There is nothing obvious about education in large part due to the long list of decision makers involved.

 

-----signature-----

There has been a thesis put out about this. It's highly controversial but the academic foundation it is built from is beyond reproach.


Link to thesis

 

-----signature-----

Honestly, I wonder about the metrics we're even using to try to define the problem.

In truth we have only one metric: cost. We can track that one pretty well, whether or not we interpret it appropriately is another matter, but in the end we actually have a fair record of the direct costs of the American public education system.

As for the rest - I wonder about the metrics that speak to the performance of American students - I wonder about their applicability and correctness.

Any metric derived from NCLB is a sham and should be written off entirely. NCLB is a disaster on a scale so large that it has set education back more than 2 years for every year it's been in place.

Setting that aside, I refuse to believe that many teachers in the public education system are just doing the bare minimum. I am sure that there are some, but I doubt the number is any higher today than it was when I was in school. I am also sure that there are some schools and school districts that are substandard, but again, I'm not sure that the number of those is any higher than it was 30 years ago either.


Curriculum is different nowadays than it used to be - tools for learning nowadays are much different - helllooooo library and encyclopedia vs. the internet... and yet students still get out of school without being able to read or balance a checkbook or even fkn make change for money without a calculator. The parts of our society that value intelligence and education so little need to be made aware of the fact that they are holding our nation back and that it will not be tolerated any longer.

One thing I do believe though is that American public education is almost unfixable in its present manifestation. It needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.

 

-----signature-----

I don't disagree. What we should be doing is making sure more schools with X parents are doing the best they can. Not trying to make schools with X parents get results like schools with Y parents.


It should be possible to look at the good performing schools with X parents and figures out what makes them good compared to the bad ones. It presumably is not just union contracts because those are the same at pretty much every public school and yet there are substantial differences between schools in the results they get.

There's another really good documentary about education:


Waiting for Superman

 

-----signature-----

As I said from the start, one of the most important things is to stop blaming the parent or the kid.


Seriously it is absolutely critical that the child and the parent doesn't become a scapegoat. This results in people ignoring the problems with the school or the curriculum or the teacher or whatever.

 

-----signature-----

It isn't about blame. It's about being realistic.


Kids with X parents are different than kids with Y parents. If you ignore that difference you will get bad results. Our basic educational policy for the last 30 years or so has been to ignore those differences and demand everyone perform equally well. That's stupid and counterproductive.


I agree blaming the kids and parents is counterproductive. What needs to happen is policy makerse need to appreciate the impact parents have on the education of their kids and not ignore it and then do what you can with the cards you are dealt. Public schools can certainly do a better job with the marginal kids they get. But they arn't going to do it by trying to treat everyone like they have engaged parents and a home environment conducive to education.

There is a huge tendency to draw the lines between the haves and the have-nots and to draw the lines along racial lines, with the intention of course of taking the argument into the realm of how white people keep brown people down, going all the way back to education, but at a point, one has to take into account certain social paradigms that are internally created by the cultures involved. One cultural issue is disdain for education.

 

-----signature-----

So what do you suggest as a solution?

 

-----signature-----

I think that cultural issue (disdain for education) is in fact cultural and not just divided along racial lines.

Unless you are about to tell me all the stupid dumb effers here on the outpost are all black...

 

-----signature-----