On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 01:59:15PM -0400, Paul Stenquist wrote: > > On Apr 9, 2013, at 1:21 PM, Bill <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On 09/04/2013 7:43 AM, Paul Stenquist wrote: > > > > Why not just fix the public system instead? > > > We've been trying to fix the public school system for fifty years. School > reform without additional motivation just hasn't happened. Any discussion of > such a complex problem becomes overly simplified in a forum like this. But in > very general terms there are myriad reasons why public schools have continued > to fail, including powerful labor unions, politicians who depend on the labor > unions for votes, and school systems overburdened with administrators and > non-teaching personnel. To that add teacher education programs in the 1970s > and even into the '80s and '90s that ignored things like curriculum, > structure and discipline.
Because, simply put, the problem isn't the schools. The problem is at home. Children who come from families that put a high priority on education do well in school. If kids see their parents reading in their free time, they will consider reading a viable leisure time activity. If they see their parents watching TV, getting drunk etc. that's what they will consider normal. We live in a culture where people who excel at stick and ball games are worshipped as heros, where kids who speak properly, and do well in science and math are teased and taunted as socially awkward nerds and geeks. And, then we wonder why are schools are failing us. Complaining about school performance in our culture, is like complaining that you can't get decent photos because Pentax doesn't make a full frame body, when you haven't even learned the basics well enough to get the best performance out of the cameras they do make. See, I can drag this topic, kicking and screaming back to the topic of photography. The reason that kids in charter schools do better is simply because they have parents that care enough about their education to put them in what they perceive as better schools. Those kids would still do better than their peers in public schools. The biggest effect of charter schools, vouchers etc. is to separate the kids who have parents that care about their education from the ones who don't. > > I was a product of late sixties and early seventies teacher education. They > taught us that if we loved our students enough they would learn. They > didn't, and trying to teach in schools that were founded on those hazy > principles was like getting run over by a freight train. Our educational > system is only now beginning to recover from the mistakes of the past. But > there has to be motivation to do better. Without competition, there is not > sufficient motivation in many communities. > > Public schools will survive given the vested interest that a large portion of > the population has in their continued existence. Charters won't ever replace > them completely. It's doubtful that we'd ever get to 50% charters. But to > ensure survival, public schools will have to complete. They can no longer be > lazy and take their position for granted. And that's happening in a lot of > places. > > This discussion seems to assume that the existence of charter shoals and > voucher systems is up for debate. It's not. They're operating and, in many > places, succeeding. We still have much to learn about how they should be > regulated and on what basis they should be allowed to compete, but going back > to a schools system that is operated only by the government isn't going to > happen. That's history. > > -- > > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > > [email protected] > > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and > > follow the directions. > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
