How is education improved from our parents generation?

Question

How is education improved from our parents generation?

Answer 1

I don't know if it has improved, but, due to changes in technology, life styles and so on it is certainly different and I think it may be more demanding simply due to the volume of "new" technologies kids have to learn and deal with.

Answer 2

In many respects it has improved for the WORSE.

Answer 3

It has improved in that students with disabilities are allowed to be in regular classrooms and not shut away in institutions.

Answer 4

It has NOT improved because of NCLB.

Answer 5

It is better in the fact that children with disabilities and children who are minorities are not blocked from going to school.

However, I think this may also have created problems as well, particularly with children with special needs. Understand I am NOT against mainstreaming; I think a child should be mainstreamed whenever feasible. But I think the pendulum has swung too far the other way, where you have, in a single classroom, children who may be borderline mentally retarded in a class that also has children with learning disabilities, children who are average and children who are gifted. You then have a teacher with the challenge of trying to find one formulaic program to educate everyone -- and it can't be done. Thus, education is dumbed down to the lowest common denominator and everyone suffers. I think things such as the proficiency testing and NCLB have worsened this situation.

Another double-edged sword is the amount of material and new information available that wasn't known or present in earlier generations, such as scientific studies, history, discoveries and technologies such as the internet. One one hand, it's great to keep learning and knowing the most current information. But from my observation, schools are often trying to teach everything, and a child's education winds up being "a mile wide and an inch deep," as I once heard an educator phrase it. Children have a lot of information thrown at them, they memorize it long enough to regurgitate it for a proficiency test, then promptly forget about it as their curriculum is rushed into the next topics.

Answer 6

I kind of agree with the rest of the folks in that it hasn't improved much and with the new law, No Child Left Behind, it is actually much worse. Teachers no longer have the freedom to teach creatively, but must teach to a test, which does no one any good.

The true improvements have been made in the areas of special ed. Due to the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), we now serve children with special needs far more appropriately than in generations past. There is also a much better body of knowledge as to how to teach these children and there is special funding for them.

As a teacher for quite awhile, I keep trying to think of what is better now and I am drawing a blank. I don't like the middle school model at all because I think 6th graders are forced to grow up too quickly.

I guess the understanding of reading methodology may be a bit further along, but as for vast improvements, there sure aren't many.