What is the role of public education?

[ldsoftwaresteve]

neviene:The level of education in a community is inversely proportional to the crime rate, too. We have other things we're forced to pay for that we don't like, either, that I'd love to opt out of - such as financing this war, and social security that has all but promised to be gone by the time I retire - but we all suffer together, right?

Yes, we do. And quite needlessly I might add. And it's probably too late to save ourselves from destruction. We live in a fabric of lies Neviene, but the worst ones are the ones we tell ourselves. That's the real shame. I see no hope ahead, just more lies.

The crack in the armor of virtue occurs at the instant one internalizes a falsehood on purpose. Once you do that, you become a pawn in someone elses game. Virtue should be synonymous with being truthful but we've been taught to let in the little lies. We've been told that there isn't a better way to do things and that if we have to dig for the truth, then it's probably not worth the bother.

The separation of church and state was an attempt to keep systematized lying away from the hands of government. At least some of the founders must have understood that bad things would happen if that occured. Well, they just slowed it down is all.

And now lies, spin, politically correct are what we live with today. If that doesn't change, we're screwed.

[ldsoftwaresteve]

Irisheyes: FINALLY!

Someone is singing my song out there.

LOL! Thanks for lifting my spirits. :eek:

[zadojla]

I'm curious. It would seem consistant that you would also view paying mandatory taxes to support police, fire departments, public hospitals as stealing. Do you?

I have one child. She goes to public school, and she loves to learn. So do most of her friends.

I went to public school. I have 3,000 books, most of which I have actually read, and I know many things I was never taught in school.

[zadojla]

By the way, my understanding is that public education initially developed in the 19th century to Americanize the children of immigrants.

[ldsoftwaresteve]

zadojla:I'm curious. It would seem consistant that you would also view paying mandatory taxes to support police, fire departments, public hospitals as stealing. Do you?

That is correct. Any public function that can be privatized, should be privatized. That would provide accountability as well as the hope for improvements in all of those services.

Today, there is no hope for any public service to ever improve over time, at least not systematically and purposefully. That is not in the nature of a public service. There is no built-in incentive for it to do that.

Education is a perfect example of why our approach is wrong. We still have grades 1 - 12. I had grades 1 - 12. My mother had grades 1 - 12. My Children had/have grades 1 - 12. It'll never change. And from what I've seen of the material being taught, that is pretty much the same thing just different covers.

But the complexity of the workplace has not been at a similar stand-still, it has gone up, become much more complicated and demands many more skills. And worse, or better, depending on your point of view, the rate of change is accelerating. We must have something that reacts to change and even anticipates it and that is most definitely not the public school system.

Nothing stops us from pretending, however. So we do. We lie to ourselves. But the dust you see on the horizon is the commotion caused by 4 BILLION hungry folks who want to compete with our children who, by the way, have lost the use of ages 5 - 18, roughly 20% of their lifespan.

[ldsoftwaresteve]

zadojla: By the way, my understanding is that public education initially developed in the 19th century to Americanize the children of immigrants

I suppose that could have been used as one of the reasons. But here again the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Get the people to buy the intention and then pave away. One of the most beloved people in the history of our country, Thomas Jefferson, believed that everyone should be able to get an education. But I hardly think that he'd approve of what we've done with the concept. Teach them to learn or educate them. Vastly different subjects.

There are layers of problems even associated with discussing the issue. Since we have zero belief in our ability to identify truth, argumentation becomes a contest where 'winning isn't everything, it's the ONLY thing'. So rather than use discussion as a launching pad for discovering the truth, we use discussions to bully and get our point across at any cost. And then we determine right and wrong by an opinion poll, for goodness sake. Belief replaces certainty and the truth suffers. It's like wendy, fairy dust, and flying to never-never land. Wish hard enough and you can make it true.

But keep in mind that this isn't an esoteric subject, something we can have a nice little chat about over dinner. You might be surprised to find out that I think that the blood of millions is on our hands because we implemented public education.

We outlawed slavery but followed that up with public education, stole the ownership of property from every person in our system, and enslaved the children all in one deft stroke. Some of that insanity has been reversed and home schooling is now 'allowed' (as if anyone other than the parent has the authority on this issue) but property taxes have not stopped. So we still have not been able to reclaim our property rights. That, in fact, has gotten even worse. Now, if the 'taxing authority' can make a financial case for seizing a persons property on the basis of it having more 'REVENUE' post seizure than pre seizure, it can take one's property and give it to wal-mart. I doubt that many really understand what that means.

But we can pretend that everything is just fine so we will. We've been taught how to do that quite well.

[Fishteacher73]

That is correct. Any public function that can be privatized, should be privatized. That would provide accountability as well as the hope for improvements in all of those services.

Today, there is no hope for any public service to ever improve over time, at least not systematically and purposefully. That is not in the nature of a public service. There is no built-in incentive for it to do that.

We have tried to privatize the public schools and it failed(see Chris Whittle and the Edison project).

I in no way defend they style and manner in which our current publlic system works, but to say a public education is useless, just look at crime stats and schooling. I feel that standardization is a huge step in the wrong direction. The system should teach kids to think, not just vomit out the pre-programmed answer without any real understanding.

[ldsoftwaresteve]

fishteacher: We have tried to privatize the public schools and it failed(see Chris Whittle and the Edison project).

I in no way defend they style and manner in which our current publlic system works, but to say a public education is useless, just look at crime stats and schooling. I feel that standardization is a huge step in the wrong direction. The system should teach kids to think, not just vomit out the pre-programmed answer without any real understanding.

I guess I won't argue about whether or not previous attempts at privatizing public schools have failed. Public schools have, that much I know. It has to be extremely frustrating to attempt to accomplish anything in the situation you find yourself and you have my sincere sympathy.

 

What I would like to focus on here is the future in a 'should be and ought to be' sense.

I think that the free market will impact this area and most likely it will happen in the developing countries first. Learning will start ramping up along the lines of specialty schools, self study courses and tools like 'Video Professor', essentially going around the need for a public system. What would the nature of a future school be, if as you say, "The system should teach kids to think, not just vomit out the pre-programmed answer without any real understanding." ?

 

Let's assume for a moment that each of us carries fallacies around and that those fallacies are part of our intellectual makeup. We would need to be prepared for our students pointing out our fallacies, assuming of course that we teach them to think for themselves. If we create a cult of reason, we had better be prepared for the little buggers to start pointing out where we are wrong.

 

I would consider that to be a measure of our success and I would hope that you would too. But if we are to have an intellectual Renaissance, nothing less than that will do. The big question is how the hell do we get there from here?

[IrishEyes]

Let's assume for a moment that each of us carries fallacies around and that those fallacies are part of our intellectual makeup. We would need to be prepared for our students pointing out our fallacies, assuming of course that we teach them to think for themselves. If we create a cult of reason, we had better be prepared for the little buggers to start pointing out where we are wrong.

 

I would consider that to be a measure of our success and I would hope that you would too. But if we are to have an intellectual Renaissance, nothing less than that will do. The big question is how the hell do we get there from here?

This is just beautiful, and I agree 100%.

I think one of my happiest moments was when my oldest daughter started questioning me. I don't mean the "Why can't I stay up late?" type of questions, but the harder ones like "Why do you believe in God?", "Why is it important for me to learn things instead of just memorize them?", and the hardest, "How can some men just walk away fromt heir families, and don't tell me 'sometimes it just happens' ?" She has started actually challenging me to think in order to answer her questions, and sometimes I have to evaluate my position on certain things in order to answer her honestly. And I adore that she doesn't base her opinions solely on my answers, but has started seeking out answers that fit her instead. I'll admit that it's not always easy that she doesn't accept everything I say as gospel anymore, but it is thrilling all the same.

How can this happen on a grand scale? How can we teach our kids to think on a national, or even global, level? I'm not really sure. I think it has to be important enough for the parent, but most parents don't even realize that their kids are missing it in the public school setting. Many are frustrated when their 22 year olds graduate from college, but can't seem to decide on a job, but they have no idea why their kids lack ambition. They don't realize that the drive was stolen from their children in kindergarten, when recess became "organized free time".

My answer - scrap public education altogether (sorry, Fish). Make parents responsible for educating their own children, either through homeschooling or private schools.

If keeping public ed, forget about 'grading', and figure out a better way to determine if someone has mastered a skill. Instead of more requirements for teachers, make more for parents - regular conferences, phone calls, class participation, etc. Get rid of standardized testing, it's all but worthless. Actually, I guess the list is rather long, and probably not very realistic.

[ldsoftwaresteve]

Irisheyes: If keeping public ed, forget about 'grading', and figure out a better way to determine if someone has mastered a skill. Instead of more requirements for teachers, make more for parents - regular conferences, phone calls, class participation, etc. Get rid of standardized testing, it's all but worthless. Actually, I guess the list is rather long, and probably not very realistic.

I only disagree with the 'not very realistic' part. I think you nailed it when you mentioned 'mastered a skill' - and I don't think it would be all that hard to do and do well. But we need to choose that path. The rest will follow.

Ok. If the goal should be to teach the children skill sets, we would need to identify what those skill sets are, develop programs for each of them, identify how to measure them and ensure that we include a feedback mechanism for process improvement (perhaps the single most important thing).

If we look at the career of politician, we'd need to teach our children how to lie and bullshit..

If we look at the career of television personality, we'd need to teach vanity and attention to bullshit.

Just kidding. My point is that we need to identify what the underlying values are behind the need for the skill sets. And, it would help to have a hero - an image of the creature coming out of the other end of this process? A picture paints.....

Our current failing system uses 'the good citizen' as its model for the product and nobody should be surprised at the failure.

It does that because the underlying goal should be to teach survival and how to connect with existence, NOT how to conform and get sheared. The founding fathers were Revolutionairies and most certainly NOT sheep and it is not surprising that they were very connected to the earth and the natural sciences - and, mostly self taught.

I like the image of Leonardo da Vinci because of his genius and energy. But whatever image we choose, the children should have to look up.

[Erasmus00]

My answer - scrap public education altogether (sorry, Fish). Make parents responsible for educating their own children, either through homeschooling or private schools.

 

As someone who went through private Catholic schools throughout my development, I can say that private schools aren't bastions of learning. Private high schools also usually lack the honors and AP programs that help some of the brighter students in public schoosl retain their sanity.

 

As for scrapping public education all together, I have a short anecdote. For three years I taught a hands on physics course for a program called "College for Kids." Sort of a summer camp for the scientifically minded fourth and fifth grader. Every year, a handful of the kids who signed up were homeschooled (maybe 3 or 4 out of 20 each year). And, to a child, each of the homeschooled kids had a lot of trouble interacting with their peers. Three children out and out refused to work with other kids in teams, and one child cried whenever he didn't get his way.

 

I don't wish to imply that it is impossible to raise a well adjusted child in a home schooled environment, I just think that learning to socialize with a children the same age group is extremely important.

-Will

[Fishteacher73]

While there have been a number of strides made forward in the realm of home schooling, one of the best is the loose organizations that many communities form and have group functions for all the students. This ranges from competetive sports teams, socials, and even some local colleges presenting higher level science classes and labs for these students. This counters some of the social drawbacks of home schooling.

 

While the other aspects that are hinderences to the system do sound a bit demeaning, I mean it as no personal attack to anyone that homeschools. Generally there is less diversity in the learning environment. The teaching capacities of a small group of individuals may be compromised and certain subjects may not recieve adequate instruction on them. The effects are insulating from the real world in both ideology and social activities. Not every situation has all of these issues, and there are many homeschooled individuals that excell in a great variety of arenas, but the general trend is showing that each of these issues are present in some combination in most homeschool situations.

I say these things because I have first hand seen the dificulties that many homeschooled students have if they move over to the public system.

[ldsoftwaresteve]

I think in the coming years we will see that public education places our children directly on the trailing edge of human development - at least in the worldwide intellectual arena. Our only chance for parity is to hope that all of the developing countries make the same mistake we made and create their version of public schools, making it mandatory, etc. just like us. Then we might not be so bad off. If they don't, if they recognize that there might be a better way if they don't try to legislate it, they'll beat us hands down.

We can argue about it or we can wait and watch because how we believe will make no difference at all. What is, is.

There was a brief period of time when I was in my teens when I thought I understood everything. I think it lasted about a day, probably less.

The only thing I know for certain today is that as the truth about the universe becomes known, if it ever does, a lot of people are going to be pissed or will have to simply ignore what is true.

Even in the 'scientific' community we have extremely wide differences of opinion about some pretty fundamental things. They simply can't all be correct. Some of them have to be wrong. So someone's ox will get gored.

I'm hopeful that this area of conflict is not wide, but realistically, it probably encompasses most everything. I'm fairly certain that our lack of understanding includes human nature, one of the most confusing subjects there is. We're talking about teaching humans here.

 

So why do we think that what we believe to be true about education is even remotely correct? Oh, we pretend we understand it, but come on. We're darn near clueless. So the odds of our public education system being based on something other than a bundle of fallacies is remote, to say the least.

[Erasmus00]

So why do we think that what we believe to be true about education is even remotely correct? Oh, we pretend we understand it, but come on. We're darn near clueless. So the odds of our public education system being based on something other than a bundle of fallacies is remote, to say the least.

 

That is a rather large leap. As has been pointed out by Fishteacher, crime stats and schooling seem to indicate education does something. You can use your same train of logic to insist that all human endeavors are based on "a bundle of fallacies."

 

Second, you act as if our public education system fails to produce top minds in academic fields, but it most certainly does. Could it be better? Probably, but everything has room for improvement.

 

Lastly, privitization does not always equal quality, which seems to be one of your starting assumptions.

-Will

[IrishEyes]

Oh me oh my, Erasmus and Fish, you both skirted that darn "S" word when talking about homeschoolers. For shame, for shame.

Yeah, anecdotal is just that. I'm sure you could come up with a few more, and I bet I could come up with just as many that show the opposite.

And Fish, I understand what you are saying, but really - is having the same teacher all year bad for public school kids?

And both of you - do you think we keep our kids in closets? sheesh :D

I've seen exactly what you are both talking about, but from the other side. We had a six month 'deprogramming' time when we pulled our kids. We literally had to take the time to get all of the crap out that the schools had put in them. And I'm not talking about differences between what our religion teaches and what the school does. I mean things like "girls aren't supposed to be good at math, so don't worry that your normally straight-A child is getting a low C". "Mom, I got detention for talking at lunch, I asked someone to pass me the ketchup". "But I'm not allowed to talk to my brother in school, they don't let us talk to anyone but people in our class". What complete hogwash! Not to mention trying to keep up with what every other child's parents bought for them. And bullies on the school bus hitting my 5 year old. I think they can do without any of that type of 'socialization'.

But you're right, I'm sure there are drawbacks. I just can't seem to think of any. :D

Sorry, I forgot we were talking about public 'education'.

[ldsoftwaresteve]

Erasmus: As for scrapping public education all together, I have a short anecdote. For three years I taught a hands on physics course for a program called "College for Kids." Sort of a summer camp for the scientifically minded fourth and fifth grader. Every year, a handful of the kids who signed up were homeschooled (maybe 3 or 4 out of 20 each year). And, to a child, each of the homeschooled kids had a lot of trouble interacting with their peers. Three children out and out refused to work with other kids in teams, and one child cried whenever he didn't get his way.

Interesting. Were the kids there by their choice or did their parents force them into the situation? I also find it interesting that you were even aware of which kids of the 20 were homeschooled. How did that come up? Are you sure there wasn't bias on your part and on the part of the other kids toward the home school kids? I don't applaud the parents of those home school children for putting them into that position. If they chose to be there and were excited by what they would learn, that would be a different story.

Erasmus: That is a rather large leap. As has been pointed out by Fishteacher, crime stats and schooling seem to indicate education does something. You can use your same train of logic to insist that all human endeavors are based on "a bundle of fallacies."

You are correct and that is precisely what I was saying except in this context, I am talking only about 'public social projects' those instituted by the government which are based upon its/our understanding of human nature. That isn't even a small leap.

I presume that you are heading for a career in education and perhaps you will become a teacher or a professor. Would you recognize a Leonardo da Vinci if he were to show up in one of your classes? Or would he end up in the principals office and eventually be diagnosed with ADD? "Here kid, take some pills".

Erasmus:Second, you act as if our public education system fails to produce top minds in academic fields, but it most certainly does. Could it be better? Probably, but everything has room for improvement.

Oh, please. Will, I thought you were on the road to becoming a scientist? You assume that those top minds are products of the system. I'd assume that they achieved that in spite of the system, not because of it. "Could it be better?" uh, that was my point. The process of public education does not have any built in function to bring about contextually appropriate improvement and is worthless on that point alone. It simply establishes and maintains the status quo. It is hopelessly out of touch with the needs of the modern world. It doesn't react and these obvious (to me) weaknesses are based upon not understanding human nature in the first place. Incidentally, the insanity that was the former Soviet Union was based upon the exact same fallacies as is our public education system and had at its root the same rediculous image of a human being. Not a very large leap at all, Will.

Erasmus: Lastly, privitization does not always equal quality, which seems to be one of your starting assumptions.

Make sure that the failures of which you speak are the result of being 'private' and are not the result of being 'private in a controlled/licensed environment'. Do not confuse a free enterprise educational environment with what we have. Can you honestly expect me to believe that Irish Eyes and I could open a school for children without having to jump through the impossible hoops of getting accredited? Please don't tell me that those roadblocks are there to maintain quality. They are there to make sure nobody can compete with the in-house system which has already drained 'the people' to pay for itself. Talk about a stacked-deck. Are these the failures of which you speak?

[IrishEyes]

Can you honestly expect me to believe that Irish Eyes and I could open a school for children without having to jump through the impossible hoops of getting accredited?

Very good point. There are some states that require homeschoolers to become 'private schools' that way they can enforce standardized testing and such. Some states just require the tests without becoming a private school. And some states will not allow homeschoolers to be classified as a private school. There are different reasons for wanting to be a private school or not, including tax reasons. My state also has a 'religious exemption' track, that requires only a one-time notification, and no standardized testing. Basically, we're on our own. Luckily though, many colleges are beginning to realize the benefits of homeschooling over public or private schooled kids, and are admitting homeschoolers in droves.

But I agree that it is very difficult to open a school, even just a private elementary school. We thought about it in our church, but the county regulations alone were quite ridiculous, not to mention the state ones. I think they were probably more stringent than the public schools, but I'd have to do some more research on teacher quals to be sure. But I know you can do an extended sub in our county with no more than a high school education, yet to homeschool (except under RE) you are required to have a 4 year degree, unless you subject yourself to strict observation.