Kindergarten Burnouts?

[Belle Hibiki]

Fareed Zakaria actually touches on this subject in his book The Post-American World. The issue with education isn't that children are inherently more difficult to teach these days, but that the "good" kind of education isn't well dispersed.

There's a huge gap in educational quality in public schools from district to district and state to state. While many children are among the worst in math and science, others score very closely with children in Shanghai, which is the runaway leader in world test scores.

These are all public schools, but management and community support make a huge difference. (It would also be helpful if the state didn't always see education as the first thing to slash when it's looking for budget solutions.)

In an ideal world, I'd 1) like to see teachers paid more to make the teaching profession more attractive. The work is not easy, and many beginning teachers have to devote their summers to taking additional classes for years after their work starts. You wake up early, work a long, chaotic day, and after it you have to stay and grade homework and tests, then come up with a lesson plan for the next day. It's a long hard road to hoe, and the field is littered with stories of teachers without aid that have hit burnout in a year. All this work and responsibility, and in many areas they're paid peanuts for it until they hit tenure.

2) Small class sizes. You guys are totally right when you said public education can't give students enough individual attention, but homeschooling isn't necessarily the answer. If we can get more teachers and schools into the system, I'd like to see classes around 10-15 students in size. I think this would strike a balance between the necessary societal development that happens in school and the individual attention that many children need.

Aside: I'd advise against homeschooling, though I can only offer anecdotal evidence as to why. The kids that I know that were homeschooled were unable to cope with the real world's expectations. At home, there was always a pat on the back waiting for them, even when they failed. Perhaps this could be ameliorated by hiring a tutor, but full-time tutors are expensive as fuck, and if you can afford them, you probably live in an area where the public school isn't terrible anyway.