Chapter 4 Reflection-Rethinking Education

"Until the 19th century, education was largely the responsibility of parents.  Most people were farmers, and children learned the skills they needed, whether it was reading and counting or plowing and sewing, from their parents or other kin." (page 50)

I think that parents need to revert back to taking responsibility for their children's education by making sure their children are doing their best in school.  Most parents do make sure that there children do their best in school, but there are parents out there that do not care about their children's schooling.  The student suffers a lot and does not learn how to take responsibility for themselves.  Its sad to see those students suffer, no matter how hard the teacher tries, just because the parent(s) don't care.

"..."we are no loner satisfied with vague arguments about what this or that system of administration or method of teaching does, but demand exact measurements of the achievement of any system or method or person." Soon statistical measures were developed to assess intelligence, learning, efficiency, teaching, and leadership." (page 59)

I think that standardized tests are a good way to measure whether or not a teacher is teaching well as well as whether or not a student is learning.  I think that the tests should be given in the spring instead of the fall because then the tests will actually reflect the current teacher instead of the previous teacher from the previous grade.  Having standardized tests in the spring would also allow for students to actually use the knowledge that they have learned this school year.

"The exponential growth of knowledge has also put increasing stress on the schools.  It is said that there are as many scientists, researchers, and authors alive today as lived in human history up through 1950." (page 64)

This quote points out how much information is really out there and how much information we are expecting our students to learn.  Every year there is more information out there for students to learn, yet there is no way that students can keep learning all of the new information and all of the old information.  Teachers really need to take the time to go through the text books and pick out the important information to ensure that the students are not being overloaded with too much information.