Lions for Lambs and other such things

So this is my first entry for class and I hope I'm doing this pretty close to how my teacher wants it.

so in this movie, Lions for Lambs, there's a kid in college who stopped caring about school because he started finding other things more important. he has a meeting with one of his professors to talk about what's going on. the student lists off all these things that are apparently getting in the way of him attending class. the teacher saw potential in him so that's why he made the meeting. the teacher said, "i'm salesman. i'm selling you to you."

i think this is a great example of what teachers should do. we should be selling our students to themselves. helping them find what interests them instead of turning them off to certain subjects because they're "boring" or they think there are more important things. there shouldn't be anything more important than an education. education is meant to open doors of opportunity and every opportunity should be open.

in class we've also been talking about no child left behind. it's one of those things that's good in theory, like communism. it's good to have a national standard and try to bring every student up to the same level, especially between states. in my experience, however, no child left behind has failed... miserably. the biggest thing i've encountered with this is standardized tests. in my high school, there wasn't a whole lot done before we took the tests. the administration was just like "ok, on this day you're taking test. go!" it wasn't a huge deal. because of that, no one really took it seriously. some just carelessly filled in bubbles, some went through the motions, and others struggled. well how it turns it out is that my high school got an overall terrible score. i think it was something like two stars out of five, whereas the other high school in our district got four or five stars.

well the next year, our administration cracked down and they cracked down hard. the students that did terribly were put into tutor sessions and it was a requirement to do well on this test or you wouldn't graduate. the reason why is because if we did terribly again, we'd lose funding and might get most of our teachers replaced. cutting funding sounds counter-intuitive to me. if a school is doing bad, wouldn't you want to give them more money to help them instead of hurt them even further? and by replacing teachers (with government approved teachers, mind you) that implies it's the TEACHERS' fault that the students aren't doing well. anyone who went to my high school knows that there are some great well-rounded teachers (of course there were some terrible ones too but the good outnumbered the bad). in my experience, if a student isn't learning, it's because they're chosing not to, not being the teacher isn't trying to engage them.