Nowadays, public school, in most forms, is little more than a glorified daycare. As usual, I blame the parents. Parents have gotten so mind numbingly lazy and clueless these days that honestly, they shouldn't even be allowed to procreate. Much of the mess that public school is today is due to lazy, clueless parenting.
And here's another example: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2010541198_apusdriversedcuts.html?syndication=rss
Here's the story anyway:
Some schools are dropping driver's ed to cut costs
Beginning driver Ashley Crawford grips the worn gray steering wheel and warily begins maneuvering the 1999 Ford Escort through a set of bright orange traffic cones outside Killian Senior High School.
Associated Press Writer
Beginning driver Ashley Crawford grips the worn gray steering wheel and warily begins maneuvering the 1999 Ford Escort through a set of bright orange traffic cones outside Killian Senior High School.
She considers herself lucky: Because of budget cuts, many schools around the country are leaving driver's ed by the side of the road. They are cutting back on behind-the-wheel instruction or eliminating it altogether, leaving it to parents to either teach their teenagers themselves or send them to commercial driving schools.
"If my parents would have taught me, it would have been different," said Ashley, a 16-year-old sophomore. "When I drive, they try to tell me what to do, and I get nervous."
Some educators and others worry that such cutbacks could prove tragic.
"As soon as people start taking driver's education away from the kids, we're going to pay for it with lost lives, collisions, and ultimately that costs everybody," said John Bolen, past president of the Florida Professional Driving School Association.
Some worry also that many parents can't afford the $350 to $700 that private lessons can cost or don't have the skills to teach their kids themselves. Even for those who can do it, the combination of parents, teenagers and learning how to drive can be volatile.
In more than half the states, minors who want a license must take driver's education from a certified instructor, said Allen Robinson, CEO of the American Driver and Traffic Safety Education Association. However, that doesn't necessarily mean schools are required to offer a class. (Generally, after age 18, would-be drivers do not have to undergo any formal instruction.)
High schools started rolling back driver's ed after their effectiveness was called into question in the 1980s. The more recent cutbacks have been driven by school funding shortages, and the trend might be accelerating because of the downturn in the economy, said J. Peter Kissinger, president and CEO of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.
Robinson said the nation's schools have all but eliminated driver's ed as an elective course offered during the school day.
Here in Miami-Dade County, the nation's fourth-largest school system got rid of driver's ed during the day at all but Killian and another school. Students can still enroll in a free after-school course at one of the district's adult education centers. But that is not an option for the many thousands of students who play sports or are involved in other extracurricular activities, or cannot get a ride.
About 10 high schools in Georgia eliminated or reduced driver's education this school year. A dozen more did the same in Kansas last year. In Volusia County, Fla., schools eliminated daytime driver's ed three years ago, replacing it with summer, after-school and Saturday classes. Enrollment plummeted two-thirds, saving about $400,000 a year.
"This is not because they don't believe in driver's ed," said Bob Dallas, director of the Georgia Governor's Office of Highway Safety. "They do, but they're facing the same financial pressure that everybody in government is facing."
In rural Pennsylvania, the Titusville district got rid of the behind-the-wheel portion of its program last spring, saving about $20,000. In Blountville, Tenn., the driver's education program was cut in half about five years ago because of budget woes. Administrators considered eliminating the $130,000-a-year program last spring, but did not.
"It could save lives. It's very simple," said Jack Barnes, director of schools in Sullivan County, Tenn. "We don't want any of our students injured or killed because of mistakes they made that possibly a program like this could help."
Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for U.S. teens; in 2007, an average of 11 16- to 19-year-olds died every day. But Russ Rader, a spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said studies show there is no difference in crash risk between 16- and 17-year-olds who take driver's ed and those who don't.
"In some cases, driver's education has a negative effect because in some states you can get a license sooner if you take driver's ed," he said.
Private instructors aren't necessarily picking up all the students who can't take driver's ed at school.
Julio Torres, an instructor at the Easy Method Driving School in Miami, said he suspects the downturn in the economy is playing a role. He also said some parents simply prefer to teach their kids.
But Torres and others said parents, despite their best intentions, aren't always the best instructors. For one thing, they may pass their own bad driving habits on to their children.
Also, "the kids are at a stage where they're confrontational with their parents," said Brenda Bennett, owner of a driving school in Erie, Pa., that holds contracts to teach driver's ed through some area high schools. "Then you add driving with a parent and you have more confrontation. Whereas someone like myself, when we take kids out, there's no personality going there. It's just all business."
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Now, I get why most parents don't teach their teens to drive. But I also know SCORES of teens who've been driving on their farms and ranches since they were twelve and thirteen years old and when it comes to being taught something by their parents it's not "Like OMG, like totally Mom, like you SO don't know what it's like to be a teenager and driving", it's "Yes sir, and No Sir and Yes Ma'am and No Ma'am." See a difference? I do. It's called "How You Raise Them to Respect You"
But that's not my point. Anyone who has ever read my blog knows what I think about liberal, hands off, don't stifle my precious baby's creativity style parenting.
No, what pissed me off about this story was THIS quote: As soon as people start taking driver's education away from the kids, we're going to pay for it with lost lives, collisions, and ultimately that costs everybody," said John Bolen, past president of the Florida Professional Driving School Association."
Um....excuse me??? You mean if a child doesn't learn how to drive in school...somehow that child will get a license anyway and go out and kill people? Even if I COULD wrap my head around that philosophy, since when did some idiot modern day teenager EVER listen to anything taught in a public school???
Public schools teach them (ad nauseum) about the ills of drinking and driving...yet every year I see more and more of these asshole roadside memorials dedicated to someone's high school pal who decided, at the ripe old age of 16 or 17, that she/he knew better with a gut full of alcohol that taking that turn with a car load of asshole friends was a smart move.
Public schools pass out condoms and require 8th graders to tote around a baby doll all day to teach them that the responsibilities of parenthood at an early age are cumbersome. Doesn't stop "hookups" in college or teen pregnancy or teen STDs.
These are just two examples of curriculum that schools teach that students pay absolutely no attention to so what makes me think that statistical deaths on the road will increase if Driver's Education is not taught in public schools.
There is another argument to this that also just royally pisses me off: "The parents won't teach the children so the public school has to." No. If a teen wants a driver's license, the teen can go to a school that will teach them what the parent won't. Do I care if the parent can't afford the school's fees? No I don't. The public schools can barely get classrooms of fifty or more disrespectful, obstinate louts to read and write with any success and NOW parents want the schools to teach them more??
Just what, exactly, are the parents teaching their children? Well... let's start with what the parents AREN'T teaching their children: the word "no", discipline, respect for others, self esteem, some kind of work ethic, self respect, respect for teachers and authority.
Zip, Zero, Nada. And it's simple as to why: Americans have, for the most part, become a society that does not like to be told they are doing anything wrong. School administrators tippy toe around parents when they have to call them for disciplinary reasons only to have to parent, irritated that THEIR personal time is interrupted, proclaim that the school is picking on their child, the child said they didn't commit the infraction and they stand behind their child, or (my favorite) boys will be boys or girls will be girls.
Now I'm not a school administrator. But if I were a school administrator, I'd be the biggest asshole and a bain to the existence of parents and students alike. You see, I'm lucky. I don't care if people like me. I don't live to have people like me. I'm immune from being validated by popular opinion. And school admins, hear me, are not in the business of having people like them. They are there to enforce the rules and, if it comes to that, make them hurt.
The ONLY way in today's society that you are going to get parents to take their brats in hand is to make them what they are: Responsible for Their Child's Actions. Parents are going to make damn sure they know where their kids are and where the alcohol came from if THEY have to spend 48 hours in the pokey due to a law that requires a 48 hour mandatory incarceration for first time DUI. Think about it. If you serve two days in the county lockup along with prostitutes, drug dealers and people who piss all over themselves for the fun of it because YOUR teen got caught drinking and/or driving.... how likely are YOU to make damn sure that you never have to do that again? Why you? Your child is a minor and YOU the PARENT, are responsible for your minor child's actions.
How about a nice fine that can be paid through your home owner's insurance? You think money is tight now? Wait until you get nailed with a fine that YOU have to pay as the parent because you teen went out and did something stupid. And the judges can do it. In order to get a judgment, they can clean you out: savings, stocks, 401K, insurance... and good luck ever getting insurance again. How about if, in addition to the fine, YOU are the one who has to perform the community service picking up trash along the main interstate? Like bright orange? How likely are you to take your child in hand and make them fly right if YOUR neighbors, friends, co workers, bosses etc are the ones driving by watching you pick up trash, weeds and dead roadkill while wearing an orange vest that says "I'm Doing Community Service so My Precious Teenager Doesn't Have To".
Is that the school's responsibility too?
Americans are requiring schools, just like they are requiring their health insurance, to cover everything. Problem is, covering everything costs.... and parents are too busy covering their credit card debt ceiling to pay for something additional like bad lifestyle habits and educating their children.
Well, sports fans...the Roaring Twenties Ride is over. It's over for the housing market, for the job market, for the jack asses on Wall Street and most likely over for Unspooled Spendthrift Congress people come Nov. 2010.. It's also over for public schools. They can't teach your child everything because there aren't enough hours in the day and you, as the parent, do little if anything, to help out.
You don't teach the basics to your children so you send these ill mannered, spoiled brats to school and then you hamstring the disciplinary options for the school. To add insult to injury, you pay public school teachers just a little better than a full time night manager at Mc Donald's and for that, you want an Einstein. With little or no responsibility.
Teaching children about drugs, sex, drinking and how to drive responsibly was and is and will always be a parent's responsibility. If you cannot handle it, scrape up the cash to find someone who WILL teach them this be it a driver's school or a good counselor or both. For those of you who are childless, NOW is a good time to ask YOURSELF if you have what it takes to be a good parent and teach your child what needs to be taught, get behind the teachers and enforce the lessons they teach and sacrifice that cute blouse or latest whatever to pay to have someone teach your child what you're not able to.
Death stats are not going to be appreciably altered by a school's driver's education curriculum. That is a scare tactic and if anything, adults should be angry at having their intelligence insulted like this.
Get real people. If you do not require your health insurance company to cover everything (sorry, your inability to put down the smokes and booze and booger sugar is NOT my problem) then your premiums would go down. If you do your job as a parent, you won't HAVE to worry about your kid winding up as a roadside memorial or a teenage rehab or pregnancy statistic. Your public schools cannot teach your children everything. Start taking some responsibility.
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