Posted on 03/02/2010 1:52:10 PM PST by BruceDeitrickPrice
One of the most striking things about education is that everyone has a theory.
A lot of these ideas are extreme. Some are what I call swaggering defeatism (everything is fixed, game over, no use fighting). At the other end are blue-sky utopians (we have to level the schools and start over a different way). Truthfully, a lot of this is not very helpful. Smaller, immediate goals are usually going to produce more progress.
But here’s what is most profoundly troubling to me about all these ideas. They give cover to the people who are the real problem, namely, our Education Establishment.
These guys always want to blame somebody else. First, they say it’s the kids’ fault because they don't try. Then it’s the parents’ fault because they don’t care. Then it’s society’s fault because we don’t spend enough money, etc.
Our top educators are in perpetual CYA mode. The last thing they want is that anybody actually look in their direction. Can you imagine HOW GRATEFUL THEY ARE that most of the people in this country use up their reformist energies discussing split infinitives, planning new kinds of schools on the moon, or just giving up?
In every industry, and every kind of human activity, when you have a bad year, the first reaction is to fire the coach, get a new CEO or whatever. But we never do that in education. We let the same people (quacks and hacks, I’m afraid) mess up year after year; and when we identify a problem, we let these people replace the old stupid idea with a brand-new stupid idea.
I’d suggest we need new people, and a new class of ideas. To get there we have to stay focused on the real culprits.
(The thinking above led to the YouTube video. Only 3 minutes. Makes the same points in a light-hearted way. Please use whichever one you think might help.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN-dY1HBqsQ
Mostly because of the NEA, one of the most nefarious organizations in the country, and a key Obama supporter.
It’s easier to produce dumb students than educated ones ... and they are far more useful as dumb to liberals. Look how they elected Obama.
Listen, as I have successfully convinced my formerly unengaged wife into believing, the problems in our society all go back to one, and one only, source - government, or, more accurately, government ineptitude.
They don't care.
Follow the money.
You only think they’re doing a bad job because you think the “job” is educating children. Once you get past that misconception, you can see how well the government schools perform many functions.
The answer to why US public schools do such a poor job is pretty easy and obvious when you think about it. The US has among the worse primary and secondary schools in the developed world. Other than elite private schools nobody would want to send their star child to the US for primary or secondary education. On the other hand, everyone wants to send their college age young adult to the US for a college education.
There are both private and public primary and secondary schools in the US. There are both private and public colleges and universities in the US. So it can not be more competition from the private sector at the college level. So why are US colleges and univesities relatively good and why are US primary and secondary schools relatively bad compared to the world?
The answer in a word is VOUCHERS. US colleges and universities operate in a voucher world. There is college choice and vouchers, called Pell Grants, in the US. There is no or limited choice in secondary and primary education in the US, other than paying your taxes and then paying extra out of pocket for private tuition or home schooling.
Allow primary and secondary school choice with vouchers and US primary and secondary education would become competitive quickly. US colleges and universities are helped by foreign colleges and universities often being monopolies like US primary and secondary school.
This misses the point. The model is the mistake. Single payer education is not going to perform any better than single payer healthcare or Soviet collective farms. We have gone through at least 50 years of handwringing and “reform”. Nothing useful has been accomplished for the trillions spent, and there is no great idea or set of ideas that has any practical prospect of transforming a government system of education for the better. You can’t fix stupid, which is what single-payer education is.
The only answers are relatively radical answers, but we still have too many people who cling to the familiar - the government school system.
Because they don’t have to.
Public schools do a great job. It’s just that their job is not what some people assume it to be.
Two reasons, it is GOVERNMENT in education, and the massive, powerful teachers’ unions. You can put some blame on the school boards themselves, often populated with retired teachers and those sympathetic to the teachers.
The ONLY problem with public education is the failure of parents who sit on their rear ends doing nothing but complaining. You don’t like how things are being run? Then get yourself on the school board, go to the PTO meetings, be the witchy parent on the phone every day to the principal, be a room mom, volunteer in the math or reading programs, become a teacher, become a school employee, or any of a numerous things but get off your rear or shut up.
Two words:
TEACHER’S UNIONS
Why? Parents don’t care, teachers don’t care, admins don’t care, kids don’t care. Plenty of blame to spread, but it starts with parents.
I guess another main reason, coming at it from another frame of reference, is there’s no accountability for failure like there is in the rest of the real world. You suck, you get fired, or the business folds, shareholders remove top administrators.
Can’t do that with teachers and superintendents. Can’t fire them based on sh1tty results. Unions and contracts protect them. It’s almost impossible to remove teachers.
Most decent students who want to learn and abide by the rules are bullied and cowed by the no-good nicks.
Because they don’t have to.
IMHO it is the kids who come from homes where school is viewed as the babysitter and who’s parents mostly keep them for the extra income from the government. If no one at home gives a ____ about the kid he isn’t going to care much about what he learns.Then comes the liberal agenda the NEA favors above teaching.
Socialist funded government schools **never** worked since they first opened in the mid-1800s to early 1900s.
Simply by attending, children learn that government can take money from their neighbor to pay for a socialist service their parents want tuition-free. Well?...If the government can give the kid socialist schooling, why not other wants and needs?
Within one to three generations of government schooling we had:
**the IRS
** the federal reserve
** Unions
** the feminist movement
** the direct election of Senators
** attempts at “One World Government” ( the failed League of Nations and the U.N)
** FDR for four terms and his New Deal
** Johnson's Great Society
** the abolishment of the gold standard
** thousands of socialist programs and offices.
The above is what socialist government schools taught my parents, my grandparents, and my great grandparents to be comfortable with.
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