Teaching & Learning: There's Minimal Connection
Haven't Complainers Heard of a Bell Curve?

Education should be honest and tough. It is in most other countries. The first 12 years of education are the most important. Financial success and survival depend on it.

Courtesy: Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan Public Schools

(MOLALLA, Ore.) - For starters, with two masters and two doctorates, I’ve been an educator all of my adult life!

Everybody knows that some people are smarter than others. They also know that some people are dumber than others. If you assemble 100 people, five will be very smart and five will be the opposite. Two thirds will be about average – the middle class. This situation occurs in ALL human endeavors – including teaching and learning.

President Obama just stated that all high school graduates should be ready for college. He knows, you know, and I know that this is not possible.

There are some really tough courses in colleges. I’m going to point out just a few: Engineering, Science and Math. I’m not going to mention the easy majors. You all know what they are.

My own experience may be typical. The first lecture in my Chemistry class, the Professor stepped up to the lectern and looked over the room and said “there are no empty seats in the room. That means there are 258 of you. By the time you are seniors there will be 10 of you left and we will recommend 5 of you for jobs.” This was during World War Two. Many of my classmates went into the service or war plant jobs. After 4 years, there were only two of us left of 258… Even before the war started, after each exam we lost about one fourth of the class. I’m sure the loss of students was similar in the really tough courses.

I have the greatest sympathy for the current high schoolers. There is entirely too much interesting stuff outside of the schools. Who wants to be a “greasy grind book worm?” I have even more sympathy for the teachers. The students are most usually daring the teachers to “learn me something”. No teacher can “learn” anything for the student. If the student “wants” to learn he/she will learn. This is shown by at-home teaching. It appears those home-schooled students frequently perform above average.

Parents should be involved in their children’s education by putting their education first, before all other distractions. I sense a disconnect here. If the teachers grade UP, which seems to be going on now, the parents may assume their child is an A-B student. The strange thing by the current system – all students are A-B students and there are no C-D students. The chickens don’t come home to roost ‘til these students get to college and discover, to their academic peril, that college is or should be far more challenging and difficult than high school ever was. At the same time, high school teachers can’t teach tough and grade tough; parents won’t allow the teachers to hand out C-D’s.

We cannot change this system by firing teachers or closing schools. If teachers were allowed to grade tough based upon the students performance, this alleged teaching failure would be solved within a couple of years and the parents and the students would be bitching like crazy, but they would be LEARNING.

Education should be honest and tough. It is in most other countries. The first 12 years of education are the most important. Financial success and survival depend on it.

SO LETS START STUDYING AND LEARNING!!!

Before any of that, Phil Leveque was a Combat Infantryman in the U.S. Army in WWII. He suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder more than 60 years after the war, and specialized in treating Veterans with PTSD during his years as a doctor in Molalla, Oregon. Do you have a question, comment or story to share with Dr. Leveque?
Email him: ASK DR. LEVEQUE
More information on the history of Dr. Leveque can be found in his book, General Patton's Dogface Soldier of WWII about his own experiences "from a foxhole". Order the book by mail by following this link: DOGFACE SOLDIER OF WWII If you are a World War II history buff, you don't want to miss it.