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"That all disabilities are equally severe for all individuals." This, I never claimed. I actually claim that my disabilities are actually quite severe, more severe than average, which clearly contradicts the claim I am said to have made.
I will admit my bias: I have often seen disabilities which are not learning disabilities clustered with them, not by official sources but by others. This causes me great pain, as many of these students have other problems, usually low I.Q.s, which are unrelated to learning disabilities. I have starved to remove any connotation of low I.Q. from the term, and have probably been overly vigorous and not careful enough in my attempts.
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Kamisaki, because we have more teachers than any other country (I don't have research to back it up, but I bet you a nickel that's true). According to the US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (from the last census), the average person with a bachelor's degree in the US earns nearly fifty thousand dollars a year. Remember, that's with teachers as an outlier bringing the average down, so if you could take teachers out of that average, the real number would go up. The current number would be about a 25% increase over what I earned last year, and I'm a twelve-year veteran. If you wanted to increase every teacher's salary by 25%, where would the money come from? Would we be able to buy books? Reduce class sizes? Build new schools? Buy new uniforms for the football team? Get paper for our copiers and laser printers?
According to the census, there are 6.2 million teachers in the united states. Giving them all an extra $12,000 a year, say, would cost $74,400,000,000. Where would 74 billion dollars come from? How much of an increased tax burden could you support? For myself, the answer is not much. (But then, if you gave me a 25% raise, I suppose that answer might change!)
I don't know enough about national economics to get a clear sense of just how much money that is, in national terms, but I just don't think education is a high enough priority to warrant that kind of spending. Especially not when the system limps along just fine as it is, and a limping educational system can't help but favor those who already have political power.
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Pel, I've read the study. I read the study when it came out, and I'm telling you that "only one more error per article than Britannica on average" is an in appropriate summation of any study unless you list the sample size, or at least the average number of facts per article, or some sort of ratio. The problem isn't the study. It's your reporting of the study. Wow, I really do find you exasperating, you are like a living embodiment of the saying, "A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing."
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But Pel, you seem to believe that since you consider your learning disabilities to be severe and because you feel that you are still able to learn at a higher than average level, others should be able to do the same thing.
It simply doesn't work that way. I have severe OCD, and although I don't think anyone considers ocd to be a learning disorder, it does put many restrictions on mental function. I can still academically outpace my peers, and I have always been able to do so. However, I recognize that others may not have the same advantages as I do, and I have been told outright by more than one of my doctors that I am ridiculously intelligent, my mind is much more capable than it may outwardly seem because of my disorder (and believe me, I was asked to skip high school and go straight to a four-year college at 14, so I still seem pretty smart ), and were I not so bright, it would be very unlikely that I would be able to function, much less excel. Of course, I also have the advantage of being able to afford competent, private care, which makes a very big difference as well.
I think I'm not alone when I say that you don't seem to recognize that something being easy for you does not make it easy for others.
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Irami, I am fairly certain that if I quoted Alexander Pope in the manner you have, it would become a major issue.
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"something being easy for you does not make it easy for others." Not everything comes easily to me, I have to work harder than the vast majority of my peers at some things (Elementary school, with penmanship and spelling as subjects was awful, the price I paid for a parochial education on the level of my peers, rather than a public school with special ed classes.)
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Pel, when you say "my learning disabilities are more serious," I find myself laughing.
Dude, you don't even know if you are learning-disabled. You've never even gotten a coherent diagnosis. Frankly, I think you've been sent to "experts" who couldn't find their respective asses with a copy of Portnoy's Complaint, and who've done some damage to you by confusing personality traits with inborn flaws.
I'll tell you again: one of my friends is so dyslexic that he's functionally illiterate. He can read only in specific controlled settings, with paper and text of specific colors and contrast levels. His brain simply isn't physically capable of converting the symbols to letters and letters to words under other circumstances.
That's severe dyslexia. Occasionally typing "I have starved" when what you mean is "I have strived" is not severe dyslexia.
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quote:Originally posted by Pelegius: Kamisaki, money, intelligently spent, is needed. Firstly, in no particular order, to increase salaries of teachers to an appropriate level (I cannot tell you how many people, extremely smart people, have told me that they would teach if they did not have a family to support. Yes, their logic is slightly flawed and their life philosophy may need to be addressed, but they do have a point.) Secondly, we need better supplies, including new buildings. (Even in wealthy districts, schools are depressing, which is hardly the best atmosphere for learning.) Finally, to hire more teachers.
Because we can do this, because we have the money to do so, in fact.
I'll wait to respond to your "pay teachers more" point until after I hear what Icarus has to say, but don't think I'm ignoring you on that part.
EDIT: Okay, Icarus responded while was typing that the first time, and I agree with pretty much everything he says as to why it won't happen. I do have a few other things to say about it, though. First, what do you think is valid pay for a teacher? Because while it is true that they do get paid lower than other professions with similar levels of experience, there are other factors that make teaching a more attractive profession than those other jobs. First off is that whole "priorities" issue you talked about. Many people do want to teach the younger generation enough to be willing to take a pay cut in order to do it. Second is that teachers usually only work for nine months out of the year, making teaching one of the careers more conducive to having a family and raising kids. Last is that teachers often get better benefits (it being a government job) than private sector jobs. So all those are reasons why teachers will never get as much in straight dollar amounts as other professionals. Now whether their current pay levels are still too low even after accounting for those issues, that's debatable, and is an issue that needs to be defined on a regional basis, I think.
As far as new buildings, I don't really see that as a problem. Of course, I live in Las Vegas, and due to the huge growth rate we've had here, most of the schools are new, many of them built within the last 10-15 years. I'd imagine the situation is similar in many places in the west, probably not so much further east. So maybe that's something that needs to be done on a case by case basis.
And hiring more teachers would probably be the best use for money.
However, I think that cutting down on administrative and bureaucratic costs would be give us better bang for our buck, and allowing more competition from private schools and homeschool programs would do more to improve education than just spending more money one doing the same things we do now.
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"However, I think that cutting down on administrative and bureaucratic costs would be give us better bang for our buck, and allowing more competition from private schools and homeschool programs would do more to improve education than just spending more money one doing the same things we do now." Doubtless.
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"Dude, you don't even know if you are learning-disabled. You've never even gotten a coherent diagnosis." Dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyspraxia are all certain. Either those or unknown conditions with the same symptoms, but this is as certain as anything is in psychiatry. These diagnoses were agreed upon by I think three psychiatrists and several teachers who were specialists in teaching learning disabled kids.
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"First, what do you think is valid pay for a teacher?" That’s difficult to say, much depends on where they live (my city is much cheaper than New York or San Francisco or London.) I think that, for a well-experienced teacher (I am talking about one with a thirty year career behind him) with a graduate degree, living in a very expensive city, that $90-100,000 U.S. does not seem excessive, although only a small minority would ever be paid this.
My middle school scammed teachers, low pay (I mean lower than average) and almost no benefits. My secondary school is much better and it is possible to teach there without having been born or married rich.
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quote:Second is that teachers usually only work for nine months out of the year, making teaching one of the careers more conducive to having a family and raising kids.
My dad, who is a teacher, calls it three months of forced unemployment. In his district, you can choose whether to get regular paychecks the months you are working, or to have your salary split into smaller paychecks spread out over all 12 months. He and most other teachers I know have to find other summer work every year.
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Well, I do agree that teacher pay should depend on where they are at; unfortunately I don't know if I disagree or agree with your $90-100,00 figure for a 30 year teacher, since I don't know what experienced teachers make now. I know in Vegas teacher salary starts out at just under $40,000, and I have no idea how much it increases for each year of experience.
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Amilia, What level does your father teach? Many secondary school teachers I know can get grants to study during the summer (on of my favorite profs is at a Hannah Arendt seminar in San Francisco right now, thanks to the government.)
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quote:Second is that teachers usually only work for nine months out of the year, making teaching one of the careers more conducive to having a family and raising kids.
My dad, who is a teacher, calls it three months of forced unemployment. In his district, you can choose whether to get regular paychecks the months you are working, or to have your salary split into smaller paychecks spread out over all 12 months. He and most other teachers I know have to find other summer work every year.
Hmmm... Okay, so it's not a positive for everybody. But that doesn't change the fact that it is a positive for many. My uncle, for one. He loves having summers off.
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Oh, I'm not saying that it is never a positive. Just that it can be an inconvenience. And to agree with your point. Whether or not it is a positive, it is one of the reasons teachers are paid less per year than other professionals.
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Pel, I'm still waiting for you to acknowledge the rest of my criticisms, or even the main thrust of my point: that the assertion that all children with learning disabilities can be safely assumed to be able to absorb a curriculum of any difficulty is highly flawed.
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Pel, I'm curious as to how or why your original post's thesis of no curriculum metamorphed into a thesis where as a subtopic you might assert "all children with learning disabilities can be safely assumed to be able to absorb a curriculum of any difficulty."
The quote is in Tom's word's because I'm lazy, but I skimmed the thread, and you do say similar things.
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I think we have so many pedagogy threads that they're getting crossed. The assertion Tom is referring to was in his common middle school curriculum thread.
And I seem to have lost a post here, somewhere. Maybe I accidentally made it somewhere else.
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quote:Originally posted by Pelegius: "Dude, you don't even know if you are learning-disabled. You've never even gotten a coherent diagnosis." Dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyspraxia are all certain. Either those or unknown conditions with the same symptoms, but this is as certain as anything is in psychiatry. These diagnoses were agreed upon by I think three psychiatrists and several teachers who were specialists in teaching learning disabled kids.
First of all, in terms of psychiatry (although I don't know specifically about learning disorders), psychiatrists DON'T officially diagnose patients under 18.
On top of that, why does this matter? Just because you had a hard time and pulled through doesn't mean that everyone else can do so.
I feel as though you don't understand or refuse to acknowledge that many people are fundamentally different than yourself, and that it isn't practical to assume that everyone can ever be in the same circumstances as you have been.
quote:FWIW, shortly after I joined Hatrack, in an argument about teacher pay, I calculated, using census data, the average pay rate per hour of about a dozen occupations requiring a bachelor's degree. I failed to find a single one that averaged less per hour than teaching did. So I just wanted to throw out there that it wasn't just because teachers have a quarter of the year off.
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pH, they most certainly do, although those that do are usualy specialists (you may be right about mental illnesses such as Bipolar disorder, but they do diagnose such problems as ADD, Autism etc.)
Morbo, Icarus is generaly right, although I never said what Tom says I did (I said that all children with average or above average intellegence, even if they had learning disabilities, could learn my curriculum, which is rather a different claim.)
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Oh, I totally agree that having summers off is only one of the reasons for a lower pay rate. Thanks for clarifying that, Icarus.
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quote:I said that all children with average or above average intellegence, even if they had learning disabilities, could learn my curriculum, which is rather a different claim.
By "intelligence," are you referring to IQ?
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: That's severe dyslexia. Occasionally typing "I have starved" when what you mean is "I have strived" is not severe dyslexia.
It is a little more serious than you are making out, though, because what you ought to intend to write is "I have striven". Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: That's severe dyslexia. Occasionally typing "I have starved" when what you mean is "I have strived" is not severe dyslexia.
It is a little more serious than you are making out, though, because what you ought to intend to write is "I have striven".
Hey, let's not turn this into a passing confest over why's got the worsted dyslexia.
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quote:Originally posted by Pelegius: (I said that all children with average or above average intellegence, even if they had learning disabilities, could learn my curriculum, which is rather a different claim.)
Do you not see how this assumption leaves absolutely NO room for differing severities of learning disorders?
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Not at all, ladyday, although it would pain me to have to send people to a different school based on dyslexia. There are factors which could make dyslexia harder to combat, a poor family situation, or a combination of dyslexia and another disorder or, worst of all, dyslexia and an insufficently high I.Q. (although, given the nature of most I.Q. tests, it is difficult to test the I.Q. of a dyslexic person.) An insufficently high I.Q. to combat dyslexia may not, on consideration, be below average on a general scale, but may also include some students with I.Q.s in the bottom section of average.
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"By "intelligence," are you referring to IQ?" In theory, yes. I.Q. as an abstract concept seems valid, but I.Q. tests are not very reliable.
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There is a great analogy I'm going to copy down from an essay on "Education beyond Schooling," by Mortimer Adler.
quote:I admit that children are containers of different sizes. They do not all have the same capacity. But the question is not one of the amount of education to be given each child, for no child can receive more than his capacity permits. The question is the kind of education to be given each child, according to his capacity.
Let me illustrate this with a simple metaphor. Let the child of low intelligence and weak natural endowment be represented by a pint container, and the child of extremely high endowments and intelligence, by a gallon container. According to the democratic concept of education, you must put into the pint container whatever kind of liquid you put into the gallon container, even though only one pint can go here and a gallon there. It will not do to put cream into the gallon container and, say, water--dirty water, at that-- into the pint container. Vocation education is the dirty water we are now pouring into our pint containers. Liberal education is the cream we are giving the few.
I think that schoolteachers, parents, and the country in general, have been misled on this point because the problem is so difficult to solve. The teachers took the wrong turn, though the easier one, when they were first faced with the problem at the beginning of the [20]century. They discoveredd that they did not know how to put cream into the pint container. Instead of doing what was required of them--taking the time to face and solve this very difficult problem of finding pedagogical techniques, methods, or means for putting cream into every container, large or small-- they backed away, and accepted vocational training for the great majority of children as much the easier thing to do. This profound mistake we must now correct. We must give liberal training, training in the liberal arts, to all the children who are going to inherit the rights of citizenship and the leisure time of free men in their adult years.
This essay, and I believe all of the essays in "Reforming Education: The opening of the American Mind" is outstanding in its insight.
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quote:There are factors which could make dyslexia harder to combat, a poor family situation, or a combination of dyslexia and another disorder or, worst of all, dyslexia and an insufficently high I.Q.
Pel, let me refer you again to my friend, who is incapable of reading except in controlled environments. He's quite bright, but does not enjoy reading in the least as a consequence and usually winds up listening to audio books. What room is there for him in the curriculum you've created?
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I don't think that I can agree with the author on his basic premise that vocational education is 'dirty water' and a liberal arts education is 'cream.' I often see people asserting that being well educated in a trade is inferior to someone with a PhD in humanities. I completely reject this. I think that an electrician contributes just as much to society and get as much personal satisfaction out of their job as the person who devotes their career to writing academic papers on post Hellenstic philosophy.
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To be fair, I don't think he's denigrating electricians and plumbers, but specifically trade school. In other words, get your liberal arts high school diploma, and then learn your trade through on the job training or whatever. The premise being that a liberal arts high school education makes you capable of learning whatever you need to learn when you need to learn it, whereas if we spend your high school years teaching you woodworking, woodworking is all you'll ever know how to do, and some day a machine will make you obsolete there.
It's an interesting question, and by no means an easy one. It's the same debate as raged between Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois, and a hundred years later we're still not sure who was right.
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Tom, unless I'm misunderstood Pelegius would send your friend to a separate school.
It would pain him though.
Again Pelegius, correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not -completely- sure if you were saying 'Not at all' to my initial statement or to my question :X.
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The kicker is that my friend has an IQ of 160. He's not the most brilliant person I've ever met, but I'm rather disturbed by the thought that he's "insufficiently" intelligent.
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In addition to what Icarus said, Adler's worry about trade school stems from the last paragraph.
quote:We must give liberal training, training in the liberal arts, to all the children who are going to inherit the rights of citizenship and the leisure time of free men in their adult years.
If we didn't live in a democracy, and only a certain class of people were expected to engage in public, non-economic business, then trade school would be an adequate alternative to a liberal arts education.
The problem, in Adler's view, is Universal sufferage, and that every person, the electrician included, is supposed to be considered a full person, and treated accordingly. Furthermore, earlier he argues that modern industrialized democracies actually permit every person the requisite amount of leisure time to be full citizens. Voters in Athens and the voters in early America weren't workers. They were landed gentry or gentleman farmers, which meant that they had the sufficient leisure time to be educated in the ways and means of politics and the human condition, such that they were able to fitfully execute their duties as free citizens. The issue is that now that we seriously expect all people to fitfully execute the duties of free citizens, we have to give all people the quality of education that was previously reserved for the leisure class.
Adler believes that what is at risk is the US, and everything thing the US has the ability to touch, because a democracy made up of people who aren't educated in the liberal arts will be the sport of demoguages or Hitlers, prey to unreasonable fears and inculcated dogma.
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Hey Irami, I understand better where you are coming from now compared to that other thread where I got so frustrated with you. I don't entirely agree, (though I'm still working on articulating my disagreement) but what you were saying then now makes more sense.
I suspect that my perspective has a little bit to do with the idea of Dignity and Nobility In Simple Tasks Done Well. But I understand what you are saying as far as how the current system leads to a less informed voting popluace. I guess what bothers me is that in your system "less informed/educated voter" seems to be a demeaning classification as to the value of a human. And the value of a human is entirely independent of how informed their vote is.
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But does it contradict "the idea of Dignity and Nobility In Simple Tasks Done Well"? If so, how?
In fact, does he actually say that a less educated voter is a less valuable human being? It seems to me that all he is saying is that a purpose of schooling is to prepare one for citizenship.
I don't know if that's true or not; it would make an interesting discussion. But it seems like he is saying one thing and people are responding by contradicting something else entirely.
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Are you talking about secondary school here? If so, I misunderstood, I apologize. I agree with a general education in high school of the arts, literature, science, mathematics, etc. I'm not advocating that we turn them into trade schools.
I guess my question then is at what point is it ok to start giving people this 'dirty water?'
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I really liked the setup at my high school. For half the day, you were required to do math, english, science, etc. For the other half, you could choose to take classes in a trade. People who learned a trade still had the necessary courses to attend a college. Since you had to mantain a certain GPA to continue attending the trade school, it helped motivate these kids to behave and strive in the courses they didn't like.
Also, someone said that teachers get good benefits. The teacher's unions in my area did a survey and found they had the worst benefits in our city, including looking at other state employees. Most teachers did not have their children covered due to the ridiculously high costs. Private insurance for my husband and I was only maybe a hundred bucks more
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"Are you talking about secondary school here? " We don't know what were talking about here. To wit, this thread was about secondary school, but my previous thread on middle schools became woven in and I think that, some where along the way, we added in all levels of education, for good measure. Thus, we are confused on what we are talking about. Or, at least I thing that we are confused.
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quote:Also, someone said that teachers get good benefits. The teacher's unions in my area did a survey and found they had the worst benefits in our city, including looking at other state employees.
Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. My best friend who is a school teacher has a husband who is a firefighter, and the firefighter's benefits are cheaper for the same insurance coverage (Blue Cross/Blue Shield medical and dental). The teachers do, however, have a pretty good retirement plan.
That's just something that varies from place to place.
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"The kicker is that my friend has an IQ of 160. He's not the most brilliant person I've ever met, but I'm rather disturbed by the thought that he's "insufficiently" intelligent." I would be interested to know how the calculated that score, as most standard I.Q. tests are inaccurate for dyslexics (there might be ones that work, I don't know.)
Your friend;s problem may be that his dyslexia was not treated early enough, i.e. he was put through "normal" reading classes in the first grade or even later. Dyslexia, in my experience, must be found and treated while still very young, at the normal age when children start to learn. But, it can be substantially treated. My cousin did not receive treatment until middle school, by then too late to make a substantial difference. I began learning from specialists in the first grade, and was able to read at or above the level of my peers by third grade, and my dyslexia is supposedly quite severe.
I being general here because I do not know your friend, nor am I an expert in this field, although God knows I have seen enough of them. I speak from experience and observation, not formal training.
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), and were I not so bright, it would be very unlikely that I would be able to function, much less excel. Of course, I also have the advantage of being able to afford competent, private care, which makes a very big difference as well.
