow slow children in slow classes but not mixing them with behavior problems
right
and then you know the case where they put the behavior problems in the average classes you get these kids that are average students but highly motivated
right
and then you throw in kids that are not motivated maybe bright but they're discipline problems and you sometimes the average classes really
are problems because you've got such a mixed bag there
um-hum
right
you know the gifted and talented are fast classes there's really not that much of a problem with but it's
well i i've seen more uh incredibly intelligent intelligent underachievers than than uh
um-hum
i personally i will i would take a person who's motivated and a little uh less intelligent than the person who uh is one of these very intelligent people who just kind of
that's yeah
isn't motivated to do anything
i remember i had a college professor who once said that genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration
yeah well i i not to toot my own horn here or anything but i i was graduated from my high school i was the valedictorian and i know that there were a lot of kids that were an awful lot smarter than me
um-hum
and they proved out like when it came time to take the SATs mine were good but they weren't great and uh
um-hum
um-hum
when i got into college i struggled i struggled just to uh get my degree in the in the field that i was in whereas i knew people that
yeah
in high school were kind of lazy and all but they got motivated in college and they did a lot better than i did and when it
yeah i guess kids do mature at different ages too that's and you know as a teacher you you try to make be understanding that you know there are different ages kids are is
right
that a kid that's just a question of maturity or is he problem child but teachers are asked to diagnose so much
hum
um there i mean i mean we're have to be we're alerted there's all sorts of systems where suicide
right
uh predisposition i mean we're alerted to what the moment we see something if we see a child that we have any reason that's on drugs such as if he's got a beeper or
if they're if they're flashing lots of money around we've there are certain things to do i mean so teachers the school system's asked to do so much but you can't operate in a vacuum
you actually have students with with beepers
this is a we're in a rather wealthy suburb of Washington
uh-huh
and a student with a beeper immediately gets sent down to the uh principal
i mean where what are the what could they possibly be thinking i mean how
it's for drug use they can't imagine for anything else
yeah
you you know it's it's amazing but uh you get all sorts you get all all sorts of things uh in the schools uh uh and it's
and you know as a teacher you're alert you're alert for the kid who's very drowsy you're alert to the kid who suddenly has a um behavioral change and you refer them to the nurse and
right
and so i mean you have to find out whether there's a legitimate reason or whether this is a warning signal
yeah can you how can you how can you expect to
and parents frequently resent when you ask them is there a problem that we should be aware of
oh yeah i i was uh sitting in the barber shop i'm i'm an officer in the Air Force and i was having my hair cut
um-hum
and the barber uh got a call while i was there uh from his son's school his son's in high school and his son was failing gym and uh and having trouble with a few other things but
you know it's like uh this guy was like why now there's no problem with my kid my kid's a great kid and all this the kid had missed all these classes and basically he his answer was oh i gave him permission to to miss
um-hum
yeah the denial mechanism is really strong and so many parents are facilitators i mean they're manipulated by their children i've been fortunate i have uh
yeah
right
a son who's a sophomore in college up in Massachusetts at uh Amherst and my other son is a senior in high school and he's going on to Williams and i mean they're really super they're both national level swimmers
uh-huh
sure
and where we've been very fortunate but you know they had to be held accountable too i mean you know at some point a parent does help their kid but in in some ways but but you have to say at what point isn't the help becoming negative
right
sure
and i think this is where the school system uh is suffering and not through any fault of the effort of the school system
right
but gee it was good talking with you
it was good talking to you too
yeah so there are people throughout the country that feel the same ways that you do and and are connected with the schools
yeah
yeah i've had interesting conversations on several subjects not uh
not just this but different the different things it's amazing how the you know people you talk to have some interesting conversations and uh it's too bad that all this stuff is just being thrown into a data base and that none of the ideas or thoughts are
um-hum
being used at all
well we are both listen good luck take care bye-bye
yeah that's true all right yep bye-bye
