Educating All Students For Success: Fill & Download for Free

That’s simple. Restore school discipline. Our politicians have thrown discipline out the window. Literally. There is nothing more corrosive to the learning atmosphere than defiance. Defiance is when a teacher gives a direction and the student refuses.Teacher: “Johnny will you please take your assigned seat.”Johnny: “No. I want to sit here.”Teacher: “You don’t sit there. You need to go back to your assigned seat.”Johnny: “I don’t f***ing like that seat.”Exchanges like that happen every day in American classrooms, usually it’s a lot more extreme than that and profanity is frequently more colorful than what is described in the imaginary exchange above. All too often, it escalates beyond crude language.The problem is that the Obama Administration put pressure on states to not suspend students for minor things, like telling a teacher to “f*** off.” The state of California responded with AB 1729 and AB 420 which make it almost impossible to discipline a student for defiance. If the teacher and administrator are willing to jump through hours+ worth of hoops, the student might face a relatively minor consequence. For a kid to be given a 30 minute detention requires paperwork, meeting and home contact that will take more than 30 minutes of the teachers time and at least that much of the administrators time. Probably security will get involved taking the kid to the office. So you’re looking at 1.5 to 2 hours of adult man hours to give one kid a 30 minute detention. Most administrators don’t have time for that because there are too many kids misbehaving. So mostly they get a slap on the wrist and sent back to class to repeat the behavior.One example, a female teacher I know was sexually harassed by a special education student in her class using extremely vulgar and descriptive language. The student verbally described what he fantasized about doing to the teacher. The student wasn’t transferred to another class because there wasn’t another special education teacher with her assignment. And he wasn’t suspended, because its even harder to suspend a special education student. She simply had to put up with this vulgar kid making her uncomfortable for the rest of the school year.In most cases, defiance doesn’t rise to the level of sexual harassment, but it does waste a lot of class time. Students who refuse to work or cooperate aren’t learning. Actually they are learning that they are immune to consequence of their behavior. But they’re not learning the math, science, reading and language skills they need to be successful in life.

Not at all.In 2003 I had surgery to my ankle at a hospital in the Malaysian state of Penang. The orthopedic surgeon went to medical school and trained in Malaysia. Since the surgery, I’ve had zero problems.In 2001 I became an expat in Penang to start a factory. Every employee’s education at the primary and secondary level they received in Malaysia. Among the professional staff, about half took their degrees from Malaysian universities or colleges. All of these employees were completely effective. The factory’s financial and operating performance were well above average compared to other sites in my division.There is an unfortunate brain drain of educated and trained professionals from Malaysia to other countries. This can only be possible if the primary and secondary educational system in Malaysia prepared students for success in their college and university educations.Like any other country, in Malaysia some schools are better than others.In general, the people in Malaysia have a good work ethic.

I work with high school students, so I see the very first landmine any person who wants a career ever steps on:A failure to actively take education.People say “get educated” all the time. “Get” is the wrong verb. And education isn’t something you get…it’s something you take.If you are not actively taking that knowledge, that skill-building, that experience gathering, then you are setting yourself up for more failure than you think.Education is not about getting a piece of paper. Education is about making yourself valuable to others. I think if we viewed it that way, we might be a bit more successful in helping others to take that education seriously. But so often, we make education a game, and lots of students just won’t play.That is a tragedy.People complain about the rat race that is career life. But you can’t even enter that race if you step on a landmine before it starts.TAKE education, young people, and take it seriously. Drink it up like a one who thirsts in the desert. Be tireless in your studies, and take every opportunity to acquire new knowledge and skills however you can.The alternative isn’t pretty.