Baldo by Hector D. Cantú and Carlos Castellanos for August 28, 2013

This is why you should take notes in class during the teachers’ lectures.

At least some kids want to learn! The GOP wants to starve education anyway it can so it can point to it’s failure. All they want is failure for the USA.

My cheap fix for this – photograph the assigned pages with a digital camera, then download it onto the computer and read it on that (or an e-reader, if you have one.). I’ve done quite a lot of research that way.

Unfortunately, the current mood in the U.S. is that we should become much more like Western Europe.

Tax Man, it’s the Democrats fighting for education funding to be preserved. But how about we put aside the labels and all of us agree that teaching our children well is one of the most important functions of a society.

Oh boy.

We bought our own books in high school.

Wow, sad. Book sharing, are you kidding me?! I once heard a reporter from the east say that Americans are fat, stupid unpredictable children with big guns. He went on to say that the gun power is the ONLY reason others back off.

I do believe our education problem would be better solved by avoiding the “good for the goose, good for the gander” mentality. Can we stop fighting and look at the problem as a whole? Fat, stupid, unpredictable children…..ouch.

Thriller87: I tried in 2010, but unless you have an old League of Women Voters candidate survey from that year, there is no record. The Democrats didn’t bother to run against the leader of the flat earth faction and the corporate media isn’t permitted to mention the Green Party.

I’ve taught in that classroom – 22 Grade 11 Social Studies text books, for two classes with a total of 50 students. So not even quite a class set for one group of students at a time. What does that mean for learning? Students have to have time in class for reading and homework out of the book, meaning less time for instruction, discussion, and work beyond the book. It is also demoralizing – it says to students they’re not even worth their own text. It means less homework – students like that part at first, but since the exams and assignments don’t get easier just because they had less time and resources available to them, they soon find out it’s a mixed blessing at best.

TaxMan – does spending more on education improve outcomes – absolutely yes, if you’re not spending enough. It’s not rocket science that many of the states that spend least per student on education also have the poorest educational outcomes – in fact, it’s a pretty close correlation.

No amount of money (more, more, more) will help.The problem is NOT lack of funds…more money doesn’t help.The true problem is that you cannot MAKE the children want to learn. The hip hop culture places “gangsta” as cool, and working hard to get good grades as nerdy, or un-hip.

Baldo is not the common teenager, and his family is atypical. Children are not getting the parental “push” to do well in school. either that, or peer pressure is greater than parental/family pressure.

“This year”? I had to share textbooks in high school 14 years ago.

Thankfully, the government’s power over budgets doesn’t extend quite that far…