WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE WHY DISRUPT? AND WHY BE TARDY? PUNISH WORKSHEETS FROM GLEN OAKS MIDDLE IN THE  80's?
98712
Some teachers in the school where I work use a system like this.  Instead of having a late student disrupt a class, the student has to fill out a short form before coming into class and leave it in a box by the teacher.  Then, the student just sits quietly and the teacher can record the tardy later.  Saves disruptions from explanations ("I had to go to the bathroom really bad and I didn't know if I could get here in time so I decided to just go since asking you first would just take more time and I didn't want ot miss more of your class than I had to but I really had to go and please don't mark me late again because I'll have detention OK Ms.D??")
944387
...things were better because I think I grew during the last decade where parents weren't breathing down kids' necks about one thing or another (the '70's).  Now, kids seem to be on lockdown because of crime of one sort or another, stress over getting into the right college, and the pressure to make a lot of money (and buy a lot of stuff) in the future.  We could play outside until the streetlights came on, and there wasn't the competition to get into college (I only applied to one school -- a pretty good one, in fact, and got in).  Kids could just be kids, and not expected to act like mini-adults.
322819
i thought we already discussed this...lol it's because they want our money and to torture us and give us bad grades b/c we don't want to get up and go to chemistry or to ford's class :)
459207
Somewhere along the line the networks decided that it would be more profitable to start running news programs on saturday morning.  One bleak saterday, kids got up, grabbed their cereal, and collectively screamed as all 4 networks had the "talking-head brigade" in full force.  A couple of things helped to push the networks this way.  One was that cable was starting to come into its own, and you had the early "kids" cable stations like nickelodeon showing the smae lower-budget cartoons all the time.  The other is that the "good" cartoons by the mid 80's were all syndicated, and were being sold for higher prices, hard to buy enough of these for both afterschool and saturday mornings.
373031
they got sent to the Principal's office!  :)  That show left the air a long time about and it was syndicated for awhile (re-runs) but I have not seen it in a long time.
977267
yep. i have seen countless equations listed as a question and ideas for essay topics. its ridiculous. no wonder american schools are falling apart....the kids cant think for themselves.
1041333
Yes, schools today teach a class on Sh*tty Music Appreciation 101 as a prerequisite of graduation.  Why the hell is Greenday still around?  I hated them in 10th grade and they suck worse than ever 12 years later.
691017
racial problems were starting to surface in a much more serious way after Brown vs board of education. Central High, Birmingham, rosa parks, the 3 civil rights workers. On the flip side, bull connors, dogs, water hoses, resurgence of the kkk, axe handles etc. Rock and roll also contributed by energizing teens. parents then didnt like the music as much as the 60's parents didnt like the beatles.
666637
Try contacting your old high school.\n\nI used to work for computer techacher in high school who also did yearbook.  Working on computers gave me access to "restricted" places.  They had few boxes of old year books stored in a room.  With a luck your old high school might just have one for you.
911112
they were probley taken down because of the harassment going on in there. you can find other sites where they have chat though dont worry.
637502
Sign me up for your team - I agree with you completely.  I'm a former teacher.\n\nThe sad thing is that it wasn't always like this.  Our educational system used to be the best in the world.  Somewhere along the way, we lost our focus.  I don't think it's a lost cause, but we need to act NOW to save what's left.\n\nTeachers can't discipline children who misbehave without the risk of retribution from the parents.  When I was a child, if I was disciplined in school it was a small matter compared to what I faced when I got home.\n\nMany teachers have gotten to the point that they just want to coast to retirement.  They're vested in their retirement plans, and don't want to change careers even though they've lost the passion that put them in that job in the first place so many years ago.  Many new teachers are there because the college degree is relatively easy to get, they get summers off, and they get to coach a sport.  Now, I'm not saying ALL teachers are like this, but everybody must admit there are some out there, and they're bringing the system down.\n\nMany parents use school as a daycare center.  They expect teachers to teach their children how to behave.  They won't help their kids with homework because it's the teachers' responsibility to make sure the kids understand it.  \n\nFew parents attend parent-teacher conferences.  The ones that do are generally the parents of children that aren't having problems.  The kids see all of this and adopt the philosophy that, "If Mom and Dad and the teachers don't care, why should I?"\n\nSchools have become more focused on teaching vocational and technical classes, and less on the basics.  As an instructor of some college-level medical courses, I was once asked by a panel of high school administrators what courses they should offer to their students to better prepare them for a college program in healthcare.  "Should we offer Medical Terminology? Anatomy & Physiology?"\n\nMy answer was, "Make them take 4 years of math, 4 years of English, and 4 years of science.  If they haven't done that, they aren't ready for college."\n\nIf you have a plan to fix the system, count me in!  Let's start a movement in the right direction!\n\nP.S. - Did you notice that the only people who disagreed with you on this wrote in very poor form, with no capitalization or punctuation, or misspellings and generally poor grammar?  I found that interesting.
1005856
Good question. I am continually surprised at the loss of intelluctual people these days.  It seems a good education and learning has gone down the drain. I don't know if it's the pupils or the system itself.  Grammer has gone to the dogs.  Kids these days don't even understand the difference between 'its' and 'it's'.
532650
From what I have seen, American High schools pale in comparison to schools in other developed countries.  What we seem to be about a school behind.  Our college is their high school, out high school is their middle school.\n\nWhen I went to Europe on an exchange, the students in 10th grade were learning calculus and they had to take like 4 languages.  At home I was taking geometry and one measly Spanish class.\n\nAnd Asia is a WHOLE different story.  Their 5 year olds are smarter than American high schoolers.\n\nI think its a bit of a shame, but our government is so scared to single people out or leave people behind.  Everyone has to have an equal opportunity.  And I am all for equal opportunity, but if a student refuses to take advantage of his opportunity, then screw him.  Our laws keep "dumbing down" the curriculum and forcing homogeneous grouping (no smart kids classes and dumb kids classes) so the motivated kids get bored and aren't challenged, and the lazy kids don't do any better because they don't want to and they have no intent of trying any harder.  Schools can't kick out students who don't want to learn, and teachers get put in the middle of the whole mess.\n\nAnyway, I will stop ranting now...
1182146
I graduated in the class of '99 and I must say I was nowhere near as studious as you. I tended to blow off assignments if I didn't feel like doing them, but I have a photographic memory so I always aced my tests without cheating. I never skipped class but that could've been because my very strict father taught Physics at my high school and if I missed class he'd know about it. Besides being lazy and generally not caring much about my education I was not a terrible student. I've never done drugs and didn't start drinking or having sex until after I graduated high school. Since then I spent some time in the military which taught me discipline and I recently started college. I don't think kids are any worse now than they were when we were in school... I knew about a lot of my peers doing the same things you mentioned your students doing, I just didn't do the same things.
820722
I don't know what happened to Zthing.. that site had the craziest flash cartoons out there, especially "Failed BreakFast Cereals"!
188778
They dont deal with it that why the schools are so bad now days!
899435
There was a test called the "Gate" test and we all took it in first grade.  After that test my two best friends would leave the school we attended for "accelerated" learning  2-3 days of the week and I was stuck at school without them. \n\nBy the time I was in 6th grade I was getting in a lot of fights and suspended from school for hitting a teacher.  They of course sent me to the school counselor who opened my records and said, "why didn't you attend the Gate program?  You got the highest scores in our district!"  I went on to get expelled from 2 High Schools, a Boarding School and even 2 Projects.\n\nMom and Dad never told me about the letter they got about passing the Gate exam.  They called the school back in first grade and said they didn't want their son to be "different" from the other kids.\n\nWhat were my dreams?  To be a Criminal... I won't go into detail, but not one stopped me.  Thankfully I learned from my mistakes before I ever got caught, I learned that being the tough guy left you with a dirty conscience... so now I'm serving in the military trying to repay my good luck in service to this country.\n\nCan't wait to get out, and just be "different!" =P\n\nMom and Dad... it's not your fault, but I can't help but wonder what might have been.\n\n*ADDED* A  few of my boys and I jam on Sundays... it's what we do instead of church, since it's the only time we are all off together when we are deployed here.