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It's not the survival of the fittest -- it's the survival of those lucky enough to be born into the right circumstances in life. I suppose that's a sort of "fittest", although those people are not necessarily the "best" (morally, intellectually, or by any other standard); who knows what other talent is out there, and deserves to be nurtured? Or kids who might be perfectly average, but still need a fair shot? In theory, anyway, our American society still believes in equality and not a caste system, but I think everyone will agree that our students are not provided with equal educational opportunities. I'm certainly not going to pin the blame on any one group of people or even "the system", although I think there's a lot of both big and small changes that could make things work better for more people.
You are right and it's going to stay that way. You can bet your bottom dollar I will give my children the benefit I worked hard for them to have. Yes, that makes them lucky but I have the right to give my children a better future than I had if I have the means. I made it farther than my parents and I hope my kids make it farther than me. Yes they were born with one foot in the stirrup but so were a lot of people I competed with. That's just the way it is. We all try to pass on advantages to our children.
Schools do not exist to nuture talents. That's something individuals do or parents do. As I'm typing this, I'm listing to dd practice for her piano lesson tomorrow. Did I give her a leg up with $45/hr piano lessons all these years? You bet your bottom dollar and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. If you sit around and wait for the schools to nurture talent, you'll be waiting a long time. That's just an excuse for being too lazy to go do something.
You are right and it's going to stay that way. You can bet your bottom dollar I will give my children the benefit I worked hard for them to have. Yes, that makes them lucky but I have the right to give my children a better future than I had if I have the means. I made it farther than my parents and I hope my kids make it farther than me. Yes they were born with one foot in the stirrup but so were a lot of people I competed with. That's just the way it is. We all try to pass on advantages to our children.
Schools do not exist to nuture talents. That's something individuals do or parents do. As I'm typing this, I'm listing to dd practice for her piano lesson tomorrow. Did I give her a leg up with $45/hr piano lessons all these years? You bet your bottom dollar and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. If you sit around and wait for the schools to nurture talent, you'll be waiting a long time. That's just an excuse for being too lazy to go do something.
But that is exactly what they want. Home life and parent responsibility don't count anymore ? Is it 100% up to the schools to do everything for a student ?
And what happens when they leave that nanny-state K-12 and enter college ? College doesn't play by the K-12 games. It's sink or swim in college. And when the local CC has more remedial math/English classes then college level entry math/English classes that should speak volumes.
At grades 6-12 the gloves should come off. Pass or retake or summer school. No social passing, no easy-peasy extra credit to make that passing grade that you really didn't earn. Many schools are too worried about getting their $$$ per child promoted than whether or not that child earned the promotion.
I don't expect that all kids should have equal opportunities OUTSIDE of school, but I think it's reasonable to at least hope -- and do our best to achieve -- that in the actual schools themselves kids have an equal opportunity to educational opportunities. That's not the case in modern America.
A system of "haves" will work just fine. I'm not talking "haves" as in everyone has the best job, but rather a society in which everyone has food to eat, clean water to drink, access to decent health care, a roof over their head. These are basics here, but to get them you generally need to have had a basic education. And since this is a democracy, I think that for it to work you also need to make sure that its citizens have the basic tools to keep it functioning.
And by "nurture talent" I meant the thing that schools SHOULD do -- teachers teach, don't they? If some kid has a talent for, say, physics, I expect that the school will offer a decent physics class and the kid will at least have the opportunity to learn some basic physics and to realize that he or she wants to pursue it at a later point. Not all kids in today's schools are getting access to anything approaching a quality education, and yeah, I do think that's wrong.
On this, or maybe it was another thread, someone said something about many posters on this forum writing almost exclusively about kids who go to schools that are at least okay, in communities where most of the kids are getting at least their minimum needs met. You're forgetting about those schools where things aren't anywhere near equal, where even those kids who are willing and able to learn don't have anywhere near the in-school opportunities that their wealthier peers in nearby districts have. You might think this is just fine and the way things should work -- after all, there are always going to be poor people -- but I think it's immoral and unethical to just throw entire communities of kids under the bus just because we can't even begin to imagine (or worse, don't want) a society in which all kids can read, have the basic skills to lead a decent life, and not have their path to a future filled with poverty and related issues laid out from the start. Sure, some kids overcome those odds, but it's tough. And, even if one doesn't have any moral qualms about it, for purely selfish reasons I also prefer that kids go to school and graduate able and willing to enter society as responsible adults. It costs society a great deal, financially and otherwise, to have such a large -- and expanding -- class of people whose "have nots" go far, far, far beyond just not having piano lessons.
I don't expect that all kids should have equal opportunities OUTSIDE of school, but I think it's reasonable to at least hope -- and do our best to achieve -- that in the actual schools themselves kids have an equal opportunity to educational opportunities. That's not the case in modern America.
A system of "haves" will work just fine. I'm not talking "haves" as in everyone has the best job, but rather a society in which everyone has food to eat, clean water to drink, access to decent health care, a roof over their head. These are basics here, but to get them you generally need to have had a basic education. And since this is a democracy, I think that for it to work you also need to make sure that its citizens have the basic tools to keep it functioning.
And by "nurture talent" I meant the thing that schools SHOULD do -- teachers teach, don't they? If some kid has a talent for, say, physics, I expect that the school will offer a decent physics class and the kid will at least have the opportunity to learn some basic physics and to realize that he or she wants to pursue it at a later point. Not all kids in today's schools are getting access to anything approaching a quality education, and yeah, I do think that's wrong.
On this, or maybe it was another thread, someone said something about many posters on this forum writing almost exclusively about kids who go to schools that are at least okay, in communities where most of the kids are getting at least their minimum needs met. You're forgetting about those schools where things aren't anywhere near equal, where even those kids who are willing and able to learn don't have anywhere near the in-school opportunities that their wealthier peers in nearby districts have. You might think this is just fine and the way things should work -- after all, there are always going to be poor people -- but I think it's immoral and unethical to just throw entire communities of kids under the bus just because we can't even begin to imagine (or worse, don't want) a society in which all kids can read, have the basic skills to lead a decent life, and not have their path to a future filled with poverty and related issues laid out from the start. Sure, some kids overcome those odds, but it's tough. And, even if one doesn't have any moral qualms about it, for purely selfish reasons I also prefer that kids go to school and graduate able and willing to enter society as responsible adults. It costs society a great deal, financially and otherwise, to have such a large -- and expanding -- class of people whose "have nots" go far, far, far beyond just not having piano lessons.
I disagree. The other kids who attend school with my childre have just as much education offered to them. It is their home lives and ability that determine whether or not they take it. It's there for the taking and anyone can take it. What the system doesn't do is attempt to even the playing field.
Bold italics: THAT is the goal of schools. To educate the population to a reasonable standard. Not to an individual standard and NOT to make up for what you weren't born with. While education helps, it does not even the playing field. The field will always have people who were just born lucky. Lucky WRT who their parents are or lucky WRT genetic abilities. Yes, some will rise above whatever obstacle is placed in front of them. They have the ability to do so and they choose to do so. Those who don't have that ability or choose not to act on it if they do are on thier own.
The problem is that each school district has to offer what their students need. They need to do what serves the greatest number of students. In an inner city school with kids from poor neighborhoods, that's, likely, remedial math and reading not physics. Each district is allocated money from the state to pay for classroom instruction and each district has to decide how to best spend it. If something is not offered, that is something parents need to take up with the school district.
Why stop at physics? Why not sculpture, underwater basket weaving, swimming, diving, golf, interpretive dance, web page design, computer gaming....or any other thing any student might decide they're good at? Each school decides what to offer for a reason. Most schools are not in position to offer everything and must choose what to leave out. My daughters attend different districts. One takes a swimming class for PE, the other can't because the school doesn't have a pool. The district with the pool in the high school is much larger so things like having a pool aren't such a burden.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 12-03-2010 at 11:20 PM..
I'd say education in the USA is doing exactly what it is intended to do. It's purpose is not to make intelligent, independent and creative critical thinkers, it's to make lots of "worker bees".
The Man needs cashiers, burger flippers, shelf stockers and the occasional repair man or lawyer, not people who have the ability or will to challenge the established system.
That is why school involves long hours doing mindless repetitive tasks under the direction of an authority figure. If you train 'em while they are young, they will easily stomach it when they are adults.
I'm suprised the internet hasn't started to bang this theory/ideology away.
Maybe in 1952 it worked. In a very enclosed system. You had what, 3 tv stations? Limited radio. Limited media and newspaper. If you're in a school house in the middle of Iowa, it can work. But how can it work now, in an "open", sort of open source society?
It seems like information from the outside world would seep in, into the enclosed school bubble.
I'm suprised the internet hasn't started to bang this theory/ideology away.
Maybe in 1952 it worked. In a very enclosed system. You had what, 3 tv stations? Limited radio. Limited media and newspaper. If you're in a school house in the middle of Iowa, it can work. But how can it work now, in an "open", sort of open source society?
It seems like information from the outside world would seep in, into the enclosed school bubble.
You are operating on the misconception that people are, intrinsically, motivated to learn. My experience is that most just want to do the minimum to get the best outcome.
You are correct. The information is right there in front of them. They choose not to look it up or if they do, they choose not to act on it. Some people are just more comfortable being told what to do.
Interesting, but the real problem is that we keep throwing more and more money into education without the slightest idea of what constitutes a good education, and how to efficiently provide that to the students that can benefit from it (not all will, and we shouldn't be so focused on them to the exclusion of high achievers).
Our society is so in love with children that we think we have to approve EVERY penny the schools ask for. The schools then create huge bureaucracies of extremely well-compensated non-teachers, and spend $70 million to build a Taj Mahal High School with creative architecture. Then we wonder why education is so lacking, and so misguided.
Our educational system is not failing, but this fear-mongering narrative makes people think it is.
Those who want to learn and embrace high-educational achievement have an abundance of options. Those who do not want to learn are not a reflection of the failure of the system.
You are operating on the misconception that people are, intrinsically, motivated to learn. My experience is that most just want to do the minimum to get the best outcome.
You are correct. The information is right there in front of them. They choose not to look it up or if they do, they choose not to act on it. Some people are just more comfortable being told what to do.
I think people are intrinsically motivated to better themselves. Did you have relatives that came from overseas 100 years ago, because..."America was great"? There's some minimum level of motivation to learn.
But think about the difference between living in 1952 in a small town, vs now (and the amount of information available to you). I was just on amazons site, and they say the kindle is the number one most wanted item for the holidays, etc. Information now is as free flowing as electricity use to be. Say, when electricity was first introduced.
Another reason why we're failing. This incredible dearth of foreign information. I think the rest of the world could turn purple for 2 years, but you'd never know it reading American textbooks.
China passenger train hits 300 mph, breaks record - Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101203/ap_on_hi_te/as_china_high_speed_rail#mwpphu-container - broken link)
What do American kids learn about China these days? Anything? It's embarrassing. Look at the implications in just this one news article.
-A chinese passenger train hit a record speed of 302 mph on friday. What's the implication to that? What does that mean to the Chinese economy?
-Do students realize that this is what the United States use to do? We use to set records, build dams, and build worldclass infrastructure. We use to have the money for it. In the same batch of news, we added a pathetic 39,000 jobs for the month of november.
Job growth weak for Nov. in setback for economy - Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101203/ap_on_bi_go_ec_fi/us_economy - broken link)
You don't need to be "bright" in econ to understand this. Much of "school" overcomplicates and politicizes the obvious. Who's going to win the economic race over 10 or 20 years? Country A that invests in their infrastructure and sets records. Or Country B that tries to "stimulate" its way to growth. Would you like to take a highspeed train to the next state to get a better job?
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