Originally posted by NordlysIn the US, anyway, the quality of state schools varies from place to place enough such that the disparity in quality of education from child to child is almost as great as it would be if parents were left to their own devices (ie homeschooling, "unschooling", private schools, apprenticeships, etc).
Actually from what I hear about education here in Norway as well as what my sister told me about her children's school in Belgium, the trend goes in the opposite direction. Today (in these places), there's a lot of focus on problem-solving, working independently or together with other children on self-chosen projects, discussion etc. When I went to school (i ...[text shortened]... ding in front of the class doing most of the talking, although it already started to change.
Also, I wish I had some of my books from high school to hand; my experience was split between official indoctrination (especially in history classes), "indoctrination" at the whim of the teacher (especially in literature classes, usually a good thing, and similar to what would happen with widespread homeschooling), situations in which the question of indoctrination was largely irrelevant (like language classes) and independent study. I attended a comparatively well-funded state school in a middle-class area*, which was "respected" among schools in the area, and I can still identify several problems with my own education which kind of render public schooling a bad model as far as I'm concerned**.
First, public schools create an artificial and somewhat damaging social environment. In some communities, this extends to real physical dangers (I'm not talking about statistical anomalies like mass shootings, but rather the constant lower-level violence in some schools, particularly ones in socially deprived urban communities). However, even in the absence of serious violence, the age segregation, authoritarian atmosphere and tribalism in high schools are unlike anything seen in real society, except perhaps in prisons or the military or cults. This leads to passive indoctrination from several angles; in the real world, one has the option of, to some extent, choosing one's social networks and avoiding places and groups which impose ways of thinking. This option is not available to students in school, who can be punished by authorities and peers for failing to adhere to certain values.
These aren't just abstract problems; even in the "good" school I attended, the atmosphere of boredom and of being trapped with a random group (as opposed to a self-selecting group) of people led to fairly frequent fights, rampant recreational drug use and apathy, all at levels which would be unheard of in a group of people being educated voluntarily.
Second, state-mandated educational standards do very little to help anyone learn anything, regardless of whether or not they are met. In the US, there are new federal (and older state, in some states) standards of student competence in various subjects, and adherence to those standards is measure in annual (or more frequent) exams. In my "good" school, we wasted at least a week of every single year filling out machine-scored multiple-choice exams (these are a huge industry). The school would receive convoluted results, comparing our "achievement test" scores to what we should have achieved given our "aptitude test" scores -- these results arrived months after the tests, usually to late to be used that year to inform how we were to be taught (assuming they were useful). The spectre of these tests, on which, I believe, some funding was predicated, caused the curriculum to be modified in small ways, emphasising the content of the exams rather than giving teachers, some of whom were quite knowledgeable, discretion in how to teach. This is apparently much worse in schools with a history of failing such exams; I've read about months per year of instructional time being spent explicitly on exam preparation.
Third, there is an enormous amount of political and corporate indoctrination in the form and content of the public-school curriculum. I've complained in other posts about the schools having a stated goal of "preparing youth for contributing society" rather than educating them, but this goal isn't even the defensible one of teaching useful skills (if it were, the vocational classes wouldn't be reserved primarily for those with "behavioural problems" as they were in my school system). The goal is to produce people who can be relied on to consume. I noticed, while progressing through the public school system, that our supposed increased competence with each passing year wasn't really acknowledged -- the subtle myth that we all needed the help and guidance of authority was propagated in a lot of ways. This creates a psychological dependence on large social structures and combined with systemic boredom, ensures that those structures are ones in which we buy [stuff].
Also, with one exception, every history and social studies class I ever took consisted of ridiculous jingoistic, status-quo-celebrating propaganda.
I'd continue, but I'm tired. The most telling piece of evidence for the pointlessness of state-sponsored schooling, I think, is the series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in 1858, well before compulsory education in the US. Given that:
"This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world-enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites-causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty-criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest."
was the level of public discourse in the US in 1858 (in the sense that politicians in search of votes stood up in public and talked in that literate way), one can only acknowledge that the US, after around 100 years of widespread 12-year public education, is a far less literate place than it was in 1858.
*Part of the problem is that in the US, central governments (state and federal) provide educational mandates, but leave the funding and operation of schools to local governments, via property taxes. The result is that, at least as measured by per-student funding, schools are much better in wealthy areas.
**Furthermore, I'm going to rant about it! I've been thinking a fair amount about pedagogy lately.
I'm with Noodles on this one.
Originally posted by ChronicLeaky
In the US, anyway, the quality of state schools varies from place to place enough such that the disparity in quality of education from child to child is almost as great as it would be if parents were left to their own devices (ie homeschooling, "unschooling", private schools, apprenticeships, etc).
That's not an argument against state involvement in education but about the poor level of educational infrastructure, funding and teaching ability. Besides it's also speculative, I doubt you have the relevant data on homeschooling/unschooling and how successful they are.
Also, I wish I had some of my books from high school to hand; my experience was split between official indoctrination (especially in history classes), "indoctrination" at the whim of the teacher (especially in literature classes, usually a good thing, and similar to what would happen with widespread homeschooling), situations in which the question of indoctrination was largely irrelevant (like language classes) and independent study. I attended a comparatively well-funded state school in a middle-class area*, which was "respected" among schools in the area, and I can still identify several problems with my own education which kind of render public schooling a bad model as far as I'm concerned**.
Since indoctrination, on some level, is going to occur at whatever the situation I'm not sure how this supports non-sate education.
First, public schools create an artificial and somewhat damaging social environment. In some communities, this extends to real physical dangers (I'm not talking about statistical anomalies like mass shootings, but rather the constant lower-level violence in some schools, particularly ones in socially deprived urban communities). However, even in the absence of serious violence, the age segregation, authoritarian atmosphere and tribalism in high schools are unlike anything seen in real society, except perhaps in prisons or the military or cults. This leads to passive indoctrination from several angles; in the real world, one has the option of, to some extent, choosing one's social networks and avoiding places and groups which impose ways of thinking. This option is not available to students in school, who can be punished by authorities and peers for failing to adhere to certain values.
These aren't just abstract problems; even in the "good" school I attended, the atmosphere of boredom and of being trapped with a random group (as opposed to a self-selecting group) of people led to fairly frequent fights, rampant recreational drug use and apathy, all at levels which would be unheard of in a group of people being educated voluntarily.
This isn't just the fault of the schools but of the economic gap between students, and areas. I'd argue that it is not the schools which create the environment, but that the environment creates the schools. I suspect it is also in some part due to the size of the school, how big are these institutions and how prevalent are ones of their size?
Second, state-mandated educational standards do very little to help anyone learn anything, regardless of whether or not they are met. In the US, there are new federal (and older state, in some states) standards of student competence in various subjects, and adherence to those standards is measure in annual (or more frequent) exams. In my "good" school, we wasted at least a week of every single year filling out machine-scored multiple-choice exams (these are a huge industry). The school would receive convoluted results, comparing our "achievement test" scores to what we should have achieved given our "aptitude test" scores -- these results arrived months after the tests, usually to late to be used that year to inform how we were to be taught (assuming they were useful). The spectre of these tests, on which, I believe, some funding was predicated, caused the curriculum to be modified in small ways, emphasising the content of the exams rather than giving teachers, some of whom were quite knowledgeable, discretion in how to teach. This is apparently much worse in schools with a history of failing such exams; I've read about months per year of instructional time being spent explicitly on exam preparation.
Again, this isn't an argument against state involvement, but for improved teaching infrastructure.
Third, there is an enormous amount of political and corporate indoctrination in the form and content of the public-school curriculum. I've complained in other posts about the schools having a stated goal of "preparing youth for contributing society" rather than educating them, but this goal isn't even the defensible one of teaching useful skills (if it were, the vocational classes wouldn't be reserved primarily for those with "behavioural problems" as they were in my school system). The goal is to produce people who can be relied on to consume. I noticed, while progressing through the public school system, that our supposed increased competence with each passing year wasn't really acknowledged -- the subtle myth that we all needed the help and guidance of authority was propagated in a lot of ways. This creates a psychological dependence on large social structures and combined with systemic boredom, ensures that those structures are ones in which we buy [stuff].
I agree with this, but in some ways I don't think society could run now without this being true, regrettable as it is. Take away those inbuilt consumer automaton tendencies and I suspect economic structures would collapse, then we'd be off to hell in a hand basket.
Also, with one exception, every history and social studies class I ever took consisted of ridiculous jingoistic, status-quo-celebrating propaganda.
I'd continue, but I'm tired. The most telling piece of evidence for the pointlessness of state-sponsored schooling, I think, is the series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in 1858, well before compulsory education in the US. Given that:
"This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world-enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites-causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty-criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest."
was the level of public discourse in the US in 1858 (in the sense that politicians in search of votes stood up in public and talked in that literate way), one can only acknowledge that the US, after around 100 years of widespread 12-year public education, is a far less literate place than it was in 1858.
*Part of the problem is that in the US, central governments (state and federal) provide educational mandates, but leave the funding and operation of schools to local governments, via property taxes. The result is that, at least as measured by per-student funding, schools are much better in wealthy areas.
**Furthermore, I'm going to rant about it! I've been thinking a fair amount about pedagogy lately.
So what's the alternative? Homeschooling is unlikely to give rise to an increase in literacy, if anything I'd suspect a decrease, given that the huge amounts of idiots and trailer trash in the world will now have to ensure that their kids get taught, instead of just packing them off to somewhere where someone else will do it for them. And how do you regulate teachers in these homeschool groups? You're turning a few thousand institutions into a few million, how do you suggest these are monitored, who decides the curriculum, ensures safety standards, marks exam papers etc? It would be bureaucratic morass on 'Brazil' level. What about sport, music, the arts? How would homeschool networks provide the sort of levels of equipment and resource to allow students to excel? And poverty stricken areas would suffer even more.
Whilst I agree that there are massive problems in the state school system, I just don't see any advantages to destroying it.
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Originally posted by AThousandYoungFrom my experiences in Australia, I gather that most teachers are atheists - or at least a tad radical. I went to a Catholic school, yet my English teachers taught the Regeneration Trilogy which graphically depicted homoerotic sex. And before that was an anthology of short stories, one of which was about a woman who left her husband to become a lesbian.
I mean...do you really want people like Huckabee teaching your kids to do math? People like Bush teaching them about budgets?
"I didn't major in math," the former Arkansas governor told a cheering crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference meeting. "I majored in miracles."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080209/ap_on_el_pr/huckabee
And now that I ponder this, I realise that in every text I studied in my final year had some enraged expression of atheism (Generals Die in Bed; The Curious Incident of the Night-Time; Look Both Ways; Songs of Paul Kelly.)
I expect the situation in America is different. The USA seems nuts.
Originally posted by StarrmanObviously you've never bothered to look at any data regarding home schooling. Here's one study (using standardized test results):
[b/]I'm with Noodles on this one.
Originally posted by ChronicLeaky
In the US, anyway, the quality of state schools varies from place to place enough such that the disparity in quality of education from child to child is almost as great as it would be if parents were left to their own devices (ie homeschooling, "unschooling", private schools, appr just don't see any advantages to destroying it.
concluding that home schooled kids on average have much better results than those in public schools:
http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v7n8/
Here's another: http://www.hslda.org/docs/study/comp2001/HomeSchoolAchievement.pdf
Originally posted by StarrmanThe idea that people educating their own kids is impossible because there are "huge amounts of idiots and trailer trash in the world" is insulting elitist garbage. Perhaps you are unaware of it, but virtually all kids are taught to read by their parents BEFORE they are packed off to the public schools. A gun to the head of the parents is rarely required.
I'm with Noodles on this one.
Originally posted by ChronicLeaky
[b/]In the US, anyway, the quality of state schools varies from place to place enough such that the disparity in quality of education from child to child is almost as great as it would be if parents were left to their own devices (ie homeschooling, "unschooling", private schools, appr just don't see any advantages to destroying it.
Originally posted by no1marauderThat's not the claim I was making, only that perhaps a decrease in literacy would occur, based on those that in their situation are unlikely to become literate without state schooling. Give parents that do not teach their kids to read and write the responsibility of ensuring the rest of their education and I doubt things will improve for them, at least in state schooling they might learn to read and write in time. I retract the 'idiots and trailer trash' remark, it's early and I'm grouchy.
The idea that people educating their own kids is impossible because there are "huge amounts of idiots and trailer trash in the world" is insulting elitist garbage.
Perhaps you are unaware of it, but virtually all kids are taught to read by their parents BEFORE they are packed off to the public schools. A gun to the head of the parents is rarely required.
Where does the illiteracy RC mentioned come from? Are you suggesting there is none?
Originally posted by no1marauderI'm not arguing the effectiveness of homeschooling itself, but that a move to homeschooling on a national level would be a mistake.
Obviously you've never bothered to look at any data regarding home schooling. Here's one study (using standardized test results):
concluding that home schooled kids on average have much better results than those in public schools:
http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v7n8/
Here's another: http://www.hslda.org/docs/study/comp2001/HomeSchoolAchievement.pdf
Originally posted by StarrmanI don't adopt both sides of ChronicLeaky's argument; I would maintain a free state sponsored school system but do away with compulsory schooling laws. From what evidence I see, it would probably improve the quality of education for both those in the public schools and those who were not.
I'm not arguing the effectiveness of homeschooling itself, but that a move to homeschooling on a national level would be a mistake.
Originally posted by no1marauderWhat schools have you been in? In the schools I've taught in, there are perhaps one or two students per Kindergarten class who already know how to read. Because it is such a rare phenomenon, there aren't enough of them to create one class. They have to sit through the rest of class learning which sounds go with the letters of the alphabet, while a number of students don't even know that. This isn't about income gap -- I taught in three parochial schools and one public school, and in that area there's no difference.
The idea that people educating their own kids is impossible because there are "huge amounts of idiots and trailer trash in the world" is insulting elitist garbage. Perhaps you are unaware of it, but virtually all kids are taught to read by their parents BEFORE they are packed off to the public schools. A gun to the head of the parents is rarely required.
There are a small percentage of dedicated homeschoolers, and they can give their children the individual attention they need because they have a "class" of 1-5 students, none of whom were budding sociopaths dumped on the system for child care. They also aren't handicapped by having to teach to a test. There are also crappy homeschoolers who think if their child can identify individual words, they are capable of reading grade level books. I have had to bring their way-below-grade-level children up to speed once they stop homeschooling and send them to school. I have also talked to homeschoolers and unschoolers on various web sites, and the people in the General Forum have a much higher ability to read and write correct English than they do, yet they're keeping their children home rather than have them exposed to correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation. One said that her daughter was learning as much science by working part time in a pet shop than her daughter's friends were learning in high school physics, chemistry, earth science, etc.
When I think of universal homeschooling I think of those cases, as well as children like me, for whom school was a respite from home. There's no way my mother would have taught us; she wasn't even that interested in feeding us or getting us medical and dental care.
Rather than thinking about the good people who would probably be capable of at least creating children with a sixth grade education by some point, think of how many people on the forum you think would make good homeschooling parents, and remember that this group has more access to technology than many parents and higher level thinking skills than some.
Originally posted by no1marauderAgreed. Keeping children in school until they are sixteen or 18 isn't helping them or anything else. I do like the system other countries have of a non-academic track. I believe children should be on the path to self-sufficiency and employment and not raised to be on Welfare. Alternative education forms, such as apprenticeships, business and industrial models, arts models, etc., would be great.
I don't adopt both sides of ChronicLeaky's argument; I would maintain a free state sponsored school system but do away with compulsory schooling laws. From what evidence I see, it would probably improve the quality of education for both those in the public schools and those who were not.
Originally posted by StarrmanThat's not an argument against state involvement in education but about the poor level of educational infrastructure, funding and teaching ability. Besides it's also speculative, I doubt you have the relevant data on homeschooling/unschooling and how successful they are.
It is an argument against any model of state education which uses locally organised programs to meet a central mandate. THe alternatives are thus to leave everything up to small communities or to have a uniform, centrally-funded school system. I'm going to try to argue against the latter alternative in my responses to the rest of your post, and just point out here that the former alternative (public schools organised entirely on the local level) doesn't change any of the inequities we're discussing.
Since indoctrination, on some level, is going to occur at whatever the situation I'm not sure how this supports non-sate education.
If indoctrination is going to take place, it's less harmful if everyone's indoctrination is different. That way, exposure to other people makes some realise that they've been indoctrinated.
This isn't just the fault of the schools but of the economic gap between students, and areas. I'd argue that it is not the schools which create the environment, but that the environment creates the schools. I suspect it is also in some part due to the size of the school, how big are these institutions and how prevalent are ones of their size?
This is a problem with the very idea of school itself. I suspect that, as much as any other reason, secondary education is compulsory because the economy is too specialised to employ people of that age in productive ways in large numbers, and these people have to be put somewhere. (According to the best history of this that I've read*, the modern compulsory school system began to take shape around 1900, after the effects of industrialisation had just sort of made themselves clear.) I'm not sure what people would be doing in the current economic and social environment**, but I suspect that many of them would become meaningfully educated or productive. Those that didn't would be in roughly the same boat as they would have been in public school, except that:
1. Nobody would be stigmatised for failing to negotiate a largely irrelevant set of obstacles;
2. Nobody would be stuck in an artificial community for 35 hours a week;
3. People who failed to evolve into educated and productive people could do so on their own terms, and be left with the possibility of redeeming themselves on their own terms, later.
4. People trying to become educated and productive on their own terms would have the time to do so.
5. People wouldn't become used to the idea that it is best to associate primarily with those of one's own age, socioeconomic background and aptitude as measured by schools. The last point is worth elaborating on, which I will do later in this post.
My high school had 900 students, which is slightly small for an American public high school, I think. While I suspect that increasing the size of the school makes all of these problems worse, at any size a school places one in a group selected for no meaningful reason (this is just life) with no escape (this is artificial -- we might not think so, but contrary to what we learned in school, corporate rat-races etc. are not compulsory in the way schools and prisons are).
Again, this isn't an argument against state involvement, but for improved teaching infrastructure.
Teaching infrastructure? The only good teaching I had in high school (and there was, to be fair, a reasonable amount) came from teachers with enough experience, knowledge and willingness to ignore centralised mandates to be able to operate independently.
You seem to be placing a great deal of faith in the idea that central authority is capable of organising things effectively. "Teaching infrastructure" to me sounds like a mechanism which enforces a kind of lowest common denominator in teaching. Just before the start of each school year, my school would hold an evening where each teacher hung around xyr classroom and parents attended presentations by the teachers assigned to their children; last September I went along to my younger sister's teachers in the capacity of parent (my mother teaches in that school and thus had a pitch of her own to make). Most of these teachers were newly hired, most were less than ten years older than I, all had degrees in education rather than in the subjects they taught and all put way more emphasis on the "techniques for facilitating learning" that they'd learnt while being made part of the teaching infrastructure than they did on the actual intended content of their courses, which was in some cases kind of a taboo subject.
I submit that any attempt to standardise education will have such effects, by the nature of standardisation.
I agree with this, but in some ways I don't think society could run now without this being true, regrettable as it is. Take away those inbuilt consumer automaton tendencies and I suspect economic structures would collapse, then we'd be off to hell in a hand basket.
Fine, but when did society become more important than its constituent members? This is my least favourite part of your post, because:
1. I don't even think you agree with it because it is inconsistent with the general high level of personal agency you exhibit.
2. A lot of your post operates on a major underestimate of the abilities of individuals and an overestimate of the abilities of central authorities to get things done (I guess that you think this is forgivable because you're English and thus used to being patronised by well-meaning upholders of the social order 😛).
So what's the alternative? Homeschooling is unlikely to give rise to an increase in literacy, if anything I'd suspect a decrease, given that the huge amounts of idiots and trailer trash in the world will now have to ensure that their kids get taught, instead of just packing them off to somewhere where someone else will do it for them. And how do you regulate teachers in these homeschool groups? You're turning a few thousand institutions into a few million, how do you suggest these are monitored, who decides the curriculum, ensures safety standards, marks exam papers etc? It would be bureaucratic morass on 'Brazil' level. What about sport, music, the arts? How would homeschool networks provide the sort of levels of equipment and resource to allow students to excel? And poverty stricken areas would suffer even more.
All of the problems you've foreseen stem from the assumption that there would have to be some central authority regulating education while assigning local authorities (homeschool networks) to carry out its edicts. It is true that this model is just a less effective variant on the current system; I'm not advocating it. I'm advocating eliminating the central authority altogether.
I'll try to answer your points in the last paragraph more specifically later, as well as elaborating on "grouping by aptitude" as promised earlier.
*Richard Hofstadter, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life"
**I'm an armchair critic, not an armchair reformer.
Originally posted by pawnhandlerI'm not saying 6 or 7 year olds are reading Tolstoy, but I do believe that the majority know their alphabet and simple words. Am having some difficulty finding figures on the net either way though.
What schools have you been in? In the schools I've taught in, there are perhaps one or two students per Kindergarten class who already know how to read. Because it is such a rare phenomenon, there aren't enough of them to create one class. They have to sit through the rest of class learning which sounds go with the letters of the alphabet, while a num ...[text shortened]... e access to technology than many parents and higher level thinking skills than some.
I've NEVER met a parent who didn't attempt to teach their kid(s) to read before kindergarten.
Originally posted by no1marauderThat's about the quality of the people you hang out with. This is my ninth year of teaching. I have rarely met parents who tried to teach their children to read. I have rarely met parents who read, which I found shocking. It is not just anecdotal: kids are screened before they enter kindergarten, to find out their skills. Most know at least a few letters of the alphabet. Some know all of them. One or two can read simple worlds. Every year. Every school. In the parochial schools I taught in, basketball is valued; reading is not. In my current school, few parents would be able to teach their children to read English, and many would also be unable to teach their children to read Spanish. The parochial schools were full of parents with good jobs, gas-guzzling vehicles that could fit 12 so their two children didn't have to sit in the same row, and they pulled their children from school to go on vacations. Their kids were as non-reading when they entered as the low-income kids of undereducated parents at my current school.
I'm not saying 6 or 7 year olds are reading Tolstoy, but I do believe that the majority know their alphabet and simple words. Am having some difficulty finding figures on the net either way though.
I've NEVER met a parent who didn't attempt to teach their kid(s) to read before kindergarten.
Originally posted by no1marauderLet me ask you something: Do the parents you know smoke around their infants, toddlers, and children? Do they feed their children breakfast before they go to school, or give the children the skills and opportunity to at least get their own breakfasts? Do the children come to school clean and in clean clothes? Do they get what they need? I had a parent ask me to seat her child in the front of the room because they were told the child needed glasses but they wanted to wait a few years before getting them. Parents who teach their children to read are probably also the same parents who don't smoke around their babies, who make sure their kids are clean and healthy and well-fed and their basic needs are met. You'd be surprised how many people don't fit that profile.
I'm not saying 6 or 7 year olds are reading Tolstoy, but I do believe that the majority know their alphabet and simple words. Am having some difficulty finding figures on the net either way though.
I've NEVER met a parent who didn't attempt to teach their kid(s) to read before kindergarten.
Originally posted by pawnhandlerBelieve me. Too many children in my neck of the woods would NOT pass a test about what they should know. Their math, English...everything BUT P.E. and dancing is atrocious. Even the dancing cannot be done according to a plan but has to be spontaneous.
Recent? They're a hundred years old.
My school doesn't teach Social Studies/history/geography because it isn't on the standardized test. Instead, we have two hours a day of math, two of reading, and the remaining hour and a half combines writing with science as well as English as a second language. Their recess is 10-15 minutes before lunch. No test like that because too many children would pass it. There wouldn't be a bell curve.
We have many fantastic students, but nothing like "too many" of them.