Reply #21: there was no golden age when children were loved and nurtured and taught [View All]

there has always been a wide distribution of parenting "quality" that ran from kids who ran the streets and came from big families where there was little individual attention to kids who were only children of upper middle class families where they had full time attention from a dedicated parent. kids who were beaten and horrendously abused, kids who were coddled, kids who did several hours of chores before school, kids who didn't have enough to eat.
teachers have always had to teach the children that are before them. i agree that nclb was a horrendous waste, and a ridiculous framework built in lake wobeggon, where all the children are above average. the standard really should be how much the child and teacher achieved together, how much a child moves in a year.

as far as your position of having someone full time with kids, i think the real loss is multigenerational families. from levittown to vaudeville comedians, the most maligned of women has been the mother-in-law. funny that we so cherish the grandma and revile the MIL. but the american "ideal" of go it alone has fractured the extended family in favor of the nuclear family.

but again, there never was a golden age of fantastic parenting. it always has been and always will be a teacher's job to teach children in the real world where they come with gifts and deficits of all sorts. children will need to have relationships with teachers, and the good ones will make a difference in their kids life. i guess one thing we have no tests for is heart.

(and i apologize right now that this is sort of drive by post. i will only be around for a little while.)