do you think public schools are a conspiracy to keep kids dumb?

Or good little consumers?

Please explain, if so.

same thing.

conspiracy? no, just the system.

because I've put a lot of time into trying to teach the kids I have to think for themselves.

but most don't, they let the "educational" system do it for them

I have one friend who is a grad 8 teacher. Another is a school board president. Both agree(seperately) on one thing: NCLB is the pile of manure in the middle of education's floor. The children are being taught to pass tests, not for them to learn anything. The ultimate goal of NCLB is for schools to top out, not able to improve any more, and then to start defunding them.

I hate the bureacracy at the last one, but the teachers were great.

as much as good consumers/capitalists.

so now what, with no factory jobs to be had?

and I find the provenance of such statements to be suspect, do you believe that to be their purpose now?

The game is changing.

If we are to survive, we need to work with each other.

The government is doing jack shit.

Big corporations are in bed with the government.

So we need to work together and make our own big corporations to counter.

That's all we can do.

Care to work together like we ought to, which in turn makes us a real "community" and not just a catchphrase? Or am I merely delusional?

Pledge of Allegiance and how to make change for a dollar and off you go.

:shrug:

I should have added that I was thinking that that would be the neo-con ideal, not what is actually happening. On the other hand, I do not believe we are turning out the next wave of rocket scientists, philosophers, and great writers either.

On the other hand, I do not believe we are turning out the next wave of rocket scientists, philosophers, and great writers either.

has been a regular refrain from generation to generation. :D

as hard a time as the parents in combating the influence of the idiot box and the konsumer kids it produces.

Public school is for worker bees. But the intentions of early educ. professionals was that schools were a democratic tool. That's why rightwingers hate John Dewey so much.

At least to my unreformed understanding of the roots of public ed. :)

I hope I can be a good teacher-- I want my kids to question authority (even me!) and NOT be nice little consumers :)

I think you will. :hi:

:D

In my experience, the kids will even work with you if they trust you so that you don't come out in a bad light to your principal. :D

it's the politicans, state and local, who are trying to keep kids dumb.

Oh, and those parents who give their kids dumb ass ridiculous names :D

:rofl:

given the limited resources and crap support they get from government.

Public schools were created as a fundamental right in this country, because an educated citizenry makes for a better community.

If you think public schools are failing, then do something about it instead of making snarky comments. Protest cuts in funding, vote FOR levy tax increases, vote for politicians who want to restore spending and get rid of 'Every Child Left Behind', and volunteer at the school.

:applause:

to destroy public education.
It is one of the rights that we have to fight to preserve!!!!

If the salary of every teacher was doubled as well as all the funding for public education, would the results dramaticially change and how long would it take.

Teachers are doing their best right now. I know I was when I was a teacher. Every year we told the state legislature they needed to raise teacher pay, but the idea wasn't that if that happened teachers would all of the sudden start teaching better. We were doing the best we could then.

Teacher salaries have gone up tremendously over the last 20 years, but the results haven't matched the extra costs. Still it was important to raise the pay so teachers could live better, not for kids to learn better.

Highly qualified teachers are leaving the profession in droves because of the low pay, lack of support, and stressful work conditions. Increasing their pay will only help attract more talented people into the field.

http://www.nea.org/pay/index.html

"Classroom teachers are paid less than those who work in other professions requiring similar education and responsibilities. If you combine the lower pay with the rising demands and pressures of state standards and the federal "No Child Left Behind Act," it's no wonder that more and more teachers are leaving the profession for greener financial pastures.

Teacher turnover is a huge problem. Some 20 percent of new public school teachers leave the profession by the end of the first year, and almost half leave within five years. Pay-related turnover is especially high for minorities, males, and teachers under the age of 30. And the economic reality of teaching means that many who do stay are working second jobs to meet their families' basic needs."

http://www.nea.org/newsreleases/2005/nr051205.html

"Inflation Outpaces Teacher
Salary Growth in More Than 40 States

As school districts struggle to fill teaching positions, NEA study finds teacher salaries are not keeping up with cost-of living increases"

The point isn't that teachers will 'teach better' if they're paid more. The field will attract more high quality professionals, who will stay in the profession longer, AND be able to give the job the attention it deserves by not having to work second jobs.

And here's a good one for you: If parents paid teachers what they pay BABYSITTERS, teachers would make more than $100,000 a year. That's right, teaching 30 kids for 8 hours at a rate of $4.00 AN HOUR is a better deal than almost every single teacher gets now.

Don't think teachers' jobs are worth more than the average 12 year old girl's job?

8hr*30students*$4(per student hour) * 5 days a week * 52 weeks a year = 249,600

6 hours * 30 Students * $4 * 170 (min days) = 122,400

When I taught, I never had 30 kids for 8 hours. School day was notionally 7 hours. 1 period for lunch and a planning period. Its also 9 months a year.

Not saying that teachers don't work hard and earn every dime, but making an argument that can so easily be deflected is not a way to convince any one.

Being paid at a baby sitter's rate is more than $100,000 a year. I never claimed more, so it's not an easily deflected argument.

And I know about the 7 hours, a planning period, etc. My dh is a high school teacher.

You wouldn't have the attrition rate that now exists - 50% of teachers leave the job after 3 years. 50%.

More people would become teachers, since the pay is now competitive.

Crumbling schools could be repaired.

GOOD textbooks and curriculum would be purchased.

Equipment would be updated: schools could buy computers and learning tools.

Teachers wouldn't have to shell out $2,000 a year for out-of-pocket expenses (that AREN'T tax-deductible anymore, thanks to Bush).

Teachers could pay attention to teaching, instead of worrying about paying rent and clothing their children, and they wouldn't have to take second jobs to make ends meet.

I'd like this country to try it. Repukes are always whining that 'we can't solve problems by throwing money at them' while they're throwing money at Iraq, defense contractors, lobbyists, industry, and the wealthy.

The U.S. spends more per student's education than most of the industrialized nations. Yet, we are only ranked 27th.

The problem is allocation of funds and some poor teachers/administration.

I'll agree that some neighborhoods don't receive enough money. Funding needs to be more fairly distributed to lower income areas.

However, my spouse works in the school system. Once a teacher has tenure, they can do a crappy job and there are no consequences. That's how one of the Special Education teachers (at my spouses school) was able to surf the internet all day while her 2 aids ran the classroom. That's why 18 out of 25 students in one of our high school biology classes opted out of the class, because of the poor skills of the teacher.

I am pro-union, but tenure and the difficulties involved in firing Teachers who aren't performing their jobs, I think is also a problem.

And no teacher should slack off on their work. The teachers I know are dedicated and work very hard; I think poor teachers are the exception, not the rule.

Tenure (and the termination of tenured teachers) is generally a matter of state law, not union contract. In my state the behavior you noted would fall within acceptable reasons for termination: gross inefficiency or immorality; for willful and persistent violations of reasonable regulations of the board of education. Most schools don't try.

As far as the difficulties in firing non-tenured teachers, any administration that can't follow its own disciplinary procedures should be held accountable. Generally, the procedures for termination aren't that difficult - but the administration doesn't follow the procedures. The union steps in to point out that the teacher is entitled to the negotiated protections (like notice, chance to remedy the problem, etc) before termination and the public perception is that the union is preventing the administration from getting rid of bad teachers. In reality, the union is protecting teachers (good and bad) from arbitrary actions by the administration.

I don't think that's the intent of most teachers or site-level administrators, but when a system has a hundred year track record of creating widgets, it's a good sign it was built to make widgets. The public school system creates vast hoardes of obedient workers and consumers who can follow simple instructions and figure out simple problems when they must but can't think about anything of consequence.

What's the drumbeat for reforming schools? Not more history, more art, more literature, more thinking, it's always back to basics, no more fun, more standardization, which eliminates discussion and the ablity to persue interests and passions but makes for more exactly matched widgets. I can't help but think that's intentional.

Two things:

1. Quite a few of us came through public schools without becoming "widgets".
2. A lot of folks don't aspire to be much more than widgets in a society that values them, and would become same no matter their education, imho.

but can't think about anything of consequence.

This has very much been the opposite of my experience in an urban middle school.

I agree that we're very much plagued by movements and drumbeats of various kinds, but that's the politicos for you.

(I like to think I'm one of 'em, having done my 12 years in brain jail myself) but I do think they're deviations from what's expected. We live in a society where most adults don't read non-essential material at all. Even those who do seek out the printed word are so largely inept with it that newspapers and other printed materials are written at a 6th grade level. Nobody seems to be doing much about that, or about teaching high schoolers to take notes and write decent essays so they'll do well in college.

I should revise my previous statement: I believe the public school system is designed to create workers and consumers, while enriching companies run by the politically conected. I believe it's also important to capitol to have kids out of the care of thier parents so that those parents can concentrate on thier work, and as such institutional school is as much daycare as anything else. I believe individual teachers often struggle against this tide, but the very nature of the system works against true education. Teaching thirty kids with thirty different backgrounds and sets of interests at anywhere near thier ability level is not a possible task. Doing it with textbooks that have all the interesting debates removed and only bland, frequently incorrect material remaining is just a recipe for frustration for all parties.

We live in a society where most adults don't read non-essential material at all.

I don't see how that's on the schools, though.

Nobody seems to be doing much about that, or about teaching high schoolers to take notes and write decent essays so they'll do well in college.

That's an easy blanket statement to make, but how true is it?

I believe it's also important to capitol to have kids out of the care of thier parents so that those parents can concentrate on thier work, and as such institutional school is as much daycare as anything else.

Work existed before capitalism did, as did education. How would you reform the system?

I don't think it's reformable. In my view, the industrial model of education is inherently flawed.

I think it needs scrapped and replaced with a more individualized system of home education, apprenticeships (both for trades and intellectual disciplines) certifications for individual learning acomplished out of classroom, more widely varied classroom methodologies for those who learn well that way (with the option to avail themselves only of those classes needed) and concurrent college enrollment in at least a few subjects for those teenagers who can handle it.

system by first adequately funding it and fully funding IDEA, and reminding people who don't seem to think that funding public education is important, that in order to have a thriving, healthy society everyone must have access to a fully funded, free thinking PUBLIC education.

In grades K-5 every teacher would have an assistant and parent volunteers could help out in classrooms as well. I've spent many hours in classrooms with students who needed more than teachers could provide, but I committed to 1 day a week and this teacher knew that she could call me if she needed more than that. I worked with some of the kids who should have had assistants with them, but there is no money for that.

Further, one of my kids wrote a paper last year that he decided to write after watching a documentary about our government's involvement in the overthrow of Salvadore Allende in Chile. He did additional research, documented the research sources that he used and his teacher threatened to fail him if he didn't change the "tone" of his paper. It has been apparent to me and to all of my kids that in our neck of the woods honest information and thought is being discouraged.

I have a friend who has taught English/Lit. in the upper grades and who teaches the advanced classes tell me that during the past 9 years she's had many more students and parents challenge her on subject matter that has previously been the norm in all of her classes. For some reason Mark Twain's "War Prayer" is ripping these folks totally out of frame. Challenging students to think and to question is falling by the wayside far too often as far as I can tell. And, please, don't allow thinking that might challenge some of the rigid mindsets of the parents, as this seems to get get teachers called on the carpet and lots of folks in 'trouble'.

Perhaps the 'problems with public education' are more regional?:shrug:

are, in fact, widgets, and the people who aren't widgets aren't because they had outside influences besides school.

The robber barons were concerned about the rising level of education in the population because it was starting to breed resistance against corporate governance; the workers were becoming too activist and too militant, and they kept thinking too much and asking too many questions, so they began to co-opt the educational system in regions where they had the most power. Education was no longer about creating well-rounded, thoughtful citizens; it became nothing more than job training.

by Prof. Jeff Lowen. It's one of the most eye opening books I've ever read. He makes an ironclad case that our school systems are not (as we may be led to believe) out to produce critical, thinking and independently educated citizens - but hyper-patriotic, unquestioningly loyal, xenophobic and supremist tax paying ones.

This is not an indictment on teachers, by the way. I give them my utmost support. They truly have the most valuable job in the world.

but I just don't see that aim in the schools in general.

I did a brief elementary school gig, and got a chance to see how the school board, PTA and principles were shaping the curriculae. Since textbooks are chosen by the board on a district by district basis, your kids could be exposed to anything from gems to garbage - depending on the boad and the PTA that leans on them so heavily. I've seen PTA meetings where administrators were literally coerced into adopting some marginal text because some soccer mom was loud and abrasive enough. We had one county (Davis County) out here a few years ago, that adopted an art history book with a beautiful full page photo of Michelangelo's "David" in it. Well by the time the Propriety Marms did their thing at a PTA meeting, the school board actually SUSTAINED a recommendation that someone go through the books, one by one, with a damn magic marker and black out the penis on Michelangelo's statue.

That extreme example withstanding, Prof. Lowen's book very well describes the dynamic at work between PTAs, School Boards and activist "citizens" to squelch text materials that are seen as less than sunny on our history, past policies and actions of our government(s), and too rosey about our "enemies".

I highly suggest reading it.

We generally don't use texts as curriculum here. We have a few adopted - largely in science and math at the upper grades. We develop our own units and then gather a collection of material to illustrate various ideas.

Hyperpatriotic? We have a flag in every room - is that hyperpatriotic? Unquestioningly loyal? I can't even imagine that one. Xenophobic? We're such a melting pot here . . . we have kids taking trips to Mexico for language immersion, we had a unit last year on the Holocaust with a visit by a concentration camp inmate, and another on the Hungarian uprising where they visited a local park dedicated to the event and heard from speakers there. Supremist tax paying? Well, I dunno. We do teach that laws should be obeyed, and that there are options to protest unfair laws. We had a section on civil disobedience in civics which was fun last year. The kids had to study the Vietnam Era and the draft and hippies and war protests. Then they had a debate on what effect they had on society. It was very interesting.

So I guess I take issue with the idea that these are ideas we support. Maybe it's happening elsewhere.

As for being good little consumers, schools don't send kids out the door in all the latest fashions, parents do. Schools don't buy the latest cell phone, parents do. Schools discourage inappropriate competition between kids, parents don't.

is to keep middle class and poor kids dumb

all public AND especially all private institutions in a capitalist country inevitably serve to make good consumers out of the populace

is actually to privatize the whole thing, but that's me. :)

all public AND especially all private institutions in a capitalist country inevitably serve to make good consumers out of the populace

Interesting statement. Are public schools then inevitably bound to create unquestioning consumers?

:shrug:

It may try to teach them to consume relatively more wisely. Unless capitalism is regulated to the point that it is basically no longer capitalism, it will ensure that any public institution to which corporations andor lobbies have access will promote consumption.

these days, schools and government agencies--especially "regulatory" agencies--promote whichever lobby/corporate donor gives the most dough.


The repuke reason for privatization is to ensure that the proles have no access to education; the religiously insane have access to defective "education"; and the wealthy have access to actual education. It's a class war and just like the feudal lords of old, the new oligarchy uses the church as allies/enforcers.

those who take advertisements at face value, by way of example.

The repuke reason for privatization is to ensure that the proles have no access to education; the religiously insane have access to defective "education"; and the wealthy have access to actual education. It's a class war and just like the feudal lords of old, the new oligarchy uses the church as allies/enforcers.

But that no more indicts the schools as a pawn than feudalism indicted the church as a pawn.

they are victims.


oh, and the church was complicit with feudalism, who basically borrowed it lock, stock and barrel, from the Roman emperors as Rome died.

"make good consumers out of the populace"

Not being pissy - honest. I just don't know what this means. Is it the antithesis of "being a bad consumer"? What IS a "good" consumer? Isn't everyone a consumer?

I teach grade 7 & 8 French. Back in 03, prior to dumbya's war in Iraq when everyone was hyping the anti-French BS, the students would ask me about the situation. I probably could have been fired, but I told the kids to do their own research, to READ, and not believe everything they heard in the 2 min. sound bytes on Faux.

They asked me what I thought of the boycott of French products. I told them that 1) it was stupid, and 2) I went out and bought several bottles of French wine, and 3) I will never go to another Dairy Queen as the local store's marquis said "forget the French, we have Freedom Fries". One student told me that his mom wouldn't buy French bread at the local grocery store anymore, to which I replied "well, you do what you want, since we live in the US and you have that right. BUT - who made that French bread? The workers at the local store! It wasn't made in France! Boycotting the local French bread will only result in local people being laid off of work. If you feel that boycotting French products is the right thing to do, at least make sure that the products are made IN FRANCE".

I truly do not believe that public schools are a conspiracy - at least not at the local level. If there is an agenda, it exists somewhere higher up the food chain. Every teacher I know does his/her best to teach the students in their classes to the best of each child's abilities.

Continue the cycle of envy from an ever earlier age that keeps the American/global economy churning? Possible.

i wouldn't go so far as calling it a conspiracy but there are plenty of examples i could site that makes one think, something beyond education is taking place in our schools; the introduction of product advertising is one example.

another concerning the dumbing down aspect is the "testing".

while i do understand the need to ensure our children are learning, i don't believe memorizing or studying to a test is, imo, learning.

Channel One and crap like that. Ditto the emphasis on testing. I look at those as more fads / responses to funding crises than the fundamental project, though.

I'm not opposed to charter schools, locally they provide a leg up for kids who may bypass formal education altogether. I'm not opposed to religious schools. They're a good choice for lots of families. But I am opposed - if that's the right word - to those that would turn their backs on decades of widely accessible, free education for concerns about some conspiracy of government indoctrination.

We've all been to school. The only "conspiracy" going on is the social demand to fit in. That's the nut. Some of us do well with it, some don't.

I know the arguments about the nature of public education and how it stifles individual initiative. They're right on. But they're not a part of a plan.

It is what it is.

to what was once restricted to the privileged. Literacy has always been the key to power.

Sometimes I think the powers-that-be begrudge us this one method of upward mobility.

Those who wish to prepare us to be docile citizens and productive workers will focus on teaching us to follow directions and will reward us when we sit at our desks with "clean hands and faces and smiles on our faces."

Even in the widget factory some will deviate from the norm though.

Those who wish to prepare individuals to be socially conscious citizens will challenge our minds, engage our attentions, and inspire our individual creativity. They will try and teach us to think and draw our own conclusions. They are the subversive element in education and have been for centuries because they share access to the power of the mind, not just the control of the mind.

And thank a good teacher for the key that unlocked the secret.

That is why the repugs are working so hard for vouchers and privatization.

some kind of machine that makes them want to program our children to be dumded-down. I never felt that way going to school and thought I was receiving a fairly comprehensive education which was mine to do with as I chose.

I don't think the current intrigue and conspiracy, brought to you by Bushco, has it's tendrills that far down into the system.

NO ONE can agree what the purpose is. Some think it's to make little corporate drones; some think it's to keep them quiet until it's time to go home; some are idealists -- and even they disagree with each other (is to to get into a great college, to encourage self-expression, or to "achieve success," or something else?)

I'm sure in some classes, in some whole districts, there is rampant anti-intellectualism and corporatism. However, there are also classes, and entire districts, with completely different agendas.

I taught elementary school, and my goals were to 1)give the kids a very solid basis on which to continue their schooling (I did a lot of math facts and reading practice) 2) excite them about learning. This was harder, and took more energy, but I created some great, inspiring science and history lessons. (Not that my administration noticed, but that's a different post. They DID like my students' high math scores.)

There are many, MANY teachers out there who are very cool liberals, you know!!!

We could keep kids dumb for a lot less money by dismantling public education and letting them all fend for themselves. We could go back to a schedule of school for only a few weeks in winter and let 16 year olds like Laura Ingalls try to bring a little literacy to the children who weren't born into the elite class. The rest of the year those children could have jobs, darn it.

Public schooling today retains one of the early missions of Mann's common schools. They are intended to unite us a society and provide a basic education and skills regardless of circumstance. Does it always happen that way? Nope. Do the majority of schools meet that goal? Probably. Could we improve the teaching of reading comprehension, civic awareness, critical thinking and other skills that would be of benefit to us as a country? Sure. It would cost money, though. Much easier to just dismantle public education as swiftly as possible. :rant:

I had the distinct impression when I read the Little House on the Prairie series that even the children of the "non-elite" would kick the crap out of today's youth academically. Laura Ingalls and her sisters were not "elite" by my definition, or by any definition I've ever seen used on DU in the past, other than that they had two living parents who cared about their education. They were often described as being poorer than many of the town children, and in several books are poor enough to worry about eating properly. For much of the series, they lived in a very small home (a shack, really, by today's standards) where all the children shared a bed. And yet, they shine intellectually, in ways I can't imagine even my extremely pampered and cared for (by comparison) college students shining in 2006.

Example: There is one scene when Laura is in her early teens (maybe 13-14 years old?) and she is asked to prepare a recitation for the town at an "activities night" type of thing. With several weeks preparation and her personal knowledge gained from her school lectures, she delivers an extensive lecture on American history from the country's origins to her time (~1880), without notes, and including the dates and relevant details of major battles, all the presidents, etc. She is concerned beforehand that she will forget something and shame her teachers, which implies to me that she believed that at least part of her audience would actually -know- if she misspoke or forgot anything.

How many average 13 year olds today could do that? How many college freshmen in 2006 could do that? And how many members of the audience would know if they gave factually incorrect information in such a lecture?

I don't know whether it would be better to go back to that sort of system. But don't diss Laura Ingalls - she rocked! :-)

And in answer to the original question, yes, I do think we are breeding sheeple in our schools. I am less convinced that it is an actual conspiracy rather than just a symptom of some other negative social problems.

Thank you for sticking up for Laura, though. I had guessed that some DUer would jump into defend her. :-) I wasn't implying that the Ingalls were part of the elite, but that the presentation of prairie schooling on the T.V. series was divorced from the reality of much public schooling during that era, especially in rural and small town America.

There are of course the detractors, but the majority of citizens who are quite productive in this nation have been educated in public schools.

School is what you and your parents make of it.

There is no way on earth that you can be taught everything there is to know in 12 years of public education. It is a stepping stone. If you are bright, self-motivated...the stuff you learn in school is typically enough to motivate you to learn more about whatever interests you. PARENTS if anything play a far more important role in education and if parents are involved in a school...and in their kids education...those kids will do well.

Of course there are those folks who think that their special talents were not discovered, or that their little "genius" is being robbed of something...but typically those folks are typically not "playing with a full deck"...the same folks who think that the world revolves around their little "robby" are then shocked that "robby" can't hold down a job in adulthood because "no one caters to poor robby" anymore...

I live down the street from a family of 5. There are NO children's books in that home, there are no coloring books and those kids get NO ATTENTION...from their parents. But the neanderthal father blames the public school system....what a joke. His middle child flunked kindergarten and first grade but he has pushed them to pass him each time....the boy needs help and the school is willing to do more to help but the father doesn't want this kid "stigmatized" with special education...so he prevents him from getting it..

If they need to destroy the public school system to accomplish that goal, they will.

because an educated society is more likely to figure out that they are being screwed.

I also think that the US "wealth worship" doesn't help education either. People here are not respected based on what they know or their education, they are respected based on how much they earn and how they flaunt it.

And a citizenry with little education and therefore no chance at a good living will make great cannon fodder. BushCo figures that population will be more likely to join the military since it might their only chance to earn a living. They are trying to create an ignorant underclass.

.. Americans are just becoming lazy and complacent. You see it everywhere. Schools are merely a reflection of the fact that as a society, we've lost sight of how we got where we are and now everyone is just out to have a good time - learning is hard work, teaching is hard work, governing is hard work, having realistic policies is hard work when you can just have "zero tolerance".

This country is suffering the same fate that any prosperous and successful country suffers, we are complacent, sitting on our laurels and from here on out you can expect most of the huge advances in science, engineering, space, and medicine to come from somewhere else.

To see a perfect analogy, look no further than the auto industry. Then extrapolate.

I think public schools are at the mercy of politics. When politics are all about power/control issues, then so are schools.

Teachers and other educators don't go into the profession to gain power. Obviously, lol. We go into the profession to make a positive difference. To serve our people to the best of our ability.

Who makes the rules? In as much as the power resides with the families and educators, partners in the process, then public schools are a system to benefit individuals and communities. When the politicians are holding, and wielding, the power, it all depends on who happens to be in power. Benevolent or despotic, when the power is in the state capitol or washington, instead of at the school site, shared with all stakeholders, the stakeholders have been disempowered.

Currently, public schools have a more threatening agenda under the waterline; the "achievement gap" is just the tip of that iceberg.

One agenda is to control curriculum and instruction. This ensures that a few corporate producers of tests and "programs" prosper off the fat of our tax dollars. It also ensures that we factory-produce large numbers of citizens whose skills remain low. This provides a large pool of cheap labor and cannon fodder, in the case of those that couldn't survive the one-size-fits-all system. It provides an even larger pool of people who don't think or operate independently, but are well trained to bubble or screen-touch the votes as they are told.

It's all about keeping the haves in power, and the have-nots serving them.

Is it a conspiracy? :shrug: I think it's a well-planned and implemented long-range strategy. I wish fewer Americans, including Democrats, would stop supporting that strategy, consciously or inadvertently.

A possible solution: No private schools. Open all private schools. One strong, well-funded, educational system.

some sort of zoning/neighborhood reform cleanup, and/or integration plan; otherwise, the haves will fall back on their high cost neighborhoods to ensure that the havenots can't darken the doors of their local schools.

Equitable funding, instead of funding from local property taxes?

:thumbsup:

a valid question.

We have thousands of local systems, each with its own standards and, for want of a better term, corporate culture.

In the average college town or in a school system or school that has the International Baccalaureate curriculum, the standards of academic achievement and critical thinking can be very high--because the parents demand it.

In a town or neighborhood where the average educational level of the adults is low or where the community culture is based on being a mindless trendoid (an athletic trendoid, but a trendoid nevertheless, as in the suburb I spent my high school years in), the schools will turn out semi-literates who will never open a book voluntarily and will believe everything they hear on TV.

Plus this standardized testing craze ignores the fact that this society is far from standardized--take Miss Only-Child Suburbia whose stay-home ma reads to her every day and then take Johnny Inner City whose single mom has to work three crap jobs to feed him and his four siblings, and imagine someone believing that even given the same base intelligence these two kids would perform comparably on a standardized test. It just isn't going to happen, and recognizing class differences can cause disadvantages education-wise isn't the "soft bigotry of low expectations."

And the answer is BOTH--dumb and a good little Wal-Mart consumer (since that will be the only place most will be able to afford to shop!)

I have not spoken with one educator from classroom aid to superintendent who feels that NCLB is anything but a means to keep all children behind. After all if they are all as dumb as Bush then Bush won't appear quite so dumb.

Consumers? Yes.

Ignorant? Absolutely.

Public and private schools tend to chisel kids down so that the ones with rich parents fit into a suit, and the ones with poorer parents work in factories.

Good little worker bees who work quietly and don't ask questions unless it's considered ok by those in authority.

This and more from www.thememoryhole.org/edu/school-mission.htm

"In his 1905 dissertation for Columbia Teachers College, Elwood Cubberly—the future Dean of Education at Stanford—wrote that schools should be factories "in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products...manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry."

The next year, the Rockefeller Education Board—which funded the creation of numerous public schools—issued a statement which read in part:

In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way."

This country just doesn't put enough emphasis on education. And, many Americans don't even know how bad the education system really is.

A bright six year old demanding to be challenged spent his whole kindergarten year sitting in a chair staring at a wall. I am lucky enough to be married to a certified public school teacher who quit her job after he was born to be with him. She taught him well and he could read at 4 (on a second grade level) and he had mastered basic math skills including addition and subtraction on a late first grade level.

We put him in a federally funded school for smaller class size (there were 18 in his class). The teacher spent the year with a notebook in her hand chasing two other children around documenting every time they beat up another kid to get them classified as BEH (Behaviorly or emotionally handicapped) or at least to get them into self contained classrooms so they could stop seek out first a diagnosis and then a better plan for those two kids.

My son sat there, for 180+ days watching this little episode play out.

At the end of the year, I asked the teacher (without going into detail) if he was in for the same treatment the following year, and well yes, there were six kids who needed classification and 3 first grade classes, so they would be split up again the following year. Being federally funded there are no teacher's aids, so the teachers have to deal with all aspects of their classrooms.

My wife taught my son most of what he learned last year, and so now he's home to home school. Does that mean we hate public school? No, not at all, but it does mean that he won't go back into probably middle school when they will finally start to teach him again according to his ability level.

I don't believe you. First of all, it is a HUGE privacy violation for any teacher to discuss the needs of another child (especially one with handicaps) with another parent. NOT OKAY. That conversation is enough to get me fired where I work.

I also have been in public education for nearly 30 years and have never heard of "a federally funded school for smaller class size".

this is from their website and I will send you a link. My wife is a former Special Ed teacher who volunteered in the classroom almost every day. The teachers never said what they were doing, but she knew because she spent five years doing the same thing in a different county system in the same state. And when we called a conference to talk about it, it involved the "senior partners" or pricipals.....all three of them because of the "sensitivity" of the issue.

Believe me, we know the laws.


From the webpage of the school......


Our school is unique because...

* There are 20 students or less in each class, kindergarten through fifth grade.
* Each student has an individualized learning plan and progress is documented through Personal Education Plans, student data notebooks, and parent-teacher-student conferences held four times a year.
* We have a high level of parent involvement. Each family is asked to volunteer a minimum of four hours a month for the school.
* Each quarter our students focus on a community-based service learning project.

It is a "school of choice" in our county. It resides outside the base school assigment system and outside the magnet school system. But it is not listed with the other "charter" schools.

I think schools turning kids into good little consumers is a (mostly) unintentional byproduct of the unfortunate fact that school districts are so underfunded that they turn to corporate sponsorships to help keep the schools somewhat financially afloat.

What keeps kids dumb is not the public school institution itself but the government's role in how schools are funded, all manner of standardized tests, parents who don't have time or interest in educating their own kids and keeping them away from way too many hours of TV. I can't tell you how many parents I've known over the years who didn't want to teach things to their kids "because that's the school's job."

I think people from several different groups are jointly responsible for what's wrong with the public schools - administrators, the government, corporations, parents like the ones I described above, and communities where the public vote down millages.

I also have mixed feelings about the way schools are funded. If public school is supposed to provide equal access to education, I don't think it should be such that kids who were lucky enough to born into families in wealthy communities will get a better education than kids who happened to be unlucky enough to be born into poverty-stricken communities.

I also think that some aspects of the way the schools are designed make things worse. I really don't think the artificial age-grading makes sense. At no other point in your life are you surrounded by people who are exactly within a year or so of your same age. I think that creates a breeding ground for a lot of the social problems that exist in schools. We could possibly eliminate the need for things like gifted programs (and I say that despite the fact that my child is in one) and remedial programs simply by removing the strict age/grade correlation.

So yes, the schools are both keeping kids dumb and creating good little consumers, but I don't think there's one simple place where I can point the finger. I think that for the most part teachers are doing their best and are hindered by government and administrative regulations. I'm very familiar with some of the darker purposes of school as an institution, such as their history in preparing children for factory work and acting as a de facto babysitter for parents who have to work in a society that has a vested interest in keeping childhood the way it is.

Are there major problems? Yes, of course. Are there easy solutions? No, I don't think so. Even if we could get to the root of some kind of conspiracy, there would still be multiple other issues to address.

have someone to hate and blame that relieves you of your own responsibilities.

Congratulations. You'd make a great republican.

You don't know me very well. :D

that post was worth reading twice.

i always knew there was something askew with you...:D

* and his thugs passed NCLB with the intention to dumb down our kids so when our kids are grown, they will have few options for employment but to sign up for * & Cos endless wars or working for the chump change that *'s selfish corporate buddies wanna pay.

Meanwhile it's those same greedy corporate bastards who are brainwashing our kids to value money/greed, consumer goods and superficiality above all else. Instead of expanding their minds, developing critical thinking skills and learning to value what's really important in life.

I'm homeschooling my kid this coming school year.

I don't know if it's intentional, but the effect is the same either way.

And the right-wing has done EVERYTHING it can to MAKE public schools fail.

I'm a product of both public and private schools. Granted that was 30, and more, years ago.

I seem to be able to both think well, write fairly well, and question authority. ;)

Unfortunately, public education today has become a political battleground that may benefit some kids - I think more rigorous standards are probably good, and kids are being taught to think math problems through more, and analyze things more, at an early age. But the politicized spectre of NCLB (a good idea that became a Trojan horse), is destroying public education in some forms, and leaving the schools open to extreme privatization.

My dislike of the bureaucratization and politicization of public schools is why I decided to send my kid to a small private school. But I certainly don't have any objection to paying school taxes as well, since not everyone has the means (or doesn't care about having fancy furniture) to do what I have done. I think all kids deserve a free education.

demands, and the expectation of a school

bullshit that you trash the school system. don;t know why, but i see my kids in an excellent environment working their ass off because it is what we have taught them, it is our expectation, and it is the teacher and the school itself that demands.

correct.

'Specially those whose folks are too poor to send 'em to private school. :puke:

when oldest was in 4th because i saw the public had a better academic record than the private and i was in the best private in towm

privates arent all they are said to be. not in my area anyway.