We need to completely scrap and change our nations education system. (community college, degrees)

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by Chinolala

After watching a documentary on the education system in China, I agree even more. High school kids go to school 7 days a week and get a 4 week break.

Watching documentaries can be informative, but they do present things from one point of view. Personally, I never heard that the Chinese educational system is one to emulate.

Originally Posted by Humanoid

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In general private schools are better, who would pay to go to one instead of a public if they weren't?

Many people feel their kids are getting a better education b/c they are paying for it. Some want their kids to go to a school of a particular religious body. Some want a school with a particular educational philosophy, such as Montessori or Waldorf. There are many reasons people send their kids to private schools.

[Humanoid]

YOU made the comparison between public and private.

I already explained this.

If the current private schools, market driven as they are, are not better than the public schools, then what is it, exactly, that you think privatization is going to accomplish?

I've already responded to this line, there aren't many general purpose private schools for your average income families. The current private schools are niche schools, such a general purpose private school can't survive due to the existence of public schools.

If you have no standards of your own for what constitutes a " better" school, then how can you argue that privatization will improve them?

I never said I have "no standards of my own", I said I have no interest in debating the relative merits of a bunch of snobby grade schools.

You have already admitted you know nothing about the individual schools!

I know about many of the schools you mentioned, even the ones on the east coast. They are indeed, rather snobby. So is Princeton, Yale etc etc.

Regardless, obviously what I said before was vague. I have since then stated many times what my claims are, why you are still betting a dead horse is beyond me.

[Huckleberry3911948]

voucher system, the sooner the better. public school system, kill the monster.
political beast of the privileged.

[jps-teacher]

Originally Posted by Humanoid

I never said I have "no standards of my own", I said I have no interest in debating the relative merits of a bunch of snobby grade schools.

I know about many of the schools you mentioned, even the ones on the east coast. They are indeed, rather snobby. So is Princeton, Yale etc etc.

Oh, you do? That's odd. I could have sworn you said:

The only thing I can base matters on is general rankings of these schools, I don't have first hand experience with these schools as I've never spent a lot of time on the east coast.

Given that, it's pretty wry that you now claim to "know about many of the schools." You know 'about' Exeter, except that you didn't know that kids from most middle and lower class families can afford to go there. Just a small technicality.

Insisting that you don't want to discuss the individual schools and then denigrating them... *shakes head*

You know none of the public schools I named on the west coast, I would wager, let alone whether they are or are not snobby - not even by reputation, I suspect. Maybe Cate.

Calling the Milton Hershey school snobby is the height of absurdity.

Out of curiosity, which "general ranking" system are you using to come to these deep and profound conclusions about these 'grade' schools about which you, personally, know nothing?
*******

Looking at your quote above, you observed that you "never said" that you have no standards of your own. Let's try again, then...

What makes a school good in your opinion? How would you determine if your grand experiment succeeded?

While you are "not interested" in public vs. private, you refer to some schools as better. What constitutes a better school, generally speaking?

Oh - finally, as to why I am "betting" a dead horse...

It's because you keep making statements that you either do not define or cannot support factually. To whit:

Originally Posted by Humanoid

there aren't many general purpose private schools for your average income families.

How many is "many?"

[cpg35223]

Boy, did you ever hit my hot button.

Burn the entire stinking, festering, Rube Goldberg mess down to the waterline and start all over.

Why? Because the American Educational System is a grotesquely expensive failure. Americans spend far more per student today than any other industrialized country, yet the product that comes off the assembly line is inferior to almost any other industrialized country. Why? Several reasons.

1) Schools are designed along the lines of 18th-Century Textile Mills. Here we are, in an age of ubiquitous knowledge, where four words typed into a search engine can yield an incredible trove of information on almost any subject. Software can be designed to teach almost any subject in a involving way. Yet, the way the curriculum is designed, children must march in lockstep from Kindergarten through 12th Grade, the smart learning at exactly the same pace as the stupid, those with initiative having to mark time at exactly the same pace as the lazy.

Why can't children move through the educational program based on mastery of material, rather than by spending an arbitrary number of days in a desk according to some bureaucrat's whim? Do this, and I bet you'll have literally millions of kids graduating high school at the age of 14-15, all because they have a tangible incentive to actually learn. What's more, they will probably have done a far better job learning along the way.

2) Not everybody is going to college. Heck, most people won't go to college. When a kid hits 14 and doesn't show academic promise, why not give him/her the option to learn a trade such as plumbing, electrical work, or any number of other well-paying professions? Instead, in the average 11th and 12th grade English class, you have 25% of the students actually interested in the books they're reading, while the rest will stay up the night before reading the Cliff's Notes.

3) Stop using the schools for socialization. Drug education, sex education, education on bullying, education on the environment, drivers' ed, mainstreaming you name it. Every time some social problem occurs in our society, some hack politician stands up and proposes that the schools take care of the problem, rather than the parents. Heck, the schools can't teach basic English grammar at this point. How in the world are they going to convince kids to not smoke dope? Instead, concentrate on the core curriculum, and make the rest of it parental responsibility.

4) If a child is a discipline problem, it shouldn't have to be the school's problem. If a kid is a constant disruptive influence, KICK THEM OUT. Make it the parent's problem. Stop forcing the schools to take kids who refuse to learn, thereby making it more difficult for the ones who want to learn.

5) De-Emphasize sports. Hey, I played sports. But I also recognize that high school sports have become the tail that wags the dog. When you make sports the central source of pride in a school, you inevitably downplay everything else.

[Humanoid]

Oh, you do? That's odd. I could have sworn you said:

There is no contradiction. I know about many of the schools you mentioned, but not all. Also, simply knowing a bit about the schools does not qualify me to comment about their relative educational strengths vs other schools. Get it?

But its clear you are more interested in trying to take apart my comments than looking at the actual issue. This is a forum, people are going to say things that are vague, badly worded etc. So, I will say it again. I claim that you can improve the education system by privatizing it or at the very least remove the various ways the current system distort the free markets. I have no interesting in going into an endless diatribe about my point of view in this thread. If you don't agree, well good for you. You are free to state what you think would improve matters.

[jps-teacher]

There was a contradiction. I freely grant that it can come from "things that are vague, badly worded etc."

Originally Posted by Humanoid

"simply knowing a bit about the schools does not qualify me to comment about their relative educational strengths vs other schools."

So, I asked which general rankings you were going by. No answer. I asked what you meant generally by "better" and got no answer to that, either. I asked what your standards are. More silence.

And while your knowledge doesn't let you discuss their relative educational strengths, it lets you discuss their relative snobbery? Bizarre.

Originally Posted by Humanoid

"more interested in trying to take apart my comments"

"improve the education system by privatizing it or at the very least remove the various ways the current system distort the free markets."

Actually, I was interested in understanding the basis for your comments, not taking them apart.

I get that you think that privatizing the system would improve it. You have repeated that sufficiently that even I get it.

What you have not successfully communicated is:

1) What would constitute such an improvement? That is, besides the theoretical miracle benefits of a free market approach, what would be different in these schools?

2) What makes one school better than another? How would you determine the degree of success (or failure) of your experiment?

3) Granting that the current system distorts the market, you've not explained what there is of a free market does not succeed in creating private schools that are far and away better than the best the public can create.

We have private boarding schools. We have public boarding schools. We have private day schools and public day schools. When both are at their most selective, the results are similar. When they are at their least selective, they are often similar, as well.

If throwing endless money does not result in a vastly improved school, then why would the far more limited version of it - a privatized system - do better?
****************

These are questions I have asked, one way or another, previously.

They are not saying "Humanoid, you are wrong and you talk funny, too!" Nor are they seeking "an endless diatribe."

They are asking for a) support for your position on a factual basis rather than with vague imprecations, and b) what success would look like and how we would know if we got it.

Somehow, I don't think those are unreasonable things to ask for of any proposed experiment or its advocate.
************

More in a bit.

[jps-teacher]

Let's assume, for the sake of the discussion, that we actually have the power to implement change in our educational system in one or another of the ways mentioned by folks above.

Where do we start with the changes? How do we begin?

Plans such as vouchers and charters are relatively easy, but also seem wholly inadequate for the level of change that many folks in this thread are advocating.

Would you just shut the current schools down, given your druthers, and then wait to see what springs up (for those advocating free market revolution, for example)? Unlike even major curricular change, it can't be phased in year by year, in my imagining of it.

If you advocate major curricular change, would you replace all 12 years at once or would you bring it into 1st grade the first year, 1st and 2nd the second, etc.?

If the first, how would your curriculum for the older students address their not having had the new approach for most of their academic careers? Would there be a transitional curriculum for those students, while the full new system came along more slowly? Or would you, in phasing things in, simply let the remnants of the older system go along like dinosaurs in their soon-to-be extinct studies?

How would colleges be able to assess the new systems, in terms of readiness of potential students and comparisons between and among them? What role, if any, for standardized tests - within a state or national, like the SAT and ACT?

[Humanoid]

What you have not successfully communicated is:

I had no intention of giving a lengthy analysis of my claim, nor do I now.

Plans such as vouchers and charters are relatively easy

A true voucher system would undermine the entire education system, so it is only from a technical point that it is easy to implement.

Anyhow, you would privatize the schools in much the way you'd privatize any other industry that was previously nationalized. You sell the assets to the highest bidder, once sold the private company will take over operations. Things would not change the minute they purchased the school, they would run things as usual and slowly implement improvements.

[jps-teacher]

Originally Posted by Humanoid

I had no intention of giving a lengthy analysis of my claim, nor do I now.

Or a short one.

Originally Posted by Humanoid

A true voucher system would undermine the entire education system, so it is only from a technical point that it is easy to implement.

I agree.

Originally Posted by Humanoid

Anyhow, you would privatize the schools in much the way you'd privatize any other industry that was previously nationalized. You sell the assets to the highest bidder, once sold the private company will take over operations. Things would not change the minute they purchased the school, they would run things as usual and slowly implement improvements.

Thank you.

Having watched corporate for-profit nursing homes, personally I think this is a really bad idea.

But, it is certainly different.

Would you recommend it be done everywhere at once, or with trials in one city or a city and its suburbs?