For some time now the American system and tradition of public education has been under attack by the Far Right. Shrieking radio and TV talk show hosts have alternately ridiculed it as useless and pathetic, and decried it as Un-American! I thought it was absurd nonsense and ignored it.
But of late, say the last five or six years, I've seen a shift. Conservatives in general, and Republicans as a tenet of faith it seems, have begun using both tactics in general public discourse. Here on Gather, I could name a dozen members (and I have no doubt there are far more) who will happily tell you that public schools are subversive, useless, anti-Christian, elitist, horrible places to send your children.
WHY?!? Why have public schools, and public education in general, become the bug-a-boo of the Right?
Public education became an underpinning of the American Republic when it became apparent to American leaders that an uneducated public in a modern world was simply unacceptable, and that private education would never make that happen. It could ONLY happen if the public at large provided the funds for land, buildings and teachers. And it would ONLY be effectively done if that were a public funding process (tax) and not dependent upon the annual willingness of the public to ante up. And that's what was done. Throughout the country, local school districts were formed, and within those districts taxes were adopted (generally by plebiscite), land was purchased, school boards were formed, teachers and administrators were hired, and public schools became the norm.
I HAVE a public school education, and it was a damned good one. It got me into one of the most prestigious private colleges in the Midwest. But I keep hearing that "That was then... this is now." So I took a look. I have a grandson in sixth grade. Looking through his books, I see more pictures than I'd like, but the basic information is there. He's learning the same history I learned (plus what's happened since), the same science, with the advancements, the same grammar and writing skills... I'll be damned if I see what the Right is screaming about.
So, how 'bout it folks? What's buggin' you about public education?
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Comments: 241
However, I feel that there needs to be enough taxes to support the school programs in the states, I don’t know about a federal department of education, I feel that the Feds need to trust the states in that arena.
The Feds, in my opinion need to also support the research programs in the Colleges and Universities, like NIH, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Funding for Environmental R&D and others
I agree with you 100% Richard.
... Does he want to "remove evolution from the curriculum" and "dismantl(e) the public school system"?
Or is it ..."a loathing of taxes" and the "strong desire to avoid paying for the education of anyone other than (his) own children"?
You are correct in many ways, but over all, the left has hold much more control of the education system than either the Right nor the Moderates, so they also carry the majority of the blame for the fall in education, which they will never as usual fess up to. It is so much easier to hide from reality then to face it.
I don't see the separation of kids in educational levels, but it seems to be far even they are both doing poorly, and are having the same issues in the real world, they cannot deal with it. The ability of kids graduating from pubic school that can do math in their heads is dropping every year. My own nephews have top use their fingers to do more complex math we did in our heads in school. Many kids have a hard time understanding what is said without someone telling them what it means, we had more ability when we were in school. There is a big difference today from say 30 to 40 years ago.
Sex is not a belief, but lack of knowledge about sex (the usual result when "sex is left to the home") leads to stupid and dangerous beliefs, STD epidemics and teen pregnancies.
But the pledge of allegiance was something we all did, it was a rule we followed not so much as we had to say the word god. It taught us to be structured & to prioratize things. I didn't think they were teaching religion, I went to church, Sunday school, & cathichesim. (sorry for spelling)
Also ... "No one should try to teach religion unless it is in the place that the person has gone there for it."
Thanks.
You are so right. How did our colleges end up being primarily liberal. I don't want them to be primarily conservative either. I wish they would staff their universities with a variety of thought so the young adult really had a balanced view. Then let them choose. I think one lacks integrity in a university that stacks the deck.
I went up to ask to see the material. They were really nice and cooperative and let me use the teachers manual.
I swear to they were discussing things I NEVER EVEN KNEW PEOPLE DID :):)
We're extremely open at our house. teased everyone going through puberty. Talked about sex easily. I just told them no thanks.
This has been featured in 4 US and World News and Opinions.
Thanks for posting there.
Look at your typical teabanger rally. It looks like a WWE wrestling crowd, except the signs are different.
It's also about breaking another union, the NEA, and having more influence with what is written in text books. They'd have people believe that St. Reagan came down from Mt. Washington with the Constitution in his hands. They already want to replace FDR with Newt Gingrich.
I don't want a big business but I'll pull for you if you want one.
What's with this superior race stuff? I never heard anything about that and I'm around conservatives all the time. We just want to take the country in a different direction than you guys want. Not evil, just different. We're in a tug of war. Right now you're winning :)
Much of the hatred (on the right) of the President is because he is black.
"Close the border" stupidity is based on nothing but stopping Hispanics from entering the country. And on throwing as many out (both illegal and legal, in all honesty) when the borders are finally sealed.
Muslims and Arabs are considered terrorists since 9/11 simply on sight.
Yes, racial superiority is still there, still strong, and just waiting to come back.
If you look at the polls on Facebook about Obama and read the comments you get a good look at what Franklin is talking about.
The N word is thrown around.
I saw one last week that the questions was Love or Hate Him Will Obama Get a Second Term.
One poster said that the only people that are supporting Obama anymore are the black people and if any white people are still supporting them its only because they are married to a black person.
How often if ever did you hear that only the white people or those married to white people supported Bush or Clinton at the end of their terms? I never did.
I have seen people praying for Obama's assassination and being very vocal about it. Never saw that with Bush.
I knew racism existed in the United States but I didnt realize it was so widespread until Obama was elected.
I'm also for homeschooling for the same basic reasons, but do acknowledge there are too much politics and political fear and ignorance involved.
It's good to take a look into the books being used to educate the children. And to stay on top of ones childrens education, so I applaud your taking a look at your grandsons book.
Perhaps it would also be interesting to look at, say, the English, math, etc...books used in the 1800's, and see what their basics consisted of.
You might look up some of the writings of John Gatto on the subject of education, and some of the references he uses to expose the social engineering agenda project that goes well back in history, and also goes well beyond the good idea of having a well educated population.
Some of that social engineering is what many homeschooling advocates are reacting to, which, of course, leads one into becoming more politically active.
Outside of the religous fervor, if you want to know the answer to that, WHY, question, you might come to understand, not neccesarily agree with, but understand where the angst is coming from.
I grew uo in the '40s and '50s, but I had access to McGuffey's Readers (all 12 of them... someday I'm gonna do something to my brother for selling 'em). There was also an arithmetic series from the '20s. Mom had an encyclopedia from that era as well, which I used to good effect in middle school.
What, exactly would you expect me to find?
Below is the prologue of John Taylor Gattos book, "THE UNDERGROUND HISTORY OF AMERICAN EDUCATION".
Table of Contents
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prologue
Bianca, You Animal, Shut Up!
I Quit, I Think
The New Individualism
School As Religion
He Was Square Inside And Brown
The New Dumbness
Putting Pedagogy To The Question
Author’s Note
Bianca, You Animal, Shut Up!
"""Our problem in understanding forced schooling stems from an inconvenient fact: that the wrong it does from a human perspective is right from a systems perspective. You can see this in the case of six-year-old Bianca, who came to my attention because an assistant principal screamed at her in front of an assembly, "BIANCA, YOU ANIMAL, SHUT UP!" Like the wail of a banshee, this sang the school doom of Bianca. Even though her body continued to shuffle around, the voodoo had poisoned her.
Do I make too much of this simple act of putting a little girl in her place? It must happen thousands of times every day in schools all over. I’ve seen it many times, and if I were painfully honest I’d admit to doing it many times. Schools are supposed to teach kids their place. That’s why we have age-graded classes. In any case, it wasn’t your own little Janey or mine.
Most of us tacitly accept the pragmatic terms of public school which allow every kind of psychic violence to be inflicted on Bianca in order to fulfill the prime directive of the system: putting children in their place. It’s called "social efficiency." But I get this precognition, this flash-forward to a moment far in the future when your little girl Jane, having left her comfortable home, wakes up to a world where Bianca is her enraged meter maid, or the passport clerk Jane counts on for her emergency ticket out of the country, or the strange lady who lives next door.
I picture this animal Bianca grown large and mean, the same Bianca who didn’t go to school for a month after her little friends took to whispering, "Bianca is an animal, Bianca is an animal," while Bianca, only seconds earlier a human being like themselves, sat choking back tears, struggling her way through a reading selection by guessing what the words meant.
In my dream I see Bianca as a fiend manufactured by schooling who now regards Janey as a vehicle for vengeance. In a transport of passion she:
Gives Jane’s car a ticket before the meter runs out.
Throws away Jane’s passport application after Jane leaves the office.
Plays heavy metal music through the thin partition which separates Bianca’s apartment from Jane’s while Jane pounds frantically on the wall for relief.
All the above.
You aren’t compelled to loan your car to anyone who wants it, but you are compelled to surrender your school-age child to strangers who process children for a livelihood, even though one in every nine schoolchildren is terrified of physical harm happening to them in school, terrified with good cause; about thirty-three are murdered there every year. From 1992 through 1999, 262 children were murdered in school in the United States. Your great-great-grandmother didn’t have to surrender her children. What happened?
If I demanded you give up your television to an anonymous, itinerant repairman who needed work you’d think I was crazy; if I came with a policeman who forced you to pay that repairman even after he broke your set, you would be outraged. Why are you so docile when you give up your child to a government agent called a schoolteacher?
I want to open up concealed aspects of modern schooling such as the deterioration it forces in the morality of parenting. You have no say at all in choosing your teachers. You know nothing about their backgrounds or families. And the state knows little more than you do. This is as radical a piece of social engineering as the human imagination can conceive. What does it mean?
One thing you do know is how unlikely it will be for any teacher to understand the personality of your particular child or anything significant about your family, culture, religion, plans, hopes, dreams. In the confusion of school affairs even teachers so disposed don’t have opportunity to know those things. How did this happen?
Before you hire a company to build a house, you would, I expect, insist on detailed plans showing what the finished structure was going to look like. Building a child’s mind and character is what public schools do, their justification for prematurely breaking family and neighborhood learning. Where is documentary evidence to prove this assumption that trained and certified professionals do it better than people who know and love them can? There isn’t any.
The cost in New York State for building a well-schooled child in the year 2000 is $200,000 per body when lost interest is calculated. That capital sum invested in the child’s name over the past twelve years would have delivered a million dollars to each kid as a nest egg to compensate for having no school. The original $200,000 is more than the average home in New York costs. You wouldn’t build a home without some idea what it would look like when finished, but you are compelled to let a corps of perfect strangers tinker with your child’s mind and personality without the foggiest idea what they want to do with it.
Law courts and legislatures have totally absolved school people from liability. You can sue a doctor for malpractice, not a schoolteacher. Every homebuilder is accountable to customers years after the home is built; not schoolteachers, though. You can’t sue a priest, minister, or rabbi either; that should be a clue.
If you can’t be guaranteed even minimal results by these institutions, not even physical safety; if you can’t be guaranteed anything except that you’ll be arrested if you fail to surrender your kid, just what does the public in public schools mean?
What exactly is public about public schools? That’s a question to take seriously. If schools were public as libraries, parks, and swimming pools are public, as highways and sidewalks are public, then the public would be satisfied with them most of the time. Instead, a situation of constant dissatisfaction has spanned many decades. Only in Orwell’s Newspeak, as perfected by legendary spin doctors of the twentieth century such as Ed Bernays or Ivy Lee or great advertising combines, is there anything public about public schools.
I see a lot wrong with the idea that public schools should teach only "the basics". The success of American democracy has had a lot to do with social mobility, which has historically been based not only on the elimination of the concepts of hereditary nobility and on free enterprise, but also on an education system that allows the children of the poor to go on to the best universities if they have the aptitude and the interest. (Compare this with the British system, which, even after many reforms and within a context of prevalent social democratic ideals, retains a good deal of elitism.) In order to fulfill this function, public schools must teach a lot more than "the basics". They must enable their students to compete with private school students.
Holistic Education Review - June 1992
Dumbing Us Down: the Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
By John Taylor Gatto
Reviewed by Ron Miller
John Taylor Gatto’s fiery speech to the New York legislature, upon being named the state teacher of the year, was reprinted in several publications and widely circulated among alternative and radical educators, making Gatto an immediate hero within the alternative education movement. That speech, along with four other essays are brought together in Dumbing Us Down, a book that should further establish Gatto as the most visible contemporary critic of public schooling. Like Paul Goodman, John Holt, Herb Kohl, Jim Herndon, and Jonathan Kozol in the 1960’s, Gatto is a morally sensitive and passionate teacher who is thoroughly disgusted by the spirit-crushing regimen of mass schooling, and unafraid to say so. Both Kohl and Kozol are still writing important books that present a progressive/radical critique of schools, but Gatto (like the late John Holt) gives voice to a growing populist rebellion against schooling as such. Whether this rebellion will support or counteract the holistic education movement is an open question to which Dumbing Us Down may offer some clues.
One thing must be said up front: Gatto is a superb essayist. His writing is not academic or pedantic, but a model of harnessed passion. He builds his argument carefully and smoothly and then unleashes bold attacks that cut right to the core of many problems of modern education. He clearly has a solid understanding of the historical foundations of modern education, but generally makes his own personal interpretations rather than citing sources or scholars. Indeed, his essay, “The Green Monongahela” is an intimate account of his own life and how he became a teacher. He tells a simple story from early in his career, of rescuing a young Hispanic girl from the stupid injustice of the system (she later went on to become an award-winning teacher herself) that captures the essence of his moral crusade against institutional schooling.
Gatto summarizes his argument in an introductory chapter:
Was it possible I had been hired not to enlarge children’s power, but to diminish it? That seemed crazy on the face of it, but slowly I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of the national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to prevent children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior. (p. xii)
In his speech to the legislature, he makes this charge explicit, describing seven “lessons” that form the heart of the compulsory curriculum. “These are the things you pay me to teach.”:
Confusion. “Everything I teach is out of context. I teach the un-relating of everything.” (p.2)
Class position. “That’s the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place.
Indifference. “Indeed, the lesson of bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything?’ (p.6)
Emotional dependency. “By stars and red checks, smiles and frowns, prizes, honors, and disgraces, I teach kids to surrender their will to the predestined chain of command.” (p.7)
Intellectual dependency. “Of the millions of things of value to study, I decide what few we have time for, or actually it is decided by my faceless employers….Curiosity has no important place in my work, only conformity” (p.8). Gatto says this is “the most important lesson, that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives.” (p.8)
Provisional self-esteem. “The lesson of report cards, grades and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents but should rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to be told what they are worth.” (p.11)
One can’t hide. “Surveillance is an ancient imperative, espoused by certain influential thinkers [such as Plato, Augustine, Calvin, Bacon, and Hobbes]. All these childless men…discovered the same thing: children must be closely watched if you want to keep a society under tight central control.” (pp.11-12)
And here is the crux of Gatto’s critique: In the past 125 years, social engineers have sought to keep American life under tight central control. Compulsory schooling is a deliberate effort to establish intellectual, economic, and political conformity so that society can be managed efficiently by a technocratic elite. “School,” claims Gatto, “is an artifice that makes…a pyramidal social order seem inevitable, although such a premise is a fundamental betrayal of the American Revolution” (p. 15). Along with the media—especially television, which Gatto criticizes harshly in another essay—schooling removes young people from any genuine experience of community, any genuine engagement with the world of immersion in lasting relationships. It robs them of solitude and privacy. Yet these experiences are what enable us to develop self-knowledge and to grow up “fully human,” argues Gatto, and he asserts, that our most troubling social pathologies, such as drug abuse and violence, are the natural reaction of human lives subjected to mechanical, abstract discipline.
Gatto insistently calls for a return to genuine family and community life by rejecting the social engineering of experts and institutions. In a particularly powerful passage, he rejects the notion that a “life-and-death international competition” threatens our national existence, as A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence, 1983) warned. Such a notion is “based on a definition of productivity and the good life” that is “alienated from common human reality.” True meaning is genuinely found, Gatto writes,
in families, in friends, in the passage of seasons, in nature, in simple ceremonies and rituals; in curiosity, generosity, compassion, and service to others, in a decent independence and privacy, in all the free and inexpensive things out of which real families, real friends and real communities are built….(pp. 16-17)
And these are the things we have lost in our hierarchically managed, global empire-building society.
In the essay “We Need Less School, Not More,” Gatto draws a sharp distinction between true community (in which there is open communication and shared participation) and institutional networks (which value the individual only in terms of the institution’s particular goals). A network cannot be a healthy substitute for family or community, Gatto argues; it is mechanical, impersonal, and overly rational. Schooling is a prime example of this:
If, for instance, an A average is accounted the central purpose of adolescent life—the requirements for which take most of the time and attention of the aspirant—and the worth of the individual is reckoned by victory or defeat in this abstract pursuit, then a social machine has been constructed which, by attaching purpose and meaning to essentially meaningless and fantastic behavior, will certainly dehumanize students, alienate them from their won human nature, and break the natural connection between them and their parents, to whom they would otherwise look for significant affirmations. (p.62)
This is a brilliant, radical critique of the nature of modern schooling. ‘Gatto has certainly earned his heroic stature, with his deeply insightful observations into the very essence of what public education has become. His writings deserve to be pondered seriously by holistic teachers and can contribute a great deal of insight and energy to our work.
My dad was the son of an immigrant cab driver. He grew up in NYC where he was lucky enough to go to City College (now City University) for free because his high school grades met the admission standard. He was the first person in his family to go to college. He never would have done it if it weren't for free public education.
I went to public schools. I was lucky enough to go to good public schools. I studied science, math, English, two foreign languages, and somehow found time to take 3 years of history and sing in the chorus. Besides learning how to solve systems of linear equations in multiple unknowns and prove trig identities I learned Latin grammar and to love Shakespeare and the poetry of T. S. Eliot. I read Balzac and Jules Verne in French. I want kids to have the same opportunity my parents and I had.
My older son is a freshman in a public high school. I don't know what on your list they will read and what they won't yet, but they're currently reading the Odyssey in English (it's an EXP class--I'm not sure if the "regular" classes are reading the same). They did have geography (in Earth Science) and world history in middle school, and I know there will be more history in high school. (It's less than what I'm used to as a Middle European, but that's a different story.) I also know that here, in this town, it's quite common for parents of private school students to transfer them to the public schools for the last few years, because these offer more AP classes (which the colleges are looking for).
Hmmmmm ... I guess that's everything but sex education :) I guess that's what I mean. Ha ha. Wouldn't you know that's what it boiled down to?
((Incidentally, I don't think "basics" is the best word you could use to express what you mean, then.))
My son, as I said, is in 9th grade. His math course is algebra 2. He did algebra 1 and geometry in middle school.
The schools are teaching stuff, really.
People generally identified politically as the "left" (like me) prefer to call themselves, "liberals," "progressives" or Democrats.
People on either side tend to demonize the other side.
Any good parent can, and does teach the basics, and well beyond that, as well, good teachers manage to find someway to teach, in spite of, not because of the giant beaurocratic social engineering project that is our American Public school system.
"The children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone would be interdependent."
- John Dewey
Now, how do we wind up with an educated generation if we have no public education? And whereinell did you EVER get the idea that I couldn't think for myself?
I'm sorry Chuck, I wasn't trying to imply that you or anyone else on this thread were unable to think for themselves.
The quote does imply that the current public school educational system does little to teach kids to think for themselves. Obviously for the education reformer John Dewey one of his goals was interdependence and reliance on government.
how do we wind up with an educated generation if we have no public education?
It's in everyone's interest to educate the next generation; public education or not, it's going to happen.
Before public education, literacy exceeded 90 per cent in some regions by 1800. Hannah Barker and Simon Burrows, eds. Press, Politics and the Public Sphere in Europe and North America 1760-1820 (2002)
Why not liberate all the vast resources we spend on public schools and let Americans re-channel their own money to schools chosen by the parents? Both Private and Home schools have outperformed public schools while spending far less money.
Why? It didn't before. That's how we GOT to public education.
I doubt it was many.
Why not liberate all the vast resources we spend on public schools and let Americans re-channel their own money to schools chosen by the parents?
80 million families? Not gonna work, son... just not gonna work.
80 million families? Not gonna work, son... just not gonna work.
Why? I did not say they would all be homeschooled. Put the money in the parent's hands and let them decide where to send their children.
And the Henry Fords, Vanderbilts and others knew that unless they could find literate workers, their factories would not run. Education is required for a modern society, and as Aniko says, this now means much more than basics.
I think that if we hadnt had public education for the past 125 years, we would now be a colony of European and Asian nations, used for our agricultural productivity. We would have had very little immigration, a much smaller population, small and backward cities, and an overall low standard of living. We would never have become a superpower, could not have intervened in either World War, and would basically be at the level of a South American nation.
Some of this might sound attractive to some folks, but they are fooling themselves. Ignorance and poverty (which always go together) are not much fun.
My grandparents knew how to read, and all the rest, and so did my ancestors for generations back. They were taught by their parents, and learned useful skills. One of which was to continue learning, and researching and asking questions.
Like I said, I am not opposed to the idea of public education whereby lots of people are taught the basics, which if you do more research, you would know it encompasses a great deal. Much more than grade school stuff.
I still don't get it. Why is the Right so ANGRY about public education?
Typically, when racial issues arise in my local schools, they come from the parents, not the kids. The kids are sick of their parents' racial issues, and say so at times, but it is hard to teach an old parent new tricks. Seen anyone on Gather learn anything really new from anyone else lately? It happens, now and then.
"Racism fuels the fire in some regions ... our school districts are so gerrymandered that they make no sense at all: we have many more costly, separate school administrations than we need, so that each ethnic or historical enclave can try to insulate itself."
If you've got that problem, you've got politicians who are intentionally using race to win votes for themselves and their party. The people are being used by self-interested, corrupt politicians.
Why is it that bigoted statements about conservatives are accepted as 'common knowledge facts' when similar statements about a politically correct and politically protected ethnic group are immediately condemned?
The public school system is hostile to most conservative and Christian view points. Why condemn those parents who would rather not have their kids subjected to harassment and cruelty by those who accept the public school indoctrination that conservative and Christian ideas are to be suppressed?
I can think of several reasons the right wants to do away with public schools:
Knee jerk desire for privatization.
The Supreme Court ruling against mandatory prayer in schools.
The "inequity" of taxing childless people to support a school system.
The "inequity" of taxing people who want to opt out of public education to support schools.
The fear that the government will indoctrinate children.
The fear that their children will have to attend school with children from "less desirable" backgrounds.
I think most of it stems from the Agrarian Myth, the golden age thing about America being purer and better when our society was predominantly agrarian. Back in the good old days the population was homogeneous and kids went to the little red schoolhouse where teachers imposed discipline, taught the three Rs, and kids prayed together. Of course it's a myth but its a very powerful one.
My guess is that they dont like paying taxes for anything. Many of them dont like public funding for garbage collection, police, fire, etc. Some folks want everyone to pay only for what they themselves use or need. They hate the idea of someone else getting any benefit from their hard earned tax money. I am not sure this explains it, but its what I have heard from SOME of the right wingers. I am sure they will turn up soon, and enlighten us.
Um-m-m-m... sure. That's what they'll do. They'll "enlighten" us.
The situation in Texas is alarming. "Stealth candidate" get elected to school boards and
the State Board of Education and then reveal their true agendas pushing religion into our schools.
In Canada (or at least Ontario... maybe just Toronto?) (I don't have kids so I'm not totally familiar) but anyway, we have two school boards funded by taxes... (actually four, if you include the French versions) the public schools and the (public) catholic schools. The advantage I see to this is that those who want some element of religion in the schools can have it, but it is still regulated. We've had this for some time; most of my friends from high school who have become teachers have done so in the catholic system. They have to have the identical credentials as the public board.
(I think that it is as a result of this that we don't have quite the same pressure on our school system as you do down south.)
My issue would be that around here (I don't know about everywhere) its part of our property taxes that go to the school systems. Yet, most people with children who go to public school don't own property, so the parents of the children are not really helping pay for their education. There should be a better way to make sure that everyone has to chip in to pay for the public schools. Mabe one penny of our 7 cent sales tax should go to schools.
Also, I would like to see the average public school put more interest in buying more things to help with the education, and less focus on the football teams. Sports are good for children who want o participate in them, but maybe the football team should have to start their own fundraisers just like the "lesser" school clubs have to have for themselvs to be funded.
If you check, you'll find that the organized sports teams are promoted and supplied primarily by "booster clubs." Most high schools don't build arenas and stadiums... their bosster clubs raise money for 'em.
Yes, this one part of the problem with our current American education system.
If parents don't have their say and DO the CHECKS and BALANCES, you have the public schools run amuck. I can't tell you how many times I went to the schools when my children were young to see why they were having such a hard time learning and found that the teachers were to blame as was the principle for NOT DOING HIS/HER job.
Example; I was told my daughter needed to drink coffee because she was too hyper active. When I went to the school, I told the principle, maybe the teacher was a bit too old to be teaching six year olds. The teacher was in her late sixties, bless her heart; but come on! She retired the following year.
People need to quit voting blindly, as I use to do and check into the bills passed for education. I.E. lottery monies touted for education and taxes. I know someone got rich, but it certainly wasn't the school system in CA.
Thank you for your submission to:
"CONSPIRACY THEORIES" Your post is FEATURED!
My wife spent ten or twelve years being a "room mother," just so she could see how things were done on a continuing basis. Once the kids were out of middle school, she couldn't do that any more, but we stayed active anyway.
Lottery money for education is a HUGE scam. Every dime of it goes to schools... it HAS to. They put that in the law. BUT... they take an equal amount OUT of the general fund money that Used to be used to subsidize all the schools. It's a WASH!
But when you voted for it, weren't YOU under the impression it would be ADDITIONAL money for the schools? I was (voted against it anyway).
Great job Mom! Your room mothering was well appreciated I'm sure!
I'm ashamed with the Conservatives do it and I'm ashamed when some of the Liberals do it. But at least I see and admit it is on both sides.
A meme is any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.
A meme is defined within memetic theory as a unit of cultural information, cultural evolution or diffusion that propagates from one mind to another analogously to the way in which a gene propagates from one organism to another as a unit of genetic information and of biological evolution. Multiple memes may propagate as cooperative groups called memeplexes (meme complexes). Via Wikipedia.
Biologist and evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins coined the term meme in 1976. He gave as examples tunes, catch-phrases, beliefs, clothing fashions, ways of making pots, and the technology of building arches.
Meme theorists contend that memes evolve by natural selection similarly to Charles Darwin's theory of biological evolution through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance influencing an organism's reproductive success. So with memes, some ideas will propagate less successfully and become extinct, while others will survive, spread, and, for better or for worse, mutate. Memeticists argue that the memes most beneficial to their hosts will not necessarily survive; rather, those memes that replicate the most effectively spread best, which allows for the possibility that successful memes may prove detrimental to their hosts.
The idea of memes has proved a successful meme in its own right, gaining a degree of penetration into popular culture rare for an abstract scientific theory.
Richard Dawkins coined the term meme, which first came into popular use with the publication of his book The Selfish Gene in 1976. Dawkins based the word on a shortening of the Greek “mimeme” (something imitated), making it sound similar to “gene”. The concept received relatively little attention until the late 1980s, when several academics took it up, notably the American philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett, who promoted the idea firstly in his book on the philosophy of mind, Consciousness Explained (1991), and then in Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995). Robert Anton Wilson also discussed the concept in his writings.
Dawkins used the term to refer to any cultural entity (such as a song, an idea or a religion) that an observer might consider a replicator. He hypothesised that people could view many cultural entities as replicators, generally replicating through exposure to humans, who have evolved as efficient (though not perfect) copiers of information and behaviour. Memes do not always get copied perfectly, and might indeed become refined, combined or otherwise modified with other ideas, resulting in new memes. These memes may themselves prove more (or less) efficient replicators than their predecessors, thus providing a framework for a theory of cultural evolution, analogous to the theory of biological evolution based on genes.
Considerable controversy surrounds the word meme and its associated discipline, memetics. In part this arises because a number of possible (though not mutually exclusive) interpretations of the nature of the concept have arisen:
1. The least controversial claim suggests that memes provide a useful philosophical perspective with which to examine cultural evolution. Proponents of this view argue that considering cultural developments from a meme's eye view — as if memes, or the people who carry them, acted to maximise their own replication and survival — can lead to useful insights and yield valuable predictions into how culture develops over time. Dawkins himself seems to have favoured this approach.
2. Other theorists, such as Francis Heylighen, have focused on the need to provide an empirical grounding for memetics in order for people to regard it as a real and useful scientific discipline. Given the nebulous (and in many cases subjective) nature of many memes, providing such an empirical grounding has to date proved challenging. However, a recent study by Mikael Sandberg, further elaborates the memetic approach to empirical studies of innovation diffusion in organisations.
3. A third approach, exemplified by Dennett and by Susan Blackmore in her book The Meme Machine (1999), seeks to place memes at the centre of a radical and counter-intuitive naturalistic theory of mind and of personal identity. Evan Louis Sheehan uses the hierarchical model of cortical architecture proposed by Jeff Hawkins to develop such a memetic theory of mind in his book The Mocking Memes: A Basis for Automated Intelligence.
Etymology
Historically, the notion of a unit of social evolution, and a similar term (from Greek mneme, “memory”), first appeared in 1904 in a work by the German evolutionary biologist Richard Semon titled Die Mnemischen Empfindungen in ihren Beziehungen zu den Originalempfindungen (loosely translated as “Memory-feelings in relation to original feelings”). According to the OED, the word mneme appears in English in 1921 in L. Simon's translation of Semon's book: The Mneme.
According to Dawkins, who coined the phrase and didn't know about mneme, meme represents a shortened form of mimeme (from Greek mimos, “mimic”). Dawkins said he wanted “a monosyllable word that sounds a bit like gene”.
Applications of memetics
Memetic accounts of religion
Memetics regards religion itself as memetic, and Richard Dawkins has often discussed religion.
Some fundamentalist evangelical religious movements act predominantly to swell the reach of their faith-meme. These movements devote a large amount of time to evangelical activity.
Many of the world's most successful religions demonstrate memetic modification over time — the theologies of the 21st century differ to a greater or lesser extent from the theologies of previous centuries. Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Mormonism (and their descendants) have all developed through variation, modification and memetic recombination from a shared monotheistic meme: Zoroastrianism appears to have functioned as an important and widely-shared religious ancestor (see Lawrence Mills, Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia, Chicago, 1913), contributing through Judaism to Christianity, Islam and their many derivative religions.
The Religious Right in the United States of America attaches conservative political views to Christian religious evangelism (“meme piggybacking”), and fundamentalist Christianity has associated a particular set of politico-social ideas/memeplexes with a separate set of religious ideas/memeplexes that have “replicated” very effectively for many centuries. For other examples of piggybacking involving religious memes, note the conversion-histories of the Hungarians and of Kievan Rus': adoption of Catholicism and Orthodoxy respectively entailed perceived cultural, political and diplomatic benefits and adherence to perceived mainstream civilization.
In Western countries, universities evolved from medieval religious institutions devoted to learning. Of the nine colonial colleges in the British colonies of North America, eight had affiliations with religious institutions. Many US colleges separated themselves from their seminaries, because the First Amendment to the United States Constitution prevents federal funding of religious organizations. One can think of American academia as an offshoot religion that eliminated less adaptive memes (beliefs in the supernatural) in response to a selective pressure
What I don't like is the prison / factory model of education. That aspect of all public and most private schools is one of my hot buttons.
Homeschooling is best for the children and when that is impractical or inappropriate (not all parents can or should provide academic education for their children) the public and private schools should be excellent. They are not. They are a travesty. They have earned their poor reputation.
We have a population of about 310 million, which suggest a population of families with school-age children of about 75 - 80 MILLION. Under no imaginable circumstances are you going to be able to home-school the children of 80 million families.
The majority of parents in those homes are not capable or qualified to home-school their children, and for the most part, do not have time, anyway They're working to provide the home you would turn into a school, and the food, clothing and medical care their children need. Remember, most parents today are NOT college graduates, and the industrial jobs that fueled their parents' one-income lifestyle has gone to India, Taiwan and Mexico. These folks are starting jobs a $7 - $15 an hour. They're not gonna be home-schoolin' the kids in their spare time.
Read the research results. Talk to your local college admissions office. Find homeschooling websites. The products speak for themselves.
Where did anyone suggest that everyone has to homeschool? Don't build straw men and expect me to accept your argument.
How many stay at home mothers are there? Most (not all) of them can home school quite well. You don't need to be a college graduate to homeschool.
Actually, you can do as good a job as the public schools do in half the time. Three to four hours a day for five days a week work just fine. (Note that home schoolers can use the weekends.
Please do the research on this, Chuck. I know quite a few homeschooled children (from my youth sports coaching) and they are quite successful and like it better than public school.
You said, "Homeschooling is best for the children and when that is impractical or inappropriate (not all parents can or should provide academic education for their children) the public and private schools should be excellent. "
By its tone, that statement implied to me that you thought most children should or could be home-schooled, and that inability to do that is the the exception rather than the norm. Apparently I misunderstood.
So, that puts us back to... the majority of children are going to be publicly schooled. WHY does the Right think that's so bad?
You are telling us that public schools have not done their job.
Homeschooling doesn't depend on the parent to teach all 12 grades. By the 7th or 8th grade the homeschooler typically knows enough about doing research to study independently even if it's only online courses.
It really is being done and done well by ordinary parents with the online help of other parents and the local help of other homeschoolers. They often "trade" subjects with friends who homeschool. "I'll teach your boy algebra if you'll teach my daughter art."
???Are you SERIOUS??? ???7th graders doing independent on-line research is how we're gonna make sure every American child gets a good education??? Unqualified parents "teaching my kid art if I'll teach theirs algebra??? THAT'S your plan???
Have you ever talked to a 12 year old about some video games he plays or some D&D thing he's involved with. They know how to find out things. They use google and other internet resources. It isn't that hard to do.
How did people get a good education in Lincoln's day? How did that poor boy with his step mother working so hard ever manage to get such a good education in the law? Could it be that he did the research on his own after he learned to read using McGuffey's Primer. (It is still a great way to learn to read and a parent can teach a child to read in no more than 15 minutes a day for 6-8 months.)
If our 12 and 13 year olds can't do research at that age what makes you think they can compete in the world economy even with Masters in Education public school teachers?
Thanks for all your information.
Thanks for doing some homework for Chuck. :-)
I had them tested. Very high I.Q.'s. Pulled them out of schools, officially, with the exception of one daughter who did decide to stay in public school, and since the tests revealed very high I.Q.'s she was paid much more attention to by the schools and councilors, put on excelerated schedule and curriculumn was jumped up 3 grade levels, and graduated early.
Thing about homeschoolers. They are self-starters, take the initiatve instead of waiting to be spoon fed.
It is interesting that the only CHOICE that public school advocates seem to endorse is prenatal infanticide.
The school administrators don't like homeschoolers because they get money from the property taxes based on the number of students enrolled. They think that the fewer students, the less money they will have for their school.
They forget that it is the amount paid in taxes that determines the money for the schools. There would be more money per student in the schools if there were more homeschoolers. (Home schoolers pay those property taxes, too.)
I agree with you on this point. It really is all about the money.
It is kind of sad, when you think about it.
We don't home school so that our kids will be better than other kids. It is so they will be better than what the public school can make them because the public schools in America are much worse than in most other western countries. We want the kids to do their best.
Why would you deliberately try to make us do it for evil reasons. It just isn't true. Besides, how do you know there aren't lots of liberals home schooling? I really don't know one way or the other.
Our home school group met twice a week for phys ed and sports. We met weekly for field trips. And our kids met regularly for classes in Spanish and computers that we hired teachers to teach for us. We used the best public and private school teachers to teach when we didn't feel comfortable teaching ourselves.
My son was in the FL boychoir - with 80 boys from public, private and home schools and they got to meet boys from around the world and sing at a concert hall in Tampa.
Home schooled kids usually have better social skills than kids from public schools. They're better behaved and they have daily interaction with people of all kinds - different races and ages.
1) Property taxes are paid by owner of property, whether a parent owns the home or families are renting the property there are still property taxes paid. Even in housing projects there are taxes paid on the property. (Becuase someone owns it)
2) I attended the local school & a friend of mine attended catholic school. Her findings on this was the kids at her school had more expensive drugs than our local school system. Kids were all the same it was just not spoken about at their school.
3) We tend to lay blame somewhere. Some one must have not done their job, somebody must have let the ball drop, the teacher can't handle the kids! We should go back to how things were handled long ago. If anyone from the school called my home I was in trouble. End of conversation, didn't matter what happened, parents were called & we needed to know that we were in trouble. We behaved very well and all of us are good, honest, working & give back to society instead of taking from it. Now days all you hear is the teacher does not like my kid, everyone is always picking on them, they have no right to do that, I will sue them, I will have her job. What is wrong with you parents? Face facts that your kids are not always right.
We sat, the sons of industry in their blazers and slacks, and I in my jeans and khaki shirt, in a raked amphitheater, and took the SAT together. When I had finished I turned in my paper to the proctor and went outside for a smoke. About fifteen minutes later, a couple of young men came out. "Gave up, did you farmer?" one of 'em smirked.
"No." I finished my smoke and went back inside. It was January, and I was a tad chilled.
We sat again, and I left when I was done. There was at least a half-hour left. I can say without fear of dispute... my public education and I scored better than any of them. I had the 5th-best score in the State of Ohio for that year.
Poor and chronically angry people work rather well for control freaks (AKA Stateists). They become a reliable voting block. Wonder who they vote for most often?
Now more than ever there are haves v have nots. Without public education it is easier to keep people in their place.
Public education as you seem to have identified it came into being only in the late 19th/early 20th century. It was designed nationally to be a process of inoculating both citizenship and basic industrially needed skills onto a diverse and growing population.
Few would argue that in those early plans that it failed to do that limited mission. It gave a pretty good basic education and citizenship inoculation to tens of millions. But compare the education you got to that of kids today? Some things may be harder but the grading system is easier. Have you ever seen a literature book from the 1930s for junior high? I have one that I show to people to see the shock on their faces. Its advanced college level material today. 70 years ago it was pre high school!*
Claiming its some right wing conspiracy is simple and satisfies that craving of many for easy answers but its plain wrong. Right wingers seldom fail to scream for more education money any more than their supposed Left wing political opposites. We have a system that nationwide is designed to push the maximum amount of kids through the required steps within a set period of time. Possibly worse, it attempts to teach the majority to pass tests that will get them onto the next ring "up"; college when many are not ready or even able to go because of a poor but expensive pre college education.
* Treasure Chest of Literature (grades 7-8) New York City Board of Education, 1935
Sorry, we as taxpayers are demanding something to show improvement for the ever increasing funds put into education. The tests were the education establishments answer to that. Again, blame it on the Right but the truth is that the tests were pushed by both sides so to have something measurable to show angry parents/taxpayers. No one on the Left has any answer to the continued problems but increased funding.
There's nothing in that statement that's true. The Right (and moving slowly toward the middle) is, as the headline of this article suggests, the constant in yammering that public education is evil. A common insult from the right on Gather is to respond, "I'll bet you had a public education."
You BET it's a Right-wing conspiracy. Well. actually I don't like that word because it assumes a commonality of purpose that I doubt. I think it's just knee-jerk following and parroting. But whatever it is, it's from the Right, and I'm tired of it.
Now you say he (Bush) wrote the whole plan by himself and Kennedy was only his innocent foil? Considering how intelligent the Liberal Lion was, that must have made Bush truly super smart then to pull the wool of a Kennedy's eyes.
I didn't say he wasn't behind it R.F. Read my comment. Both parties have pushed the dollar solution and both have pushed things like NCLB. Many on both sides too know that it isn't working either. Nobody however in power wants to admit to it. The Repubs in power pushed just as loudly for increased education funding (Bush was in the double digit increased camp as was his Dem predecessor and Dem successor). Now Dems are in power and gee, more money is the solution again.
Government education is in trouble and has been for decades. Anyone in higher education knows this, teaching colleges quietly admit it to their students, and even government knows it. I have no magic answer but continuously acting like its the political problem/responsibility of the other side isn't helping. Neither is the refusal to allow parents to use their money/vouchers to send their kids for private schooling as they see fit doing so.
http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget08/summary/edlite-section1.html
So nothing in my statement was true huh? Repubs have not supported increasing Fed dollars for education through out the years.
As for the joke(s) about government education, they seem pretty universal in the real world and I've heard them from many a Dem too.
I used to work where I could observe many a child at wide range of ages. Many of these were groups of homeschooled children who signed up for various activities. These children were very well behaved, very bright and sociable, and I ran across none that could not count out the money to pay me for their purchases; However, the public schooled kids generally, but not all were very loud, unruly, cligue-ish, and many could not count change.
but it was your god's bush's plan, that statement does not acknowledge the fact the plan was written with Dem input. Kennedy stood right beside Bush in pushing this plan regardless if it was in accordance with Bush's ideals or what.
Again, you claim that this was just Bush's plan and then it was some sort of competitive model. Who competed against the government schools in this plan? What standards have they rigorously been held to? I won't disagree it has largely failed and I don't believe I ever said otherwise. My point is and remains that it was a bi-partisan plan, the type we are always being told is the ideal of government. It also as usual in trying to solve education problems involved a pile of money.
Diverting money from public schools to fund private schools through vouchers does nothing but exacerbate the problems public schools have. It's a sick right wing plan to end public education.
In cities like Washington DC, it is Dems fighting for such a right. Schools in DC are considered pretty bad and vouchers for some 20k kids a year were allowed. There were more than 20 or more applicants per voucher by people living there which is not a non Dem stronghold. As long as government schools have no fear of losing their money for what is often inferior education, what reason do they really have to improve? Right wing plan? I don't think so. Its a growing movement and one that cuts across the political spectrum, people want their kids to learn and poor people resent being told they have no right to use their tax dollars for an alternative to the government school system they feel is failing them.
"Child abuse in the classroom" by Phyllis Schlaffly is a very good example of how angry they are that they don't ruin . . . er, I mean run the schools anymore than they already do.
They've been trying this for years. It just got much, much worse under "No child left educated."
My son Matthew has a severe speech delay.
This year he has said the most words I've ever heard from him.
They must be doing something very right at the school.
The far right knows that a educated public can not be used and controlled.
Why is it that the teacher's union’s predominantly support democrats?
Parents have the right to protect their children from ideologies that the parents reject. Parents also have the right to teach their children the values that they embrace. Public schools do not have the right to attack cultural values that they may not like, nor do these public schools have the right to intrude into families whose values these public school tyrants object to.
Inner city schools are worst because there is less money in the inner cities. Puiblic school do not have a right to attack or preach anyones cultural value weather they are inner city or not. That education is up to the parents. Parents always have a right to send there kids to any private school of there choice, as long as they can afford to. Most inner city people can not afford. What does that make them? A anti-conservative? Catholic? Jew? Nope, just a middleclass american!
We need schools where our kids get a well rounded education like we used to have, Chuck. Back then, everyone understood that even if you weren't going to be a musician or an artist, that music and art were important in the educational process. Not any more.
Our parents and grandparents and the educators also understood that it was important for kids to be kids. Not any more. They don't have recesses any more, and many schools hardly have any phys ed either. So, the young kids with "ants in their pants" (remember that's what they used to say?) end up getting drugged to keep them docile. Teachers are actually try diagnosing kids with ADHD as if they're qualified as physicians and if they recommend drugs and the parents ignore the recommendation, then the administration often calls child protective services on the parents.
What else? They're re-writing history. They would never use the history text books that we used as kids. No sirree. It might mention that a president went to church. Heaven forbid.
There are many reasons, Chuck. And for those many reasons, millions of conservatives are home schooling their kids. They're now being allowed to be in the spelling bees - and winning. And, home schooled kids no longer have to go to Christian colleges. They have no problem at all getting into regular colleges and universities and are often sought out now.
A growing number of parents are choosing to home school their children. 20 years ago, I found that shocking and had doubts about the results. Now, I've seen how well home schooled students score on standardized testing. They are well-adjusted and highly motivated.
Parents have all sorts of reasons for making the choices we make for our children's education. Choosing non-public schooling is not so much an attack on the institution of public education as a different choice.
Why is it OK to slam Christians but not OK to slam some other identifiable group ... like say... African Americans?
I am only pointing out that acceptable hate speech is invariably directed at Christians and conservatives today with the same mindless enthusiasm that hate speech was once directed at African Americans in this country.
It is hard to believe that you are too stupid to get the irony of this new development in modern bigotry.
In a world where free speech is protected, why should conservative thought be suppressed?
Diversity training could be a half-day seminar. It doesn't have to be something that takes up so much time in the classrooms that our kids are behind everyone else in the world in science and math and English.
Involved parents do teach their kids, and they should be the ones who make decisions on where and how their children should be taught.
Joe is 100% right on the issue of funding religious schools in the US. There are differences between countries, and many of us are very fond of the Constitution (even if we disagree about its interpretation at times).
Has anyone questioned the efficiency of the public school system?
Has anyone questioned the priorities of the public school system?
Wouldn't a prudent parent be quite within their rights to choose an alternative to said flawed public school?
In other words, they created a legal way to segregate the school system so their white, well-off children don't have to rub elbows with children of color, can be taught a conservative/right leaning curriculum, and they don't have to pay for it.
"daddy says, he dont want me going to school with athiest and Ni***ers!"
Your government just found a way to give each child some educational money to spend as the parents saw best. What's wrong with that?
Can't people be different? Think differently than you without calling them names?
Thing is, Taxes are our own dimes all piled up into the hands of Government beaurocracies. Since it's the punlics money, it's only natural that the public is very interested in how it is allocated, and the children we speak of are those of private citizens, so it's naturally going to be something those citizens are going to feel very protective of.
I rather miss horse drawn buggies on the freeways ... don't you?
Educated people are less likely to buy propaganda as truth.
Schools cost money, tax money. No schools equals lower taxes.
Uneducated people are easier to coerce.
Remember, at one time it was illegal to teach a slave to read. There was a reason for that.
And, it's not all conservatives who are fed up with public schools. My son/daughter in law who are VERY liberal residents of East Bay and work in Berkley plan to send my newest grandson to a private school. So.....
Have any of you considered it the quality of learning that is lacking? Houston teachers just had a fit because the school board is going to implement "accountability". with 3 attempts to "rectify". Sssshhheeeeesh! That's why I got out of education, they won't fire the bad teachers! (UNION!)
That doesn't mean that we ignore the problem public schools, though. It means we have to redouble efforts to fix them.
As for the % of kids taking remedial courses in college, it is terrible and a shame. However, is it all the schools' fault? How many parents of those kids ever read a book, or had books in the home? How many showed respect for education, teachers and the learning process? Very few, I bet.
I love public schools and am an ardent supporter of them. My Dad was like Nippy's, going to Brooklyn College in NY because his grades got him there. He and all of his siblings went to college, but that was the first generation in the family to do so. I went to public schools from K through grad school.
This occasional talk of "danger" from one educational approach or another goes a little far, in my view. I'm not afraid of homeschooling or charter schools, per se (though all the charter schools in my area seem to go bankrupt). I'm not afraid of religious schools, per se, and it isn't my business how other people want to raise and educate their own kids. I do think it is ironic that so many home-schooled or otherwise educated kids end up in public high schools to take advantage of AP courses and other resources, including sports. If we destroy the public schools, those high schools won't be able to bail out the home-schooling parent (or parent group) unable to teach AP chemistry or whatever. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with home schooled kids entering the public schools at any time. I only have a problem when people claim they don't need public schools to exist, because even if their kids don't use the schools, their neighbors' kids probably do, and the majority of kids in our cities do. What kind of populace do you want to have?
The other side to that coin, for you home-schooling-is-the-answer crowd, is what kind of a populace do you think we have now? You can pat yourselves on the back for the great jobs you are all doing at home schooling. I'm sure you deserve it (seriously). Many people, however, are not economically or educationally or even temperamentally able to tackle home schooling. Such people are still citizens of our country, and their kids deserve the best education we can provide, even if it will never measure up to what goes on at your kitchen table.
I can tell anyone who wants to hear, and few do, that problems cannot be run away from. Move from my area to a wealthier one and all the BMW-driving kids can afford drugs, and drug use is heavy in many cases- alcohol use and unsupervised parties are also common in these communities. It doesn't matter what kind of school the kids go to (public, private, religious).
Send your kids to religious school (not my cup of tea) and it can be great, or not, and it depends on the kid as well as the school, the specific teachers, and the parents, just like any other school experience. Chances are that evolution will be left out of the curriculum. Maybe you like that.
Nonconformist personalities may be out of place in some visions of public education, but they really have no place in most religious schools (Jesuit colleges being a probable exception, but we aren't talking about college). I know kids who left expensive, exclusive religious schools for college and were already alcoholics. Their siblings were fine and had no such problems. You can't just decide everything is going to work one way or another ahead of time- life throws us too many surprises.
Personally, I'd much rather send my kids to a diverse, public school than an exclusive private one (and while I couldn't afford private school now, there was a time when I could have).
So, my wife and I do what we want, and our kids go to public school. I have 9th and 11th grade boys who started the public system with all-day kindergarten. The schools are not perfect, but they are excellent in many areas and good in many more. They are better than the schools I went to in many ways. My older son had five years of Latin by the end of 10th grade, my younger son has had a bit less Latin due to budget cuts.
My 11th grade son is taking three AP courses: Calculus I/II, chemistry and American government. They read the Federalist papers, the Constitution, study the Bill of Rights and important Supreme Court decisions in AP Govt. They debate the issues (both sides). It is a very serious course, as are calc and chemistry. Next year, that son will take at least AP English and AP Calculus II/III. When I went to HS, I don't believe there was AP anything except calculus. My son is in the jazz band and gets regular master classes from some of the top jazz musicians in the country (some of whom live here during the week, and some of whom fly in from Lincoln Center, etc.). He is a varsity soccer player. The school is at least 80% African American, though we are not, and is in an "urban suburb."
Our local, more economically-disadvantaged students do not have it quite so good. Note that this is an economic and not a racial distinction. Some of these kids lose connections with school during the middle school years. I blame many of the problems on NCLB and the toll it is taking on elementary school education: there is so much pressure to meet the ever accelerating criteria that the schools are being required to eliminate the very things that help engage kids in studies, like art, music and PE/recess in elementary school and beyond.
Ironically, and irony shows up a lot in discussions of American education, the people who crafted the NLCB law (and those who implemented it at the State levels) have positioned even our best and most elite public schools to fail (yeah, elite public schools, odd as it sounds- they are the schools where the wealthy live, which is a big surprise). Why? Because the required percentage increases in numbers of students scoring at or above proficient are impossible to maintain if the school is already doing very well. I think the people who crafted this law don’t understand what "percent" means.
I think that the idea of taking away recess from youngsters and shoving a book in from of their faces for an extra 40 minutes to improve their test scores is ridiculous. The kids can't be kids without a chance to run around and have fun and blow off steam. The other subjects or classes that are being eliminated in favor of more reading and math, particularly the arts and early foreign language instruction, are subjects that require and develop integrated learning as opposed to compartmentalized learning- they encourage creativity, self-esteem, and parental engagement. These subjects that are being eliminated, or have been eliminated, naturally incorporate reading, writing, math and many other disciplines. The teachers and administrators are being forced to eliminate these classes by NCLB criteria and shrinking budgets.
Back for a moment to the idea of danger from alternative schools that has been raised by some- I just don't think that is the root issue that we face. People can do what they want with their own kids- it's the USA. There are potential dangers from many sources in life, including parents. However, we can't allow "alternative schools" to take the money meant for public education, unless the alternative schools are really alternative public schools. I have nothing against alternative approaches to learning, but I find that the particular educational theories in use are rarely the keys to success. Those keys are the preparation and attitudes of the teachers, the size of the classes, having involved parents, and the inclusion of creative expression from the beginning, along with a strong emphasis on mastering fundamental skills.
Private, religious and Charter schools are under no obligation to educate everyone. They therefore get rid of problem kids in many cases (unless they are very wealthy, typically), throwing them back to the public schools. Special needs kids? Around here, public schools are all you can use unless you have lots of money (really a lot of money). In contrast, public schools have to handle a wide range of students, and if they are forced to do this by using large classrooms with too broad a range of students, they may fail for many kids. If the public schools were allowed to have reasonable class sizes, a diverse range of students wouldn't be a recipe for disaster. Guess what, though, folks? When your kids leave school, they are going to have to deal with a wide range of people. Diversity is part of what defines our country (like it or not). Why not prepare your kids for life instead of hiding them from life? Send them to public school so they'll recognize America when they see it. Just a thought.
When I said "range" above, I didn't specify “range of what." It certainly isn't intelligence. That range is relatively narrow (and no, I don't think every child is equally brilliant). The range is in preparation, attitude, engagement, and related issues. This would not be the case if we stopped the NLCB-driven downward spiral.
Of course, the decline of many public schools pre-dated NCLB. I can’t blame everything on NCLB. However, in spite of comments above about how wealthy we are as a nation, if you try to follow the money, you might have a hard time finding it. The property tax freeze in California is a textbook case of dismantling and destroying one of the best K-12 and University education systems in the country by bleeding it of funds to the point where it isn’t clear how to dig out of the hole. In this case, the money just isn’t there to solve the problem, and of course it takes more than money, but all the other things it takes cost money, too.
I don’t have (much) of a problem with letting the States run education instead of the Federal government, given that I don’t want to mess with the Constitution, but we need equitable education within each State. What has happened is that approaches to funding schools, like the use of property tax, lead to lots of tax revenue where property values are high and little revenue where they are low. So, the poor, and increasingly the middle class in some regions, are getting robbed of suitable public school systems. When the money is there, it is held tightly by the upper echelons of earning power.
We need to reverse these funding trends (or entrenched systems) at the polls. The only thing that should affect how much money a school district receives to educate each child, from a State and municipality combined, is cost of living. Clearly, this is higher in cities than in rural areas.
We need to look at priorities. States have pulled a bait and switch with lottery money in almost every case, not increasing funds to schools at all (Georgia is an exception that I know of). What in the ledger for a State’s “general fund” is more important than making sure its kids can read and write and think and create and speak and innovate? Nothing. So, what are we going to do about it? My local public schools are a source of pride. Public schools worked fine in most places in the country at one time or another. If they aren’t working now, we need to fix them. We cannot destroy them. The legacy enrollees at Harvard aren’t very likely to invent our next economic boom, or political breakthrough, or even think before voting- they lack merit. Innovation will come from regular people’s kids who receive a good education. Let’s get started.
Better neighborhoods have better schools. This is an unfortunate fact of life that only throwing money at cannot change. When a sea of money does not change the outcome of a public school ... then the parents are made to blame. If it is indeed the parents' fault that some public schools are failing to educated, then the parents who care about their kids should be allowed to rescue their children from failing schools, and the money should follow the students.
Sending a child to another public school, and there are many great ones, is an accepted and acceptable reason for moving State dollars, if there is a real problem with the original school. Sending a child to private school is not. That just hurts the public school system even more, and we can't survive as a nation without people who are ready for the jobs of the future (among many other reasons).
Throwing money doesn't help many things, but that doesn't mean that the wise use of money isn't called for. Coupling funds with rewriting NCLB so that it
(a) makes sense and
(b) actually puts children's education first
would be the way to go, in my opinion.
When driven by politics rather than sane policy ... public institutions never use money wisely.
Much of the world-wide technology revolution that we enjoy was developed or started via Federal research grants. The same is true for many medical treatments, diagnosis methods, and more.
For one example (out of a vast number), there is a cancer chemotherapy drug that is called cis-Platin that is very widely used and quite lucrative. It was developed out of a pure Federal research project and, when no drug company wanted to bring it to market, the FDA forced two companies to work together to do so. It has saved many lives.
Public institutions do plenty of things right. It is just fashionable in some circles to deny reality. Most of the time, such people seem willing to accept the help of public institutions for themselves, but they don't want that help to go to others.
It may be too late but here is my response too.
My brother is a teacher at an LA high school and was in administration for awhile but is now back teaching because of all the budget cuts. He has 5 semesters left and counting every minute. We have differences of opinions on wazzup with the schools but here is how I see it.
The Republicans want private ownership of everything as a basic philosophy and that includes our schools. They refuse to see the damage of privitizing everything from water, schools, all the "Commons" of Civil Society. But, then there is Jello Biafra, an out there gay rock singer. He wants voucher schools. He will tell you right out that he could not do what he wanted in school and felt he should have been able to. Also, in things like history, there is a lot of molded and manipulative history being pushed off as the true and full history, when in reality it is not.
Then there is teaching to the lowest denominator and not making English a sink or swim deal in schools like it used to be in the 50s and 60s.
Charter schools seem to be getting an unfair share of the public pie of money. Voucher schools do not vouch enough for poor people to pay for that equal education that they claim. Public schools have that government manipulative element too.
I still want public schools with equal funds to any charter schools and no vouchers. Change the history books or add a high school class extra ciriculum with H. Zinn type history. Small changes.
Also, I have to pay for military and am not so sure I won't have to pay for that after I died or it just might end up being the cause of my death with all these nukes proliferating.
This needs more articles. The news is full of teachers with signs stomping around the streets as the school boards with their bloated salaries cut and slash.
How much administration of everything there is, to the point that nothing is affordable anymore, is a point of issue for me from City Hall to Boards of Education to hospital and university administrations. Leaches.
Now, at least in Texas, schools spend much or the school day teach test-related material instead of teaching an understanding of the subject matter!
Simple, to form a mob!
Think about what motivates people............................HATE!!!!!!!!!!!!
Your kids are being harmed! NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT!!!!!
Same as religion. They want to destroy Christianity. NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT!!!!!
Obama is NOT torturing terrorists we are More in danger! NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT!!!!!
It is not so much as school itself as that is a way to get people fired up.
Re-read this post and the comments that follow. Most of the mindless hate and name calling is directed at conservative and right wing leaning people.
I rather like your icon ... it suits you.