toldailytopic: What do you think of the public school system?

[Ted L Glines]

The TheologyOnline.com TOPIC OF THE DAY for September 15th, 2011 09:48 AM

toldailytopic: What do you think of the public school system?

Here in Texas, we have some of the worst SAT scores in the nation. But there are other more important things.

HEALTH apparently is not taught. We have some of the most obese kids in the nation. These kids are obvious candidates for heart disease and diabetes, among other things. You would think that parents and teachers would be concerned about health, but they are obese, too.

SCIENCE is not a priority, along with a lack of emphasis on medicine and high technology education. Result is that we have kids going from high school to college with low tech aspirations. They set their goals in the liberal arts and business management areas, neglecting studies in the sciences. The end result of this is a lack of science and high technology graduates among our own citizens. Most of the science graduates are now foriegn students who are sent back to their own countries when their studies are completed. It is not an accident that nations like China are now taking the lead in these areas.

In short, our public school systems are producing fat people who will excel as managers of Taco Bell, while our high technology corporations will have to move to China just to find qualified employees. IBM has been screaming about this for years. When Silicone Valley moves to Beijng, San Jose will be unemployed. Is that cool, or what?

:dunce:arty::cheers:arty::dunce:

 

[sky.]

Any child will tell you that public education is about society and not about education, you just need to listen. Children are not inherently uneducated. Public schools teach them about politics and philosophy.

 

[The Berean]

I think we should copy countries with successful programs.

Yet the article you linked to says that we shouldn't try to copy the Finns. :idunno:

Such a quest is understandable but misguided, says Alan Smithers, an expert in cross-border education comparisons at Britain’s University of Buckingham. Importing elements of a successful education system—the balance between central and local government, the age of transfer to secondary school, the wearing of school uniforms and so on—is unlikely to improve performance. “You shouldn’t try to copy the top performers in PISA,” he says, “because position in those league tables depends on lots of other things besides what happens in schools.”

Bearing out Mr Smithers’s caution is an analysis of Finland’s most recent PISA results, from 2006, by Jarkko Hautamäki and his colleagues at Helsinki University. They highlight only one big policy element that could easily be replicated elsewhere: early and energetic intervention for struggling pupils. Many of the other ingredients for success that they identify—orthography, geography and history—have nothing to do with how schools are run, or what happens in classrooms.

In Finnish, exceptionally, each letter makes a single logical sound and there are no irregular words. That makes learning to read easy. An economy until recently dependent on peasant farming in harsh latitudes has shaped a stoic national character and an appetite for self-improvement. Centuries of foreign rule (first Swedes, then Russians) further entrenched education as the centrepiece of national identity. So hard work and good behaviour are the norm; teaching tempts the best graduates (nearly nine out of ten would-be teachers are turned down).

Few countries would want to copy Finland’s austere climate or sombre history even if they could (though spelling reform in English might merit consideration). More instructive, perhaps, is looking not at how Finland’s schools are run, but how decisions about education are made. As in other European countries, Finland merged specialist academic and vocational schools into comprehensive ones in the 1970s. The first point Mr Hautamäki highlights is broad consensus, cautiously but irrevocably reached. “They simply kept going until they reached agreement,” he says. “It took two years.”

 

[Yorzhik]

If we must have a government, it should restrict itself to being the third party in rights violation disputes, nothing more.

Education has nothing to do with this, therefore it should be handled by the market.

Education is not a right. Forcing all citizens to pay for an education that only some receive is theft.

Even if you could prove that every individual benefits from public education, that still wouldn't make it a legitimate government function. Everybody would benefit from a daily multi-vitamin, but should the government be in charge of distributing/forcing that?

This is all not to mention that the free market (people acting/transacting voluntarily) can and does provide better education with costs that are appropriate to what the consumers demand.

Beyond that fact that gov't (state gov't too) should have nothing to do with raising kids... public schools will always teach the humanist religion and that church should not be promoted by the state.

 

[Todah]

I think that once they teach them the basics, they then become an indoctrination center, and codependency camp, instead of educating children on how to think for themselves.

 

[Lighthouse]

They're a cancer.

I learned to read in a private school, and became top of my class in the subject. My senior year of high school in the public arena I was surrounded by kids who were still sounding out every word.

I work with people who can't do simple math without a calculator. They all went to public school. Math was my worst subject, but I'm more confident than most other people I know when it comes to the subject.

And don't get me started on spelling.

Then there's the indoctrination. Not just from the staff, but the other students as well.

And for you Christian parents out there, public school is not a mission field; I don't care what Audio Adrenaline told you. Most children are not equipped to evangelize their friends when they're school age; not even teenagers. Usually they're too concerned with other things. And the ones who are capable are ineffective because the kids they're trying to reach are far from interested.

 

[Buzzword]

Here in Texas, we have some of the worst SAT scores in the nation.

As a fellow Texan, I'd also like to add the hypocrisy of supporting school sports teams to the point of having to fire actual teachers in order to keep the coaching staff is ludicrous and destructive to kids.

I attended public school all the way through.
I learned to read from a combination of my kindergarten teacher and my parents making materials available to me.

I loved learning and loved reading, and by 5th grade was reading at a high school level.

I was verrry active in extracurriculars, notably band and choir.
My high school (a 4A school) placed higher budgeting priority on the band than on athletics, so I learned teamwork in one of the best band programs in the state.
In a school of around 1200, 300-370 were in the band at any given time.
It had such a huge positive impact on me that I still have all of my band t-shirts (treating them as a weight-loss goal at the moment), and treat the feeling of marching to a crowd which mostly came to see US instead of the football team as the most exhilarating experience of my pre-adult life.

In summary, I had a very positive experience in public school, as did my wife.

As has my oldest nephew (11) whose reading aptitude mirrors my own at his age.
He's also in band, btw.
Little dude's totally growing up like me, though I wish he'd cut his hair...but I digress.


As far as my future kids?
My wife and I have agreed that we will likely never be able to afford homeschooling, especially as the economy continues to weaken as we both plow through college.

Actually, with all the pressure we get from people at church to start procreating already, even though we've only been married about 2 years?
We're starting to consider NOT having children.
My two brothers have eight kids between them, so it's not like the family line will die out or anything.

Reading through the thread, it seems like many people are accusing public schools of not teaching kids things which school isn't SUPPOSED to teach them.
Thinking for oneself? I thought that was a value to be instilled by PARENTS.
Christian values? PARENTS, not school.
Eating right? My MOM taught me that. She didn't wait for the lunch lady to do it.

But I bet even the most devoutly Christian parent who has zero background in physics could teach the subject half as well as a person holding a degree in the subject.

 

[Lighthouse]

I loved learning and loved reading, and by 5th grade was reading at a high school level.

Going to private schools brought that out in me in second grade. They really are more advanced than public schools.

 

[Buzzword]

Going to private schools brought that out in me in second grade. They really are more advanced than public schools.

...because there's absolutely no way you could have been naturally gifted with advanced reading comprehension, regardless of your school.


I wonder if we could start a separate thread comparing private and public UNIVERSITIES?
I think we'd start seeing the exact opposite qualities mentioned by both sides regarding primary and secondary schools when discussing universities.

 

[Lighthouse]

...because there's absolutely no way you could have been naturally gifted with advanced reading comprehension, regardless of your school.

I first went to a public school and they made my dad take me out because I couldn't read, or even learn to.

 

[Alate_One]

Yet the article you linked to says that we shouldn't try to copy the Finns. :idunno:

But as you might note there are some aspects we can copy.

They highlight only one big policy element that could easily be replicated elsewhere: early and energetic intervention for struggling pupils.

For that we require more and better trained teachers, rather than less like we are doing now. you also might note Finland was actually about *gasp* local control and getting teachers on board. Finland also has very highly educated teachers.

Instead of the moronic confrontational attitude "reformers" are trying here with teachers, politicians might recognize that teachers with a lot of experience might have at least some idea as to what works in their classroom and ask them why their students are not succeeding. Imposing draconian measures based on standardized tests inspires . . . cheating on standardized tests.

 

[Alate_One]

Going to private schools brought that out in me in second grade. They really are more advanced than public schools.

Depends very much on your private school. My private school was very definitely behind the public school except perhaps in teaching reading comprehension. But I very quickly got bored out of my skull since my reading level was far better than any of my peers. I remember finishing my book reports sometime in February or March for the entire year.

I also switched public high schools halfway through and there was extreme variation in teacher and curriculum quality both within and between schools. Some were terrible, others amazing.

 

[One Eyed Jack]

They highlight only one big policy element that could easily be replicated elsewhere: early and energetic intervention for struggling pupils.

They tried that with me -- stuck me in an LD math class halfway through the first grade. They quickly discovered I had no problem doing the math. I just didn't like homework.

In any case, I was back in the normal math curriculum when second grade started. And by the end of tenth grade, I was done. I could have taken calculus in 11th or 12th grade, but I decided study hall and work-release worked better for me. I had the credits I needed to attend college.

 

[Persephone66]

...because there's absolutely no way you could have been naturally gifted with advanced reading comprehension, regardless of your school.


I wonder if we could start a separate thread comparing private and public UNIVERSITIES?
I think we'd start seeing the exact opposite qualities mentioned by both sides regarding primary and secondary schools when discussing universities.

I went to public school, I also studied at one of the top universities in the world.

 

[Persephone66]

I work with people who can't do simple math without a calculator. They all went to public school. Math was my worst subject, but I'm more confident than most other people I know when it comes to the subject.

And don't get me started on spelling.

You still work in a pizza shop?

 

[Sherman]

They're a cancer.

When I was a kid the public school trained kids to be good Modernists. I was schooled to think like a Modernist. I was even in the gifted program where I was trained to view the world through a rational and scientific lens. Kids were taught to be self confident. That aspect wasn't necessarily bad. Now the schools train children in the Post Modern mold. The prominent feature of Post Modernism is multiculturalism and anything goes. Kids are new depressed and suicide is at an all time high. Self injury is now a fashion statement called 'Emo'. My son observed this in the few years he attended public school and he hated it. Public school may have been a good thing at one time, but it is now poison.

Education should not be left to the government. Government invariably ruins it when it tries to take over the job of training young people. Shaping young minds need to be left to parents and private institutions.

 

[The Berean]

For what it's worth I went to public school. My senior year I took AP Calculus. There were 12 of us in this class. Eleven of us passed the AP Calculus exam with a score of 3 or higher. We all went to college including two that went to Stanford, one to Cal Tech, five to California Polytechnic University, one to Penn University, and one to Santa Clara University.

 

[The Berean]

For that we require more and better trained teachers, rather than less like we are doing now. you also might note Finland was actually about *gasp* local control and getting teachers on board. Finland also has very highly educated teachers.

Many of the teachers here are highly educated. A good friend of mine is a elementary school teacher and she has a bachelors degree, a master's degree, and a teaching credential.

The problem is not poor education of teachers. The major problem IMO is that the skill of teaching is not something that can be learned just by having lots of education. It's a subtle skill that is hard to identify and foster. This New Yorker article makes a great analogy comparing finding a great teacher to finding a great NFL quarterback. It's an interesting read.

 

[Traditio]

I went through the public school system and got my undergraduate degree at a public university. I didn't like the people at the public school system, but that's what you get when everybody gets educated. You've got the bright children and the riff-raff collectively. If you're willing to learn and do your homework, the public school system works. If you don't care about school and you refuse to do the work, then it doesn't. But I don't think that you can hold the public school system or the teachers responsible for that. You have to blame the parents.

 

[The Barbarian]

Actually, there are ways to get the uninterested kids going. In science, there are all sorts of weird demonstrations you can do. Then the kids say "can I make one of those?"

And you've got them.