TJUSD Board Meeting - June 12, 2014

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Re: TJUSD Board Meeting - June 12, 2014

Postby wildrose » Sat Jun 21, 2014 8:54 am

Student in 4th-grade sues accused bully
Sounds like a case where the parents believe everything their little angel tells them to me! It's highly unlikely that the kid actually got picked on that much while at school. Hopefully the judge/jury in this case have good BS detectors!
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Re: TJUSD Board Meeting - June 12, 2014

Postby shadylady » Sun Jun 22, 2014 6:53 am

Web Exclusive: 'Reading Rainbow' returns
I've never been able to decide who has more of a milk-and-toast personality: LeVar Burton or Mr. Rogers? They both seem really nice, but boring! Even kids I've known over the years feel the same way. Apparently someone somewhere out in TV land doesn't feel that way, otherwise neither would have been so popular.
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The Finland Phenomenon

Postby surfsteve » Sun Jun 29, 2014 4:27 pm

Make Trona great again!
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Re: TJUSD Board Meeting - June 12, 2014

Postby wildrose » Mon Jun 30, 2014 8:20 am

The Finland Phenomenon
Most of the answers to the questions posed at the beginning of this video come down to demographics and cultural issues. Our teachers are perfectly capable and the school system is actually about the same as it is in Finland, but we have cultural issues outside of the school system which limit what happens inside classrooms. Some are political and some have to do with greedy corporations trying to undermine public schools so they can privatize education, and other factors have to do with cultural diversity. Finland has been held up as a model for several years now and for good reason, but it's not so much a matter of their system being better, but of their culture being more supportive of the educational process. (BTW, surfsteve posted this video elsewhere, but for the sake of meaningful discussion I reposted it here.)
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Re: TJUSD Board Meeting - June 12, 2014

Postby BallaratBob » Mon Jun 30, 2014 10:16 am

wildrose wrote:The Finland Phenomenon
Most of the answers to the questions posed at the beginning of this video come down to demographics and cultural issues. Our teachers are perfectly capable and the school system is actually about the same as it is in Finland, but we have cultural issues outside of the school system which limit what happens inside classrooms. Some are political and some have to do with greedy corporations trying to undermine public schools so they can privatize education, and other factors have to do with cultural diversity. Finland has been held up as a model for several years now and for good reason, but it's not so much a matter of their system being better, but of their culture being more supportive of the educational process. (BTW, surfsteve posted this video elsewhere, but for the sake of meaningful discussion I reposted it here.)

Most of what you hear in the corporate media is negative when it comes to public education. When they aren't talking about some teacher committing some form of child abuse, they talk about the schools failing. Then there are parents who believe their kids are perfect and never cheat or misbehave in anyway. Add to that opportunistic parents who are always looking to sue schools and you have a pretty negative social climate. I'm just getting started, there's a whole lot more! A large segment of the population places little or no value on "book learning" and then there are those who talk like they value education, but really don't. Add to all that, dysfunctional families and those with an entitlement mindset and it's little wonder that schools struggle to make progress. Salmon swimming upstream have it easy compared to teachers in public schools. Did I forget to mention the antagonistic corporations waiting on the banks of the stream like vultures hoping for any sign of failure so they can pretend to come to the rescue? And they're the ones who control the media which creates the negative social climate in the first place!
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Re: TJUSD Board Meeting - June 12, 2014

Postby cactuspete » Tue Jul 01, 2014 8:15 am

Finland: To me the most interesting part of the documentary was the part about trust-based societies and compliance-based societies. We here in the USA are a country that practically worships rules and regulations and so we are a compliance-based society and then some. As such people are more worried about fulfilling the minimal requirements of the law than with living up to some ideal. That being said, there are plenty of other issues that our society must deal with before we could even begin to move towards being a trust-based society. In fact, the obstacles are insurmountable IMHO. A society which welcomes people from other cultures almost by necessity must be a compliance-based society since not everyone shares the same values. In Finland there is less diversity and more shared assumptions and so it is possible to trust. Compliance-based societies use bribes and punishments to influence behavior and that traps individuals in a state of immaturity since it impedes the development of internal motivations to contribute to the greater good. Trust-based societies facilitate the recognition of intrinsic rewards. Our media does everything in its power to ensure that individuals don't trust one another. We here in the USA are almost addicted to stories about untrustworthy people taking advantage of other people and so we insist on rules, regulations, and laws to ensure our safety. What we wind up with is a society of people who do the minimum necessary to fulfill the law instead of people eager to do whatever it takes.
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Re: TJUSD Board Meeting - June 12, 2014

Postby wildrose » Tue Jul 01, 2014 8:35 am

cactuspete: The other problem with rules, regulations, and laws is that they actually discourage people from doing anything extra since often people can get in trouble for putting out that extra effort. You've heard the saying, "No good deed goes unpunished." Well, that's true in a compliance-based society since people look at you with suspicion if you do something above and beyond the call of duty. They figure you must have some kind of ulterior motive. Not so in a trust-based society.
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Re: TJUSD Board Meeting - June 12, 2014

Postby desertrat » Wed Jul 02, 2014 6:41 am

Pre-K suspensions target black students
All this politically correct talking around the real issue gets to be frustrating after awhile. Black kids are NOT TARGETED. They're behavior is different and as a result there are consequences. Some kids regardless of race are high maintenance and some kids just seem to be able to adapt to their surroundings with little effort. Apparently a high percentage of black kids fail to adapt to the school environment. In other words, a high percentage of black kids are high maintenance. It's not fair to blame the teachers or the schools for this reality. If black kids require more attention, then perhaps schools should be given more resources (lower student-teacher ratio) based on the number of black kids at the school. BUT WAIT, that would be discriminatory and would siphon resources away from kids with other racial backgrounds. Until we come to grips with the fact that there are real differences in terms of academic aptitude (intellectual and behavioral) between the races all we're going to be doing is playing the blame game and nothing will be accomplished!
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Re: TJUSD Board Meeting - June 12, 2014

Postby cactuspete » Wed Jul 02, 2014 8:04 am

desertrat: In order to funnel more money towards helping black children the government would have to officially recognize that they have genetically based cognitive deficits. That will never happen. No matter what the evidence shows to be the case, the conclusion will always be some politically correct intentionally incorrect interpretation of the data. Obviously no one TARGETS black children, they misbehave and they get punished. The fact that they misbehave at greater rates than other children is their own fault, but the attribution will always be that it's the teacher's fault. Somehow teachers unconsciously discriminate against these poor little dark-skinned victims. It's horribly immature and irresponsible to make such false attributions and in the long run it delays improvement which is why this whole race issue isn't improving very quickly. Eventually interbreeding may erase most of the barriers, but that'll take a couple more generations and in the meantime the problem doesn't get dealt with properly because people are afraid to face the uncomfortable truth.
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Re: TJUSD Board Meeting - June 12, 2014

Postby tronagirl » Thu Jul 03, 2014 8:12 am

Finland/Black Students: There aren't really major differences between the Finnish school system and the one here in the USA. A few minor tweaks and they'd be the same. The big difference is outside the school. Schools don't work miracles. They just reflect the society that they're in. A lot of the differences between Finnish society and what we have here in the USA are differences that cannot be changed, but of the things that can be changed the one that could make the biggest difference is attitude towards school. People here in the USA don't really value education as much as they should and if education were to become a priority then big changes would occur.
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