Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…

Pat made a comment about the old “two men working and ten men shirking” syndrome which leads me to comment on things I have seen, particularly in public schools, examples of local government running out of control.

When I was a boy my junior high had about 750 kids in it. We had—count them—one principal, one clerk, one dual use clerk-librarian, and two janitors.

As I grew up married and traveled about I saw several junior highs. Up to about the late sixties and early seventies they ran with roughly the same number of administrative, clerical, or custodial employees, perhaps one additional clerk or a full time librarian, that's all.

By the time I began teaching in civilian life in the late seventies there was a move on to “plan” more, to “add depth to offerings,” and to counsel our little darlings every time someone hiccupped. I laughed at it at first because I had just come out of the service and could see it for what it was: People at the top gathering positions around them to make their jobs seem more important so that their salaries could increase.

But by the time I got to Carson Junior High in Mesa, having quit teaching high school because it was too easy (chemistry; all the little brains), I was shocked out of my mind at what I saw. Here is the burden carried on the shoulders of the teacher salaries at Carson: Principal. Assistant principal. Principal's secretary. Assistant principal's secretary. Attendance clerk. Two general clerks in the front office. Librarian and library aide. Audio-visual clerk and audio visual aide. Three full time and one half time counselor. Counselors' secretary. School psychologist. That was ten years ago. I'll bet there are more of them now.

But just think of the counseling staff. SIX people, including a full time school psychologist. That's over a quarter of a million dollars in salaries for one junior high out of twelve. Each year! And having them gets absolutely nothing taught that would not be taught without them. You know what the counselors said all the time I was there? “We don't get to do much counseling.” Surprise!

If you get hold of the roster of town employees, or county employees, or state employees you'll find the same thing: top heavy! People who fill positions which simple aren't needed, who produce nothing, and who spend most of their time creating busy work to justify their existence.

Another example. Mesa has a science and social studies department at the district office with over thirty people in it, all of whom do nothing which could not be done by a small committee of six or eight teachers, who would be happy to do the job for—say—an extra thousand a year.

Want your taxes lowered? Create a citizen's committee to scrutinize what's going on and write position cuts to go on the ballot.

patrandall (Pat Randall) says…

Now all the teachers have aides in the valley and up here they have to have a Thursday afternoon a month off for something.
I have never figured out why all the couselors and why the psychologists.
I think they screw up the kids minds.
All three of my kids went to Carson Jr. High in Mesa . Way back in the
60's and 70's. Boy, I am getting old.

Put another line on the ballot that says, none of the above

llandproud (Susan Grubbs) says…

You know, I can't remember even one half-day of school - for any reason, let alone for teachers' meetings. And snow days? No such thing. Oh, there was plenty of ice and snow, but it didn't shut the school down. I attended school in Kansas, from kindergarten through the University of Kansas. No half days, so snow days. The first time there was a snow day, it happened at KU, and I had graduated (in 1975) by that time.

I don't see the point in teachers' aides, but would have to ask my three nieces (all teachers) how they feel about them, before I'll make a blanket statement beyond not seeing the point.

Pat, I'm not sure to whom you're referring when you say “they screw up the kids' minds.”

Tom, one thing that I saw, consistently, in the Payson schools was that there were very few teachers who were willing to do more than the bare minimum. The happiest day, since we moved to Payson in '86, was the day my son graduated and I no longer had kids in Payson schools.

I must say that elementary school - both kids attended Payson Elementary with Johnny Ketchum as principal - was very good. The teachers were good and enthusiastic.

When the junior high became a middle school, my daughter was in the first class. Her experience was terrific. Bill Lawson was the principal. The teachers, while not all crazy about the middle school concept, were energetic and willing. By the time my son started middle school, there was a new principal and the teachers seemed not to care, for the most part.

The high school ran very well under principal, Phil Gille. The teachers, as a rule, were good and pretty willing to work with the kids and parents. After Phil left, the school really lost direction.

I guess that the key to a quality school may well be a solid principal - one who can deal not only with the kids and parents, but with the school board. I won't even start on my feelings about it.

patrandall (Pat Randall) says…

Psychologists and counselors. If the kids don't have anything wrong with them they will have.

llandproud (Susan Grubbs) says…

Okay. I had a feeling that was what you were saying. I disagree, but don't have the time to think about more of a response than that right now. I will ask, though, do you feel that way about psychologists and counselors in general? If so, then I really disagree.

patrandall (Pat Randall) says…

YES.
Psychiatrist are fine. They have medical training and can prescribe medicine and have medical test done.
I don't like the horror stories I have seen and heard happen in the schools. A teacher and a child can have a personality conflict and off to the psychologists with the kid. From then on they are screwed up and labled.
I have known counselors that work at places like Rim Guidance and the education they have is pathetic.
I know people here that have gone to one of the counceling places in town and it is a joke. Maybe because 99% of them are court ordered to go. The people that work there know they have a captive patient work load so just don't care.

Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…

Susan,

Pat hits the nail on the head in two ways: First of all, psychologists do not have a medical degree. I actually have enough hours in psychology to have a degree in it if I cared to get one, which I don't, and I wouldn't feel qualified to give advice to someone trying to find his backside with both hands. That's not to say that there aren't some very qualified people in the field; I just don't think you are very often going to find them working in a school.

Secondly, the school psychologists I saw at Carson had nothing to do and so ended up spending their time creating problems. There is a concept that calls for educators to see themselves as “student advocates.” The school counselors in Mesa took this to mean that they should become sh-t house lawyers. Every time you went to discipline some kid he or she would scream, “I wanta see my counselor!” It was a pain in the…. Didn't change anything, but it was clear cut evidence that the counselors presented themselves to the kids that way, creating an adversarial atmosphere between themselves and the teachers.

Here is a typical example of counselor-produced work: One day we had a half day for teachers meetings. I went into the library where the meeting was being held and was handed a balloon and a pin by a counselor, one of those who had planned the meeting.

“What do I do with this?” I asked.

“Break it and get the slip of paper.”

Right off I disagreed with that. I hate waste, and bursting a perfectly good balloon to get a slip of paper I could have been handed was stupid (and cost taxpayer money). Nevertheless, I broke the balloon and got out my slip of paper. It named a tune, Yankee Doodle, I think. It said to go around among the eighty or so teachers, administrators, aides, and others humming the tune until I found the people who were supposed to share a table. Now I'll tell you, the day I do something that stupid hell will freeze solid. I sat down and waited until forty five minutes of valuable time had been wasted, then got together with the others I was supposed to be sitting with. The average pay in that room was about $30,000. There were eighty people. School contracts, in case you didn't know, call for a specified number of days, somewhere in the range of 200 to 210 days. That means it was costing the taxpayers $12,000 for us to meet that day. We wasted more than one tenths of the time on that crap, spending more than $1200 dollars of YOUR money humming a tune. We then proceded to waste the rest of the meeting time with fluff-and-stuff, total crap. That means the entire $30,000 was wasted.

That's what school counselors do: Waste your money. Mesa could save $6,000,000 a year by replacing school counselors with clerks and hiring a couple of psychiatrists to cover any truly necessary counseling over the entire district.

More in second post…….

Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…

Part two.

I never had aide. They aren't supplied for secondary teachers, something I agree with, though aides are needed in primary grades. I used student aides in my chemistry classes and computer classes; they handled routine tasks, freeing me to supervise potentially hazardous lab work and to move around the room during computer classes to work one on one with students. The kids earned elective credit and also learned a lot of chemistry or computer science.

The biggest problem with school money, and other public funds, is the lack of objective measurement of whether people actually accomplish anything. Merely saying what a person should do, and then checking to see that he or she has done it is not sufficient. For example, I have seen the success of school counselors measured on the basis of how many students they've seen. Nuts! Those kids were pulled out of class, leading to potentially lower grades. And no measurement was made of whether or not the problems got solved.

An incredible amount of taxpayer money is wasted on textbooks. They are too fancy, too heavy, and too expensive. To make matters worse, the kids are required to carry them back and forth to school, causing them to wear out long before their time. And far too much homework is assigned because classroom time is wasted on fluff.

My textbooks literally never wore out. While other teachers turned in as much as 10 or 15 percent of their books annually as worn out, I turned in NONE. How? Sent the books home with the kiddos, told them to leave them there, and had a classroom set. When the kids came in on a day we needed to use the books, we used the classroom set. The kids loved it and it saved time and money.

in all the time i taught, i never once gave a homework assignment, other than a reading assignment. Never! And my kids always scored better than those of other teachers. Why? We didn't waste time. When the kids had an assignment to do I corrected that assignment right in class. It had to be right or they went back and made it that way. It makes no sense to have kids turn in something, grade it, and allow them move on if they earn a 60. If you only understand 60 percent of what I taught you yesterday, how the devil are you going to understand what I'm teaching you today? Today is based on understanding what I taught yesterday!

My kids worked like little beavers, far harder than kids in other classrooms. I had them work in pairs except for tests. How did I get them to work? Simple! If they finished work they could do a wide variety of other things: Paint, draw, read, play chess, checkers, or other games, use a computer, paint or draw posters for extra credit, do extra credit lab work, or—the biggie for some kids—just sit and talk with each other.

Each semster I sat down with each class and asked the kids for ideas to make my teaching better. I listened and made changes. I had an absolutely irreducible one to three percent failure rate.

patrandall (Pat Randall) says…

When I went to school and my kids there was no such thing as ADD.
It was spoiled kids that weren't disciplined or else they were far ahead of the class and bored. Now they dumb down the classes. I think a lot of the teachers want the kids drugged, so they sit dociley in thier seats and don't learn a damn thing.

llandproud (Susan Grubbs) says…

Tom & Pat,

First of all, Tom, a psychologist does not merely have a bachelor's degree, or even a master's. They have doctorates. So, no, you could not have been considered a psychologist.

Many of the counselors in schools today have degrees in social welfare. I'm pretty sure that doesn't impress either of you.

You know, you may have been a great teacher, Tom, and you the perfect mom, Pat, with the perfect kids. Good for both of you. I think that schools were better “back in the day,” too, but one thing seems pretty certain: It is unlikely that school will ever be like it was for us again.

patrandall (Pat Randall) says…

And that is a real shame.
I don't think I have ever said seriously that I was a perfect mom or that my kids were perfect, but I will put them up against any other family of three kids.
I was just lucky and had intelligent kids.
One never brought a book home in 4 years of high school. Had good grades and had offers for scholorships to quite a few schools.
The first three years of his schooling we had to take him to the door of his school or he would beat us home, he did not like school at the beginning.
Then he found it was a great place to socialize and school was never hard for him.
He even has great penmanship.

Shovelhead (Mike McLaughlin) says…

Auto shop may not help treat the dog but it will give you the needed education to change the tire on the car when you need to drive to the farm and check the cows! :)

llandproud (Susan Grubbs) says…

Pat, I know you never claimed that either you or your children are perfect. My kids are intelligent and pretty great, too. But, even intelligent, well-behaved, talented kids can have problems. For reasons, often unknown, some kids have problems in spite of being great kids. Their parents may do everything right. Well, wait. None of us does everything right, but you know what I mean.

You seem to scoff at the notion of ADD. I have a nephew - very bright, with terrific parents, ideal homelife - who was diagnosed with ADD. After much agonizing by my brother and his wife, they did put him on Ritalin. It helped. He was able to concentrate in school and has grown into a very successful man. His ADD kept him from accomplishing some of the things that his parents might have wished for him, like a degree. He stopped taking the Ritalin during his freshman year in college and ended up studying about computers. He owns his own business now and makes a very good living - good enough that his wife can be a stay-at-home mom. My point, Pat, is that the challenges that came with ADD certainly changed his life-course, but with treatment, counseling, and Ritalin, he was able to rise above it.

I don't know all of the details surrounding his time in elementary school, but I do know that alert teachers AND counselors made a very real, significant difference. Tom has an opinion (a low one) of counselors, due to his experience. You have yours, whatever it is, based on experiences that you had with your children. I happen to have a completely different opinion than either one of you, based, in large part on my medical background (psychology is a science, after all) and on my having seen very positive results from counselors.

patrandall (Pat Randall) says…

Was it a Dr. or who (not name) or what that diagnosed your nephew?
Please go back and read your post.
The way I understand what you wrote he was not going in the career direction his parents wanted.
How does a child not have ADD when they are little, then get to school, have it and then when they are out on thier own and stop the medicine they don't have it.
I have seen kids that are brilliant in what they want to do. They march to a different drummer. It isn't that they can't keep thier mind on something, they just don't give a damn and don't want to waste their time on something they are bored with. They would do great in accelerated classes in what thier interests are.
I don't remember so many problems until the schools started dumming down the classes.
I always told my kids. I don't care what kind of work you do, you can pick s– with the chickens, but you better be the best picker out there. (:
I don't know if you read the post where I said all three of my kids went to the same jr. high where Tom taught. Then 2 of them went on to Westwood H.S. which abuts Carson Jr. High. Maybe that is why we have the same ideas on counselors.
My oldest son at the time wanted to be a veternarian. His counselor had him sign up for classes that had nothing to do with that. I remember one class was auto mechanics which he had no interest in and wouldn't help him take care of animals or get a medical degree. They also didn't have him take a foreign language, which when he got to MCC he had to take and not get any credit for it. He was supposed to have it in high school.
I think people get ADD when they are about my age.

patrandall (Pat Randall) says…

By 12yrs old my kids all knew how to change a tire. I had seen to many women driving around that didn't know how. When you were raised in Payson in the time period I was you didn't call AAA. I can remember when there was only one phone here. FS
My daughter took auto mechanics and for her 16th Christmas she asked Santa Claus for a tool box and tools. Did all of her own oil changes etc.

llandproud (Susan Grubbs) says…

Pat, no, my brother and his wife had no specific career path in mind for my nephew. He was in elementary school - primary grades - for pete's sake.

My comment about a degree is, quite frankly, what each of my siblings and I hoped for all of our children. We each attended and graduated from universitites, as did each of our spouses. So, it seemed the natural progression for our children to do the same. I will say that not all of our kids have attended universities, finding different paths. Not one of us designed a particular career path for any of our children.

Yes, the ADD was diagnosed by a psychiatrist AFTER my brother and his wife, the teachers, and the school counselors suspected ADD.

I didn't say that my nephew no longer had ADD when he stopped taking the Ritalin. He was 19 or 20 when he, personally, decided that he didn't want to take it anymore. When he stopped taking it, he realized that a university was not for him. It was that simple.

DonEvans (don evans) says…

So called counseling professionals have grown by leaps and bounds in the last decade. It has become an “industry” field. Lot's of private and insurance money to be made telling people they are a victim of _ _ _ syndrome and not responsible. I personaly know that a local large facility counselor/administrators college degree is in divinity. Yes, there is a time and place for professional couseling, but far to many today do it for financial gain, not help therapy. Keep em coming back as long as you can, keep telling them they have the latest psycho babble malady, make them a victim, and excuse their behaviors, and deposit the check….

llandproud (Susan Grubbs) says…

Some people - perhaps you, Don, - will never believe that mental illness exists. It has been my experience that it is best not to try to convince those who cannot be convinced. If one waits long enough, it is a very real possibility that a mental illness, of their own, will convince them.

As for counselors with degrees in divinity, I would argue that many are more than capable of dealing with emotional/mental problems. My father was an ordained minister and had a Doctor of Divinity. I'd have recommended his advice any day, any time. Perhaps he could have helped you.

patrandall (Pat Randall) says…

Yes, llandproud, there is mental illness.
Many different kinds. Some are chemical imbalance in the brain.
Some are stress related, abuse, injury to the head.
They should not all be treated the same way and definately not diagnosed and treated by school counselers.
All I hear about kids now days is they have ADD and then by the time they are 16 they are depressed and all need anit-depressants.
No wonder so many go to illegal drugs.
C'mon folks not all kids can be the sharpest tack in the barrel and yes they are going to be disappointed about things, but pills are not always the answer for all of it.
So your girl/boyfriend leaves, you didn't make the football team or cheerleading squad it ain't the end of the world. Get a grip. You aren't the center of the world.

Shovelhead (Mike McLaughlin) says…

WHAT!!!! Give up …I don't believe it for a minute!

llandproud (Susan Grubbs) says…

Pat, it isn't the 1950's, '60's, or '70's anymore. Things will never be the way they were again. More is being learned, more attention paid to things that were, frankly, swept under the rug in days gone by.

I trust that you've given up, but perhaps I should have said a “good” counselor can tell the difference. Or a good teacher. Or a good principal.

llandproud (Susan Grubbs) says…

Pat, I really think that school counselors have a place. They are not there to diagnose, but they are knowledgeable and are perfectly capable tof referring a parent to a mental health care provider.

I won't argue that the dianosis of ADD seems to be overused. However, from personal experience I know that it isn't done lightly. I was convinced that my son had ADD. Not one person in the school system thought so, so I didn't seek futher counselling on the matter. He wasn't and isn't.

There's a difference between depression and disappointment. I would wager that a counselor can tell the difference.

patrandall (Pat Randall) says…

I doubt it, to your last sentence.
The thing before ADD was hyper-active. If a kid wouldn't sit still for two hours they were hyper. I have seen one child in my life that was hyper and that was the scariest most pitiful thing I have seen with a child.
He was almost 4 yrs old. I don't know if I can tell say this right, but
when he was 3 yrs. old they found out the depth perception in his eyes worked opposite, or sometthing like that .
They found out there was something wrong with his eyes when he tried to ride a tricycle. This little boy was the wildest most active kid I have ever seen. He would be up over the sofa across the tables, up on the dining room table under the chairs. Amazing.
He would not sit still to be read to or told a story or anything. If you wanted to talk to him you had to keep up with his movements.
Talk about stress, his parents had stress !
We are never going to agree on school counselors so I am giving up.

patrandall (Pat Randall) says…

Shovelhead,
I give up on the school counselor part.
llandproud
Granted there is more technology in medicine now but there are not better practicing Drs. because they depend to much on the damn machines.
Yes, my husband is alive because of the technology. He was probably the first person living in Ariz, in the 70's to be diagnosed with sleep apnea and that was done at Stanford Univ. in Calif. There were only 2 sleep centers in the U.S. at the time. Still holds the record there for not breathing the longest period of time. I took him to 4 doctors in Mesa, and then he spent 3 days in the hospital with different drs. checking him including a psychitrist and they all told me people can not hold thier breath while asleep.
I finally found one to believe me and we were off to Stanford U.
He was in the first 100 people in the U.S. to have an angioplasty, done at St. Mary's Hospital in San Francisco. Twice. A year apart.
One of the few people to have 7, yes, seven by passes in his heart, done at Mesa Lutheran in Mesa.
He just had 2 stents placed in two of the bypasses as they had plugged 98%, at Banner Baywood Heart Hosp. in Mesa.
I am grateful for the medical people, but they overlook a lot in the beginning because a machine didn't tell them. They don't listen to the patient. They catch one in a thousand words and order the machines to take over, or start sending you to some other doctor.
Now they know the sleep apnea caused the heart problems.
You know if your left toe hurts you have to go to a left toe doctor, not a right toe doctor.
I don't know what set me off on all of this, but I typed it so will post it.
Maybe this explains why I am a raving lunatic. (:

patrandall (Pat Randall) says…

Tom,
Sorry your thread on Gov. got all messed up. That is what we women do.

Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…

Pat,

The things you have all been talking about is exactly what this string is about—waste of taxpayer money on frivolities.

Susan,

You usually have your facts straight, but in this instance you are wrong about the degrees of school, and most other, counselors. I have never met a school counselor with a degree above an MA, and I have met dozens of them .

llandproud (Susan Grubbs) says…

Read my post again, Don. There is, indeed, a difference between having a degree in psychology and being a psychologist. In not one post have I made the statement that school counselors are psychologists. Not one. The purpose of my post, discussing degrees in psychology was to make a point - and I may have misread something that you or Pat wrote - that in no way could you consider yourself capable to act as a psychologist, simply based on psychology courses you may have taken.

You might also look back at your own post, Don, of 6/30. You refer to “school psychologists I saw at Carson….”

coyote (Thomas Trottier) says…

There's a joke there somewhere.
Neurotics build houses in the sky; Psychotics live in them; Psychiatrists collect the rent.
You are your kids best counselor, I mean, most of you admit they screw the kids up. Why take a chance? They need someone who they trust, who really has their best intrest at heart. All you really have to do is listen mostly and be a guide, they already know most of the things but need someone to bounce their ideas off.

DonEvans (don evans) says…

Thomas, good point. Susan, I think several of your above posts were in response to Tom, not me??? Anyway, Pat, Susan is right on one thing. It's not the 50's through the 70's anymore. This is the new millenium of enlightenment. We are all victims, not responsible for anything, we all need therapy, need someone to improve our own self esteem, and about how we FEEL about things, not how we THINK about things. I think the in term is being a Progressive person. I need a prozac cause THEY said so……

patrandall (Pat Randall) says…

Don,
Maybe if more people would speak out about what a crappy world we live in, take responsibilty for thier failings we could turn it back to the 50's. It was a much kinder, gentler world and people had to face life with out blaming their parents, the neighbors dog or whatever.
When I was about 14 one of the boys here in Payson was killed in a car wreck. He was the most popular, most loved of any of us. He was a very special person. We did not have grief counselors, psychologists or anti depressents to get us thru our grief. We leaned on each other and our families. We didn't stack flowers and balloons on the site. We held each other and cried. We survived quite well.
There probably isn't a day goes by now that at least one of us 15 to 20 survivors of that time don't think about him. There were 29 of us in Jr. H. and H.S at the time.
Remember this was a time when the school was very small and all 12 grades went to Julia Randall School.
I don't know what got me on this subject either. Just rambling thoughts.

llandproud (Susan Grubbs) says…

Tom, you're right. Sorry.

llandproud (Susan Grubbs) says…

Oops. I mean, Don. Don, you're right. Sorry.

Guess it's time for me to quit!

Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…

Hope everybody had a happy 4th.

And Susan, that's okay. I'll accept your first post. By the way, you keep saying that a school psychologist isn't just someone with a degree in school psychology. I hate to disagree with you because I almost always agree with what you have to say, and find your viewpoint refreshing at times, but I worked for Chapman Universtity for a while and was directly involved in such things. Okay, maybe I'm wrong, but If a school counselor has something beyond a degree in school psychology could you please tell me what it is? And I'm not being facetious here, either; it's just that you just usually have your facts straight, but in this case, well….

Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…

Hm-m-m. Here's a good one: I usually write my posts on a word processor, run my spell-checker, copy the corrected data, and post it on the blog. In this case, I spelled University correctly, but the machine spelled it Universtity on the blog. I still have the original file and the word is spelled correctly.

New gremlins?

Tom_Garrett (Tom Garrett) says…

Susan,

Not to make a big deal out of it, but if you have an answer for, “If a school counselor has something beyond a degree in school psychology could you please tell me what it is?” I'm still waiting to be corrected.

And I mean that very sincerely. If I'm wrong I want to know it because I can make sure I correct anything I've said. If I'm wrong I'll be happy to admit it too. I don't have to be right. It's nice, I guess, but I can live with being wrong.

How about it?