Bartlesville Education

I’m really frustrated with our education system in this town right now. I’ve already heard some horror stories from my friend Jenn who teaches night school at the highschool, most of which has already made me think twice about putting our children in private school. I know I’m no teacher but the assignments that these kids come in with just seem a little ludicrous sometimes. I mean, I can understand what it is that they’re trying to teach them but then I don’t really think what they’re teaching them is much use. What use is it for a senior in highschool, in an advance placement class mind you, to have to research a topic that requires her to find a poem about that topic. In this particular example, this girl was writing about country music so she had to find a poem about country music, not lyrics, but a poem about it. This certainly helps them with thier research skills but does it really, as Jenn says so often “make them think”! Today we had a bunch of middle school kids in who had a project to do on Ancient Rome. The first mother and daughter that came in handed us a piece of paper that said something like this, “Make a drawing of Hadrin’s wall”. Does anyone know who or what the hell Hadrin’s wall is? My first instinct (although I was afraid to say it because I was sure a teacher wouldn’t make this kind of mistake) was that she meant to write Hadrian’s Wall but the mother kept saying “well, that’s what she has written here so I’m sure it must be right”. Then another kid came in working on the same topic, slightly different though because he had chosen to build a replica of an Ancient Roman boat. A fine topic, not much out there, but interesting topic. The only problem is that since the entire class is doing research on Ancient Rome right now, all of our good books are already check out. If teachers are going to do projects like this, why don’t they come down here and see what materials we have available so they’re not just sending thier kids here blind and unprepared for the fact that we may not have enough or the right kind of material for them. Beth has tried to get teachers to do this for years but they apparently say they’re too busy to come down to the library. I am very frustrated. Grrrr!