Friday, March 27, 2009

Fooling Ourselves . . .

"Utica students take stage at Ithaca culture conference" proudly crows the headline. Sixty students from Martin Luther King Elementary School provided the opening entertainment at an "international conference for educators" at Ithaca College. Before the performance, an associate professor of music from the college spent several hours teaching them to play their percussion instruments.
“Some songs are very profound and give tears to the eye,” said MLK music teacher JoAnne Kucerak. “And others are moving and grooving and just a hoot.” . . .

Kucerak said the experience was unbeatable for the students.

“They have learned from three or four directors today and are learning how to adjust the music as they go. You can’t get this in the classroom,” she said.
You can't? Why not?

It's lovely that the children have the opportunity to perform . . . And it was probably a happy, memorable experience for them. But it's not so lovely that they are missing a day of school to do it. This is not the spring recess. These are elementary students, and elementary school is supposed to provide the foundation for education in later years.

It is interesting that this day missed from school was to provide entertainment at an 'education conference.'

The fact that Educators see nothing wrong with this explains why our children can't read or do simple math.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Agree. Everytime one flips on the Utica School Board education channel, some student performance is featured.If I was a Utica taxpayer, I'd be really pleased that I'm finacing a great student singing and dancing effort as I read of another teen age shooting and of schools not meeting federal standards.

Anonymous said...

lol... read or do simple math... hahaha... how true how true... As a downstater that has been "hooked up" by the locals here to several women from the area, I have to say that the Townies have the worst sense of grammar, spelling, and reading abilities (pronunciation is deplorable! Girls here actually read one syllable at a time!) and I sucked at English when I was in college. The fact that I can pick out errors actually says something about the level of education in this area for the 20-30 year olds... and public education almost always gets worse, so I can't imagine what it's like now.

Anonymous said...

"I sucked at English when I was in college"

roflmao "downstater" ....