Curruption in Education

One thing you deal with when teaching overseas is, well, it is overseas. You are working in other cultures, with different outlooks, and different legal systems.

You may have to deal with out-and-out corruption which damages the educational system.

Example: Last year I had a student who JUUUUUUUUUUUST squeaked by and passed my class, but he was not so lucky in three of his other classes, where he failed miserably. He's a nice enough kid, intelligent enough, but he didn't do much work. When he was given chances to make up some work with some supplementary exams - he failed those too. The decision was made that he would repeat the year. Or at least, if he was going to continue with our school, he could repeat his 5th course (equivalent to US 11th Grade).

The parents didn't like this, and din't want to try to take their son to another school, so they "appealed" his grades to the Ecuador Department of Education. The department therefore legally changed his grade to 100% in all classes and he has legally completed his year.

So now, we are being told that this young man, who has been in 5th course again (and not doing well) may be pulled from his current courses and dumped into 6to Curso (12th grade). Of course, he has missed 25% of the year, and is totally unprepared  for school at this new, higher level.

As my eldest son likes to quote: "This can only end in tears."

When Education Decisions are Made by Texas Politicians

The biggest problem with standards, whether they be by No Child Left Behind, or some state standard, is that these standards all too often are made by politicians, and not by people who know education. When politicians decide what your teacher will teach your child, no end to troubles follow.

the Texas Board of Education is the poster child for this damning reality. Check out this news report from Yahoo about their deliberations over state standards:

Texas ed board vote reflects far-right influences

Texas has the longest set of standards in the world, so far as I know. One in which one of the few teachers involved, Fort Worth Republican Pat Hardy, said in the article "What we've done is we've taken a document that by nature is too long to begin with and then we've lengthened it some more," Hardy said, "I just think we failed to keep that in mind, it's hard for teachers to get through it all."

Amen, sister. Hard to expect teachers to teach when the standards to be taught are too lengthy even to be read by the teacher who is supposed to be teaching it.