Teacher of 17 years cannot read or write.

[Walter Sobchak]

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bes...te.teacher.cnn

I have tried to bring up education before, but no one cares. Now do you care?

The American educational system is broken, and may be beyond repair. I always knew that high schools were inclined to pass people simply due to tax dollars, but this man has a Bachelors Degree from a university. Does this not scare anyone else?

Talk!

[Sasquatch]

Government education scares the hell out of me -- and this is just one reason why.

Not only did this guy get through all of his primary education with a third-grade reading level, he then completed college without advancing his literacy, then taught high school English! This should -- and I mean should, but probably won't -- shake up a lot of things ... the schools he went to should be seriously evaluated, his employment should be terminated (screw tenure, he was hired under false pretenses), and the chain of command at the school he "taught" at should be replaced or suspended. There is absolutely no excuse for situations like this.

This is yet another reason I fully support school vouchers. It's obvious that nobody learned much in his classes, since they were at a higher reading and comprehension level than he was. Parents should have the right to keep some of their money that's taken away from them to put into public schools and use it to send their child to a private school, where they can get an exponentially better education. Once a teacher is in a position for a certain number of years, they're practically untouchable -- no matter how incompetent or warped they are or how poorly they do their job.

[Walter Sobchak]

This is yet another reason I fully support school vouchers. It's obvious that nobody learned much in his classes, since they were at a higher reading and comprehension level than he was. Parents should have the right to keep some of their money that's taken away from them to put into public schools and use it to send their child to a private school, where they can get an exponentially better education. Once a teacher is in a position for a certain number of years, they're practically untouchable -- no matter how incompetent or warped they are or how poorly they do their job.

I am in complete agreement.

As sympathetic as I am to things like universal health care, government-run education doesn't work. I can tell you that after elementary school, I did not learn anything. College hasn't been much better, and I am finishing up my second year.

Children from private schools do so much better for a reason. When the public education has to put up with kids that don't want to learn, they neglect those that do want to learn with worthless programs and the like. And in this environment, a teacher that cannot read can get away with it.

If he had been a P.E. teacher, it at least would have made some sense. This guy should be reading papers and critiquing, and instead he is likely grading based on length.

[Meier Link]

i see this as a massive blow to the high social standards that the school systems them selfs have set up. i heard it a thousand times, if you dont go to school you will get less pay and possibly will be a burden to society. do you want to work at McDonalds for the rest of your life, you better pay attention in school. well hell if i knew this guys trick then i might of ended up being president or something.

but if you went to a public or even private school you know there is also other factors that can lead to these kind of situations also, mainly sports. we had a guy that was failing in all of his classes but as soon as he started playing football he went to a b+ average (he was also special ED and A.D.D.). There was also a girl that was blind, deaf,
mentaly retarted and she managed to walk out with a highschool diploma and last i heard was in her 2nd semester of college.

There are so many loop holes in the public school systems that have been around (obviously) for decades and you know the government has to know about it. This kind of news infuriates me, exspecially seeing i killed myself to hold a 3.7GPA and retartds like this are passing with little to no effort.

[Sean]

I remember taking my high school senior year English class and we'd get to "reading aloud" parts of the class. I'd blow my mind over and over at how slowly people would read sections aloud. Now, obviously, I, as most people who can grasp langauge, don't read aloud NEARLY as fast as I do silently, but these people were absolutely ridiculous at how slowly they were reading these words and struggling on normal day-to-day words that contained more than 2 or 3 syllables.

It would get to the point for me where I'd get so frustrated I would intentionally read the sections I was assigned faster than I should to the class and put my hands over my ears to block out the next person reading and continue it in my head at 3-4 times, sometimes faster, the pace.

I remember time and time again during classes that would pause to let the students read a paragraph or something similar, and time and time again I'd be sitting there staring at the ceiling while the teacher goes "Is anyone still reading?" and half the class would raise their hands.

In my COLLEGE COMP, HIGHEST LEVEL class that I dropped from due to time restraints, I saw people that somehow took a placement test and QUALIFIED HIGH ENOUGH TO TAKE THIS CLASS at my community college, that had 3rd-4th grade reading skills, or less.

But reading skills aside, the math class I took from college was a basic level math, because that's all that is required for my degree and I had a full classload that semester anyhow. The class was, literally, teaching me things from my 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade years of schooling; all from a book I paid $140 for, USED.

From the culinary program at said community college, I've seen person after person graduate from our Associates Degree program with less overall knowledge and FAR less experience in the field than I. People who just barely scraped by getting a piece of paper that automatically puts them on a pedestal higher than where I'm currently at, all because a college says that so-and-so met their requirements to get said piece of paper.

I can outcook, outmanage, and write better menus than at least 60-70% of the recent graduates, and current "upperclassman" of the culinary school I attend.


And that, in my opinion, is a travesty.

[Jin]

Scrapping public school is not going to make kids learn better. It'll make the ones that can afford private school learn better, perhaps, but a large section of the population will simply not be able to go to school. And what's the secret to get money? Well, forgive me for sounding like a socialist, but education is and when you can't afford to be educated, you'd better be a damn lucky person if you want to ever "pull yourself up by your boot straps", as if it were that simple.

As is usually the case in government run institutions, the problem is management. The guy cheated, he said so. He didn't make it through simply because you don't have to know how to read to get through. Public schooling certainly leaves much to be desired, but you have to know how to read. Or cheat. There are problems with the cirriculum, believe me, I completely agree that idiots can easily pass highschool and get into college, but this particular case is not a teaching issue. It's an issue of cheating. With one exception. The policy that elementary kids can't fail is idiotic. This probably could have been averted if he stayed behind in grade 3 or whatever.

The biggest problem that I see in this situation is not how he passed, but how he was hired. The administration in that school should be restaffed, plain and simple. It's not hard to do checks on people. You can't let someone teach just because they have a degree. Once again, management is the issue.

When the public education has to put up with kids that don't want to learn, they neglect those that do want to learn with worthless programs and the like.

This I agree with. However, there are plenty of people that do want to learn and public school is there to make sure they can. Private schools aren't cheap.

[Anthiena]

I think it says something for location as well. My employees (who lived in Ohio) think that the school here in South Dakota that their son goes to is better. He had to repeat first grade because the class he was in was so much further ahead of his class in Ohio.

There are schools where they DO test their own teachers, ESPECIALLY with that 'No Child left Behind' spiel. It seems that those NCLB laws seem to hurt small schools and teachers who want to challenge their students more than help any student.

...but private school can be just as meaningless as public schools if they aren't run well.

[guardian]

How the hell did this guy do anything? I mean, he was teaching children who were smarter than he was. That's just sad. What the hell did he do for tests or even reading what his kids were writing. He could have been insulted at anytime in writing by his students, and he would have had no clue. And how did his kids not notice what was going on? We in high school make fun of how stupid teachers are for various reasons, and this guy couldn't read at all, and NOBODY noticed or asked questions? This really is scary.

[Merlin]

Its quite clear to me how he so easily made it through the system without anyone noticing. Just listen to the video. The guy continues to ramble on about nothing throughout the entire segment and never answered any of the questions he was asked. "How did you make it to college with third-grade max reading?" "Well statistically theres 25% of... blah blah blah" He simply spews garbage until you finally cut him off and assume he's intelligent because of all the crap he says. Its the oldest trick in the book. If you don't know the answer, just start rambling about stuff that sounds like it could be the answer and eventually they forget wtf they asked you (if its verbal) or give you partial credit because you seem to know what you are talking about (if its paper).

I can't vouch for all colleges, but some of them, such as mine, have cracked down severely on grammar and diction over the years. He wouldn't slide through the system at my college at all, even if he was cheating. Let's see... all papers are thoroughly examined for plagiarism through a massive database and also by hand. Any use of electronic devices during quizzes,tests, etc can land you being kicked out of class for the semester(ie: instant F). You better damn sure make certain your phone is off, because if it rings, you get booted from the class for the day for being a nuisance. Well the first time you just get evil stares.. after that... bye! English classes have pop quiz essays on reading material assigned the class period before. You must complete a Junior Writing Portfolio in which you submit 4 class papers from different classes and an overall paper explaining why you picked them. Those papers are then scrutinized by the English Department Chair and the professors. If one of your papers is even remotely close to something someone else used... guess what happens? If your papers even remotely seem to be written by different people(its quite easy to see different writing styles if you know your English...) guess what happens? So yeah, I seriously doubt he would make it through the system here. Sure, there's a way around every system. Nobody is doubting that. I'd just love to see him try it here. Oh and that strategy I listed on BSing? Yeah. That doesn't work on any of the professors here. You get a "F" for effort. xD

[VidenTheColdOne]

That is just apauling. I feel that i was lucky, i went to a private school for 7 years, and then went to a very good public high school and i got a fantastic education, which i never took for granted. Most kids today just don't care, they don't want to learn, and that is a problem. The school systems that are in place now do have their flaws, but i also think that some should be commended. This story however is just sickening. Nothing like this should ever be allowed to happen, EVER.

[vevuxking102]

Actually, graduation and success rates in Public Schools here in the U.S. (as with elsewhere in the world) are higher than in Private Schools, yet the propaganda machines of hardcore libertarians and extremist Christian conservatives try to make it seem otherwise.

[Sasquatch]

Actually, graduation and success rates in Public Schools here in the U.S. (as with elsewhere in the world) are higher than in Private Schools, yet the propaganda machines of hardcore libertarians and extremist Christian conservatives try to make it seem otherwise.

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/...sonLlaudet.pdf

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard...schooltype.asp

Actually, you're wrong -- anybody who's not ignorant knows what's going on, and that's the fact that private ecudation is better than public education here in America. It's too bad that you think "propaganda machines" and "hardcore libertarians and extremist Christian conservatives" are the only ones that see this -- which isn't true -- but that doesn't take anything away from it being the truth. You don't want to see it, you go ahead and live under your rock, but don't try to generalize and insult your superiors.

[vevuxking102]

Actually here's how it goes

(excerpt from old usenet post about the subject):

Public schools are doing just as good as Private schools in terms of
student achievement and SAT scores, says a new government study, done
by the US Department of Education.

What, no celebration? Bush isn't coming out to brag incessantly about
how his "No child left behind" policy has improved public school
educations? You would think that conservatives would be cheering this
as a major positive accomplishment of Bush's policy, but guess what?
There was no word from the administration for several weeks, but even
Education secretary Margaret Spellings didn't mention anything about it
until the New York Times found out about the report and made it public
just this week.

According to the Bush Administration's own reporting, Public schools
are generally doing as good or better than private schools in educating
students. Yes, you heard that. There is very little difference between
the performance of private and public school students. This is quite
interesting, since all we have been hearing from conservatives and
school voucher advocates is how horrible public schools are working.
Since the scores of public school kids are about the same as the scores
of private school kids, according to the Bush administration's own
people in the department of education, this means that the conservative
mantra about how horrible public schools are, and how they make our
kids stupid compared to those high-achieving, perfect-student
producing, iconic private schools, is just not true.

Perhaps the Bush administration did not go out of it's way to publicise
this because it contradicts what they want people to think about public
education. Perhaps the Bush agenda is to eventually eliminate public
schools, and this doesn't help put forth the idea the whole system
needs to be scrubbed.

You'd think that good news might elicit some accolades from an agency
charged with overseeing problematic No Child Left Behind mandates to
significantly improve public school students' achievement by 2013.

Nope.

The news was released minus banners or balloons and with no comment
from Education Secretary Margaret Spellings earlier this month.

The study analyzed reading and math scores from 2003 in grades four and
eight at thousands of public and hundreds of private schools.

Here's what it found:

# Once test scores are adjusted to take into account variables such as
income level, race, and parents' education level, differences in
student achievement are near zero and of no significance.

Public school students, except for in eighth-grade reading, generally
match the performance of private school peers. The exception was in 4th
grade math, where public school actually students did better.

# The report also compared Catholic, Lutheran and what it calls
conservative Christian schools to all public schools.

No significant differences were noted except in Grade 8 mathematics.
There, students at Lutheran schools did best, significantly better than
public school students, while those attending conservative Christian
schools did worse than public school students.

The things that's really funny is that the Bush administration and
conservative pundits have wasted no time in sending people to the
airwaves to spin the report! Geraldo Rivera, a long time libertarian,
and advocate of privatizing darn near everything in government, and who
broadcast a segment on 20/20 which tried to show how poorly public
schools were doing, came on MSNBC and condemned the report for it's
methodology -- but failed to note that it's the exact same methodology
that he approved of in his 20/20 segment!

Margaret Spelling herself even came out after the story broke to
comment that the report was misleading, but didn't care to explain
exactly what the New York Times misunderstood from the report. Perhaps
her recent public advocacy of a school voicher program may have been a
reason she was mum. After all, if public schools can be shown to be
just as good as private schools, why would anyone need a voucher
program. The whole situation is so typical of the Bush administration
-- ignore the facts, try to push the facts that they want the public to
believe, and bash any critics.

When you look at how badly Public schools have been attacked by
conservatives over the last decade, it's even more amazing that this
report shows what it does. See, conservatives in government have cut
public education again and again, and have made it increasingly more
difficult for public school systems, especially ones in poorer
communities, to give a good education. Teachers have to take pay-cuts,
school lunch programs get cut, various programs get cut, and yet,
despite all the cuts, they perform just as well as the private schools,
which out-spend public schools on a per-student basis by as much as a
factor of 4, depending on the particular schools.



All you gave me were links to debates about the subject, not actual hard statistics. All people advocating abolishing public schools and the idea that private schools are better just have an agenda to push.

[JRae8445]

"Once test scores are adjusted to take into account variables such as
income level, race, and parents' education level, differences in
student achievement are near zero and of no significance"

This was one of the most important points you made, in my opinion. First of all, we can't lump all (public or private) schools together and say that one or the other has a student population with a greater desire to learn. People want to learn, they do. It gives me hope that these variables mentioned above are finally being seriously and genuinely considered. I am tired of the opinion of some people who say that these factors lead to a poorer education for these students. In addition, we can all agree that some people have used these factors to say that these are the students who just don't want to learn.

The situation with this particular is absurd and a disgrace to the education system. However, one thing that applies to this entire discussion is that all schools and situations are different. There are many factors that effect that. With regards to his situation, I would love to know more about it. I want to know more about his teachers and the school he attended a few decades ago. What were the specifics? How did so many teachers pass him by? How did his students "turn out?"

I believe that this is a story beyond those that we hear about students falling through the cracks or cheating on high school exams and papers. I cannot believe that he was able to move as far as he did with his limited education. Where were the teachers...But to be completely honest, when I first read the story I was angry at him as well. I was angry that he let himself get that behind and then decided to be a teacher??? It's great that when he was approaching 50, he finally decided to learn to read and write, but what about all that time in between? Was he trying to keep sliding by for another 20 years? Did he blame his teachers so he thought he'd be a better one and make up for it? Well, those are my thoughts on the topic for now.

[RamesesII]

That is pretty pathetic i know for a fact that in Australia teaching standards and the education curriculum and the results of students have gone down but back in the days they where at the top so everyone wants the education system to go back to the way of the olden days stricter learning requirements and all etc.