Evidently not, if you can believe this piece from The New Editor.
I could be wrong, but I suspect that one of the keys to breaking up the overwhelming African-American / Democratic voting bloc will be the voucher and charter school issues, which will force the Democrats to choose between the teachers’ union and an increasing number of blacks (among others) who are looking for an alternative to a public education system that is failing them in staggering numbers—this despite the amount of money poured into the system.
I have my own beliefs as to why the system is broken—
underpaid teachers, a diluted, often appallingly politically correct curriculum (itself undercut by overtly ideological teachers), a school day that is too long, and a failure to concentrate on the educational basics.
Call me a reactionary (hell, a few of you do, anyway), but I’d like to see a curriculum that consists exclusively of reading/writing (literature, history/geography, philosophy); math; and science. And history should be far more generally comprehensive than “inclusive,” and should feature a good deal of civics (and a lot less identity narratives). For those students interested in such things, supplemental readings should be recommended and the material made available.
Beyond that, let kids go run around and play for several hours a day. That way, we won’t have to deal with Twinkie taxes and the demonization of soft drinks.
Of course, I’m shooting from the hip here, so I may be overlooking a number of important points. I’d like to hear what you all think.
What better argument for vouchers than the brouhaha with that teacher in Colorado, the one spraying spittle about Bush’s and America’s crimes?
If the government is to fund education, should it control it as well? If so, someone’s bound to be offended at some point by the curriculum. A check against boneheads like the Colorado teacher, or an Intelligent Design science teacherm is a voucher for a parent to go elsewhere.
But if we let people make their own decisions, some of them will make decisions that I don’t like!
change testing!
reject standardized tests.
anymore, the teachers in colorado only have time to teach to the CSAP. and it is completely invalid as a test instrument. it only measures how well the students have been coached to take the test. it even dictates the school year. my cousins have to start school in August, so they have plenty of time to get coached for the CSAP.
testing should be online with instant results, like the new GRE. Nearly impossible to coach, since the problems presented are dependent on the previous ones being correct.
and how do you coach for essays, like the SAT includes now?
lol, you can’t.
“I have my own beliefs as to why the system is brokenâ€â€underpaid teachers, a diluted, often appallingly politically correct curriculum (itself undercut by overtly ideological teachers), a school day that is too long, and a failure to concentrate on the educational basics.”
I think you have a solid list of problems with public schools in America today, except for the part about underpaid teachers. Thomas Sowell referenced a number of studies which found that for the number of hours teachers worked, both in the classroom and outside, teachers were paid pretty well on a per hour basis. Teachers get way more days off, vacation days, holidays, and so on.
I think vouchers would greatly improve public education, but wide spread implementation of vouchers isn’t going to happen any time soon. There are too many defenders of public schools the way the schools currently exist.
I’m not a teacher, but I wouldn’t be responsible for upwards of 100 children during the course of the school year, accountable to their parents, the administration, the Board, and the Dept. of Education for twice what the starting rate is.
Factor in the hassle factor and you’re lucky people are willing to do the job.
They must like kids or, in the alternative, having a captive audience.
Underpaid teachers? A school day that’s too long? I must be on some other planet–well, OK, NYC is another planet.
But your curiculum and activity suggestions are spot on.
A state-mandated, one-size-fits-all solution is straight out of the communist play book. How much longer must we play is game of deception where we fool ourselves into thinking that if only a bunch of smart Americans were in charge the utopian worker’s paradise would’ve worked? (I’m sure resident expert actus will have something to offer in this regar.)
Critics such as Nishi will never be satisfied, as there will always be something “wrong” with the test. And critics will always complain that students are being taught to the test, as if it’s a truth that performance results (tests) can never measure the quality of the product (students).
My father, a retired teacher, has called for year round schooling.
I don’t care what they do with our local school as long as they don’t think they can raise my property taxes again without me moving to the next county.
The more the federal government has gotten involved to try and improving funding, and by extension quality, for the worst schools, the more they have screwed up the good schools that didn’t need fixing.
Step 1: Get the federal money out of the equasion, return the tax dollars and the control to the local school board, and let the local community hold them accountable.
Step 2: Repeal all state standardized testing.
Step 3: Hire consultants to go into the communities that need help fixing their schools and solve the problems THEY actually have instead of trying to shove a one size fits all system down everyone’s throat.
My mom used to remark that it wasn’t the poor pay, so much as they way people looked down on teachers.
Of course, shocking numbers of teachers out there are crappy.
Merit pay.
And FWIW: If I had time to edit an essay I’d written, I generally got A’s (effortlessly in high school, and with a little work in college). But my exam essays always got C’s, because I simply couldn’t write extempore. It wasn’t something I could do off the top of my head, while watching the clock. Of course, this was in the days of blue exam booklets, pens, and pencils. Do they use any of that these days?
Henry —
No offense to Sowell, but grading student essays should count similarly to dog years. 7 hours for every 1 hour spent grading.
And because we don’t pay our teachers enough for all that they are forced to put up with—from the politics to the de facto security guards they become—we are not attracting the best candidates often times.
Great idea, but don’t count on it in Satchel’s lifetime. YOU will need to pick up the slack, whether public or privately schooled. This series is a good starting place, if for nothing more than a check on what you child is actually learning:
Most of the problems that seem like educational system problems are actually societal problems. When I lived in Cincinnati, the most at-risk high school in the city district had a 33% absentee rate on any given day.
I like the idea of the vouchers, but somewhere along the line there will be a core of students that don’t leave for the better school, special needs students that are too expensive for the private school, parents who don’t care about the education of their children, and some school left trying to manage that situation with fewer tax dollars.
A public magnet school in one city I lived in was run in a lower socieoeconomic neighborhood and was enormously sucessful. One secret was that it expected parental volunteer hours and overall high parent involvement. Even to get in, the parent had to physically go to the school to sign up.
All in all, I don’t think we can address education problems in a vaccuum.
Norm,
The link comes up empty. What’s the series?
As for students, it has long seemed that we need to get the concept that kids are second class citizens (read: minors) and should be treated as such. I have two daughters in public school, and I’m as sensitive a dad as they come, but kids don’t have the same rights as adults, nor shold they want the same rights. Yet we treat them as having the same rights as the teachers and administrators.
– Interesting you should be considering this situation seriously Jeff, now that you have a learning unit of your own to think about in terms of education.
– I’ve raised my youngest prince on my own, doing the battle supreme with the Cal public school system, rampant with endless stories of what I’ve seen and what I’ve been through. Your two weapons of note will be to always remember as the Parent in the final analysis you have the real power, though the system will try to distract you with faux “policies” and non-exitant “standing”, and the other is due diligence. The more you’re involved in every aspect of his education, the better you’ll be able to handle the bizzarro things you run up against. At least thats my take. Oh, and if push comes to shove, even better than litigious threats, the one thing the Denizens of the dark halls of un-enlightenment can’t handle is public exposure. So memorize the call letters of your local TV outlets and whichever reporters lead the local “consumers fight back” programs. Strikes absolute fear in the worst of the bureucrats.
– BTW, I see Hillery’s comments on vouchers as her second racist stumble after the “plantation in congress” maleprop.
My 3 thoughts:
(1) Forget about political re-alignment. In a poll conducted around the 2000 elections, (a) about 80% of blacks favored vouchers and other forms of school choice, and (b) about the same percentage believed that Democrats supported these policies while Republicans opposed them.
(2) An overlooked factor in the decline of public schools is the ever-increasing involvement of federal courts. Prior to that development, public schools had a free hand to use experience and common sense in matters of curriculum and in disciplining disrupotive students. Coincidentally, public schools used to actually work.
(3) No one works harder than they have to; thus schools only excel when parents hold their feet to the fire. Many poor people—who don’t pay taxes and are receiving free public education—simply don’t feel authorized to demand that sort of accountability; and the few that do are quickly disabused. Middle-class parents don’t have this problem, so their schools are better (without any correlation with per-student spending); unfortunately, economic segregation is pretty pervasive in the U.S., so the poor are screwed.
Someone once said on the comments section of a thread here that their Holocaust education was “90% Ann Frank, 10% Hitler poem from A Seperate Peace and 0% Warsaw Uprising.”
I second that and I go further to state that my public schooling experience was similarly woefully inadequate.
I feel that public education is simply not effective in its current form of watered cirriculum et al. And I had GOOD teachers.
Two words: School uniforms. And non-coed classes.
(I learned to count in public schools.)
We can fix all of this with medication.
On “teaching to the test”: Folks, I sometimes teach college undergrads. I would be thrilled if we taught to the test, as long as the test included reading a text without needing pictures, writing a sentence in which verb agrees in number with its subject, writing a paragraph with a perceptible topic sentence, and knowing that 4x+7=0 means 4x=-7.
It’d be nice if we could add to that knowing the difference between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War and having some idea that Thomas Jefferson and Julius Caesar weren’t contemporaries.
Okay, now you’re just talking crazy talk, mister…
My 2 cents:
1) Schools that serve a middle class/upper middle class clientele generally produce pretty decent students. There’s as many theories for the success of this group as there are experts. I advocate that the #1 variable is parent involvement and parent expectations. The #2 variable may be that these families are middle class because of parental stability. Fewer single parent homes. There are poor students in these schools. A lot of kids don’t make the connection between the affluent community they are growing up in and the habits of the adults that create that afflluence. One word: spoiled.
2) Schools that serve poverty stricken clientele generally produce poor results. I believe that the opposite environment of that noted above, is primarily responsible for student failure. Some parents don’t get involved in their kids education because they’re intimidated by all institutions, including schools. Some parents don’t get involved with their kids education because they’re working 3 jobs cause they baby-daddy hit the road and don’t send no child support. Some parents don’t get involved in their kids education because the kid is just a by-product of a drunken-stoned night of passion a long, long time ago, and was never really wanted in the first place.
Schools are generally a microcosm of the communities they serve.
3)The Texas legislature had decided that the way to move education forward in Texas is to require EVERY student to recieve what, until 20 years ago, would be called a college-prep education. So you have kids sitting in Algebra II, Chemistry, and Brittish Lit, to name a few courses who already know that these courses won’t come in handy when they’re working evening tower on the drilling rig. Teachers end up having to water the course down just to get some of them across the stage.
I could go on…..
Jeff
I concur with your idea of what the schools should teach. Even in my days in high school, I became overwhelmed with AGENDA based curriculums that definatley echoed the teachers ideologies. And being young an impressionable, I escaped being caught in the fervor of becoming a psuedo teenage activist…
But I was lucky, I grew up in a hardcore conservative family…
Now where is that pesky armored fella?
Frankly, I’ve gotten more than a little tired of teachers whining about “teaching to the test”. When they have actually accomplished teaching the material that is testable, then they can whine. So far however, their abject failure to teach students the ridiculously dumbed-down tested topics tells me that what teachers are whining about are objective standards.
Subjective standards about self-esteem and “progressive” ideas are just so much more comfortable on the poor dears you know.
You reactionary armadillo loving bastard!!!
Discipline that means something would help.
Year-round schooling with a twist: summertime would only be morning school, when it’s cool, for one or two classes each day. Then they still could have jobs.
Bah, if only my Data Structures class would teach to the test, I would actually know the material that the teacher is testing us over!
Then again, it would also help if he spoke English and understood my questions…
I teach 175 7th graders everyday (4 classes of 37 and a “sheltered” class of 27 English language learners). We just ended a grading period in which I failed over half of my students because of missing assignments. We had Student Led Conferences this week. (which almost always devolve into parent-teacher conferences) I had 116 students sign up for the conference, and less than 100 show up with their parents. I had two phone calls from parents who could not attend. Of the parent who did attend, I had five spend an average of twenty minutes explaining to me why their child’s failing grade was my fault.
There are two problems driving poor education today.
1) Parents who are uninvolved and don’t gice a damn.
2) Parents who take the side of the kids against the teachers, and enable their laziness and poor behavior.
gahrie – I think you nailed it right on the head. When I was in school, if you got in trouble at school, you were in for a double-helping at home, for having misbehaved in school. If you weren’t doing well, your folks either kicked your ass to make sure you were working hard, or if you were working hard and just didn’t get it, they’d find you a tutor. Now, if the kid misbehaves in school, or gets poor grades, the parent accuses the teacher of being biased against their kid! And the child learns nothing, least of all how to take responsibility for their actions. It’s shameful.
The economics of socialist education is pretty much the same as the economics of every other socialist program. All of these programs tend toward the same state of below-average, sagging, over-budget, under-performing morass.
It doesn’t matter if it’s the Post Office or the prisons or the goverment schools. Governments cannot run good schools. Not overall, and certainly not over the long term, because the network of incentives and disincentives is stacked against it. Adaptation and responsiveness are practically non-existent.
Vouchers won’t fix it. They will simply expand the governmental malaise into the private sector, which as soon as it starts taking government money will quickly become something other than actually private, and will instead be merely nominally private (but substantively governmental). Nominally private operations that are funded and controlled by the government is corporatism. It always fails, too, eventually.
– Thats exactly why Phinn, I’m ambivalent about the subject of vouchers. I’ve heard all the arguments pro and con, and theres a lot of possible down sides along with the good. I don’t happen to share Hillery’s views. I think she chose one of the poorer arguments con for political reasons, to play to a portion of her base, Albeit I would guess that with many it backfired.
– On the other hand I can see where, even with government payback, which is what it really is – returned taxation in most cases, the aspect of competition could serve to offset the possible longterm malaise you point out. I just would rather see some sort of solution that had fewer potential `pitfalls.
Who dey?
Does Jeff have the power to fix this thread’s margins? Or is it just me having the problem.
Gahrie- I agree with you completely.
Gahrie and Sticky B have pretty much said what has been found to be true here in Indy (and mostly ignored): while tax revenue, teacher quality and facilities/equipment quality matter some, the over-riding factor is parental involvement. No matter how good the teacher, textbook, computer or classroom, a child – especially a teenager – who is not already motivated, will not become motivated. There are always a few exceptions; we like to make movies out of the ‘Teacher Who Changed Our Lives’, but that’s far and few between.
One of the most common complaints given by teachers here in Indy – especially in the metropolitian, ‘inner city’ area – is discipline, or lack thereof. It takes too much time to get the students quieted down, and too much time to deal with the individual troublemakers; let alone the time it takes to actually write one up and send them to the administration. Administrators don’t like to deal with parents of troublemakers, as they’re either howling mad at the teacher and school, or they simply don’t give a shit enough to even come and pick up their kid. In a more charitable vein, some can’t come to the school and deal with them, as they can’t get the time off of work.
But it keeps coming back to a lack of parental involvement. This is not a problem with the schools; the failing of the schools is a symptom. It’s a societal problem. Get parents to care, and the kids will do better. Until then, all that can be done is try to plug what holes can be reached.
Goldstein:
I could be wrong, but I suspect that one of the keys to breaking up the overwhelming African-American / Democratic voting bloc will be the voucher and charter school issues[…]
That’s an intellectual’s conceit. In fact, nothing will move blacks in any substantial numbers away from the party of FDR or LBJ —or of the first black President.
I think this will become even more certain as the percentage of Latinos in America grows and that of blacks shrinks: black America will hold fast to their benefactors to maintain their solidity as a bloc, while Latinos will continue to be more steadily assimilated with the more conservative ideology of the GOP.
There is a growing economic competition between these two groups that not even the cross-pollination of their youth cultures can suppress.
– I’m thinking that might just possibly be accomadated…Gooooo Condi/Giuliano….in no particular order
Complete privatization is the only solution. So long as education is run by the government, it will suffer all its current ills. It will be: 1) one-size-fits-all; 2) marked by bureaucratic incompetence; and 3) dominated by propaganda of one sort or the other.
There are so many theories of proper education. Privatization will open the field up to competition, allowing parents to choose the type of education that fits with their philosophy and fulfills their child’s needs. Conservatives and leftists would both like control of education in order to indoctrinate students with The Truth. Privatization, by which I mean complete laissez-faire, would give us a separation between Education and State just like our separation between Church and State. We need both for the same reason.
In the meantime…
Homeschooling rocks!
Jeff
You forgot one very important thing in your list
music
It has been shown that learning to play an instrument and read music translates into academic areas. Music students are better students in all areas.
I’ve shepherded my 4 daughters through school on a balance between academics/music/sports. It turned out to be the best combo for a well-rounded human being.
And, if I could do only ONE thing to make a dramatic difference to public schools (outside of just banning them) it would be to limit their size to no more than 200-500 students. Especially at the high school level.
Mega-highschools of a few to several thousand students is a recipe for disaster. Teachers are detached and too many students are ‘anonymous’. Tragedies like Columbine would be almost impossible at a school of 300 students.
Oh. Ditto the uniform thing mentioned above. Even through high school. Two of my youngest had uniforms thru jr. high and it made a significant difference.
UNDERPAID!
Surely you jest.
I thought you knew better than to believe the popular media.
I disagree, but that’s partially because I’ve always been a total klutz when it comes to music or sports. While I think its good that children be exposed to music, drama, other art, or sports, I think that falls well outside the boundry of what schools need to teach. Further, all require a high degree of parental involvement. Children without parents involved enough to push music lessons and practice generally aren’t going to do more than follow the motions until its no longer required.
But that’s more of a problem with uninvolved parents than school size. I attended a very well run public high school of several thousand students. It was in a fairly affluent area characterized by parents willing to take an interest in their children’s schooling. Teachers were generally not detached, and the large size meant that it was able to offer programs that smaller schools couldn’t.
Other problems I see with the American educational system:
1) A disdain for ‘vocational education’, especially amongst the involved affluent liberal elite that drive educational policy. Some students just aren’t going to go to college. Providing them with an introduction to the skills necessary to be, say, an auto mechanic, may provide them with direction and a decent career.
2) Over-administration. The local school system has an over-abundance of counselors, administrators, and other highly-paid professionals that take a lot of money and don’t seem to do very much.
3) A stupid and wasteful use of technology. It is important that students have exposure to technology. Students should know how to use a computer for basic tasks, including internet research. Schools seem to think that throwing money at technology solves everything, however. Classes that have no real use for computers spend time and effort throwing computers into the mix whether needed or not.
I was going to be a teacher (MAT), but after student teaching I decided not only that I didn’t want to do that, but I couldn’t send my kids to one, unless it was exceptional. Since I live in Detroit, I homeschool.
As for “core” knowledge stuff, I highly recommend “The Well Trained Mind”- all the stuff they USED to teach in school, but hardly do anymore. True, if schools returned to this kinda stuff, they wouldn’t be able to take a MONTH out for Black History every year …
Music? Some schools with the very best, national-level dancing marching bands have horrible levels of educational achievement.
Teachers are professionals, just like lawyers and doctors. We are responsible for protecting and educating people’s children, a responsibility comparable to medicine and the law. Yet we are paid a fraction of what a lawyer or doctor makes. Why? I’m not sure really. A big part is because the public does not see us as professionals.
If you are going to bring up the fact that we only work six hours a day, that is a false statement. It is true that we have the children for only six hours, but parent conferences, professional responsibilities and grading papers can easily take up another four hours of the day. If you are going to mention the number of days we work that is a false assumption also. Teachers spend their “off” days undergoing professional development, lesson planning, collaborating and often teaching remedial students in intervention classes and summer school.
My students often ask me what I wanted to be when I grow up, and I respond that I eother wanted to be a teacher or a lawyer. Their first response is always why am I a teacher instead of a lawyer, lawyers make much more money. How many potential teachers ask themnselves the same question, and decide to do something else instead?
X=-1.75
gahrie,
First, there are many outstanding teachers out there. I’m better for have known a few, and most, at least around here, are competent. I actually did teach English to Japanese students for several years (this was a voluntary setting which had none of the disciplinary issues our teachers face. That would not have been a problem in Japan 30 years ago anyway…) Probable future son-in-law is a teacher. My comments will sting, but I’m not here to insult, and I have some basis for my opinions.
I agree about the discipline, but “professional?” Please. The problem is that there is no way to hold teachers accountable for results. What “profession” makes it almost impossible to get rid of someone who is just putting in his time? It took six years to get rid of a teacher in our high school who was teaching shamanism instead of history.
Education majors self select from among the least intelligent of the college population. Many are not competent in the subjects they teach. Teaching credentials are only remotely related to the subjects that are taught.
Finally, what profession takes things that work – e.g. phonics and memorization of multiplication tables, for example – and replace them with phony BS like “whole word recognition” and whatever the heck they call talking about math problems because they can’t solve them? Failures are, of course, the student’s fault.
Teaching is a union job. The union is concerned with its members first, and only then with the quality of the product it produces. You want respect? You need to dump the entire system. Why can’t schools compete for students and teachers compete for students as well? If I had cancer, I’d look for the best hospital and the best doctor in my area. If I wanted a roof, I’d check references. With teachers, it’s here’s who you’ve got, sit down, shut up.
</rant>
The judiciary.
You’re welcome.
tw: A higher form of irresponsibility you’ll not find.
Tragedies like Columbine would be almost impossible at a school not run by the State, which is a distressingly infrequent point in this thread.
Which is another way of saying that this scares me:
Er, teachers are overwhelmingly public sector (to say nothing of not wanting to be equated with a substantial cross section of lawyers, but that’s another topic) and I don’t give the State the right to “protect” kids (to also say little of their debacle of trying to “educate” them.)
When will we learn?
I’d go for longer school days and more teachers to bring down the student/teacher ratio over more pay for each teacher. Part of the longer day would be a couple/few hours of supervised play time or instruction in something like martial arts and specific sports in small groups as well. There would also be supervised homework time. Kids seem quite willing to do homework at a supervised study hall or after school program even though they fight it at home (experience as parent and teacher here). And for poor kids and families, yes, year-round school. My husband is tutoring some 5th graders now at an inner city school here in Alabama. The kids are not low IQ, but they have not memorized their multiplication tables yet. Our son is in an AL public school and has his done by 3rd grade, but only because we force him to do them at home.
Teachers are underpaid if they have more than 20 kids per classroom, and if they have no decent breaks during the day. Being around 20 or more kids for hours on end is exhausting…yes, more exhausting than other jobs. I taught for 2 years in a charter school. I enjoyed my kids (Jr. High) but didn’t enjoy the parents or administration, especially the ones who thought I should teach “intelligent design.”
OH–the CSAP is actually quite a good test. I taught science in CO and helped scribe for a kid who had broken his hand on his 9th grade math test. Comprehensive, difficult, quite well-written. I was ready to hate the CSAP, but ended up giving it grudging admiration.
Mark D–you know, I was just discussing the amazing mischief that people with doctorate degrees, supposedly in “education” can do to simple subjects. I wrote my mom that I didn’t know which was worse–the ministrations of such “experts” on math and phonics curriculum or the idiocy of the “intelligen design” crew vis a vis science education. I guess I’d have to call it a tie.
So the shame of it is, if you find a good, traditional school that teaches character/ethics, old fashioned math, and good phonics and grammar, you have to be very careful about what the hell they teach for science.
Not to quote you out of context, but that would be a school beholden to private choice and competition, not the NEA.
Folks, if federalized medicine is a bad idea, and if keeping government out of religion—out of personal and private intellectual and spiritual influence—is a good idea, who put the feds in charge of education?
And why?
– amyc – You don’t have to teach anything about “origions” to teach a full and complete corriculum in science. Neither Intelligent Design of secular religion, nor “Darwinism” of the religion of science. Either that or teach it all. either predjudice is exaactly the same.
Thanks, Phinn; you’re the light of reason.
Not only won’t vouchers fix a damn thing, I find them a slap in the face: Money and power laundering from on high. How that can be seen as a force for good is simply beyond me.
tw: The function of government isn’t to allocate rights and responsibilities.
As you know, you don’t even have to debate the topic when you have freedom of competitive choice…
Any argument about how to operate a basically fascist statist schooling system is debating how many conflicts can dance on the head of a student. Statist schooling is likely the fundamental underlying problem with an increasingly politically dysfunctional America. Why that essential question isn’t asked a hundred or a thousand times more frequently than it is can only be because this is the most sacred of sacred cows. The myth of uneducated inner city kids is the hook, line, and sinker of hooks, lines, and sinkers.
Civilis wrote:
2) Over-administration. The local school system has an over-abundance of counselors, administrators, and other highly-paid professionals that take a lot of money and don’t seem to do very much.
YES!
They make almost twice what teachers make and sit in their offices all day pontificating or creating excuses for badly-behaved parents and “special ed” students while the teachers actually do the work in the classroom.
word is while. hmm
Big Bang Hunter….I’m sure you have heard this before, but I’ll repeat it and then not post on this topic again, as it’s NOT the point of this thread
Evolution, or changing of life over time, is established scientific fact. We have a well established fossil record and radio-isotope dating that proves the progression of such changes. Radio dating is based on cold, hard math. “Intelligent Design” is just a philosophical discussion that tries to marry creationism with what is accepted as fact by the vast majority of folks who understand paleontology, geology, and archeology.
That said, any science teacher who is worth his salt (and paycheck) knows that he doesn’t have to talk about religion or philosophy in the science classroom at all–and all talk about a creator or lack thereof falls under religion and philosophy. Science teachers have a hard enough job trying to communicate enough actual science to kids without adding a whole unit on religious philosophy to their curricula. I’ll admit a few boneheads out there do it–I had a friend in grad school who told me scientists can’t believe in God. But kids will face that stuff everywhere, and need to be able to deal with it. If your kid gets that kind of bonehead for a teacher, it’s your right as a parent to tell your kid to do all his work on time, learn what the teacher wants to see on tests, and then forget whatever information was pure indoctrination or stupidity.
The problem is you have people with no real science knowlege teaching science, and you have dogmatic scientists like Carl Sagan (RIP) saying there is no God scaring the hell out of parents, and you have parents who don’t understand science because they had lousy science education themselves. But teaching “intelligent design” in the SCIENCE classroom won’t fix any of those problems. As an elective for juniors and seniors in high school, as part of a history and philosophy of science? Great. But be ready to teach Hindu, Buddhist, and Native American forms of “intelligent design” alongside the Judeo-Christian form, at least in the public school. After all, you said teach it all or don’t teach it at all.
and now I’m off to take my kids to their Christian basketball league games. Take care!
– amyc – You are certainly entitled to your opinions, as is everyone that has one in this regard. Whether you have a right to teach those opinions to my child is an entirely different matter. But on two things I take issue.
– Darwinism is not a complete proven science, no matter how much bloviating and arm waving scientists want to engage in. Its simply a well founded theory that in the end, the majority of which, must to be taken on logical faith. Its the one area of science that is the most incomplete.
– For everything we think we know there are a 1000 more important questions we can’t answer. Thats precisely why I used the phrase “the religion of science. Its a pretty good model as models go. But thats all it is. A model. Thats all any science is. A model of reality. A really good scientist whos honest will be the first to tell you that. We scientists are embarrassed sometimes by the absolute faith that certain agenda based groups put in scientific ideas that are simply unfounded. Unfortunately for all sorts of reasons, some of us play the game too.
I’ll keep the resonse to that short. Your friend doesn’t know what the hell hes talking about.
6gun,
This is fundamentally a values debate, and there is no correct answer, and I have at least some libertarian leanings, so take these comments as partially playing devils advocate.
This statement seems completely unsupportable. I don’t see any reason why students at a private school could not also go violent. You could minimize the chance by not admitting students with behavioral problems, but then society as a whole is left to deal with them, one way or another. Then again, since this is a theoretical argument, we have to work with theoreticals. Therefore what I say can’t be supported either.
The reason a completely private educational system is a non-starter for Americans is that society has determined that all students must be afforded the chance at an education. In order for this to work there must be some way to regulate where schools go. No private firm is going to attempt to meet the educational needs of every possible student without outside subsidy. So what we end up with is a permament underclass of people who cannot afford an education or don’t care to spend the money on education for their children.
This might be acceptable to a libertarian, but American society will not accept it. American society might even be wrong.
Interesting. Even if we get around the semantics, I’m curious what it’s called when in order to exist at all, state school has no other choice but to teach the philosophy of existential nihilism and religious equality—moral equivalence—by invoking the separation clause (such as it is) and then promoting them parallel to a closed-ended view that says origins began with the Big Bang?
IOW, when the academic careers of millions of kids suffers a vast and complex oppression of speech.
Somebody please tell me how that (1) fulfills constitutional ethics, (2) promotes tolerance and diversity, and (3) makes any rational sense at all.
I’m perpetually amazed that that isn’t an issue on either side of the political divide.
Enough to float the assertion that state schooling is simply unconstitutional and should be outlawed.
– 6Gun. Thats why imho they should just leave it out of the corriculum entirely, since the balanced approach leads to an impossibly unweildy situation which can’t possibly satisfy everyone.
– Maybe a philosphy course or two, that touches on the belief systems of all of the known religions/cults/sects, including the tenents of Darwinism as a contrasting competing theorum, and the general existance of each in society, and thats it. Take the politics out of the equation period.
Thanks, Civilis.
On it’s face, asserting crime would drop as the result of ceasing statist schooling is indeed unsupportable—presumably these crimes occur as only as a crude ratio of the population and therefore, should we abolish statist schooling, would simply occur elsewhere.
My premise is that the (1) statistics already support my claim, and (2) unavoidable and dependent statist schooling and the society it inadvertently creates is a fundamental cause of the dysfunction that is or creates criminal apathy.
I see statist schooling as part of dependency, not uplifting society from a worse condition that would occur were it not to exist. To that point, I think allowing the free market to put, say, WalMart or McDonalds-like corporations into competition in the education business on the low end of the economic ladder would inprove delivery, value, and performance in every category.
At the least, that concept stands a chance of working at least as well as the current statist system.
Society has indeed
determinedbought the notion that all students must be “afforded” the chance at an education. The unexplored and unproved variables in this equation are cost and what constitutes “education”.My aim is to turn the question around the other way and cease placing the burden of proof on opponents of a failed system that, as I said above a moment ago, also gives every appearance of being unconstitutional. Statism isn’t the norm; self-sufficiency and direction are. Why then do we have—much less tolerate—a statist system of this magnitude, importance, and proved insolvency when all indicators are that we could replace it tomorrow with a functional, free-market, private system. And stop laundering vouchers through Washington.
Regardless how that argument falls out, the remaining point revolves around affordability. Again, I’d turn the question around and demand that the statists prove that statism has ever produced a winning combination of low cost and excellence, and that even before proving both constitutional faithfulness and reasonableness.
Clearly the conventional wisdom about statist education is wrong, and this is the question I keep asking: Where did that blind assumption originate?
Yes, assuming a system of outright competition is impossible. You and I know it’s not and furthermore, we know it’s actually needed at this point in our history.
Once again, the socialists show us the ironic, monopolistic path to intolerance and social levelling…
Mark D:
1) Have you seen how hard it is to get a lawyer disbarred and a doctor’s licence revoked?
2) I actually agree with you about unions. (and I am my school’s union rep) I don’t think any government employee should be allowed to join a union. Plus I think teacher unions are one more reason why teachers aren’t treated as professionals. We should have a professional organization instead, like the bar.
3) If you paid teachers like professionals, you were get many more applicants, which would allow districts to weed out the less competent. Many teachers keep their jobs simply because there is no one to replace them.
6gun:
Free and mandatory education is the foundation of our Republic. If we give everyone the Right and Responsibility to vote, we have the duty as a people to produce the best voter and citizen we can.
I’m late to this thread and if I repeat some item others have touched upon, I apologize. However the education of our youth is the single most important endeavor we will ever attempt. Education equals knowledge and knowledge cures almost every single societal ill. As people become more knowledgable racism dissappears, crime goes down, self reliance increases, all manner of biases disappear.
I believe in vouchers. I believe in competition by learning institutions for educational dollars. I don’t believe in wasting precious dollars on high priced baby sitters in schools that do not produce a consumerable product. We need the competing schools to raise the level of education in all institutions.
We need to pay teachers commensurate with what we expect of them. If we are going to call teachers (who by the way we entrust with our most precious asset – the minds of our youth) professionals, we need to pay them accordingly and seek out the best and the brightest. Once we do that, we can require that they perform up to those expectations. Those that do not can and will be replaced.
We need to recognize that our children (the students) all have differing learning abilities and intelligence. We cannot put them all in the same category and/or teach them the same subjects or the same way. We need to bring back Vocational Education for those students that are not going on to academia. We need to teach the basics to all children in the first years of their education and teach Vocational Students a trade, consumer living courses (how to balance a checkbook, how to shop, what to look for in business transactions such as loans or time purchases, etc) and provide advance education for trades at Community colleges or Trade Schools. We can provide, in essence, the apprenticeship programs that Unions used to provide.
We need to recognize that the teacher is the second most important person in the school – the student is the most important. You can throw out the administrators, the support staff, get rid of the buses, the buildings, the sports and all of the other extraneous stuff and if you still have the student and the teacher, the education process can continue.
Full discloser – I am not a teacher, never have been and never had a desire to be, but I did sleep with one some years ago. I have been a board member of a school board, until I got tired of beating my head against the wall.
– Staying with the devils advocate theme here, we know a few things from our history as a nation, in regards to the evolution, some would say devolution, of our school system. Schooling on this continent reflected naturally the religious based roots of whatever identity group it was practiced in. Later towns/territories set up regional schoolrooms with hired teachers, and eventually we resolved that all children should be afforded an education with the advent of the public school system, a decididly Socialistic construct.
– How much is enough. The dumbing down, no child left behind, homogenization as it were, in an effort to make everyones education “equal”, ignoring that some simply aren’t as interested as others, nor do they all share the same life goals.
– The more we move in that direction the less we recognize individuality and those things that make each of us unique. Since the effective envolvement of Parents in their childrens education is an absolute keystone to a successful program for the child, I would suspect that some people are suspicious of a privatization approach because they would neccessarily be forced to take part, something that sadly a number of parents seem to be unwilling to do, treating the school system as more of a baby-sitting service than anything else.
Robert Speirs
And some schools with the very best, national-level football teams have horrible levels of educational achievement.
Please note the word balance in my post.
One of my daughters was scouted for club soccer, of the top-rated teams in my area. She was exceptionally talented, especially as a team leader and on-field strategist. But once she found out that the it meant giving up everything else she enjoyed, including music, she declined. 24/7 soccer would have put her life out of balance. As it was, she continued to play at high school and select team level, take college prep and AP classes AND be drum major of her hs school band (a lead them into state championship).
Between parents that ignore their kids and parents who live vicariously through them, IMHO the good kids come from environments that honor their own talents and insist on a classically based education (which includes sports and the arts).
Is that so? And is it also a wealthy and enlightened society’s obligation to provide all needs to all citizens? I’ve heard both of these pieces of contventional wisdom, much as I’ve heard that Jefferson said dissention was the highest form of patriotism.
Assuming any of these notions were morally correct as far as need, how would you defend delivering them by the one thing that could take them all away again?
You argue a point diametrically opposed to this Republic, not in step with it.
Oh, if I may add vis a vis Parental Involvement…as a voice from the trenches…
Public schools will get and retain more Parental Involvement when they stop being hostile to any parent that wishes to be treated as an equal partner rather than an open checkbook.
Too many teachers and administrators take the position that they are the ‘professionals’ and therefore, parents are lesser beings who should show up to run the football snack bar and fund raisers while keeping their mouths tightly shut about anything else.
Forgive the rambling train of thought in advance; this is my talking off the top of my head.
But is the failed educational system a cause of social breackdown or a result of social breakdown? It could very well be a chicken and egg question.
I think the modern state educational system developed (ironically) as a result of latent libertarian-light impulses at the turn of the last century. Society has always recognized that children by nature lack the critical decision making capabilities and skills necessary to be productive members of society. It used to be that an education was not necessary to be a productive member of society; agricultural and later craft jobs required no formal education beyond apprenticeship. As agricultural and later craft jobs declined for a more service and knowledge based economic system, children required a more rigorous and complicated set of knowledge to remain productive. Society “decided” that spending on universal education was more moral and more economically wise than spending on welfare for an unproductive citizen. But as the educational system grew, the entrenched feeling of entitlement and the entrenched bueracracy grew with it, and is strangling the system.
Was this decision correct? I can’t say; it depends on how one values the various outcomes. I personally think something needs to be done. I think vouchers are a step towards building an effective parallel private educational system; I know and understand that some here think that ‘too little, too late’. I would like to see the top heavy American educational bueracracy dismantled. I don’t believe many Americans even know what the Department of Education actually does, yet if you propose cutting the funding (much less eliminating it) the entrenched educational bueracracy (the NEA) will scream bloody murder.
TW: Did this make sense to anyone?
Not so incidently, gahrie, if free, mandatory, and presumably, nearly monopolistic “education” is the foundation of our Republic, when and by what logic and authority did it originate in the US?
Absolutely true and well-said, to the point of arresting parents who disagree with forced agendas and say so—and yes, it HAS happened.
IMHO, this is unavoidably indicative of the federal bureaucracy that includes the federal NEA, federal and local family law, and local enforcement.
All of which is yet another example of the danger of statism as it concerns young minds … and the families they come from.
tw: Home.
– Darleen. I would submit thats really as much a problem of parents being involved enough to discover that, in reality, they have the power. I had to learn that the hard way, doing the battles over the years, because the system works hard to support the illusion that its otherwise.
– But power is empty if you refuse to take the initiative. A parent has to enter the frey understanding its an advisarial system from the git-go. Most people do not have a clue when they start out as to the truth on the ground, and many never learn.
After reading the last few weeks of reading Jeff’s posts, I am now convinced that I am Jeff, and that the person known as “me” is Jeff’s somewhat-overweight and shy alter-ego.
j.d. – Do you own an intransegent pet ‘dillo whos only claim to fame is a rumored dancing prowess that…. ahem….is yet to be proven in any substative manner?
– cause if so, just maybe you’re on to something there…..
BBH
Agreed. It is a real eyeopener for any parent who is welcomed with open arms and patted on the back for volunteering on campus for a host of PTA/Booster/room-parent/procter/etc duties then watch these same ‘friends’ and ‘partners’ go spittle-flying Hyde on ‘em the first time the parent asks “Why” or “How come”.
I normally do not disagree with you 6gun, but on this one you have it wrong.
Public Education was a biggie for Jefferson, and apparently enough of those around during his time so that it became a reality.
Many sources, here is one
My personal favorite of his has to do with the idea of ‘scraping the masses’ in order to identify those with the tools to run the country in the future. The tool for scraping? public education.
– All fine and good Defense Guy, but at the same time we have to remember that Jefferson was a strong believer in anarchies, of the form practiced by local Indian tribes at the time, as long as the “group” was not too large, in which case he recongized it broke down.
– In his own words he was not a believer in representative Republics, stating on more than one occasion, that “majority rule is just a thinly disguised form of “mob” rule”….
BBH
I’m with you, and for my tastes Hamilton is the man with the better plan. Thankfully, we live more in his country. I suppose there is some irony involved in that without the education Hamilton recieved, no one would have listened to him. Not from the right family and all that.
That said, I am with Jefferson on the subject of education, for without it, this country has no future. That piece of paper on which we stake so much means nothing if people don’t understand it’s concepts or how they came to be secured. I think we should be doing much, much better.
It is my opinion that the DoD and the DoEd are equally important to the future of this country. If we neglect either to much, we won’t have a country.
6gun:
That is a strawman. The purpose of supplying a free education is not to satisfy a private “need”, but rather to maintain a healthy Republic. And public education is not a function of a “wealthy” or “enlightened” society, but rather a society with universal sufferage.
First of all, there is nothing monopolistic about public education. Private schools do exist, and have always existed. Secondly, free, mandatory public education originated in laws written and passed by our Founding Fathers who knew that in order to have a free and stable Republic, you need to have an educated electorate.
Big bang Hunter:
I believe you are mixing up Jefferson’s view of democracy, and his views of republicanism. He supported representative republics precisely because he saw them as a remedy to the mob rule of democracy. Representative republics (and especially ours) are designed to weaken majorities, and set them in conflict with each other.
Thanks for the link, Defense Guy. What I know of Jefferson hadn’t included his advocating for statism at any level—in fact, this is a surprise, enough so that I’d challenge not the words but the full and practical context. Which I’ll have to read up on first.
Suffice it to say that statism wasn’t the order of his day by any means, and I don’t see evidence of Jefferson’s peers erecting a statist schooling system immediately following 1776.
What we need is the entire history and context…
(WRT my comment on “Jeffersonian” dissent, that remark had to do with fisking the socialist view that Jefferson claimed dissent the highest form of patriotism, not that I believed Jefferson was integrally involved in federalized schooling.)
As am I. The question is how to do it without impairing any of the other rights and privileges once guaranteed by our founding system of constitutional principle and government.
We also have a family law system in this country that is in direct and daily violation of a half-dozen essential and previously unalienable rights. It too gets little to no scrutiny because it too is assumed to be the proper function of government. I submit that it is absolutely not, and that it is, by it’s own evidence, horridly unconstitutional and therefore illegal. Which it will be until it hits the Supreme Court, which it almost invariably will one day.
Much as the issue of whether or not the secular humanism taught by statist schooling is a religion or not could and should. IIRC, the last time that was argued, it came deliciously close to being ruled as such, a precedent I’d think would negatively effect statist schooling by the next quarter if not the end of the month. I’d buy tickets for that.
Anyway, if we assume that education and statist education are synonymous, what is our basis for this assumption? These terms get interchangeably bandied about entirely too freely, IMHO.
Defense Guy,
What exactly is the Department of Education (the federal one, not state or local) good for? Admittedly, it’s not something I pay too much attention to, but I’m generally not to sure what the Department of Education actually accomplishes. Unlike 6gun, I don’t have a problem with public education per se, I just think that the more bueracratic layers you tack on, the worse it performs.
Yes, but in modern terms ‘monopoly’ and ‘monopolistic’ don’t mean 100% control. I am forced to pay for public education whether I consume it or not. If you define education as a public service that the government should provide, then it may make sense for someone without children like me to pay the government to provide education for those with children. But if I had children, I would be forced to pay the government to run schools for my children even if I was then also paying a private school to actually educate them.
Defense Guy
Up until WWII federal involvement in the nations educational system was limited to information gathering and sharing in order to help local entities to establish effective systems. Some of this included land-grant colleges and universities.
WWII saw the feds step up their involvement by ameloriating the impact on local school districts burdened by military installations with cash payments. Then the GI bill for WWII vets.
With each passing decade – from the scare of Sputnik through the Civil Rights era, federal involvement in all aspects of local education has increased. It was only in 1980 that the DOE became a cabinet-level agency.
I would ask you, do you think average gradeschool education is better today then it was in, say, 1915 or 1945? If your answer is “no”, then is it possible that the ever increasing interference from the Feds plays a significant role in the erosion of basic education?
Darleen:
What you are describing has been occuring in every facet of government. This country has been evolving from a republic of States into a federal democracy for the last 150 years.
The two worst things to happen to our government IMO, were the modern interpretation of the commerce clause, and the passing of the 17th Amendment.
gathrie, asking if you believe that society, as has been suggested in other circles, owes “basic needs” such as housing, medicine, and income to all members just because it’s just and wealthy and compassionate is not a strawman as it applies to statist education. I want to know where proponents of free and universal education come down on the greater question of collectivism and bureaucracy, that’s all. I see them as all part of the same monster.
Further, when you say that the purpose of supplying a free education is not to satisfy a private “needâ€Â, but rather to maintain a healthy Republic, it then falls to you to show that a statist system is superior to a private one, assuming the former is just and allowed in the first place. As I say, the two are not interchangable and the assumption that statism provides educations with healthy outcomes is substantially unproved … or we’d not be having this discussion.
If I understand you, public education is indeed a function of a “wealthy†and/or “enlightened†society, because its costs and burdens are part of a heirarchy of needs and abilities. The inverse would be primitive societies whose ways and means have yet to evolve to that level, their relative universal suffrage notwithstanding. A simple majority does not constitute reason or ability.
As far as competition, of course there is not a complete federal monopoly on education. Instead, there is is a highly advantaged, unnaturally-influenced, and non-competitive system, as with all other manipulated systems, one that is at this very moment breeding private sector competition even despite that inequity.
Even decades of relatively blind entitlement thinking about education—the kind of which appears in these threads—is falling away in favor of the pragmatism of private education. Imagine what this phenomenon would do if it wasn’t burdened with the enormous baggage of statism.
Lastly, concerning the early Republic, I tend to doubt that today’s system would have been comprehensible, much less endorsed, by the Founders. That begs speculation, but I tend to think it’s fair.
It is a good point that the more layers of beuracracy you add on, the worse it performs. That said, the DoD is a massivly bueracratic enterprise, it just has the means to cut through it when the need arises. It has, over time, learned to push many of the decision making responsibilites down to the lowest possible level.
The way we do things now is too much like a lottery for my tastes. It is simply not equality of opportunity to say that if you are born in a tax poor area you get fucked on your education. That if your parents could give a crap about your education, then neither does your country. These, to me at least, are not small problems.
So, it may not be the DoEd as an institution that I am refering to, but more the idea that the education system as run by the states and localaties. The problem then, is that the money needs to come from somewhere.
Civilis, please let me come back to something I should have concentrated more on before. You said:
The first sentence is interesting. Am I missing some essential concept here; is there a fundamental mechanism whereby education will not and cannot respond to simple market conditions?
I’m aware of the kids-falling-thru-cracks argument, but I tend to think that’s a symptom of society, not a responsibility of state. I’m also aware of the argument that if the State pays $0.90 to save $1.00, we have our justification.
The problem is that by that logic we also have our tyranny.
But is there some intrinsic problem with paying for education that justifies subjecting what I’d argue would be the overwhelming majority to the whims and needs of the small, irresponsible minority? Remember, as a just, enlightened, and wealthy society, we have just as much obligation, if not substantially more, to demand performance from our own charity and private outreach as we do from a government we proudly proclaim must stay on it’s side of the domestic fence.
Perhaps I just don’t understand the terms. Are you suggesting that while education is vitally important to the people of this country, that it is the families of the children who are responsible for this?
In theory, great idea. In practice, I’d put my money into correctional facilities, because my guess is they are gonna boom under that plan.
I don’t believe that a public supplied education is better than a private one. In fact I believe private education is superior in almost all aspects. Unfortunately, if a free and mandated public education did not exist, vast numbers of our children would receive no education at all. This would have severe and dangerous effects on our Republic. It would produce a larger and even more parasitic underclass. It would produce a more stratified society. It would create a mob of uneducated voters even more prone to hysterical rhetoric. Our current system is imperfect, but then so are all works of man.
Oh I agree with this point completely. (see my previous response to Darleen) I just don’t believe a public education contributes to this, but rather the lack of a public education would make things worse.
I’m childless myself. So my personal experience is limited to the tens of thousands of dollars I have paid in school taxes in my lifetime. But – in footing the bill I would like to think all that money went to pay for something worthwhile. Apparently not.
My sister has a teenager whom the public schools are failing miserably. He is a very sharp kid and the schools just don’t challenge him. She can’t afford private schools, so she is now researching her options on home schooling.
So as I pay my tax bill this summer, and as my sister does, chances are good that my nephew will be home schooled.
Where do I apply for my refund?
OCSteve
As someone who went to public schools, I would like to thank you for footing the bill. I can only promise you that I will make every effort to ensure that your money was well spent.
But I will not always spell correctly. That you can’t have you cheap bastard.
As a political pragmatist, I submit that if you wish to explore this issue productively you must keep in mind one central fact: the public school system used to actually work. And this despite the fact that it faced most of the above-discussed contextual obstacles – I would even venture that those obstacles were even more substantial in ye olde days: lack of funding (in real dollars), broken families, parent(s) who were too busy scratching out a living, immigrant parents who don’t speak English, etc. And yet it worked. So you first have to ask: “What has changed?†I outlined my thoughts on that above (FIRST!), and I’d like to know what else I missed.
I see that a number of you have picked up on the increased federal involvement. I’ll suggest a fourth change: The marked increase in personal geographic mobility has resulted in localities having a diminshed incentive to educate their own.
Families and the private sector, absolutely—education is vitally important to them too, is it not? Does the State trump them?
I’ve yet to find a branch of federal government that can function ethically, responsibly, efficiently, flexibly, responsively, or dependably enough to do damn near anything in the domestic private sector. In this case we’re asking it to magically formulate and accomplish without fail or conflict of interest what amounts to nearly the entire socio-academic minds of what we insist is our most precious resource.
Again, that cart is way ahead of that horse and it’s past time to ask why we’re doing this.
That’s unsupported—we’ve got 1,000,000+ behind bars already and when young psychopaths go off and kill, per capita they do so from the public school system far more likely than not. The news is chock full of abusing statist school system “teachers”. The NEA is a known conflict of moral interest in favor of their own secularist dogma.
But that’s besides the point. The worst-case answer is perhaps, perhaps not. The early system had none of today’s baggage; let’s not confuse causes and effects over 200 years. Could we replace the statist system with a private one? Absolutely. Should we? Absolutely. Can we without serious problems? I doubt it, but so goes, as Gahrie said, the devolution from republic to ampitheatre we’ve seen since the late 1700’s…
IT’S BECAUSE OF THE CONDITIONING!
I have nine nieces and nephews. All were/are home-schooled and all are well ahead of the curve, graduating an average of two years ahead of their peers. Among them is a young degreed professional, a sports figure, a business owner, half a dozen straight “A” students, and another half dozen musicians, one soon to be professionally.
They also came from intelligent, nurturing, functional families.
In the end, the question of schooling also comes back to nature vs nurture, along with dependency vs self-determination.
correction: …what amounts to nearly the entire socio-academic
mindsmakeup of what we insist is our most precious resource.I’d have to unearth a lot of old records to give you an accurate figure, but given my age and the length of time I have owned property – let’s call it $40k+. For that I expect not only proper spelling – I want grammar too damn it!
6gun:
That is comforting to hear. She is a little overwhelmed getting started and I have had my doubts. So what you say is good news to me. Thanks.
Keep in mind this is a hypothetical situation. I believe that there is a minimum price that can be associated with a private education; the bare minimum cost to hire a barely qualified teacher, rent a schoolroom, and provide rudimentary educational material. Some parents will be unwilling to pay the cost or seek private assistance to do so. The bare minimum cost will be higher for students with special needs, and in certain areas of the country. Essentially, what I meant was in a free education market, supply and demand will be such that education will not be avaliable for everyone at the price they are willing to pay.
It could also be that parents willing to invest in a private education are more likely to be supportively involved in their children’s moral development.
I don’t mean to imply that there is anything wrong with homeschooling your children or paying for a private education. I suspect that homeschooling or a private education is superior to public education in a lot of respects, but that is in part due to the nature of those willing to put forth the effort.
– Back from taking my learning unit to his high school to enjoy the school theater group doing Grease. Gotta love it. Even had the local classic car club set up a bevy of American muscle car beauties in front of the theater.
– Gahrie – My references quote him specifically against Republicanism, as well as Democracies of all types. Perhaps by the time of the framing he had came around. Its definate he softened on the idea of Anarchies in his dodage. As with all things historic, there are always unsettled debates, mixed in with mis-quotes. For instance the issue about his possible Atheism. He himself even admitted he had all but stopped talking in public forums, since he got tired of having to make so many corrections about things he never said.
– At any rate I don’t think the founding Daddies could have had a clue about education as it exists today, but schooling, like so many social issues we like to try to debate/support with the founders wise and revered words, is just one more of those things.