TEACHING OUR CHILDREN: K-12
Are our schools preparing our children for the future?

Are our schools really teaching our children what they need to know to be well adjusted, happy, productive members of our communities? Are we really preparing our children for the future? What has gone wrong with our educational system in the USA? What is the problem?
I've done a lot of thinking about schooling, education, ever since I was in school and even more so since I had children and grandchildren of my own and they entered school, public school.

One thing I am seeing is that a child by the time they were in the eighth grade back in the 1950's, let's say, was better prepared to go out and face the world and be a productive member of our society back then, than a high school graduate and even many of our college graduates are today. That's scary.

Of course that eighth grader in the 1950's wasn't going to be a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist but he could still go out there, hold a job, earn a fair living, raise a family and be a productive member of our society and he could and would do it well. Why was he so much more capable than many of our high school and college graduates today? I think it all boils down to how our children are being taught and what they are being taught; more to the point what they are not being taught.

Now don't take me wrong here, please. We have some wonderful teachers out there and they deserve our highest respect. The problem is that they aren't being allowed to teach and what they are having the opportunity to teach is being so compressed into a small time frame that children aren't really learning all they could and should learn. It isn't the teachers' fault. Teachers have to spend far too much time testing and evaluating and trying to find out why the kid isn't learning, what is wrong with this kid that they don't have time to teach what children need to know. When a child is having difficulty in school it seems to be today's concept that the child must have some underlying psychological or emotional problem that we need to address. Why aren't our children learning? Why can't they read? Why can't they balance their own checkbook by the time they are out of high school? The answer is simple; they aren't being taught because there is no quality time left to teach. There is simply too little time left to teach, really teach. There is nothing wrong with the kids, most of them. The biggest problem we face

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