The Gaming Den

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those people who think that each generation is getting dumber; the continually rising SAT scores despite the rising difficulty is enough proof otherwise.

The thing is, I'm also not naive enough to think that the U.S. is going to abandon neoliberalism anytime soon short of President Logan (Star Trek joke here) taking the helm. Since we have that albatoss around our fucking necks and the necks of our children who will probably be poorer and harder working than each generation preceding we might as well make the best of it.

First of all, and here's the doozy, the U.S. needs to grow a spine and wipe the tears from their eyes and redo the school infrastructure. The quality gap in schools is frankly appalling. Let's not even though the educational requirements yet, right now the concern is having a decent building, access to computers, student lunches (and breakfast and dinner), and enough classrooms.

Secondly, we need to pay teachers more. I personally think it's total fucking bullshit that a professor of civil engineering has way more pay and prestige than an elementary school math teacher, considering that the latter has a way more important job. I get the feeling right now is that teaching is a profession that people pick as a passion or as a 'last resort' option, which does not attract the best and brightest to the job. A monetary incentive would not only help to retain teachers, but also to attract them. Seriously, the average salary of a primary school teacher should be around $45,000 and classroom sizes should rarely exceed 25 people except for something like gym.

Now with that out of the way, let's talk about the schoolday and year. There's a reason why teachers should get paid more and it's because we're going to be cranking up the hours. First of all, Christmas vacation has an upper limit of 14 days and everyone's asses are back in their seats by the 5th of January. Second of all, we're getting rid of summer vacation. Students get 24 days off between the school year and teachers get 20. Moreover, we're stretching the school day. School starts at 7:30 AM. Classes end at 5:00 PM. For students who have a long commute (like having a bus ride for one hour), they're allowed to leave early. Because the last hour of the day is filled with mandatory physical education--which will involve 'hard' sports like soccer or will have students doing pushups and running around the track.

Now for the cirriculum. Stuff like the drama club and art class? It's gotta go. Not entirely, but if more than 90 minutes a day isn't spent learning 'hard' facts then something's wrong. There should be a small collection of enrichment classes that have some obvious real-world utility to them like Band, Home-Ec, Programming Club, and Wood Shop. If you want that then you'll need to come on the weekend for that. I'm not saying to get rid of all humanities. Government, Economics, and History are extremely frickin' important.

So, testing. In order to stop schools from teaching to a test, we will produce five-six separate tests and administer them at random. So instead of teachers forgoing 'regular' education to get them to pass a test, they'll have to teach a broad variety of topics.

Finally, school uniforms. Not because they'll instill discipline or reduce crime or anything like that because that's bullshit, but it's there so that poorer students have an incentive to come to school and to ease the burden off of their parents. Also to show parents that we're not fucking around.

The ultimate goal is that even the student on the bottom rung of the ladder should know up to Calculus and Physics 2, should be able to name 20 famous English literature authors and a primary work (because they've read it), by the time they graduate.


Does my suggestion suck all of the fun out of school and make it feel like a prison camp? Yes. I don't want it to happen, but it's either pain now or the American (and whatever) children will be crushed under the heel of neoliberalism when the 'new' economy rolls around. I mean more than it already is.

Probably the easiest way to justify this agenda to the U.S. is to sell it as 'making American kids the best and the brightest. The Asians are going to steal the jobs of our kids and make us paupers in our own country. So let's cut out all of the bullshit of education and make it how it used to be. It'll teach them some discipline.'

Bam. Combines xenophobia, fear of the future, disdain of the future generation, and competitive fear all in one easy-to-digest package. That'll probably how you can justify the 200-300 billion dollar pricetag to get this project in gear and keep it going.

(maybe I should've added one of those smilies to the end of my post. Ah, well, I think that people would notice my snark).

Something I heard from a kiwi who moved to the US was that US schools do a lot of teaching to the tests. So much so that teaching to the test was in her opinion a significant obstacle to learning.

You'll need more teachers - typically teachers do marking out of hours as their lunch breaks are filled wiht supervisory time etc.

To achieve a 7:30 to 5 schedule you'll need to have teachers have reliefs so they can do their marking during the day etc.

Interesting, although you obviously meant that "but if less than three hours a day is spent learning 'hard' facts then something's wrong." Because otherwise you already have 60 minutes a day of PE, leaving less than 30 minutes per day of all the other useful stuff such as understanding and using english, other languages, morality, recognising rhetoric and using it, etc.

And you obviously haven't considered the hate from those who don't want government in their edumacation. A continent-wide, comprehensive, all year round, enforced education where government paid experts have actual decent wages needs to be small government with low costs (somehow).

Remember, small government, fiscal responsibility!

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In my opinion you have to take it further back. Way, way, way back. To the american frontier.

Push forth ideas of self-sufficiency, self-protection, being able to live with little to no government and the ability and skills necessary to grasp their Manifest Destiny as Americans.

So spend a while teaching kids what life is like in the gutter (most of them are going to live there). Make sure they can all change bulbs, repair a door and fix a leaking toilet. Teach them all how to hunt, and make sure that every single fucking child in america has slaughtered, skinned and eaten a cow by the age of 12 (Vegetarian? Thats unamerican. Man the fuck up and eat your meat). Train them all in how to use revolvers and fast drawing, as well as how to ride a horse. How to fix up their own wounds from the resulting gunfights, and create poultices from the garbage bin. To be a real man when this happens and sort it out yourself- man to man, and not just run to the nearest adult to fix it. Oh, and at least an hour a day of bible study (old testamant only)- since america is christian.

Its this sort of back to basics, little government, idea of a man being a real man and giving them the skills to take their slice of the world that will really resound with the american public and their belief in the american dream. And make sure to push the "manifest destiny" a lot.

Is your original post a joke, Lago?

Stop funding schools with property taxes. This is the cause of giant piles of bullshit. Rich districts automatically have better schools, unless there are a lot of retirees who constantly vote to fuck over the schools because they don't have kids in the district.

You can't fix education by cranking up the hours. I agree that classes need to be year-round, but they need to be year-round with four primary classes: Science, Math, Civics/Humanities, English. Then four "round out" classes: life skills, technical training, independent study, crafts. Mandatory physical education with people totally getting failing grades for being tubs of lard, not being able to run a mile, or not knowing basic nutrition like the calories in an apple or how big a single serving of steak is.

It's really difficult to be responsible for more than 15 hours of instruction/week without cracking or phoning it in. This is because every hour of instruction is easily 3 hours of meetings, lesson plans, and grading. You could probably get away with 30 hours of instruction/week if classes were taught by a senior instructor who then had 1-3 TA's that did things like grading and consulted on construction of lesson materials.

We also desperately need to return to vocational streaming in HS. A HS diploma should mean something, dammit. The current universal education + "Everybody's speshul" environment means that a Bachelor's degree has basically become the shit-test for jobs that are totally doable right out of high school, and that's fucked up.

Maj: It's a combination joke with serious suggestion. Actually that's a pretty cowardly way to construct a post. So from now on, it's a serious suggestion.

Sashi: I agree with you on the property taxes. I'm also really against education being mostly left up to the states. Fortunately it's pretty easy to steal control of education from the states; just have the federal government pay for more of it. Getting your foot in the door is the hard part.

The extended schoolday is there both as political cover and to ease the burden/education gap on the poorer students. The political cover comes from people knowing that we're fucking serious about drilling some discipline into our soft children, because nothing says 'hardcore schooling' like 50 hour schoolweeks with 10 hours of homework on the weekend. For poorer students it reduces the hours that they're at-risk and also ensures that they'll at least get fed every hour of the day unless they're one of those really unlucky ones who has a 90 minute commute from school to home. They should get boxed dinners.

I'm also with you on teaching life skills. The problem with that is, well, people get all wilty in the pants when you suggest teaching them something that isn't manly/immediately practical like soccer or auto shop or something eggheaded like physics. The reason why I originally planned my post as snark is because cramming facts actually hurts peoples' education. Learning unrelated stuff makes you smarter in the long run. The problem is that parents see stuff like Sociology and Art as useless bullshit subjects that take away from cold hard facts. My proposal is to combine them. Sociology gets rolled into U.S. Government. Computer Science gets combined with physics.

I know what I'm about to say is major heresy, but education in the future will probably have to be more computerized to reduce the loads off of teachers. Meaning that submitting homework assignments by scantron/online will have to become the norm. This will of course require a lot of attention from the test/homework preppers to reduce cheating. Obviously you will need to have tests now and then be done by hand and need to get more aggressive about cracking down on leaked papers as well.

As far as physical education goes, it should be the last hour of the day universally for schools. Both to give the teachers a break and to charge the time spent changing out of clothes on the student's time. Mwaha.

School breakfast and lunches should be free. If we're going with my 5:00 PM workday suggestion, then schools should serve dinner as well. Which are also free. Corporations are banned from selling non-healthy meals in school. The McDonalds in school, if it stays there at all, will be serving baked potatoes/baked potato chips and green salad with diced chicken.

Stopping bullying should be a prime concern. Seriously, being known as a bully-ignorer should be grounds for disciplinary action on part of the teacher or administrator.

Again, I don't really care either way about uniforms; they don't really do anything positive or negative except for costing more in the budget. They're just there to give the program convenient cover of 'we're cracking down on those lazy children and giving them DISCIPLINE'. Because nothing says discipline like matching clothes.

Finally, the school needs to go out of its way to establish a work ethic. Work ethic is not something that you're born with or can discover; it's a skill that you practice. And it's really best to start at a young age. Small children need to feel that not doing their homework or studying is bad. Kids should start getting homework and assignments they'll need to study for starting in second grade and the workload should steadily increase. The current schoolday is fine for smaller children (really 8:00 to 3:30 PM is as much as you can really get from them), but when they hit the magical 6th grade, that's when the New Way gets them.


So what would a typical schedule for a 13-year old boy look like? Something like this. He's on block scheduling, too, so the classes I didn't list (Foreign language, history, literature, etc.) get done every other day. There will be a math class and a science class every day however.

6:20 Johnny wakes up, showers, gets dressed in his uniform, then puts his homework away. He's eating breakfast at school so no worries. The bus comes by his stop at 6:45, so he can't dawdle for too long.

7:00 Arrive at school, eats breakfast.

7:20 First classes (the hour-thirty minute classes) start. U.S. Government. All of the students turn in their scantrons and their take-home essays.

8:50 10-minute break between class.

9:00 Second classes (the two-hour classes) start. This is where the 'combination' classes go. Computer science class. Today all of the students do their computer modeling class for the structure of the atom; the homework assignment was finishing up the pre-code to get it to work for today's class. Those who didn't do it get a bad grade and get the completed code anyway.

11:00 Lunchtime/Study Hall starts here. In order to ease the burden on the cafeteria, students are assigned to the first lunch break or the second lunch break. Students assigned to the first lunch break get 45 minutes to eat. The study hall students are in study hall during this entire time. For 15 minutes they get sent to study hall and the cafeteria workers can restock/clean up. When 12:00 comes the students who were in study hall get to go to the cafeteria. Students don't get to dick around during study hall. They can go to the computer lab, administrative offices, library, or ask a teacher for help. No games or non-project talking however. But since it's the Dawn of a New Era Johnny will really not want to screw around too much during this time. Lunch is spaghetti with meatballs, steamed spinach, bread rolls, and apple cobbler by the way.

12:50 10 minute break between classes to get where they need to go.

1:00 Little Johnny now has an hour-thirty minute class. Namely English. The English teacher does a pop quiz over the reading assignment and then spends the rest of the day going over sentence diagrams.

2:20 10-minute break.

2:30 Now it's time for Johnny's math class. His teacher goes over elementary matrix operations. Bully for him.

3:50 10-minute break.

4:00 This is where home-economics/life skills/health goes.

4:45 The students with a long commute (>45 minutes) and can prove it get to go home now. Everyone else reports to the locker room. School cafeteria also starts serving dinner and the students can take home a boxed dinner if they want to eat on the way.

5:00 With everyone changed, they report to the field. If it's the classes turn on the field, then they get to play a game. Otherwise they're running laps and doing calisthenics. Today little Johnny gets to play soccer. Yes, sometimes they'll have to do sports when it's dark out. Blame Roosevelt.

5:45 Everyone who wants to leave can go if they want. Some students can eat dinner at the school if they feel like it/their parents want them to. If not, they can go. They might want to keep playing sports or go to any clubs or whatever.

6:00 Johnny gets back home, spends an hour and a half doing homework and/or studying. The rest of the day is whatever.

Since it's Friday, Johnny gets to go home and do whatever. But he has about 5-7 hours worth of homework to do over the weekend, so no dicking around too much.

You'll notice that the school day is long and probably separates kids longer from their parents than people are used to. Again, that's the side-effect of worshiping at the altar of neoliberalism; their parents will be likely working long days in the grimdarkness of future capitalism, so it's not like they would've been having family time anyway.

Really, before making such pronouncements, Lago, read http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/ ...really wish I could figure out inserting links here.

Anyway, this (free) book is by a 3 time Teacher of the Year award winner. He has much, much, much, to say. I don't agree with all of it, but anyone who wants to 'fix' the school system really should listen to this guy for at least a start.

The tl;dr version is the entire system is unfixable, and doubtless he would greatly disagree with a "let's have a bigger system" plan like Lago suggests.

It's really worth studying the economics of the public school system to understand what government education is all about. Many school districts spend 10k per year per student. Do the math on that, on how much money each classroom of 30 students generates. Take out the teacher pay.

The rest of the money? Per classroom. Doesn't go to build the school, they float massive bonds for that (more profit for the floaters)...the rest of that money goes to legions and legions and legions of bureaucrats and administrators. I don't teach at a public/government school, but at a state college, and there are more administrators there than faculty; way more, and from what I hear from my students that go on to get teaching degrees, it's about the same in the schools.

As an example of how excessive it is, my parents had a small business that grossed over 2 million a year...they did all the taxes themselves, no accountants. My school, with 600 'customers' and grossing far less? Half a dozen full time accountants.

Now consider private schools, charging WAY less, and often, very often, doing a better job than government schools, somehow managing to do so without layers upon layers of bureaucracy.

Now consider homeschooled students (yes, I know some do it badly), that, also, very much tend to do a much better job than government schools.

Honest, you do NOT want more government schools, and you absolutely do NOT want to subject children to more government schooling in any form.

Honestly, if I really had unlimited power to remake the school system I would use Schools Without Failure by William Glasser. It really is an excellent book.

Unfortunately, a lot of suggestions in it get dismissed as hippie horseshit. For example, he recommends getting rid of letter grades and just having 'fail', 'pass', and 'exceptional'. There's no way in fuckhell that would fly in our ultracompetitive, stratified society. I can hear the 'dumbing down education!' arguments a mile away even though his suggestions would make the schoolwork significantly harder.

I'm talking about what could be passed, not should be passed and, well, even though critical thinking and sociology would make a healthier society, the so-called adults running the country have such a misplaced sense of jealousy and ingratitude that they'll only accept a sweeping educational proposal that tames the little brats.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:I'm also with you on teaching life skills. The problem with that is, well, people get all wilty in the pants when you suggest teaching them something that isn't manly/immediately practical like soccer or auto shop or something eggheaded like physics. The reason why I originally planned my post as snark is because cramming facts actually hurts peoples' education. Learning unrelated stuff makes you smarter in the long run. The problem is that parents see stuff like Sociology and Art as useless bullshit subjects that take away from cold hard facts. My proposal is to combine them. Sociology gets rolled into U.S. Government. Computer Science gets combined with physics.

By "life skills" I mean things like how credit cards and car loans work, basic civics, navigating the legal system, and nutrition. All of which can be "hidden" in a courses called things like "government" "economics" and "physical education".

Doom wrote:
Honest, you do NOT want more government schools, and you absolutely do NOT want to subject children to more government schooling in any form.

You're not one of those private-school advocate dumbasses, are you?

There's a reason why no one talked about them much since the mid-90's. Because the idea is retarded. It's like claiming that since Harvard gives a better education than Olympia Community College, we should abolish all of the community colleges and send everyone to top universities. Private schools give better education because they cater to the elite--you know, people that can afford it. I can guar-an-fuckingtee you that if you put the burden of universal education on their shoulders we'd have the biggest gap in education between the haves and have-nots since, well, the Civil War.

Private education is a big pile of crap, lies, con games with actual public money, and disenfranchisement.

The very REASON public education came to be in the first place is because genuine Private education could not, and indeed WOULD not cater to everyone. Indeed, anything even close to resembling everyone.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:

Doom wrote:
Honest, you do NOT want more government schools, and you absolutely do NOT want to subject children to more government schooling in any form.

You're not one of those private-school advocate dumbasses, are you?

There's a reason why no one talked about them much since the mid-90's. Because the idea is retarded. It's like claiming that since Harvard gives a better education than Olympia Community College, we should abolish all of the community colleges and send everyone to top universities. Private schools give better education because they cater to the elite--you know, people that can afford it. I can guar-an-fuckingtee you that if you put the burden of universal education on their shoulders we'd have the biggest gap in education between the haves and have-nots since, well, the Civil War.

Dude, I don't know what you consider to be "elite" but here in New Hampshire it's not that way. Where my advisor lives, almost everyone in the lower middle class and up sends their kids to a private school a half an hour away instead of using the local public school because of the way special education is handled (or more specifically, not handled).

Yeah, this school does not cater to everyone. But I do not see why a single school should have to cater to everyone. Schools should be allowed to specialize. Hell, one of the reasons private schools are so awesome is that they don't find it necessary to cater to the lowest common denominator.

Wasn't there a voucher system that worked decently well, anyway?

Surgo wrote:Wasn't there a voucher system that worked decently well, anyway?

No there never was, and there never will be.

A system where the government pays for your private school education that works for everyone is identical to a government run education system run in a specific way.

Yes, it's great for private schools that they can specialize and exclude all the stupid people. Way to go them. But that means that as soon as you stop having public schools, then either you have an even worse cycle of poverty where you can't even get an elementary school education if your parents don't have money, or you end up with a bunch of private schools that don't have that benefit, and thus suck.

Vouchers are a secret subsidy of the private school industry. Here's what happens when you institute school vouchers:

Government: "Everyone gets $X to pay for whatever school they want!"
Public School: "We are legally limited to charge $X/child!"
Private School: "We have no such limitation! Tuition was $Y now it's $(Y+X)!"
Poor Parents: "We still can't afford to send our kids to private school, what the fuck?"
Rich Parents: "Suddenly our private school has (#Kids x $X) extra money to poach all the good teachers away from public school! Huzzah!"
Poor Parents: "This was your plan all along."
Rich Parents: "Duh! You don't deserve anything good, you're poor!"

The big secret about private schools is that they pay the teachers significantly less and can't get the top teachers. The advantage private school has is usually smaller class sizes (which can mean a lot) and some kind of special program (Catholic curriculum, special ed program that doesn't suck). The super elite ones that charge Trust Fund Money for attendance are naturally better, but that's because they're super elite and can hire people who were rejected from teaching at universities instead of high schools.

I don't know what's going on in NH, but it's probably some kind of public school death spiral from funding being choked to death at some point, driving parents to the private school, which further reduced public school funding, driving more parents to public school, etc.

Doom wrote:As an example of how excessive it is, my parents had a small business that grossed over 2 million a year...they did all the taxes themselves, no accountants. My school, with 600 'customers' and grossing far less? Half a dozen full time accountants.

This certainly isn't so here, it must be some strange artefact of how the US funds schools.

I have a lot of problems with this thread because it takes no interest in looking at education from the approach of what actually helps kids to learn. Studies are beginning to show that our way of thinking about education is largely crap because we want to apply adult models of learning onto kids (see erik's youtube video from a couple of days ago, and Nurture Shock). Kids are not adults - their rate of learning is much higher and much more efficient. Rather than telling them how we think they learn, we need to use their learning methods in order to teach them what we want them to know.

Some completely and utterly minimal things that will help our education system:

• Sleep turns out to be absolutely vital to kids - so much so that letting them sleep in an extra hour each day can raise their average scores on the SAT by more than 200 points. No extra studying or teaching required.
• When you tell children that by doing something difficult and working through it, they actually form new neutral connections which result in greater intelligence, they are significantly more likely to not give up at the sight of subjects that are hard. So teaching kids that being smart is something you can change, not something you're stuck with is important.
• Recognizing the value of play is critical (and hard - one of the goals for the program my son is in is to teach him how to play pretend, and it took me a long time to recognize the value of that ability). Zoologists understand that the games and play and fun that lion cubs (and other animals) engage in is vital to developing hunting and survival skills that the animals will use later in life, yet humanity seems to be immune to this idea. Directed play can not only increase children's ability to learn, but it can teach empathy, executive function, and improve behavior in kids. Check out the program Tools of the Mind.

These three things alone would have a huge positive impact on our education system, and they wouldn't involve that much drastic change or comparative expense. I personally would like to see more classes like those mentioned in the creativity article that was posted here a while ago.

[url=http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html wrote:The Creativity Crisis[/url] {OK, Newsweek, Education, Creativity}]Consider the National Inventors Hall of Fame School, a new public middle school in Akron, Ohio. Mindful of Ohio’s curriculum requirements, the school’s teachers came up with a project for the fifth graders: figure out how to reduce the noise in the library. Its windows faced a public space and, even when closed, let through too much noise. The students had four weeks to design proposals.

Working in small teams, the fifth graders first engaged in what creativity theorist Donald Treffinger describes as fact-finding. How does sound travel through materials? What materials reduce noise the most? Then, problem-finding—anticipating all potential pitfalls so their designs are more likely to work. Next, idea-finding: generate as many ideas as possible. Drapes, plants, or large kites hung from the ceiling would all baffle sound. Or, instead of reducing the sound, maybe mask it by playing the sound of a gentle waterfall? A proposal for double-paned glass evolved into an idea to fill the space between panes with water. Next, solution-finding: which ideas were the most effective, cheapest, and aesthetically pleasing? Fiberglass absorbed sound the best but wouldn’t be safe. Would an aquarium with fish be easier than water-filled panes?

Then teams developed a plan of action. They built scale models and chose fabric samples. They realized they’d need to persuade a janitor to care for the plants and fish during vacation. Teams persuaded others to support them—sometimes so well, teams decided to combine projects. Finally, they presented designs to teachers, parents, and Jim West, inventor of the electric microphone.

Along the way, kids demonstrated the very definition of creativity: alternating between divergent and convergent thinking, they arrived at original and useful ideas. And they’d unwittingly mastered Ohio’s required fifth-grade curriculum—from understanding sound waves to per-unit cost calculations to the art of persuasive writing. “You never see our kids saying, ‘I’ll never use this so I don’t need to learn it,’ ” says school administrator Maryann Wolowiec. “Instead, kids ask, ‘Do we have to leave school now?’ ” Two weeks ago, when the school received its results on the state’s achievement test, principal Traci Buckner was moved to tears. The raw scores indicate that, in its first year, the school has already become one of the top three schools in Akron, despite having open enrollment by lottery and 42 percent of its students living in poverty.

The answer to our educational problem sure as hell isn't more schedule, more unfun, and more prison. No one learns from that because no one wants to.

Lago wrote:Private schools give better education because they cater to the elite--you know, people that can afford it.

Ironically, in my family (under the poverty line), we paid less to go to private colleges than to public schools - all three of us. My brother walked away from private school with less than $2K in debt, my sister - who has a Masters - has just over $10K, and I only had $1000k... Until I started attending a state school. At that point, my education cost a lot more.

People think that private schools are expensive because they don't do the work to get the financial aid and scholarships, but the money is out there, and within reach.

The idea that private schools do better because they only take good students has some merit, but is still fairly inaccurate. There's an inner city private school in Chicago, only takes the very poor...still does better, year in, year out.

But there are even more important reasons for ending government schools than guaranteed systemic inferiority (though, seriously, that should be enough). There's a strong indoctrination that goes on in government schools that not everyone should want...as well as heavy drugging...serious safety issues...inability for the parents to control exposure of their children to things they don't want their children exposed to...and the whole "you have no choice anyway" thing should be fundamentally repugnant to a free people (in fact, it was, in the early years of forced schooling). Seriously, read up on it a bit, start by reading just a little from that reference.

I used to be pro-voucher, but I've seen too many strong arguments against the voucher system (even if it sounds as beautiful as communism in principle)...and never even seen Sashi's objection before. I don't think Gatto ever even discusses vouchers, fwiw.

And Maj, all those possible improvements are besides the point; government education isn't about helping children learn or be better.

Maj wrote: The answer to our educational problem sure as hell isn't more schedule, more unfun, and more prison. No one learns from that because no one wants to.

If you want the non-elites of the new generation to survive the neoliberal apocalypse then it's either that or consign yourself to being educated poor people.

Yeah, the upper-middle class can greatly benefit from more natural and comprehensive education that isn't rote memorization. Too bad it doesn't do a damn thing to help the bottom half of the country. To survive in the new world, you're (as in the public) going to need an 'education' that drills hard science and math into peoples' heads to turn almost everyone into professionals. And the only way to do that is to specifically restructure the educational system to support this goal. You're prepping children for a career, not for education.

Otherwise there won't be a place for non-professionals in the new era. And if you don't like it you can go to the moon.

Lago PARANOIA wrote: To survive in the new world, you're (as in the public) going to need an 'education' that drills hard science and math into peoples' heads to turn almost everyone into professionals. And the only way to do that is to specifically restructure the educational system to support this goal. You're prepping children for a career, not for education.

Otherwise there won't be a place for non-professionals in the new era. And if you don't like it you can go to the moon.

This sort of rhetoric's been around for years but....seriously?

We're ALWAYS going to need plumbers (they make 50k+ a year), and I promise you, plumbers don't need to know 'hard science and math'. Similarly, mechanics, air conditioner repair guys, electricians, and sweet-jeebus businessmen will be a part of reality for humans for a long, long, time, and NONE of these guys need to know more than rudimentary physics, chemistry, or math. All of them are also quite capable of making a good living, if they're good at it, and will be able to do so for the foreseeable future.

Hell, I have three friends that do computer repairs for a living. None have a college degree and they never took any more math than high school algebra, much less any actual science, and I'm pretty optimistic computer repairmen will be needed for quite some time.

My personal trainer cannot perform a calculation like "4 - 4" without messing it up (it's the damndest thing, and I've *tried*)...but he owns his home, and a few other properties. Granted, he's pushing 70, but not everyone can even DO the stuff you're proposing, nor should it be mandatory even if that were not the case.

Don't underestimate what a human being can learn if he wants to; free libraries (not to mention the internet) do more for opening up options than 24 hour a day mandatory (and thus lowest common denominator) schooling could possibly accomplish.

Sashi wrote:I don't know what's going on in NH, but it's probably some kind of public school death spiral from funding being choked to death at some point, driving parents to the private school, which further reduced public school funding, driving more parents to public school, etc.

The funding is choked to death but that is wrong, because the parents still have to pay for public schools regardless of sending their children to private schools. Regardless of whether their teachers are being paid less or not, the private schools here are simply getting better results. You can argue with a lot of things, but you can't argue with results.

Sashi wrote:Here's what happens when you institute school vouchers:

I would have understood if you had simply said "moral hazard" instead of writing the wall of text. I challenge you, though, to produce cases where this moral hazard actually came to fruition.

Lago wrote:If you want the non-elites of the new generation to survive the neoliberal apocalypse then it's either that or consign yourself to being educated poor people.

Yeah, the upper-middle class can greatly benefit from more natural and comprehensive education that isn't rote memorization. Too bad it doesn't do a damn thing to help the bottom half of the country. To survive in the new world, you're (as in the public) going to need an 'education' that drills hard science and math into peoples' heads to turn almost everyone into professionals. And the only way to do that is to specifically restructure the educational system to support this goal. You're prepping children for a career, not for education.

Otherwise there won't be a place for non-professionals in the new era. And if you don't like it you can go to the moon.

I find two things wrong with what you have been saying.

First, I have to question the notion that American children are falling behind. A lot of American schools suck, but you should really hear the quantity of complaints about foreign students that come from professors I've had who have taught at other institutions. We might be falling behind at rote memorization, but for anything else, how about some quantitative evidence?

Second, I don't understand this whole notion of math and science being "career-based", and everything else not. You can still receive a liberal education despite focusing in math, science, or engineering! And many (I'd say most, but no numbers) do! I sure did.

For the kind of hours per day and rote-cramming power levelling that you're after there, Lago, are you sure the kids won't just overload and basically zone out for most of the day? I could barely pay attention for 6x50min classes in a day by the time I hit high school* (it didn't help that I was always a "Wake up at 10AM or later" kind of girl), so I don't know how you intend to keep them alert and able to take these lessons in.

*And now that I'm a stupid adult, can't even manage a single 3 hour class per week.

Surgo wrote:The funding is choked to death but that is wrong, because the parents still have to pay for public schools regardless of sending their children to private schools.

Actually, statistically, people who send their kids to private schools vote for candidates who want to gut public school funding more than people who send their kids to public school.

This should surprise no one.

So having a lot of people sending kids to private school does create a situation in which it politically acceptable and sometimes even advantageous to gut public schools.

"the private schools here are simply getting better results. You can argue with a lot of things, but you can't argue with results. "

Sure we can, we just do it by pointing out that your results don't come in any appreciable way from better education, and do come from other factors.

Rich people get better grades and do better in general. Private schools are limited to the rich, and those who have already proven themselves intelligent enough to deserve a waiver. If you exclude the bottom half, of course you end up better off.

Other reasons private schools get better results: More money per student. Not just more money in general because they charge tuition, not just more money because governments still do all sorts of bullshit subsidization of private schools, also more money because private schools don't have to accommodate disabled students, don't have to meet codes when they do end up accommodating them, can limit programs, IE just a few, instead of needing a football program, baseball, every afterschool club that can find a sponsor, ect.

Involved parents. If you are spending a few grand a year, you are more likely to really pay attention to your kids school work and really push them to excel, unlike people with free education.

Ect.

If you can prove a better success rate (How do you define success anyway, can't be anything the school can determine, like grades, can't be who goes to college, since lots of people don't want to or aren't going to go to college?) in private schools that don't have these advantages, then you might have some results.

The proposal has merits but also has many pitfalls.

Stating that the arts are relegated to a smaller part of the curriculum is a little much. The arts allow for functional uses as well as aesthetic.

I also think that students should be taught applied practical arts -basic cooking, basic carpentry, econ101- balance your checkbook, learn about credit scores, etc..

More thoughts at a latter point. now sleep (or maybe some Temple of Elemental evil...)