Capitol Hill Blue Forums Life and Moral Issues Education US Schools -- a failed system?

Since there seems to be some interest in government controlled schooling, I moved this here.

I think government run school systems have two primary goals -- conditioning students to be docile followers of the government and interchangable cogs for corpo-world. I do understand that the idea of controlling the government that controls the schools that control the children who will be bent to a future envisioned by today's masters will set anyone's inner fascist to aquiverin'. The important thing that you will not find in these institutions is a concern for what the child student wants, needs, or is interested in. That, I think, is a major reason why so many of them either drop out of 'school' or endure it until they can get a diploma which many of them are unable to read with any level of comprehension.

The abysmal track record of government controlled schooling speaks for its own failure.

SOURCE:

A better idea:
Completely remove the federal government from education. It has no authority to intrude into it. Remove all but perhaps local government from limited involvement in it. Stop using school to prepare children for the workplace and start using it to assist the child in exploring the world and following her interests. Get out of the way of home and private schooling.
Yours,
Issodhos
p.s. I do not advocate simply tinkering with the current system so as to increase graduation rates. It's relevency as a statistic is only to show the failure of the current system to achieve its stated mission of educating "the future". Raising graduations rates (even if not done artificially by reducing even further the minimal standards for graduating) would simply perpetuate a rotted system.

Issodhos, I am sympathetic to your appeal to factor in the child's own interests and direction. I may be overly pessimistic or paternalistic, but I am pretty sure that if the schools were left to the student or even a student-parent combo, things would go from bad to much worse.

As it is, much of the failure of the current system lies with parents and by extension the students. This is another manifestation of the absence of responsibility for one another, even on the family level.

I think it naive to think that government can take the place of a parent, and this is one of the pretenses in the system that needs altering. It is very difficult to engage in a non-slogan, intelligent discussion of education, as much as that is needed.

Hopefully you have started an exception.

You say so many interesting things. But, IMO many of the things you say seem not to correspond to reality.

Actually, isn't the interest in government funded schooling. It may be the government funding is interchangeable with government control... but that remains to be shown.

It is an interesting suggestion that seems poorly supported by the facts.

• 
  Government schools did not make Vietnam era student docile government supporters.
• Government schools have not made students docile supporters of president Bush and his policies.
• Government supported schools have lots of programs the seem to bear no direct relationship with the objectives you mention (band, art, theater, athletics
• Corporations are not so very thrilled with the job schools are doing "apparently" on their behalf.

In fact, schools of today devote much more time and effort to these things than schools of previous eras. And when you compare private schools with public... you do not necessarily see that private schools spend lots of time on what students "want or are interested in"

As far as I am aware... home/or private schools either focus on indoctrinating the kids in religious propaganda, or others (Andover/Yale) alternatively do a better job of preparing them for corporate lives.

My parents both were educators; Mom in elementary grades and Dad at the college level. As a result, most of my time in school included the knowledge that my parents knew my teachers and vice versa. I spent time at social events with the families of other faculty and saw my teachers in settings very different from the classrom.

One thing I never heard said was, "I wish the government would stop telling me how or what to teach."

What I did hear, a lot, was, "I wish the administrators would let me teach instead of making me pander to the parents." That was the beginning of the end. When Mom had to promote kids who had failed at grade because Parent did not think Student was dumb enough to fail, the failure of schools began. Not sure how home schooling solves that problem. When Dad was nudged to give the starting football player a passing grade, the value of a college education was undermined (he didn't comply; the kid didn't play), but a very good college professor moved out of the classroom and into extension work.

As schools have declined in value because of these kinds of incursions, parents and politicians have tried to remake the schools in their own definition of "quality". The results have been abhorrent.

Absolutely agree that schools should be about learning as a process, not achievement of specific knowledge points. However, there needs to be some measure of progress. In addition, we have good reason as a society in ensuring our schools turn out young men and women who can perform the duties of the jobs that will exist in our society. Otherwise we add more fuel to the fire of increased immigration and increased export of jobs.

Again, not sure how home schooling, with no standards by which to identify or measure success, meets those objectives.

Parental over-involvement helped start the slide. Have not seen any evidence yet that home schooling will reverse it.

Private schools are an interesting phenomenon, with some reason for hope but also good reason for skepticism. Private schools that focus on education do extremely well and prepare students for their lives. These schools tend to have strong parental involvement but with an exception; the involvement is focused on ensuring a strong academic program rather than a free ride for their kids. The ones where failure to perform does not result in failure to promote have the same problems as the public schools.

Government is not the cause of failure, though I agree that it has been largely ineffective in reversing the issues that confront our educational system(s).

It's not as easy as tossing the feds out, Isso, though I'd agree with you for the most part. Doing so certainly wouldn't hurt Arizona. I think Arizona is ranked 48th in the education of children K-12.

At the same time, while cutting the federal government out of education might be a good thing we must remember that we'd probably still have segregation had it not been for the federal government.

Seems to me the problem is much bigger than getting the federal government out.

Parents are a major problem with schools. Parents no longer have the time to devote to supporting their children's education. Well, perhaps they have the time, it just takes them more effort these days. Discipline is sadly lacking in schools because of parents. Yep, parents.

Television, MP3s, video games and computers. See parents.

Drugs are everywhere. Weed is ubiquitous. It's a major problem in schools. See parents.

Teacher's salaries are sh*te. They do not make nearly what they should make for doing what they do. Disagree? Try it. I did once when I served on a school board. I substitute taught for a week. Neither the students nor the teachers knew who I was. I'd never do it again in a million years. It's godawful work.

Do any of you know what your local curriculum requires? It may surprise you to take a look. There is probably much more being taught that you think shouldn't be taught and a lot less of what should be taught isn't, because there isn't enough time.

If we take the federal government out of schools we may be able to address some of the above. I'd have to say that states like Arizona would take the windfall return from the federal government in a heartbeat but far less than 100% of the money returned to the state would be spend on education.

I like the idea, Isso, but it is only part of the solution.

cute, Iss
like as if our government has a REAL interest in our children

MY concern is about uneducated people who have no or slim options for feeding their children and becoming hopelessly hungry wanting to slit the throats of those who do have food.
I'm NOT talking about people who have options of where their children go to school.

I went to a private school growing up.
Somehow I got 'over' it.

I'll be back later.

The backlash of 2 generations of students who have been socially promoted without being able to read is going to cause corporate america (and government) problems in oh so many ways.

While government and the corp mongers who want to create dumbed-down citizens...might seem like an answer of control for the long-haul... will come back to bite both institutions in the ass because if their robot-worker bees can't read...then they can't do the work that government and corporations need to survive.

That puts both corporations in the country and our government in serious jeapordy of other nations stepping in.

It doesn't make sense to me. That's like biting the hand that feeds ya.

thats a rather large assumption to build on.

care to back it up with specifics? of course youre entitled to your opinion on the matter but i was very interested in some of the detail.

for starters:

what parts of the various curricula are aimed at delivering these goals. (one could easily point to doctrinal history of course, and civics type classes if you have them - anything else?)

what teaching methods are aimed at delivering these goals?

which developmental educational programmes are aimed at delivering these goals?

Which educational adacemics, teacher traning course are aimed at delivering these goals?

how do the stong PTA organisations in the US progress the deliverance of these goals?

why, considering teachers (that i know, and i have spent much time in their company) are so forthright and outspoken in general and to do with their profession in particular, do they sit back and take it so?

on this last point do teachers in the US not have strong professionally orientated unions/organisations? here in Ireland the teachers unions are a strong influence on education policy, the experts as it were informing policy, but by no means the only influence.

PS ive rarely know teenagers to be docile followers of anything schoolwise bar the latest music, fashions, trends and pokemon (for the younger uns) but i hardly see that as the education systems fault!). and for the younger uns its hard to get them to focus on anything for more than 5 seconds!


oh and i would also like to see some back-up on ardys point about govt funding and whether it means govt control and whether any control is as strong and as pernicious as claimed.

this says a lot. im very passionate about this and while i don't entirely disregard what iss says, i do think this quote from logan has some pretty strong footing in the current trends. from having researched interviewed and so forth on this subject you have two situations working together to create either a creative environment for children despite some of the govt's ridculous mandates or you have schools that would fit the mold iss describes, and therefore lacking in anything resembling creative education. administrators play into the system and refuse to look beyond NCLB, creating drill and practice cirriculums that essentially dumb children down. there are, however, those who do not play into this and are looking for creative ways to depart from the mainstream and assist children in the process of learning despite the NCLB mandates. one such teacher and school comes to mind.

homeschooling can provide a creative and intensive approach to education. now, given my bias, i am not talking religious based schooling here either. there are plenty of academic homeschoolers who use cirriculums based on proven european methods as well as others that have great success rates. but like anything, it can be botched up too.