Posted on 01/05/2013 6:02:47 AM PST by wintertime
LMAO!!!!!! I do went to school in the 50s and 60s had one old man as truant officer he would find you no matter were you went. A bunch of us boys found a pretty big cave and thought it was a great place to hide as a river flowed just outside so we could fish, 2 or 3 of us skipped one day and was hid in the cave the old bastid walked out of the back of the cave and grabbed us.....
Also one company I worked for had one if you called in sick you had better have been home or the Dr office cause he would come and check on you this in the 70s the company was Dutch owned but here in the US..
Are government schools effective? Are so called, “good government schools “good or not?
No studies have ever been done that prove the effectiveness of institutional schooling. Seriously, we spend up to $30,000/per child/ year in government schooling and no one really knows if modern government owned and run institutional schooling works. It is just assumed that it does.
No one has taken the time or money to compare what is learned in the institutional classroom setting as compared to that acquired in the home due to the efforts of the parents during the preschool years, the support given by the parents IN THE HOME, the work done by the child IN THE HOME, the non-assigned reading and projects done by the child in the home, or by professional and non-professional ( paid or unpaid) tutoring.
No one has taken the time or money to compare in what ways the home habits and home study routines of successfully educated institutionalized children resemble those of successfully educated homeschoolers.
Honestly...Without this information how can anyone claim that any government school is “good” or not? It could be that those government schools with high standardized test scores have populations of children with parents who are doing a great job of homeschooling after the child returns from their institutional school.
Think about this. In many states, **more** is spent per typical child in a government school than is charged by the most exclusive private day schools in their state, yet, no one has ever taken the time to see if anything is learned in these government schools as compared to that acquired in the home. Does this make any **rational** sense at al to spend so much money on an unproven program? I don't think so.
By the way, I used to help with the tutoring program in our church. These children were bringing home **more**” homework” than my homeschoolers did all day. So?...If these institutionally schooled kids are doing more homework than my homeschooled kids did all day, and if they actually do it IN THE HOME, aren't they homeschooling ( AKA “afterschooling”).
What is a person of goodwill supposed to conclude?
Personally, I am thinking that maybe, just maybe, what the government schools are doing is sending home a curriculum for the parents and child to follow IN THE HOME. The school may very well be merely a testing, grading, and curriculum service. It should certainly be investigated. I think our Founding Fathers might agree with me on these points.
Unfortunately, the “demoralization” of which Yuri Besmenov warned, is plainly evident on these threads.
One of the sisters of John F. Kennedy was a victim of this abuse.
There are something like 4 million public school faculty in the United States. No exceptions to these three categories?
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Well...I consider government schooling to be a First Amendment and freedom of conscience abuse ( for all the reasons I have previously posted).
I consider socialist-funded, single-payer, and compulsory schooling ( that can never be religiously, politically, or culturally neutral) to be a threat to the child’s well being ( spiritually and temporally) and a threat to our nation’s continuing freedom. ( for all the reasons previously stated).
I conclude that the very qualities that are so objectionable to government schooling are so intrinsic to the socialist, single-payer, and compulsory system that reform is impossible.
Therefore: What am I to think about those upholding, supporting, and willingly establishing such a system that is so evil for the child and such a threat to the nation?
Conclusion: There are only three possible categories. They can only be evil, stupid, or a good hearted but very misguided Useful idiot.
Solution: Begin the process of privatizing universal education.
The NWO is here.
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Yep! They are.
Ok thanks after readin g the thread I had to look at my calendar to make sure it wasn’t 1913 I was living in instead of 2013. Thanks for the reassurance that it’s not only me seeing the obvious here.
Those who grew up in the 70s are so much smarter, sophisticated, and so much more intelligent and advanced than those of the Greatest Generation.
( eye roll)
Maybe we should reexamine some of their practices. Allowing young people to leave school after the 8th grade was one of them.
I support his thinking but there are two problems:
1. They don’t want to go to school and while there, they will succeed only in distracting people who REALLY want to learn.
2. Schools get paid more when students simply exist there; the report finished by chirping, “The Judge’s actions have boosted attendance...!” I smell the influence of a Teacher’s UNION here —this might be about tax money flowing to failed schools.
This judge is a genius! GENIUS I tell you treating criminals like criminals.
It was fairly obvious to anyone that actually watched the video that these little angels were guilty of much more that skipping school, especially when the one girl had such a good role model in a mother that would be willing to forge a note for her.I have said repeatedly that the vast majority of the problem we have in this country can be traced to lousy parenting. When the government made it more attractive to be a single mother with multiple children from multiple sperm donors we began the downward spiral.
Blue you will be incurring the wrath of Dr. Wintertime, but don't worry it won't occupy a lot of your time.
Bingo!
Follow the money right down the money trail straight to government jobs for modestly talented, white collar school functionaries.
So what if it means treating a 18 and 17 year old teens ( who not so long ago would have been storming the shore of Normandy) like state prisoners.
Not to sound rude or mean here, but honestly are you living in 2013? It sounds like you want to take these affairs up with our president.. In your world who would that be President Washington? Are you even aware we had the great President Reagan in the 80s or was that too modern for you?
Ya might want to tune in to A & E right now, they’re showing “Beyond Scared Straight”........
Were you out picketing the scghools in the 50s? Basically what you have a problem with has existed at least since then. Where were you before Free Republic? Where were you in the 70s? Are you real?
At this point they ARE real criminals and their parents no longer have a say.
“No studies have ever been done that prove the effectiveness of institutional schooling. Seriously, we spend up to $30,000/per child/ year in government schooling and no one really knows if modern government owned and run institutional schooling works. It is just assumed that it does.”
In part, you're asking the question, “Does any education happen in a public school as a result of the public school? Do public schools add any educational value?”
But that's really a question about traditional schools generally, not about public schools.
Even still, if you wish to make the case that no education happens even in “good” public and private schools, it is just as incumbent on you to offer the studies that show that no education happens. Give me some nice studies, using a formal experimental method that give evidence for the null hypothesis - that no schools add value to education.
What you will find, when you set out to do the research, is that social research is very expensive to do well, and not at all easy. Formal experimentation is extremely difficult, often unethical, and often impossible.
If you can't intuit why it might be difficult, even unethical, and even impossible, I will elaborate in a follow-up post at your request.
But most folks here who are honest can demonstrate to themselves that education happens in traditional schools. I know that my own sons are have been educated in traditional schools. They have taken subjects in their high school in which neither my wife nor I provided any material assistance related to the actual subject matter. Did we make sure they did their homework? Yes. Did we help them sometimes identify when they were having problems, and help them formulate questions to ask their teachers, to get assistance? Yes.
But then, did those teachers teach the subject matter? Yes. Did my sons sometimes need, and receive explanations of things they didn't understand from those teachers? Yes.
Did my sons actually achieve some level of learning throughout the process? Yes.
So, there are three or four main possible sources of learning here: parents; teachers; curriculum and other learning materials/aids; my sons, themselves.
And truth be told, in an optimal education, all four sources are involved. Each source LEVERAGES off the other sources. The better things are at home, the better a good school will be able to educate. The better the school, the better education the child from a high-performing home will receive.
In my sons’ cases, they received much encouragement, much oversight, much communications about their studies from their parents. Absolutely priceless to an optimal education. They also received a great deal of information from their books, from the Internet, etc. They also worked very, very hard.
But frankly, without the physics/calculus teacher at their school, it's unlikely that my sons would have succeeded in these subjects. It is this teacher who clearly and ably initially presents the material. My older son says that this teacher is the most lucid teacher he's ever had. When they had problems, it is that teacher who was there to help explain the material in different ways until my sons understood it.
That is the smallest, briefest example I could give. Suffice it to say, there are many other ways good teachers and good schools enable learning.
If you want more than this briefest example, if you don't mind many pages of post, I will go into greater detail how my sons’ great high school leverages the great preparation and habits my sons brought with them from their homeschooling experience, and how my sons’ great high school interacts with my wife and me to enhance that education. But be prepared for a very long post in return.
Are there studies that co-vary out “after-schooling” and “homeschooling” effects and parental contribution? Probably not too many directly. There's good reason - because these things don't interact in ways that are readily accessible to the blunt instrument of social science research.
But you're creating a false dichotomy - that it's EITHER the contribution of the home OR the contribution of the school. It just doesn't break out that way when things are working right.
However, there's another part to your question - how does one distinguish between a “good” school and a school that isn't as good? Again, finding formal experimental research will be difficult for the same reasons as cited above.
But anecdotally, folks can tell. I know of parents who had children in one school where they didn't do as well, transferred them to another school where they did better. Same kids. Same parents. Different school. Different results. I've also seen the opposite happen.
I've often seen successful homeschoolers transfer to traditional schools, and things kind of fell apart. This is the case of a high-performing home interacting with a poor school, and the contribution of the home doesn't overcome the lack in the school.
I've also seen successful homeschoolers put their kids in traditional schools and seen them do dynamite. My own kids are in the latter category. Dynamite homeschoolers go to a great school and do phenomenal things. Where does the homeschooling contribution leave off and the traditional schooling contribution begin? I don't know! Not sure you can parse it out like that. It's just a happy combination of factors!
But where I've seen homeschoolers go to schools where things didn't go well, I thought to myself ahead of time, “This will not end well.” Why? Because the school wasn't a very good school. Where homeschoolers have met with outstanding success, it's because the traditional school was of sufficient quality to leverage all that the homeschooler brought with him.
I could do a study showing that sort of correlation, but it would be subject to all the objections you make to studies that show that some schools have greater achievement than others. Without a rigorous experimental methodology, we're just seeing correlations, not demonstrating causation.
But that's the nature of social science research.
As for costs, it's true that some school systems spend more than even very expensive private schools. That has long been one of my criticisms of public schools.
But again, that isn't relevant to the question of whether traditional schools actually add value to education.
It's also irrelevant to the parents on the ground trying to figure out how to do the best for their own children. Whether the school system spends a buck a year or twenty thousand bucks a year per student, the differential cost of tuition for the parent making a current choice is $0. The parents pay their taxes whether they use the public schools or not.
If you want to say that, all things being equal (and all things aren't always equal), homeschooling is better than traditional schools, I agree. That's why we homeschooled through 8th grade.
If you want to say that only the exceptional traditional school experience is better than a very good homeschool experience, I agree. In fact, my sons had only two choices for high school: continue homeschooling or; go to one specific high school that I believed could give them an exceptional traditional school experience.
If you want to say that more folks should homeschool, I agree.
If you want to say that public schools generally cost too much, I agree. If you want to point to myriad flaws in how we do public education in the United States, I've pointed out many of them, myself.
But if you want to say that no traditional school adds educational value, or that no traditional school is better than the next, I disagree. You will find the research sparse for the reasons I've given. But scientific research often depends on “sign” over “sample,” because “sign” is more readily observable and quantifiable. Yet, I've seen “sample” that tells me that you're wrong, and the first thing I learned in grad school about social science research is that “sample” is superior to “sign.”
As to the Founders, I think they'd make many of the same complaints about public schools as generally found in the United States that I make. But I know they wouldn't say that it is inherently evil to have government-funded and -run schools.
sitetest
No they wouldn't, they'd be shaking their heads in dismay AND anger at how we have coddled our youth and for a majority of our society, how they neglected their parental duties in child rearing.
“Well...I consider government schooling to be a First Amendment and freedom of conscience abuse ( for all the reasons I have previously posted).”
The Founders didn't. Explain why they were wrong and you are not.
“I consider socialist-funded, single-payer, and compulsory schooling...”
The first two attributes are part and parcel of public schools in the US and have been since the first public schools were opened. Calling them “socialist-funded” because they're government funded is a bit of a stretch - but if it is socialism, than the Founders were socialists. Who knew?? LOL.
“... to be a threat to the child’s well being ( spiritually and temporally) and a threat to our nation’s continuing freedom. ( for all the reasons previously stated).”
I haven't seen you give any reasons to make me think this is universally true, especially since I've personally seen otherwise, and we have the testimony of others here at FR who have given witness otherwise.
It's the whole “black swan” business. You're saying “every public school is thus,” which is like saying, “every swan is white.” It takes only one counterexample, one black swan to invalidate your statement, to make it false.
Which should I believe? Your overgeneralized, overheated rhetoric, or my lyin’ eyes?
“I conclude that the very qualities that are so objectionable to government schooling are so intrinsic to the socialist, single-payer, and compulsory system that reform is impossible.”
The Founders disagreed.
And as your middle premise is, in my own experience, shown false, your argument fails.
It was a weak argument (as are most arguments that rely on the statement that a social reality exists 100% of the time, without exception, in all places), but at least it was an argument, altogether, in one place.
“Therefore: What am I to think about those upholding, supporting, and willingly establishing such a system that is so evil for the child and such a threat to the nation?”
“Conclusion: There are only three possible categories. They can only be evil, stupid, or a good hearted but very misguided Useful idiot.”
In that you've failed to persuade with regard to your first conclusion, and this one depends on that one, this one fails, as well.
“Solution: Begin the process of privatizing universal education.”
That might not be a bad idea, anyway, but not for the reasons you've stated.
sitetest
You are correct. It is a comment about Prussian model schools.
Re: Studies showing that education or no education happens in an institutional school.
These studies have never been done one way or the other. It is just assumed that the money spent on government schooling ( tax dollars) is being spent on an effective program. Does this sound like a good strategy to you? It doesn't to me.
If your children were successful in their schooling, I think we would likely find that your home practices and mine were similar in many ways, and the amount of time spent studying ( formal and informal) in the home by our children would be very similar. That's my guess. But....These studies have never been done.
As far as our Founding Fathers, we can speculate all day on what they might think of modern government owned and run schooling. My guess is they would be horrified and would recognize that this socialist-funded; single-payer;compulsory-use; never religiously, culturally, or politically neutral; and price-fixed cartel can not be fixed precisely because:
1) it is a socialist-funded’ single-payer; compulsory-use;never religiously, politically, or culturally neutral: price-fixed cartel.
2) Is fundamentally and structurally a First Amendment and freedom of conscience abomination to those forced to use it and to those forced to fund it.
Thanks verga for making me not think I was going crazy trying to make my case to wintertime. I agree with you that how anyone could make a case for the mother that FORGED her daughters note. I also agree with the downward spiral of the govt. approval of single mothers and multiple sperm donors, which flies against anything moral or decent.
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