Education Reform

[matriarch]

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.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yesssssssssssssssssssssssss!

 

[rgraham666]

Colleen, you're lucky that you were normal enough to succeed in a private school.

I would have had even less success in a private school than public ones. I'm a poor competitor and any system that promotes competition is one that I will fail at.

And being a solitary person by nature, the stress of being around so many people, public or private will be too much for me.

A private school is, to my mind, merely the logical conclusion of the manufacturing system our society prefers.

You were lucky enough to be the right sort of raw material to make it through. I would have been found hanging from my own belt very quickly.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

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?

Ironically, I get to use the public schools for the things I want, and leave the things I don't. Best of both worlds, at the moment... my kids can, by law, sign up for any sport or even any particular "class" in a public school. There are also lots and lots of organized sports out there that aren't connected to schools that they can participate in. As for team work, we have homeschooling groups and co-ops, they interact with kids all the time, field trips and "specials" classes (languages, music) taught by parents with those skills who are also homeschooling... we pool our resources. The best part is, they learn diversity and variety... they aren't segregated by age, locked into "peer" relations and escape the pitfalls of peer pressure for the most part as well, while still getting socialization skills... (my kids know lots of adults and can communicate very well with them... unlike at lot of publically schooled kids, who shun adults...) in fact, there is even a "homeschooling" version of "prom"... lol

College... overrated... (speaking from someone with a masters, still paying loans on my "education" lol) but easily do-able. Harvard accepts homeschoolers. Every university or college will considering a homeschooled child, and articles and signs are showing the actually prefer them... strangely enough... they usually "test" better, they are definitely "out of the box" thinkers... which is why employers like them as well...

 

[rgraham666]

A relevant quote.

COMPETITION An activity in which there are more losers than winners. Otherwise it's not a competition. A society based on competition is therefore a society that consists mostly of losers.

John Ralston Saul - The Doubter's Companion

 

[cloudy]

Ironically, I get to use the public schools for the things I want, and leave the things I don't. Best of both worlds, at the moment... my kids can, by law, sign up for any sport or even any particular "class" in a public school. There are also lots and lots of organized sports out there that aren't connected to schools that they can participate in. As for team work, we have homeschooling groups and co-ops, they interact with kids all the time, field trips and "specials" classes (languages, music) taught by parents with those skills who are also homeschooling... we pool our resources. The best part is, they learn diversity and variety... they aren't segregated by age, locked into "peer" relations and escape the pitfalls of peer pressure for the most part as well, while still getting socialization skills... (my kids know lots of adults and can communicate very well with them... unlike at lot of publically schooled kids, who shun adults...) in fact, there is even a "homeschooling" version of "prom"... lol

College... overrated... (speaking from someone with a masters, still paying loans on my "education" lol) but easily do-able. Harvard accepts homeschoolers. Every university or college will considering a homeschooled child, and articles and signs are showing the actually prefer them... strangely enough... they usually "test" better, they are definitely "out of the box" thinkers... which is why employers like them as well...

But, see? That's the difference in the areas in which we live. The things you describe couldn't happen here, there's just not a population to support it.

And, you may feel college is overrated, I don't (two degrees, and halfway through my master's). Education is a priority for me, and by turn, for my children.

Different drummers.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

A society based on competition is therefore a society that consists mostly of losers.

also see: definition of "American society"

 

[Selena_Kitt]

But, see? That's the difference in the areas in which we live. The things you describe couldn't happen here, there's just not a population to support it.

You'd be amazed what you can create if you want to... I've heard stories of homeschooling parents doing lots of creative things, including "exchange" students from other homeschooling families... just to create a better socialiation and different experience (country and city mouse) Nothing is impossible.

 

[cloudy]

You'd be amazed what you can create if you want to... I've heard stories of homeschooling parents doing lots of creative things, including "exchange" students from other homeschooling families... just to create a better socialiation and different experience (country and city mouse) Nothing is impossible.

I live in the county with the smallest per acre population in the state. It won't happen here.

 

[elfin_odalisque]

But children who do not and will never have parental involvement, because of abuse or abandonment or poverty or whatever, are the ones that suffer. And the fact of the matter is... dare I say it... a lot of this is racial. I see it every day. (SOME) white folks don't want to fund the education of little black and Mexican kids. It's not pretty, but it is what it is.

Totally agree, but you mix two valid points together.

The problem of parental disinterest - and it can be as simple as being simple - can be addressed. I think your second point is wider than racial. Middle class parents (black and white) have a downer on white trash as well as all the rest.

 

[sophia jane]

But, see? That's the difference in the areas in which we live. The things you describe couldn't happen here, there's just not a population to support it.

And, you may feel college is overrated, I don't (two degrees, and halfway through my master's). Education is a priority for me, and by turn, for my children.

Different drummers.

They couldn't happen here either, Cloudy.
And I'm with you about college. I'm getting my BA in liberal studies, a completely impractical degree that doesn't prepare me for any kind of job. But you know what? I love it. I'm learning about things I'd have never learned in a traditional degree program. Besides, I've got to get my master's degree to do what I really want to do, so I may as well get my BA in something I enjoy.

 

[amicus]

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.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

SelenaK...sometimes I think you go to great lengths to just disagree with me, I guess thas okay, if you wanna.

Not long ago, I sat down at the dining room table with my 5 year old grand daughter and an old fashioned lined table with both capital and lower case letters and numbers at the top of the page.

I spent at least an hour with her, showing her how to follow the arrows and make the letters, and how to keep them inside the lines and make them the same size.

On another occasion, I sat with my 9 year old grandson and cut a piece of paper into a square and then folded it diagonally, making two triangles and explained, in very basic terms, the relationship of the figures and the math that went into understanding those relationships.

To say that education is a 'commodity' is not a bad thing, commodity is not a bad word. It simply means a service or a product produced by one person desired by another.

I think those who teach have an immense service to offer, I even think that teaching, like art, is sometimes a gift that some have and some do not.

When you teach a child to load a dishwasher the the silverware being placed 'handles up', or show a child how to vacuum or fold clothes or mow a lawn, or rake leaves, you are teaching.

Women appear to be better teachers than men, at least in the lower grades, or so it seems to me, because they have more patience.

Parents can donate or give away their teaching skills to their children, that's what it means to be a parent. But when you require or desire the services of a 'teacher', that service then becomes a commodity, hopefully in an open market place, that is available to you.

There are many ways that could be accomplished, within a wider nuclear family; within a neigborhood of cooperative parents, within a church or other association of people.

anyway...

amicus...

 

[cloudy]

They couldn't happen here either, Cloudy.
And I'm with you about college. I'm getting my BA in liberal studies, a completely impractical degree that doesn't prepare me for any kind of job. But you know what? I love it. I'm learning about things I'd have never learned in a traditional degree program. Besides, I've got to get my master's degree to do what I really want to do, so I may as well get my BA in something I enjoy.

Thank you.

Regardless of what home school proponents say, there are some areas where it just won't work. Period. End of story.

And, college is not overrated. How can anyone think that any education is overrated?

 

[matriarch]

You'd be amazed what you can create if you want to... I've heard stories of homeschooling parents doing lots of creative things, including "exchange" students from other homeschooling families... just to create a better socialiation and different experience (country and city mouse) Nothing is impossible.

Where I live, all the homeschool families have formed themselves into an association, recognised and approved by the local education authority.

That way, the children not only get the education their parents desire, but they still get the benefit of group education and the essential social and educational interraction with other children, by organising group outings and workshops. They don't miss out on things like drama (school plays), and even group music and games.

It seems to work.

 

[sophia jane]

And, college is not overrated. How can anyone think that any education is overrated?

I don't know. Knowledge makes all the difference, in my opinion.

 

[matriarch]

Thank you.

Regardless of what home school proponents say, there are some areas where it just won't work. Period. End of story.

And, college is not overrated. How can anyone think that any education is overrated?

Education is education is education. All knowledge is a positive thing.

I have always mainted that education is NOT about work, but about LIFE.

The more we learn, the more rounded our lives.

 

[cloudy]

Where I live, all the homeschool families have formed themselves into an association, recognised and approved by the local education authority.

That way, the children not only get the education their parents desire, but they still get the benefit of group education and the essential social and educational interraction with other children, by organising group outings and workshops. They don't miss out on things like drama (school plays), and even group music and games.

It seems to work.

I think that's wonderful, if it's possible.

Here? Just won't....the population isn't large enough to support it, unfortunately. The nearest city is an hour away....the public school my youngest goes to....5 grades, is small enough to be TOO small for just my graduating class.

 

[cloudy]

Education is education is education. All knowledge is a positive thing.

I have always mainted that education is NOT about work, but about LIFE.

The more we learn, the more rounded our lives.

yes.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

SelenaK...sometimes I think you go to great lengths to just disagree with me

LOL
I agree with you more than I disagree, actually... most of the time

<<<<<<When you teach a child to load a dishwasher the the silverware being placed 'handles up', or show a child how to vacuum or fold clothes or mow a lawn, or rake leaves, you are teaching.>>>>>>

yes... in context... this is the important part... sitting down at a table with some letters and showing them to a child, or teaching them geometry with a piece of paper is all well and good... if you provide a context for that learning, and more importantly, if that child in interested in learning it. If you don't pound all the natural curiosity out of children with "lessons" they will usually be interested, and if they aren't, odds are they aren't ready yet... if a child shows interest in reading, or numbers, by all means, teach it... I've done hundreds of math and science "lessons" while cooking... and kids remember lessons in context MUCH more than they remember disconnected facts.

Cloudy:

And, college is not overrated. How can anyone think that any education is overrated?

I'm just saying that college as a vehicle of education is overrated... not education itself... it is very similar to public education in its aims and hidden curriculum... it's an extension of the same system... doesn't mean you can't get an education there ... you can... I did... but it isn't the holy grail of education that it's purported to be (or that you are, perhaps, invested in it being?)

You don't need to defend your choices to me, Cloudy... I made the same ones... our choices our decidedly limited, and perhaps things like vouchers will cause the collapse of the public school system that Cant seems to fear and an even greater free market that Amicus longs for, and even more choices for you and I and our children... we make the best choices we can in the moment... to paraphrase Maya Angelou, when we know better, we do better... no one can know what is "better" for you but YOU... that was my point to begin with... I just want a system (whatever it looks like) that actually encourages people to find out what that is...

 

[cloudy]

Cloudy:

I'm just saying that college as a vehicle of education is overrated... not education itself... it is very similar to public education in its aims and hidden curriculum... it's an extension of the same system... doesn't mean you can't get an education there ... you can... I did... but it isn't the holy grail of education that it's purported to be (or that you are, perhaps, invested in it being?)

You don't need to defend your choices to me, Cloudy... I made the same ones... our choices our decidedly limited, and perhaps things like vouchers will cause the collapse of the public school system that Cant seems to fear and an even greater free market that Amicus longs for, and even more choices for you and I and our children... we make the best choices we can in the moment... to paraphrase Maya Angelou, when we know better, we do better... no one can know what is "better" for you but YOU... that was my point to begin with... I just want a system (whatever it looks like) that actually encourages people to find out what that is...

Again, I firmly believe that the type of education you receive depends mostly on where you receive it.

I got my degrees from a very small University, one that prides itself on the education it offers, and not the sports teams it fields. It holds Chairs of Excellence in several disciplines, and when I was there, was the fourth best engineering school in the nation. Big difference.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Colleen, you're lucky that you were normal enough to succeed in a private school.

I would have had even less success in a private school than public ones. I'm a poor competitor and any system that promotes competition is one that I will fail at.

And being a solitary person by nature, the stress of being around so many people, public or private will be too much for me.

A private school is, to my mind, merely the logical conclusion of the manufacturing system our society prefers.

You were lucky enough to be the right sort of raw material to make it through. I would have been found hanging from my own belt very quickly.

I wasn't normal. I was well above average in public school. Because I was well above average, read voraciously on my own, and had an excellent grasp of history and science, I managed to acclimate. The majority of public school transfers flunked at least once after transfering. They just started out too far behind on basic concepts to catch up in one year.

The thing I saw was this, even mediocre students, who had been in the private system from square one, were hanging with their peers, while some very bright transfers ended up a year or even two back. Public education had let these bright kids down.

Public education really fails kids on either end of the spectrum. It fails the bright, by not teaching them up to the level of their ability to learn, it fails those on the other end by not attending to their needs and trying to cooki cutter them into the norm, reguarless of their ability to learn.

It isn't that you can't set high standards and teach children up to those standards. It's done in private schooling all the time. But that's alot more work than setting low standards.

I took Ap courses in highschool. Basically taking on more homework, more reading assignments and a tougher grading scale. I volunteered to make HS even tougher than it was, because I loved to learn and more was taught in Ap. In public school, aside from the gifted program, there was no option.

My first three eyars in college, i didn't learn a single thing. I mean to say, nothing I hadn't seen or heard before was imparted. High school had done it's job, preparing me to knock out my core courses by making sure I wasn't presented with material I hadn't been over before. Only when I was able to get into the high number history specialty courses did I start learning again.

I think one of the biggest indictments of the public education system is that even if you want to learn, want to know, want to elevate your knowledge base, you can't do it without going outside the classroom. You are going to get the exact same, lowest common denominator education, as the kid who loves motor bikes and is only in school cause his parents make him go.

When he graduates, he'll be off to BOCES or to apprentice with his uncle ajack and he will probably make a good living and be comfortable being a mechanic, doing what he loves. the fact that he dosen't know who wrote Charge of the light Brigade won't affect him in the slightest. But you will walk into college, totally unprepared for what is about to hit you.

I guess it's all perspective, but I would rather see a high standard set, and prepare programs for those who can't hit it, than I would see a low standard set where you don't need programs because everyone hit sit, but where many students get shafted.

Basically, in my mind, if you don't learn to love learning early, you get more and more resistant to doing it as you get older. If you learn early to revel in the gaining of knowledge,it never leaves you.

My parents taught me to learn and to love it early. If it had been left up to the public schools, it is probable i would be one of a hundred other ignorant people working in a dead end job and too uneducated to even realize I could do more. Considering where I am, and where I could be, it seems to me the educational system is damn near crimnally negligent in the way it operates today.

 

[oggbashan]

Ancient History

I have beside me a French newspaper dated 6 July 1793 detailing discussions on a project for state education of all French children. (Gazette Nationale, ou Le Moniteur Universel No. 187 Samedi 6 Juillet 1793). The following is my translation. My comments are in square brackets [ ].

It was proposed that every place with 1000 or more people should have a National School with a male and a female teacher. Except for the very youngest who would be taught together by the female teacher, the boys and girls would normally be taught separately except for certain festival events.

The intention was that 'The education that the nations gives to the children of the Republic will be, at the same time, intellectual, physical, moral and industrious; in a word, it gives understanding of mankind.'

The curriculum:

- Perfection in reading and writing
- Rules of arithmetic
- How to use dictionaries and reference books
- Elements of geometry, medicine, geography, morality and social order
- Exercises best suited to maintain health, build strength and agility
- Boys are to be trained in military exercises [France was at war]
- A Health Officer must visit every school four times a year to advise on appropriate use of gymnastics and to ensure that the pupils are healthy.

The pupils must take part in any local parades and festivities as appropriate.
Accompanied by a magistrate, the pupils must visit the local hospitals and prisons - several times a year.
They must visit factories and workshops to see how things are made and marketed and to give them some idea of the purpose of work.
Some small part of school hours is to be given for work experience to show the pupils the different trades and crafts. The girls are to be encouraged to practise sewing and knitting.
Prizes are to be given for the pupils 1. best behaved, 2. most useful to the school [Miss Congeniality?] and 3. the most talented.

Pupils who demonstrate ability in the Sciences, Letters and Arts are to be sponsored, by the state, to proceed with Higher education.

Later papers expanded on the Higher Education and established National Professorships of Science and the Arts. The basic schools curriculum was modified to include advanced instruction in pregnancy, childbirth and child-rearing for the girls while the boys received basic instruction in those three subjects before changing to study advanced geometry and surveying.

If children were unable to attend school because of the harvest, or family requirements, they must make up the time lost at another season.

****

Not bad for 1793 but it didn't work. The French government didn't have enough money at the time.

Og

 

[amicus]

Thanks Ogg, enjoyed the post.

I imagine that most societies, nations, city states, had similar documents concerning education in general.

In creating a story line of a primitive society transitioning from nomad, hunter/gatherer to agricultural and settled, I have been challenged as to just how to introduce education beyond the family limits, so that it serves the village or wider community.

It is an interesting thought process as to just how it might have occured.

amicus...

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Thanks Ogg, enjoyed the post.

I imagine that most societies, nations, city states, had similar documents concerning education in general.

In creating a story line of a primitive society transitioning from nomad, hunter/gatherer to agricultural and settled, I have been challenged as to just how to introduce education beyond the family limits, so that it serves the village or wider community.

It is an interesting thought process as to just how it might have occured.

amicus...

Education comes with specialization. I mean formal education. In hunter gather societies, the skill syou needed to survive were your education and it was a very unforgiving classroom. If you have ever tried to make a flint spear point, or scrapper, you qucikly realize there is a great deal of skill involved. Many times more in constructing a bow.

When people come together in larger groups and settle into a more ag based lifestyle, the skills again revolve around survival. When to plant, how to plat, how to harvest, etc.

Eventually, a class of people will arise who don't actually arm, but who provide back up to the farmers. Weavers, ferriers, potmakers, wranglers (if beasts of burden are used), drovers, eventually blacksmiths, shipwrights, etc. depending upon the local and methods of gathering food.

These secondary skills eventually become the basis of a need for education. teh education is still skills based, morelike Votech than higher education, but it does introduce the basic parameters of teaching. When society evolves enough, some skill sets emerge that require lengthy training, scribe sin egypt for example. Education really blossoms when literacy becomes a desireable skill to hold.

Formal education, even in Ogg's example, seeks to impart rudiments of several disciplines. As those fields widen in depth, specilization in a field becomes desireable.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

If you want a brief (ha) look at the "Underground History of American Education" (i.e. what was going on behind the scenes and the motivations for creating schools) you can check out this link. It's long, and involved, but interesting reading.

Schools became "necessary" and "compulsory" in order to create a workforce. Children got in the way of that workforce, and schools were created to 1. babysit those children (esp once child labor laws came into play) and 2. create compliant workers.

This is an excerpt from something else (forgive me, I can't find the URL at the moment!):

By the turn of the century, America's new educrats were pushing a new form of schooling with a new mission (and it wasn't to teach). The famous philosopher and educator John Dewey wrote in 1897:

Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth.

In his 1905 dissertation for Columbia Teachers College, Elwood Cubberly—the future Dean of Education at Stanford—wrote that schools should be factories "in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products...manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry."

The next year, the Rockefeller Education Board—which funded the creation of numerous public schools—issued a statement which read in part:

In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.

At the same time, William Torrey Harris, US Commissioner of Education from 1889 to 1906, wrote:

Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.

In that same book, The Philosophy of Education, Harris also revealed:

The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places.... It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world.

Several years later, President Woodrow Wilson would echo these sentiments in a speech to businessmen:

We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.

 

[Sex and Death]

A relevant quote.

We can't throw out concepts and the words that represent them, like "competition," but we can redeem them.

The word "competition," comes from the latin, "com," which essentially means, "shared." The word "petition" has an original meaning akin to "prayer." Competition was originally meant a sa way to be challenged to raise our talents to a higher level through testing them against others and then offering our performance as a communal prayer to the Gods/Goddesses.

We have taken true competition and reduced it to winners and losers in every area of our culture. Competiton can be a celebration of life and the sacred through honing our talents, gifts and passions.