Education Reform

[cantdog]

Federal educational aid is, in my view, unconstitutional in America, Xelebes.

The reason we do it just the same is the same reason that environmental things go federal.

Businesses hold states and localities hostage on environmental issues. Paper companies will relocate to places with poor safeguards, if they can. Same with shoes, cars, any manufactory industry which pollutes. Utah will have more manufacturing jobs if they gut environmental standards, and they know that. So, to protect people in Utah from PCBs and mercury inthe rivers (for example) you need a wider limit. If the federal government sets a mercury or PCB limit, then the game companies play with state legislatures is no longer possible.

Similarly with education. Like fire departments, schools are primarily cost. They express themselves as expense; they make no money for anyone, and yet they are necessary. A "good business climate" includes low taxation rates. To be attractive to companies, a state wants to lower the general level of taxes.

Corporations have much more clout here. To protect ourselves from their baleful effects, we need federal involvement in environmental and education issues, whether it is constitutional or not.

 

[R. Richard]

I have been reading the discussion here with perhaps a bit of amusement.

My grandfather grew up in a poor, immigrant community. His parents spoke only the language from the "old country." They insisted that granddad learn "the new language." Granddad went to a little one room school house with one (1) teacher for all the grades. Granddad was lucky. His older brother had to go to work in the mines when their father died in a mining accident. His older brother was damn near not allowed to work in the mines because they doubted he could do the work. Older brother managed to meet his quota each day, despite the fact that he was 12 years old when he started.

Back in those days, they used to have inter-school competitions for things like spelling bees and such. The little one room immigrant school kicked ass on the surrounding "rich kids schools." [Anybody who didn't have to send their kids to work at 12 was rich, according to Granddad's parents.] Why? If a kid was lucky enough to get to go to school and he screwed up, he would get the crap beat out of him by the old man. And then he would get the crap beat out of him by his siblings who were doing extra work so the kid could go to school. Granddad didn't get to go to college. He did graduate from the 12th grade and that only by studying at night and only going to school for tests all during the 12th grade. His older brother's earnings alone were no longer enough to support the family and Granddad had to work full time which is why he studied at night.

Now I hear that kids have to have small classes and special teachers.

I taught myself how to read when Granddad would sometimes read us the funnies. I could not attend school regularly due to a very bad attitude problem. So I stole books from the library and learned on my own. [I always returned the books within a day or two. I value the public library, unlike some of you.]

Parental pressure? Hell, I could see that I was going to have to learn something or live poor. I had my belly full of living poor by the time I was five.

Oh yeah, I was forced to spend 10% of my college education learning a foreign language. I spent an enormous amount of time and effort to pass the foreign langage classes. I today probably remember a dozen word total from the foreign langauge. I never used the foreign langage outside of my foreign language class and I have never needed said foreign language in my work or my own life. [By the way, I did learn about a dozen langauges pursuant to my work. I was a computer programmer. THOSE langauges were useful.]

I hope that you will excuse me, but I disagree with most of what has been said in this thread.

JMNTHO.

 

[cantdog]

I have been reading the discussion here with perhaps a bit of amusement.

My grandfather grew up in a poor, immigrant community. His parents spoke only the language from the "old country." They insisted that granddad learn "the new language." Granddad went to a little one room school house with one (1) teacher for all the grades. Granddad was lucky. His older brother had to go to work in the mines when their father died in a mining accident. His older brother was damn near not allowed to work in the mines because they doubted he could do the work. Older brother managed to meet his quota each day, despite the fact that he was 12 years old when he started.

Back in those days, they used to have inter-school competitions for things like spelling bees and such. The little one room immigrant school kicked ass on the surrounding "rich kids schools." [Anybody who didn't have to send their kids to work at 12 was rich, according to Granddad's parents.] Why? If a kid was lucky enough to get to go to school and he screwed up, he would get the crap beat out of him by the old man. And then he would get the crap beat out of him by his siblings who were doing extra work so the kid could go to school. Granddad didn't get to go to college. He did graduate from the 12th grade and that only by studying at night and only going to school for tests all during the 12th grade. His older brother's earnings alone were no longer enough to support the family and Granddad had to work full time which is why he studied at night.

Now I hear that kids have to have small classes and special teachers.

I taught myself how to read when Granddad would sometimes read us the funnies. I could not attend school regularly due to a very bad attitude problem. So I stole books from the library and learned on my own. [I always returned the books within a day or two. I value the public library, unlike some of you.]

Parental pressure? Hell, I could see that I was going to have to learn something or live poor. I had my belly full of living poor by the time I was five.

Oh yeah, I was forced to spend 10% of my college education learning a foreign language. I spent an enormous amount of time and effort to pass the foreign langage classes. I today probably remember a dozen word total from the foreign langauge. I never used the foreign langage outside of my foreign language class and I have never needed said foreign language in my work or my own life. [By the way, I did learn about a dozen langauges pursuant to my work. I was a computer programmer. THOSE langauges were useful.]

I hope that you will excuse me, but I disagree with most of what has been said in this thread.

JMNTHO.

Hell, I taught myself how to read. I already was reading when I went to kindergarten. So fuckin what? I don't see your point, here. Anyone whose parents get involved with their development and read to them will have a literate child without any input from their school system.

And about your foreign languages. You didn't care, which is why you forgot it all. Nothing to brag about, I'd have thought. But there you are, bragging. And you think it proves something, beyond "If I do not care, i can forget anything I like." But let me tell you a secret about foreign language education.

If we honestly gave a sweet fuck one way or another if a kid learned a second language, we would start them young, very young. You know the figures on this. Start before school age, if you really mean it.

I didn't care if my French and German students remembered word one of the language, when I taught it. I was starting them in high school on the languages; they would almost certainly have an accent you could cut with a knife, even if they got very good at it.

Here's the secret: they could lose it all, every word of it, so long as they had learned that there was another way of doing things besides the American way of doing them.

If they had internalized that lesson, plus the idea that it worked perfectly well for the people who did it that way, then I had succedded. Americans need that lesson. They have some issues about it.

 

[cantdog]

Tell you something else. For free. Don't bother to thank me.

I had a student named Wayne. He was in my French One, but he really studied. He evidently had a fascination for it. He was doing very well.

Languages are like that. Studying has a direct impact. It's not possible to bullshit in a language course; you either know it or you don't.

So Wayne was doing swell, and we had a parent-teacher conference day. Parents wandered into my classroom all through the day. I was kindly disposed to all of them. The most important and positive thing a kid can possibly have is a parent who thinks her education important.

In comes Wayne's mom. She has a book under her arm. I don't need to tell you which one, now, do I?

She expressed the idea that her kid Wayne was wasting his time in French class. She tapped the book and said, and I am not making this up, I swear to God, "If English was good enough for Paul and good enough for Moses, it's good enough for my little boy."

It was, of course, the King James.

I didn't even smile.

"If you really feel that way, Mrs. ____, then by all means you should pull Wayne from the French program. But really, Wayne is one of the best students I have; he really likes it. He's doing very well at it.

Your call, but he'll have an A or a high B without any trouble, the way he's going. And it would be something he'd miss, if he couldn't do it."

She left him in the French program, in the end, at least through that year.

 

[English Lady]

Well, I've read this thread with interest and I'm still not completely sure I understand whats happening in your American schools. But if certain children are only getting taught in basic English and Maths,everyone is missing out.

Chiildren learn through enjoyment and most of that basic English and Maths stuff can be a grind and as adults we all know we like a change every now and then. Through other subjects the children learn the basics, you don't have to be teaching maths or English to actually teach them! Even in PE (Sports) you can teach a bit about maths, it's easily done.

Anyhow, English schools. Everything works on the national curriculum now and there are these horrid things called SATs (Standard attainment tests) that occur from being about 7 (I think) now.

When I was in Secondary school (at 11) these SAT's were just coming in, and my school boycotted them. They would not do them with the year sevens or the year nines years, as they saw them as ridiculous things. My poor sister ended up having to endure them as the SAT's were enforced by the time she got to year nine (14/15 years old)and my sister hated them.

My sister has severe learning difficulties, at 11 she was said to have the reading comprehension of a seven year old and her maths was slightly higher than that. My sister worked her socks off all through secondary schools, but her sats and eventually her GCSE's all came through withn only a few passes.

She had a pass in social sciences (a class on caring which had no exams, just practical tests) but everything else was D's and one E. But I know my sister worked bloody hard and did the best she could do and I was very proud of her and the school for allowing her to attain the best she could do.

You look at a list of test scores though, and that would show my sister as a failure.

I hate the tests and test scores, they tell you nothing. I got A's and B's with no effort at all, because I'm lucky that I do well in exams. I should have done better, I barely revised but it doesn't show that in test scores.

My point? schooling shouldn't be all about tests, and I think they're getting to grips with that a little over here now, offering classes like my sisters Social science that is all based on practical work, or a vast majority of practical work,anyway.

A school has a responsibility, in my mind, to give a child a basic knowledge in many areas incluing maths, english,science, cooking, art, craft, computers etc and although maths and english should be important the teaching of those cores shouldn't take time from other studies but should be incorporated into them.

I hope some of that made sense somewhere along the line!

 

[Weird Harold]

For one of my classes, I'll be reading a paper on the No Child Left Behind act, ...

NCLB is just more paving for the Road to Hell. It is based on Good Intentions, but it doesn't address any of the real problems with education.

 

[sophia jane]

I've had an interesting experience with my oldest when we moved. The differences in education between his old school and his new is remarkable. Part of that is a difference in funding (moving from a district with lots of money to a much more rural, and poor, district). Part of it is in moving from Texas to Oklahoma.

Some differences:
his Texas school was very very focused on achieving high test scores. They prided themselves on having the highest scores in the district. They had before and after school programs to tutor in reading and math. R. was in the gifted class and he did well there. But what I didn't notice until we moved was that he didn't get any exposure to science or social studies until grade 3, and even then there was little social studies. Alot of science in grade 3, which he loved. But mostly, it was math and reading. Their music and pe programs were excellent. But recess? What's that? Even kindergarten students had recess maybe twice a week for about ten minutes at a time when the weather cooperated. That's it and we're talking about full day kindergarten. So they expected little five year old boys to sit at their desks and behave themselves all day with no free time to run and play.

his Oklahoma school seems to have a different focus. I haven't heard a peep about test scores. He only has science twice a week, which I find very disappointing, but he studies social studies everyday. And in addition to reading, they do alot of work on language and vocabulary, things that somehow got passed over at his TX school. They're a year behind in math here, but I don't know if that's a difference between a gifted class and a non-gifted or a difference in the states. The gifted program is also a joke here; he attends for forty-five minutes three times a week; this semester they're studying health. But they have recess everyday here, and I'm not getting a note home everyday that my son talks too much.


So what's my point, now that I've babbled too much? The way things stand our kids get a random mix of education. It all depends on where you live. How can kids, then, from all these different schools succeed on the same test? They're not being taught the same things in the same ways, and yet they're all expected to come out knowing the same information.


And I agree that parental involvement is a huge factor in student success. How many of those failing schools have good parental involvement?

 

[rgraham666]

I had a similar problem to your sister, EL.

I have a mild motor control problem. It's very difficult for me to do cursive longhand legibly and at a decent speed. Even my printing is slow and poor, and I'll never be a touch typist.

So the result was I couldn't finish tests. And according to the rules, unfinished questions were wrong answers. Thus according to the tests, I was an idiot.

I was nine when the education system gave up on me. My school principal told my mom I was uneducable. And should be transfered to a school, a warehouse, for kids that were going to be failures.

Luckily my mom fought that. I stayed in the regular system although I never did well. Still, not be wanted made me leave the system as soon as I was able.

Nobody except my mom noticed that although my writing was stuck at a Grade 1 level, my reading was at a university level. But tests can't really note that dichotomy.

Ultimately, education defines and improves a nation. Every time a nation has done something to improve education, its wealth and power improve.

If you want to see what the future holds, look at the simple fact that China and Europe turn out three times as many engineers and scientists per capita as North America. And the majority of science papers are Chinese and European. This doesn't bode well.

 

[Guest]

Wow, a topic I have a strong interst in, increasingly passionate opinions about, and personal ties to. I wish I had time to craft a better post on this.

I think there are fundamental problems with our system :

1. Public schools are a monopoly. If you want to send your child to private school, you lose the money you've already paid through taxes. A TV special this week on this issue contrasted our system with Belguim where each child was allotted money from tax revenue for his/her education. The school the parents chose for the student got the money. Public schools had to compete with one another, and with private & religious schools for the child and money. Think that increased the quality?

2. Public schools were initially created because for a democracy to succeed, there had to be an educated and informed electorate.

I really think the political powers-to-be now no longer want schools to turn out good citizens, but rather, good "human resources".

Sidebar: Do they still want schools to teach about propaganda methods and communication techniques so people can see how messages are crafted to influence them, but not inform them? Do they teach about peoples rights any longer? The Bill of Rights? Do they teach how to read a newspaper article and look for balance and recognize bias? Considering Fox News ratings, I doubt it.

I disagree that the voucher program is wholly about funding churches or pet conservative projects.

I've come around to your point of view. Intially I thought vouchers were the rich trying to destroy the public schools since their children didn't use the system, and they were tired of paying for a system that benefited socieity, but not their own children. And then there was the whole issue of educatiing those who can only afford public schools, beyond their "station", although they wouldn't dare to use that verbage anymore, the thinking persists.

Ironically, I believe in vouchers, while thinking many voucher adocates do want to destroy public education for just those reasons.

But, at least 30% of children in public schools cannot be effectively educatied using the cookie cutter, mass production techniques the schools (at least our county) want to use. Hence, your child is educated far below their capabilites, or you have to pull them out and private or home school them.

We need to do away with the monopoly and vouchers are a bad way, but oddly probably the only politically feasabile way to that.

It is so important that education be primarily public, Shang. So terribly important. All private or parochial education has an agenda of its own. We are trying, here, to achieve a republic.

We want a republic which is engaged with the globe at large. We want citizens who know what that means. We want people with a clue about where we sit, historically. We want people who know what's going on now, who know how it works, who can deal with complexity. Going through the motions is not acceptable, and neither is relying on parochial institutions to do this. Education is central to any hope we may cherish for our society. Central. Beats farm subsidies, beats Lockheed, beats oil companies, beats all that shit. If we aren't raising competent children, we are pissing the future away.

I agree. But are public schools still making discriminating, informed, educated citizens? I don't think so as I stated above.

Edited to add :

If we don't reform our educational system soon, we risk becoming a dictatorship albeit a superpower dictatorship.

In a few decades, as the rest of the world moves ahead of us in brainpower, be may become a third world dictatorship.

 

[impressive]

There are also quite substantial issues in the recent reauthorization of IDEA (the "special" education law) as it purportedly sought to "align" with NCLB.

As the parent of two children who receive special education services (one due to disabilities, the other "gifted"), I have seen both pros/cons to NCLB. "All" really doesn't mean "all" -- even under NCLB. It means "all except those with the most significant disabilities." I'm not saying that's a bad thing -- just pointing out that "all" doesn't really mean what many folks claim it does.

I agree that educators are now practically forced to teach to the test. Our schools give free breakfasts during test week, even.

There are plenty of folks who believe that NCLB's "hidden agenda" is to set up the public schools to fail in order to make vouchers seem preferable. However, unless schools are REQUIRED to accept students presenting vouchers (barring a capacity issue), it would be schools -- not students -- having choice. I cannot support that.

SJ -- feel free to PM or call. I can overload you with information on NCLB & IDEA from the perspective of parents of children with disabilities.

 

[eric shawn listo]

Well, you may agree or not.

The great problem with ANYTHING sent down from on high is how the peons (the School Board and administration) is going to deal with it. And you can be sure that is going to involve saving as much money as they can.

As Imp said they will say the disabled are already being taken care of and the "gifted" basically can take care of themselves.

In my wife's district they decided to get rid of honors classes and do "mixed" classes saying wouldn't it be wonderful if the more "gifted" kids became mentors to the less "gifted". As you can tell I'm sick of this PC word "gifted" and both my kids have been labeled with it.

So now they have school wide class disruption by the unruly beneficiaries of NCLB. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying "gifted" kids don't sell drugs and cause trouble. They're just smart enough not to do it when the teachers are looking. Oops, used a none PC word "smart".

Now the government has also mandated that AP classes be provided. So the top 5 to 10 kids academically ina given class will be provided for to some extent. This leaves the 'B' student trying carve out an education and mentoring his/her less "gifted" classmate while the teacher acts as diciplinarian.

At least at my wife's school.

SJ: to answer your question about the teachers union. My wife belongs and was advised to join for one simple reason. Legal fees. No school district will pay for any defence of a legal action against a teacher and god forbid the school sues the teacher for some trumped up charge. With today's litigious society it would be suicidal to enter the teaching profession w/o some protection.

While the union claims to be powerful and politicos do use it at campaign time they are not instrumental in salaries or in even mandating health care (the school board recently wanted to cut ours to 50%--my wife got on the commitee and put a stop to that--but only until next negotiation). The union cannot even require that a certain % of teachers in a given school has to be union members.

Any way...my 33 1/3 %...for now.

 

[entitled]

i'll admit to knowing nothing about the NCLB act itself, except that it's causing problems.

What i do know is that teachers don't like it. Students don't like it. Parents that pay attention to what it's causing the schools to do don't like it. Politicians think it makes them look good, so we're stuck with it.

It's reformed everything about the school systems. Children are being pushed to learn more, faster, and are suffering as a consequence. My oldest is in first grade, middle one in kindergarten. i chose to put them in a school district other than the one we live in because the one they're supposed to be going to does not allow enough recess. See, i remember recess as being a good thing. Fifteen minutes in the morning, and again in the afternoon, and whatever time was left after eating lunch. Now the kindergarteners are supposed to get by on less than 20 minutes a day for playtime. It just doesn't work that way.

How they're teaching children has changed. i learned to read using phonics. So did my dad. They taught phonics up until about the point the NCLB act passed. Now they expect children to memorize what each word is, and not use their intelligence to make the sounds of the letters to figure out what each word is. We're not supposed to, but i've taught mine phonics at home.

They teach handwriting differently. The district we live in will not allow each child to hold a pencil in a way that is comfortable to them. Instead, when they're first learning to write, the kids are given the stub of a pencil - about an inch and a half long - so that they're forced to hold it 'correctly'. They're no longer taught circles and sticks for letters. They're immediately tossed into the slightly harder D'Nealian.

They are given an insane amount of homework. i remember having homework TWO TIMES in kindergarten - and the only reason i remember is because both my dad and my grandparents threw fits when a child so young was sent home with work to do after a full half-day of school. Now, after a full day, my daughter has homework at least once a week. My son in first grade has at least four pages of homework and a book to read sent home every day.

Their time in other things has been cut down horribly. PE twice a week, art once, music once, and computer lab once. That's it.

The kids are getting burnt out. The teachers are getting burnt out. There's no room for play in the classroom anymore. The creativity in the learning process is no longer there. i think a lot of it is to blame on the NCLB act, but i don't know. i just know the educational system isn't working anymore.

 

[sophia jane]

My son in first grade has at least four pages of homework and a book to read sent home every day.

Wow. In third grade, my son doesn't even get that much homework.

You reminded me of another difference between TX and OK- he has no computer lab time now; in TX they had computers everyday.

 

[entitled]

Wow. In third grade, my son doesn't even get that much homework.

You reminded me of another difference between TX and OK- he has no computer lab time now; in TX they had computers everyday.

No child that young should have that much homework. And this is from the less strict of the two districts that are local enough to choose from. In fact, they were talking last year about closing down the schools they go to because they're so BEHIND in the amount of work and in the testing results compared to the other districts in this area.

Computer lab is a joke. Why would a kindergartener need to go to computer lab? i could see starting them in about first or second grade, but in kindergarten?

 

[cantdog]

Hidden agendas or not, Ted, kicking the money back at the parents 'for education' has the effect of washing government's hands of the problem. When this country places itself in a position of dominance over another state, we do not try to administer the place, the way the old-style empires did. That's just buying headaches. We take their money and we let them fend for themselves with what they have left. The empire builders we have running the place now would love to do the same with the American government. They are more corporate-oriented than governance-oriented. They mean to take the money and kick public functions off their plates.

How soon do public schools evaporate when the normal system of funding is a voucher system? How long before the private institutions complain that they are unfairly competed against by subsidized public competitors? Private ambulance services complain about that very thing where fire departments run an ambulance, and businessmen do run the city councils. They buy the argument.

Private fire departments are rackets. If they are there for the subscription money, it's extortion: pay us or your house burns flat. And no one is getting subscription money to fight wildland fires. Businesses come and go. There is no way to legislate that your private ambulance or school or prison must remain in business, and they will fold up if the gig isn't paying them. Tcheh, that's the market for ya.

Education and water and fire services are public because they are not goods and services in the economic sense at all, but rather portions of the public good. Your monopoly idea is false because of that.

What makes a water company anything but a monopoly? Who is going to lay pipes under the streets paralleling existing water pipes, to compete? What company is going to step in and wire a second electrical distribution net? To unleash water and electricity to private hands with no regulation is to grant monopolies to someone, every time, and yet what they are distributing is a part of the public good. People live and die by whether there is water or heat or cooling or fire and police services. Cultures live and die by whether there is a good education system.

If the public schools are going sour, you lose tech edge. That alone ought to be enough to ring a big brazen bell.

The way you fix it is not by washing your hands of it. You must buckle down and fix the public system. That is one of the responsibilities of government, and it might be work, but to govern is not just to throw your weight around. Some responsibility is included in being in charge.

Parents. If I have no children, I, too, lose the tax money that goes to public schools, by your argument. There are plenty of people who feel like that, and some of them are on school boards, too.

But so long as you plan for your country to persist you must educate all the children there are. No patchwork of Pentecostals and prep schools can do the job, even if the patchwork you see before you today looks good.

 

[matriarch]

National Curriculum taught in English schools

 

[cantdog]

And Eric is making excellent sense, too. Note that only parental involvement and even outrage where necessary has a hope of salvaging these messes. Rob's no less than Eric's. Citizens must care.

 

[eric shawn listo]

And Eric is making excellent sense, too. Note that only parental involvement and even outrage where necessary has a hope of salvaging these messes. Rob's no less than Eric's. Citizens must care.

Thanks cant.

Parental involvement is essential. My wife and I avail ourselves to be present in all aspects from choosing teachers to "bitching" to administration. Yes. My wife though a teacher is one of "those" parents. Perhaps giving a little of what she gets but mostly because advocating for your own child will in the end have a positive effect on the whole in most instances. (I'm not talking about "Why did you flunk my kid?" to which the invariable answer is "He/she didn't do the fucking work.")

I can't believe the number of parents who don't go to observe the potential teachers of their children. It's worth taking the vacation/sick day or even to lose the pay. Sorry. My opinion.

 

[cloudy]

Thanks cant.

Parental involvement is essential. My wife and I avail ourselves to be present in all aspects from choosing teachers to "bitching" to administration. Yes. My wife though a teacher is one of "those" parents. Perhaps giving a little of what she gets but mostly because advocating for your own child will in the end have a positive effect on the whole in most instances. (I'm not talking about "Why did you flunk my kid?" to which the invariable answer is "He/she didn't do the fucking work.")

I can't believe the number of parents who don't go to observe the potential teachers of their children. It's worth taking the vacation/sick day or even to lose the pay. Sorry. My opinion.

I don't know if where I live makes a difference, but my youngest goes to a small school out in the county, and every time they have anything going on at the school, the turnout of parents is HUGE. And it's not just one parent...where there are two parents in the home, both parents attend. They have to schedule things in four or five shifts to accomodate the folks that go, and things last for three or four hours.

I have his teacher's home number, and don't feel strange using it. She also calls, after hours, if she needs to - there's a nice give and take of communication.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Observations:

Here in NY the teachers union actually had the chutzpah to say testing wasn't a fair evaluation or their skills, when the Govenor tried to make testing of basic skills among teachers mandantory.

Teachers no longer think their primary job is education, they believe it is socialization.

Twenty odd years ago, when I was in school, I transfered from the public school system to a private school. I began my eigth grade year a full three years behind my peers. That is to say the books I had completed in my last year in public school (seventh) had been completed by my peers in their forth grade classes.

In private school, peope failed, people got saturday detention for goofing off and when you got sent to the principal, you usually got a spanking.

In private school, I was challenged constantly, participated in several inter school competitions rangeing from debate, to college board (A kind of team jeapardy), and advanced placement tests.

My first year in college, I was taking courses I had completed in elevnth grade, so English 101, College algebra and cal based phyisics and Chemestry were hard, but not insanely hard classes. Public school students, almost to a man, had to take remidial English, basic math and no sciences in thier freshman years. Many, who did well to exceptional in the public school system flunked or barely passed the remidial courses.


My conclusion is this, if you want to reform the education system, put the emphasis back on learning. All too often schools have become free daycare, with parents expecting teachers to act like surrogate parents.

Until public schools get back to making education their primary role and are freed from the unreasonable expectation that they will take on child rearing duties and promote harmonious relations between people insted of educating them, no matter how much money you throw at it, the problems will not change.

If I had a child, I wouldn't put her in the public school system here. I want want better for a child of mine than the absolute minimum education the lowest common denominator could ingest.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Well it's the reason I homeschool... one of the reasons...

frankly, I believe the entire system needs to die, as it is... I don't particularly have an interest in "saving" it, as Cant seems to... I don't believe it can be saved, or redeemed... but I'm an Aquarian with anarchic tendencies, so go figure

School, when it began, was nothing more than training for a permanent underclass system. That's what it was designed for, and now it is used to train people to be good consumer zombies. Schools themselves have become huge bureaucracies and like any bureaucracy, they serve only to feed themselves and make themselves fat. They are parasites. In fact, I'll go one further, and say that they are psychopathic... clinically insane. Has anyone seen the documentary "The Corporation"? Schools fall under this same exact analogy... in the documentary, corporations are likened to psychopaths... Schools, like psychopaths, are self-involved and self-interested, their only purpose is to create wealth for the people who are invested in the system. Any "good" they do, any "educating" that happens is accidental... although they have their own hidden agenda... Like any psychopath, they are irresponsible, they put others at risk to maximize their profits. They manipulate everything (do you know how strong teacher/school unions are, what "tenure" really means and how incredibly powerful the teacher's lobby is?) They are grandiose... they insist that their way is not only the BEST way, it's the ONLY way. They have no empathy and refuse to accept responsibility for their actions and feel no remorse. In fact, it is delusional and believes it actually doing "what is best." Public schools are just as insane as corporations.

And their most heinous crime is to rob people of finding their own special genius. Rob, look what schools did to you, because you couldn't "take tests." My father was dyslexic in 1950-something when they didn't have a clue what that was... they gave up on him in 5th grade, he was making potholders with looms while the rest of the class did their lessons. He never learned to read and write. When he was given an IQ test (inpatient mental health when he had a breakdown at the age of 30, diagnosed bipolar) that was read to him, rather than written, he scored in "genius" level... :x No one is more interested in your own education than yourself, because only YOU have your destiny in your hands. If you take that away from a child, as public schools do, you do the greatest disservice you could possibly imagine to that child.

NCLB is a joke. Schools can't help, by their very design, but leave children behind because they don't care about children at all. They can't, as Rob said, in their cookie-cutter, assembly line function, ever get a child in touch with their real genius. If a child finds it, it is usually an accident, or as a result of an interested adult (usually a parent.) Schools were made to create human beings whose behaviors could be predicted and (more importantly) controlled. In this, they are highly successful.

Socrates was appalled at the idea and thought of being "paid to teach." He knew exactly what would happen to REAL "education," the true seeking of knowledge, if teachers were paid. It has sadly come to pass. Like Socrates, I believe that self-knowledge is the only basis of true knowledge. Instead of warehousing them away, children need to be part of community, included in the days and lives of adults (at no other point in history have children been so disconnected from the adult world, and so uninterested in it... think back to apprenticeships). If we are so concerned with "family values" then, my god, please let children become part of family life again! As it is, public schools usurp and invade family life to an enormous degree.

As a parent, I am taking responsibility, full responsibility, for my children's education. Can't get much more "involved" than that. I refuse to "involve" myself in a system that teaches children what public school teaches them. No, I'm not talking about evolution, and I don't homeschool for religious reasons. It isn't the curriculum in schools that bothers me... it's the hidden curriculum that is the problem. How do schools succeed so well in creating children who have little or no curiousity, are indifferent and apathetic about the world around them, have little or no sense or connection to the past or the future, who are violent, cruel, uncompassionate, afraid of honesty and intimacy, who are materialistic, timid, passive and dependent?

They teach them. Not reading, writing, math... those things are learned easily by children who are curious and interested in the world around them and adult life. You'd be surprised how quickly a child will *teach himself* these things. No, that isn't what schools really teach.

Schools teach that you need to sit quietly in your seat, segregated, put with people the same age and same social class as you, cutting you off from the enormous diversity and variety of life. Think about your experience of school, moving from room to room at the sound of a bell in a place where you have no inner authority, no choice, you can't say no. You have to raise your hand every time you want to speak... or go to the bathroom!

And of course, if you actually become interested in something, say, imaginary numbers, or the Underground Railroad... you need to put that interest away when the bell rings after 50 minutes, and shift gears to the next dose of "education" you need to swallow. It's this mish-mash of unrelated facts... no wonder children don't understand the relationship between things past and future. American children don't understand the concept that Native peoples did, 7 generation thinking. The way they are taught keeps them from it. Schools also teach kids to be indifferent. Don't get too interested in anything, because tomorrow we're moving on to a new "subject."

And then then are the grades. Stars, checks, red marks, even candy, and those letters from A-F, all used to teach children that they are emotionally dependent on someone else for their worth. Kids learn quickly what "good" and "bad" behavior consists of. Good kids wait for teachers to tell them what to do. Good kids rely on authority figures and their expert opinions with little resistance and moderate enthusiasm. This is probably the most important lesson schools teach... our entire economy, our whole culture, depends on this lesson being learned....

And our kids are learning the hidden curriculum of public schools FAR better than they are learning the "facts" schools propose that they are teaching. And we are suffering, as a culture, as individuals, cut off from our own inner authority, our own innate curiosity, and it takes us years and years to "unlearn" these lessons (if we ever do) and find our own individual calling, our personal genius, whatever that may be...

Homeschooling is the only option I see at the moment. Some day I hope there are more. Community-based education, not huge institutions that suck the life out of their inhabitants. Places where children can discover meaning, and more importantly, their own purpose, for themselves.

 

[amicus]

They don't care about fair. Anything's fair, by one definition of the word, if it is the same for all.

My chief concern about education is that there be some. That it be public education and that it work. That it be funded, integrated, feature small class sizes and teachers paid money.

Currently they ain't paid money, they get shit. Even though they know things the kids don't and also know how to communicate those things, they have minimal say in the way they run their own classrooms. Everyone has an agenda about that.

Half the people on school boards ran on an anti-school platform; they got there to kill the budget so they could save a penny on taxes. Ask their opinion about anything, and they will kill it to save money.

Nobody wants to pay for proper schools, and they shunt minorities into hellhole schools by themselves. Currently also, a lot of kids don't seem to come out the other end with skills. Not surprising when you don't want to pay for any schools.

"Skills" for me include foreign languages, history, geography, and civics-- how can these people expect to build a wordwide empire when nobody knows how to be a citizen, or where Iran is?

And who has the money? Right. And what do they want to do with it? Support churches. Hence the voucher programs. The tests are not even done for the child's use or benefit, but to discredit as many public schools as possible so that they can excuse the notion of funding religion.

Also posted by Cantdog: "...It is so important that education be primarily public, Shang. So terribly important. All private or parochial education has an agenda of its own. We are trying, here, to achieve a republic.

We want a republic which is engaged with the globe at large. We want citizens who know what that means. We want people with a clue about where we sit, historically. We want people who know what's going on now, who know how it works, who can deal with complexity. Going through the motions is not acceptable, and neither is relying on parochial institutions to do this. Education is central to any hope we may cherish for our society. Central. Beats farm subsidies, beats Lockheed, beats oil companies, beats all that shit. If we aren't raising competent children, we are pissing the future away..."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I read through the thread and pretty much decided not to participate, but, sitting back with a coffee and some thoughts, I felt obligated...


Cantdog, as usual, without saying so in plain words, wants to establish a totalitarian dictatorship that controls, regulates and manages every aspect of a society.

He does so, continually, preached that the 'end' goal of his methodology will benefit mankind in general.

I think most people, even on this forum, have heard enough of Stalin and Hitler and Idi Amin, to realize that a dictatorship, wherein all power resides in government is a bad thing.

Following the usual losers line of critical comment about how things are being done, and advocating always and only total control, Cantdog never takes into consideration the overall effect of such a dictatorship.

It wasn't government that first put a radio and an automobile into each home in America. It was not total control and government that put a personal computer into every home in America. It is never government that creates progress, never, ever, not once in any aspect of human life.

Education is, to confront an assertion made; education is a product and a service, a commodity, like any other and should be viewed as such.

Any educational system will only work when it addresses the need of the 'individual' student and his abilities and desires. Education is not a means of preparing a 'national resource' of educated people. People are not ball bearings or Barbie Dolls, to be manufactured according to specifications desired.

Cantdog simply doesn't understand the diversity of a free society. Doesn't have a clue to the value of the multiplicity of all, 'agenda driven' forms of education that eventually, by the 'invisible hand' of the market place, bring a quality product and service into existence.

Cantdog, like many socialist dreamers, believers that the individual will of each human should be bent and molded to fit the desires of the state.

And Cantdog, I do not really direct this to you as an individual, just one who advocates a total dictatorship and command society, it is that philosophy that I abhor and must expose, not you personally.

I think most people sense the evil in those who advocate total control but are pacified by the lofty goals such charlatans promise.

Perhaps that is the old idiom, 'sell your soul to the devil', in doing so, you lose the very purpose of being and existence.

I am sure a Soviet Union style society could and would force every child to be exposed to whatever 'education' that dictatorship mandated.

I would not care to live in a society ruled by Cantdog and his ilk, I doubt if you would either.

To the threadstarter, I realize this does not address your question on a specific level, but, if you view each child as an individual, if you view each family, each parent as a sovreign entity, and realize, fully, that education is all about individuals and not society in general, then perhaps you can see the flaws in attempting to construct a public education system that serves all needs.

It cannot be done in a free society.

Only where individual freedom is held as a basic and central value, will true 'education' exist And much like ice cream and candy bars, it will come in many flavors, with some choosing one and others, another.

amicus...

 

[cloudy]

Selena, I honestly believe that a lot of the ills you lay at the feet of public education could more rightly be laid at that of the kids parents.

Yes, I agree that parents and children should be more involved with each other.

I don't think that we can blame the ills of OUR society on any one facet of it. It's narrow-minded, at least.

I applaud you for home schooling, but there are also parts of public education that your children will miss....can't help but be that way. It's hard to obtain scholarships, it's hard to apply to college (though not as hard as it used to be), what about team sports that teach cooperation, and team work? I have a friend that was home schooled, and while her level of education up through high school may be as good as anyone else's, she has problems with anything past high school, simply because there aren't any records of anything. She got her GED, sure, but doing that in this area of the country doesn't do anything but put her, in employer's eyes, as someone who didn't graduate high school.

It's a catch 22, for sure, but I disagree with much of what you said about the school system. It may be that insane where you are, but it isn't here.

 

[cloudy]

Cantdog, as usual, without saying so in plain words, wants to establish a totalitarian dictatorship that controls, regulates and manages every aspect of a society.

so far off base that it's past ridiculous.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Education is, to confront an assertion made; education is a product and a service, a commodity, like any other and should be viewed as such.

Oh, Ami... ouch... thank you for proving my point. We think of education, of EVERYTHING in this culture, as a "commodity."

"What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child."
--George Bernard Shaw

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
-- Mark Twain

"In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

"An educational system isn't worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn't teach them how to make a life."
-- Source Unknown

"Education would be so much more effective if its purpose were to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they don't know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it."
-- Sir William Haley


Education isn't a commodity, Ami... far from it...

True education is a mysterious click or a silent nod of the head. It is not organization or school, although sometimes education occurs in those settings as it does in others. Certainly, it is not something between teacher and student.

To me, education is like a light revealing a space or something long ago known and forgotten and then suddenly retrieved more meaningfully. It is an unpredictable unmasking. Education is something that happens when we least expect it, and it only happens when we are ready.

Funny, how we busily take our courses or design syllabi and lectures. We say, “I have to take this” or “We will cover this.” As though education is something we can measure up by the cup or swallow in doses like cough syrup til we are smart.

But the truth in learning is not to be hooked and dragged in. It comes like the dawn, a pinpoint no one much notices. And then, not when we expect it.