The Gaming Den

Maj wrote: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.

Indeed. In the Philippines, if you want to have a good education, it's virtually mandatory to go to a private school (except for the "Science" High Schools which are very good).

However, private schools also tend to have more aid and scholarship programs. I managed to get a 100% scholarship grant (up to a Master's Degree) by simply acing the entrance exam.

Moreover, when I was finishing my Masters and I began to interact more with the professors (as I'd like to be a professor someday), I found out an interesting fact: A big reason why the tuition fee was so high in my university was because the rich students (who often didn't do too well) were in fact subsizing the tution fees of the scholars (who often did quite well).

So, ironically, our private schools were in fact practicing a form of Socialism .

Surgo wrote:

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.

Schools still get a portion of their funding based on attendance in a lot of places. It's not a dollars per student per day thing, but it's still there. Plus "You can't argue with results" is my entire point: the public school loses money, the private school is more attractive, attendance at the public school drops, the public school loses even more money making the private school even more attractive. Once a critical mass of the community switches to private school, the public school can't get any bond initiatives for improvements, and the death spiral enters the end stages.

The question isn't "are there cases where people favor private schools", because there obviously are (such as sending your kid to a denominational school because public school isn't allowed to have "Catholicism is the only true religion" classes). The question is "is there something inherent to private schools that provides better education?" and the answer is "No."

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.

It's not "moral hazard", it's "subsidy". This isn't my area of expertise and vouchers don't seem to be used in the US enough to have an effect other than complaints about state money going to fund Catholic schools, but it appears to be a minor problem in Ireland.

The thing is that "School vouchers" includes a false equivalency of "schools do better if they're forced to compete for enrollment" (basically true) and "we should encourage competition by allowing parents to take money away from the public school system and give it to public schools" (a specious argument at best).

Private schools do better for two reasons:

1. Kids from higher incomes do better on average. Just a fact.

2. Private schools boot problem children in a heartbeat, and most of those kids do poorly in school overall.

The problem with American schools is that they educate everyone. In most countries it's a privilege to even go to high school, and being shuffled off to a trade school instead of high school is how they raise overall scores.

American schools will always do worse as long as we try to educate everyone.

The fact that we pay our teachers less than receptionists is probably a major factor. And I am serious.... a starting teacher is 19-15K a year and requires at least one masters degree and usually two or a masters and a doctorate and a starting receptionist pays 19K-25K.... and you don't even need to be smart enough to be a secretary to be a receptionist.

Literally, people whose only skill is that they can answer a phone and smile make as much as the people we trust to educate the next generation. There is only so much you can get done using charity workers.

Well, in the Philippines private schools tend to be inherently better because they offer extra courses which aren't part of the public school curriculum (exception again are the "Science" High Schools). Mostly because they're allowed to add to the curriculum, while public schools must stick only with the curriculum published by the Department of Education.

Now, some private schools aren't much better than public schools because their extra classes boiled down to "extra hour of prayer" or "extra hour of playtime".

But my High School offered a totally awesome class on drawing and drafting (i.e. drawing isometric figures). My high school thus produced more architects than any other school in the area despite having the smallest population.

Dunno about the US though. I would think that basing funding on attendance is hugely retarded.

Zinegata wrote:Dunno about the US though. I would think that basing funding on attendance is hugely retarded.

Yeah, especially with the way they do the whole "count day" thing (at least here in Michigan). Having the entire year's funding based on one day of attendance is so stupid. It's not like they don't have ways to record that throughout the year.

Maj wrote: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.

A million dollars? I'm assuming you wanted to drop the "k" after the $1000?

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.

You seriously sound like a nutcase. I can't figure out how you're being serious at all.

RobbyPants wrote:

Maj wrote: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.

A million dollars? I'm assuming you wanted to drop the "k" after the $1000?

Whoops! I kept looking at that thinking that something was wrong, but my brain was so not present! Damn you, school!!!

Maj wrote:

RobbyPants wrote:

Maj wrote: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.

A million dollars? I'm assuming you wanted to drop the "k" after the $1000?

Whoops! I kept looking at that thinking that something was wrong, but my brain was so not present! Damn you, school!!!

Well, at least it wasn't expensive.

Maj wrote: You seriously sound like a nutcase. I can't figure out how you're being serious at all.

Look, it's really this simple. The U.S.'s economic plans as of now seems to be to embrace capitalism until the end of time because it made it king of the hill in the past. Even though it's obvious that this won't be the state of affairs forever. The problem is that the thing that made a worship of capitalism possible AND also having such a shamefully large economic underclass was having a head start on the other economies.

If it isn't blatantly obvious, anyone in the U.S. not in the professional class is fucking fucked in a generation or two and since this is a large cross-section of the population. I mean, it should already be obvious how low-skilled careers are becoming increasingly Not Viable for an individual's path to success unlike a generation or two ago. Unless you want to switch to socialism, the only way out of this is to force everyone into the professional class. Which means gearing the educational system towards THAT and not towards actual education.

I don't see why this is so hard to grasp.

K wrote: The fact that we pay our teachers less than receptionists is probably a major factor. And I am serious.... a starting teacher is 19-15K a year and requires at least one masters degree and usually two or a masters and a doctorate and a starting receptionist pays 19K-25K.... and you don't even need to be smart enough to be a secretary to be a receptionist.

Literally, people whose only skill is that they can answer a phone and smile make as much as the people we trust to educate the next generation. There is only so much you can get done using charity workers.

Say what?!

[edit: I changed the link to a better website that notes starting salaries too.

NOWHERE NEAR 15-19k]

Lago wrote:The U.S.'s economic plans as of now seems to be to embrace capitalism until the end of time because it made it king of the hill in the past.

I don't have a problem with capitalism. I just don't think the free market can be entirely free. There's a big difference.

Lago wrote:If it isn't blatantly obvious, anyone in the U.S. not in the professional class is fucking fucked in a generation or two and since this is a large cross-section of the population.

OK. I looked up "professional class" because I wanted to make sure I understood exactly what you were saying, and I got redirected to Wikipedia's article, "American Middle Class." Apparently professional class and upper middle class (and managerial class) are synonymous and generally refer to white collar households making more than $100,000 per year. They made up about 15% of the population before the recession.

Not only that, but they have a special appreciation for education, especially higher education. They also place a high value on traveling abroad, art, and culture, and are the societal class that tends to bring social issues and movements to the attention of the general populace.

After reading that, you sound crazier than ever. The professional class are exactly the kind of people who would want to implement educational changes like the ones I've suggested.

So try again: Who exactly is going to force us into prison-like education systems so that Americans can become all "professional?"

Maj wrote:The professional class are exactly the kind of people who would want to implement educational changes like the ones I've suggested.

Who cares what the fuck they want? They're already going to get theirs in the future because they already have careers that won't get displaced when the idea of a low-skilled/highly-paid labor force gets stranged like dying ducklings.

If you believe in American statism (which I don't, but that's part of the parameters of this experiment) you don't give a shit about how much art and culture and education you have in your population if they don't have the skills required to get them a decent living wage in the new economy.

That's the bottom line of this whole experiment. It's not to create a more educated or more wise citizen, it's to create a citizen who won't get their shit wrecked in the marketplace 30 years from now.

Maj wrote:Who exactly is going to force us into prison-like education systems so that Americans can become all "professional?"

It's called a thought experiment, Maj.

erik wrote:Say what?!

[edit: I changed the link to a better website that notes starting salaries too.

NOWHERE NEAR 15-19k]

Still rarely more than my wife makes as a graduate student, and sometimes significantly less. It seems strange that people would make less after graduating.

erik wrote:

K wrote: The fact that we pay our teachers less than receptionists is probably a major factor. And I am serious.... a starting teacher is 19-15K a year and requires at least one masters degree and usually two or a masters and a doctorate and a starting receptionist pays 19K-25K.... and you don't even need to be smart enough to be a secretary to be a receptionist.

Literally, people whose only skill is that they can answer a phone and smile make as much as the people we trust to educate the next generation. There is only so much you can get done using charity workers.

Say what?!

[edit: I changed the link to a better website that notes starting salaries too.

NOWHERE NEAR 15-19k]

"Starting teachers" are substitute teachers who are lucky to get three days a week teaching.

Full-time teachers make as much as secretaries who don't need need advanced degrees (even a high school degree). Considering that an experienced executive assistant can make 80K a year in a major city like San Francisco, teaching is still a suckers game.

Lago wrote:It's called a thought experiment, Maj.

Great. Let's do a thought experiment on what the education system should be like when every third person suddenly turns green. That would be just as crazy and just as practical.



I'll bow out of your thread so I don't mess it up further.

Maj wrote:
Great. Let's do a thought experiment on what the education system should be like when every third person suddenly turns green. That would be just as crazy and just as practical.

Look, it's a plausible set of events Maj. It's not like I can't point to a school system that does things a lot stricter than the way we do things in the United States.

I gave a parameter for this thought experiment in the first post: how do we have the most Americans survive the new economy. And I gave what I thought is the most logical way to accomplish this. I'm sorry if I can't give you some detailed scenario about how to get to Point A to Point B, but I'm simply not interested in talking about that

Or if that's still too much in Cloud Cuckooland for you, how about this:

The Japanese educational system, but slightly less strict and less emphasis on humanities. No coming in to school on Saturday and no mandatory clubs; they do do that over there. So it's not like I'm proposing some sort of imaginary prison camp, just a 'hey, why don't we do that over here?' kind of deal.

I'm willing to entertain an argument that their schooling system might be wrong or bad in the long run, but I'm just not understanding why such a system would be so hard for you to grasp. Since people do do it.

K wrote:

erik wrote:

K wrote: The fact that we pay our teachers less than receptionists is probably a major factor. And I am serious.... a starting teacher is 19-15K a year and requires at least one masters degree and usually two or a masters and a doctorate and a starting receptionist pays 19K-25K.... and you don't even need to be smart enough to be a secretary to be a receptionist.

Literally, people whose only skill is that they can answer a phone and smile make as much as the people we trust to educate the next generation. There is only so much you can get done using charity workers.

Say what?!

[edit: I changed the link to a better website that notes starting salaries too.

NOWHERE NEAR 15-19k]

"Starting teachers" are substitute teachers who are lucky to get three days a week teaching.

Full-time teachers make as much as secretaries who don't need need advanced degrees (even a high school degree). Considering that an experienced executive assistant can make 80K a year in a major city like San Francisco, teaching is still a suckers game.

Perhaps, but you are downplaying how hard it is to be an executive assistant. No, you don't need "college", but it's a highly difficult field to get in.

I'm not saying that a secretary isn't better than being a teacher in every way. I'm saying that it's almost impossible to be a secretary.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:The Japanese educational system, but slightly less strict and less emphasis on humanities. No coming in to school on Saturday and no mandatory clubs; they do do that over there. So it's not like I'm proposing some sort of imaginary prison camp, just a 'hey, why don't we do that over here?' kind of deal.

.... Dude, the Japanese educational system is an actual prison camp system where kids are forced to endure gruelling levels of literal memorization.

Don't follow Japan. They're creating an entire generation of kids who are rejecting their entire society because of how retarded the whole educational system is.

Why do you think Japan is the society that turned cartoons into hentai?

Lago PARANOIA wrote:The Japanese educational system, but slightly less strict and less emphasis on humanities.

What an awful, awful system that is.

My wife went to Harvard to do her grad degree in education and she would be outright horrified at your belief. As far as I can tell, the closest analogy would be to say, "we ought to be on the gold standard" in a 21st century economics discussion.

Educational reform will need to teach problem-solving skills, not incorporate more rigor.

It ideally should look at lot closer to this:
http://www.theblueschool.org/

...than this:
http://www.ny.us.emb-japan.go.jp/en/c/2 ... kko_01.jpg

In Japan, if you have a degree from an American college, that automatically makes it so you'll be hired ahead of anyone who was only educated in their home country. The Japanese educational system sucks balls. It sucks balls from both a practical and psychological standpoint.

mean_liar wrote:It ideally should look at lot closer to this:
http://www.theblueschool.org/

...than this:
http://www.ny.us.emb-japan.go.jp/en/c/2 ... kko_01.jpg

Hell yes.

Lago wrote:Look, it's a plausible set of events Maj. It's not like I can't point to a school system that does things a lot stricter than the way we do things in the United States.

There are cultural differences between places like the United States and, say, Japan - the primary one being that in Japan, your individuality is in the tubes and you are a student for the good of class, school and country.

That straight up won't fly here. Students in the US are encouraged to be educated for themselves - their personal edification, their career, their prestige. There's very little emphasis placed on anything bigger than that, and it translates into having to create a system that teaches kids how to be self-motivated, not motivated by shame or guilt or some variant of honor. And when it comes to human beings, the former generally works better than the latter in the overall picture.

Further, the prison method really isn't that effective. The creativity article I linked to actually talks a little about other countries and the prison model...

The Creativity Crisis wrote:In China there has been widespread education reform to extinguish the drill-and-kill teaching style. Instead, Chinese schools are also adopting a problem-based learning approach...

Plucker recently toured a number of such schools in Shanghai and Beijing. He was amazed by a boy who, for a class science project, rigged a tracking device for his moped with parts from a cell phone. When faculty of a major Chinese university asked Plucker to identify trends in American education, he described our focus on standardized curriculum, rote memorization, and nationalized testing. “After my answer was translated, they just started laughing out loud,” Plucker says. “They said, ‘You’re racing toward our old model. But we’re racing toward your model, as fast as we can.’ ”

Lago wrote:I gave a parameter for this thought experiment in the first post: how do we have the most Americans survive the new economy. And I gave what I thought is the most logical way to accomplish this.

I have problems with your idea of the new economy. Americans need a larger blue collar class. Dumping everyone into the professional class will just nail us into our coffin. You seem to not be having a thought experiment about the future of education so much as you're guessing about the tyrannical overlords who will not use science, research, or caring to make sure that the American public is educated. And that's crazy on its face because if those people actually had a strong hand in our education system, we wouldn't have a public education system.

Besides, I gave you three relatively cheap suggestions that would significantly help our education system without further intensive and major reform:

An extra hour of sleep.
Teaching the idea that intelligence is malleable and improvable rather than fixed and innate.
Using integrative programs like Tools of the Mind (and/or apparently something like the Blue School) to create children who are focused, responsible, curious, and well-behaved.

As far as I can tell, you discarded my post because it was full of what you imagine to be hippie-dippie shit, rather than, you know, ideas based on research and observation of real children. And that's totally fine with me, so long as I understand that you're really just being melodramatic and not paying attention to reality.

Just to chime in again, I'd just like to note that one of the big differences in the "Science" High Schools in the Philippines (compared to regular ones) is that they also encourage experimentation and problem-solving. They aren't just focused on test scores.

And the kids that come out of these schools are indeed very, very sharp.

So like Maj and mean_liar have been saying, you don't need to overhaul the whole system. Introducing a problem-solving based curriculum as opposed to "memorize useless trivia" curriculum alone would do wonders even if it sounds unexciting and simple.

Okay, NOW we're getting somewhere. I did some off-board reading and I believe you guys about the shittiness now. So now I have a question for you:

Are you saying that their educational system sucks because of the strictness or because of the content of the education? Because it's not like they are mutually exclusive. You could keep kids in critical thinking and enrichment classes and whatnot for the entire day. I am willing to seriously consider arguments that it's impossible for people to actually learn anything working that hard if you have them study in class for that long.

Maj wrote: I have problems with your idea of the new economy. Americans need a larger blue collar class. Dumping everyone into the professional class will just nail us into our coffin.

Maj, I hate to break it to you, but the blue collar class is becoming increasingly irrelevant as time goes on. Yes, it still won't completely disappear, but the idea of the blue collar class having significantly better lives/skills than the morass of unskilled workers is going to die really soon. Why do I make such a grim prognostication?

1.) Increasing advancements in technology. The most obvious example is manufacturing. Even after the Great Recession the U.S. manufacturing base is as strong as ever. The problem is that the number of people employed in it are shrinking. What the hell happens to all of these displaced workers? If they had some kind of broad vocational aptitude related to something that wasn't being replaced by technology anytime soon they would be safe, but we're talking about a mass of people whose skills are being completely replaced. It's not like we're talking about computer programmers who can still be useful to the new economy even after they experience major paradigm shifts, we're talking about Assembly Line Welder Guy.

2) More importantly, increasing competition from other countries who do not demand the 'excessive' (their pay certainly isn't excessive, but in the view of the people who own the capital it is) wages that the current American blue-collar class is.

Ignoring the whole idea of whether Growth Is Good/Bad (I think we should be going towards a sustainable economy and Americans have too much shit already, but that's another story) the fact is that in the VERY long run this is a good thing. The fact of the matter is if the wealth in, say, Bangladesh increases enough so that they have a top university it benefits Joe Blow in Missouri indirectly. But in the medium-term he's kind of fucking screwed since his job is permanently gone and he doesn't have a different kind of skill. It'd be really nice if the system gave him a sort of education that he could use to jump into a new era job, but starting when he's 40 years old and has two kids is way too late for him to get anything more complicated than he already has--but those kind of jobs are gone already. It's not like he can move to another city and pick up a decent fishery factory job after his automotive manufacturing job goes under.

It'd be better if he already had a solid math, language, and technical background so help but that kind of thing should be started on when he's a kid.

Maj wrote: As far as I can tell, you discarded my post because it was full of what you imagine to be hippie-dippie shit,

Hey, if the hippie shit works it works. But understand that as far as I'm concerned having an education that can be transformed into some kind of employment that won't go obsolete in 10-15 years when Joe Blow graduates is a lot more important than Joe Blow getting an education. Hopefully they'll overlap, but if they don't, the latter has got to go.


There are of course alternatives towards this. Like K mentioned, if people would just realize that not everyone needs to be beholden to the idea that someone's capitalist value determines how good of a life they lead (or even if they get to live) you don't need to do all this. Of course that's really close to socialism (or worse COMMUNISM) and my post assumed that the U.S. is going to let capitalism throatfuck them until the sun burns out.

Alternatively you can also hope that we can build Star Trek style replicators and not worry about this in the first place.

As far as I understand it, grades literally don't matter in the Japanese system. Advancement to prestigious schools is dependent entirely on entrance exams (think institution-specific SAT/ACT exams) and being held back a grade or prevented from graduating is basically unheard of. This makes classes cater to the lowest common denominator something fierce and any "serious" student goes to "cram school" (night classes) to learn the actual shit they need to pass entrance exams.

All the strictness of Japanese high school is basically centered on teaching students to "be Japanese". i.e. "conform, you little shits!"