Middle school, and education generally

[notasfatasmike]

Originally Posted by Elminster_Amaur

*snip*

And then the poor have an even *harder* time getting an education than they do now, further increasing the economic divide between rich and poor. That sounds like a GREAT plan.

And please, spare me the "market-forces-will-keep-prices-low-enough-to-make-that-irrelevant" spiel that is inevitably coming. I don't buy it, because it's not borne out by history.

[Elminster_Amaur]

And then the poor have an even *harder* time getting an education than they do now, further increasing the economic divide between rich and poor. That sounds like a GREAT plan.

And please, spare me the "market-forces-will-keep-prices-low-enough-to-make-that-irrelevant" spiel that is inevitably coming. I don't buy it, because it's not borne out by history.

Yes, CLEARLY the socialistic education system that we're using now is working for us. That's why we're discussing how wonderful it is, right?

[notasfatasmike]

Originally Posted by Elminster_Amaur

Yes, CLEARLY the socialistic education system that we're using now is working for us. That's why we're discussing how wonderful it is, right?

It's not perfect, but you're basically suggesting we throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are lots of things that do need to be changed about our schools, but privatising them isn't going to fix anything but make it harder for people with less money to get a good education. Yeah, the schools for the rich folk would probably be better, but I'd be willing to be the schools the average-to-lower income family could afford would be a fair sight worse than what we have now. Which, in fact, doesn't change the situation at all: you still have a large cross-section of the populace getting a less-than-optimal education.

The problem is with the structure, not the funding. (OK, maybe the level of funding is a problem, but that would be adding another level to the debate, and I don't know if we feel like going there.)

[Elminster_Amaur]

The "baby with the bathwater" doesn't really apply in this case, because our school systems are fully-grown monstrosities. We've been moving closer and closer to a fully socialistic school system, for a very long time now, and from what I'm seeing, adults are becoming less and less content with their lives, and more unfulfilled as a result. I mean, sure, the system has it's benefits. I'm not sure those low income areas could afford babysitters of the caliber the state is paying for! But the problem isn't something that can be covered up with tests, or even more government funding for the lower income area schools. The problem is a completely flawed education system. If you're going to make a socialistic education system, at least do it right.

A proper socialistically based education system should give equally low funding for everyone, and have much higher standards for the standardized tests. I mean, look at China. They are communist. They have a great school system, even if it is lacking in the creativity department. That's why they send their graduate level students over here to learn. Our universities are great for teaching how to think creatively, while their entire school system is excellent at teaching Math, Science and Arts (History is probably not so great there).

When it comes to this, a middle of the road solution never works, because you're not completely committed. I mean take your own statement for example:

Originally Posted by notasfat

And please, spare me the "market-forces-will-keep-prices-low-enough-to-make-that-irrelevant" spiel that is inevitably coming. I don't buy it, because it's not borne out by history.

If the market forces won't keep the prices low enough, why have the schools compete with each other over government funding at all?

[P-Sleazy]

Comming from someone who is looking at being a teacher, I just got out of my VERY first education class, I'm dissappointed with how schools, and to some extent teachers, gear us towards passing that exit exam. When has anything on that exit exam helped us in real life? never. Does it apply to life? Alot more than you'd think. when do they teach us how it APPLIES to life? Never (or very close to it).

I want to teach kids math, and then have them apply it. Teach them how to do thier taxes. Probability in gambling. Maybe teach them something that can help you decide what you want to do when you grow up like Accounting, or teaching, Financing, or some other specific related course. None of this generalized crap of Math tech 1-4, calculus, algebra. Ok I took these courses. Now how do I use them in life? I was never told how to use these skills in life. My statistics teacher, showed us how everything we did could be applied in life, whether it was gambling, and well...really gambling for the most part, but he did some cool things with experiments (how they work and even had us do an experiment and design them and all that jazz) and birds and penguins and stuff.

Simply put, What I want schools to start doing, once you reach someplace like middle School or in my case high school (since thats what I'm looking at teaching), is to start teaching us how to apply what we learn in class to life. My English proffessor last semester brought up to us that what we learn in there may seem pointless now, but he made the point that what he's doing is keeping us from being babied through the class. That we do everything on our own. And I find truth in this, that we have our "hands held" all through your primary school and secondary school career. Its something my teaching professor touched on today as well.

Ok, so I ranted a little there. But I'm pretty sure that most of that is what I mean.

[Lord of Joshelplex]

I really dislike the school system. Speakinf from the point of view of a high school student, there is simply no room for average kids. Really, you have to be in the AP progrmas to get the minimum adequate education. I have taken the AP program, and I dont consider myslef of that intelligence level. I have a 75% average, and have completely screwed myslef for education after high school. Marks like that simply don't suffice, you basically need to be incredibly intelligent (90% average) or be able to get a sports scholarship, or don't even bother trying. The school system needs to better preare us for life after high school, as not many of us make it to university anymore.

[Elminster_Amaur]

you basically need to be incredibly intelligent (90% average)

I take offense to that. Not every intelligent person is going to get a 90% average in schools, and I'll tell you why I know that.

See, when I was in public school, I was well above the curve, 100% on almost everything, up until the point that I hit about 7th grade. This is because I began to realize that my teachers were either stupid (one tried to tell the class that the moon revolves around the sun), or were teaching to the least intelligent students in the class. So, I stopped paying attention. Completely ignored everything, because there was no reason to do work that was made for the purpose of giving the teacher a chance to do absolutely nothing in class. This continued until, oh, wait, I'm in college and still have that attitude. I didn't have a 90% average in high school, I had a 3.6 WEIGHTED GPA and about 3.2 unweighted. That means that my honors and AP courses were bringing my GPA up, which is completely opposite of most "normal" people. So, no, intelligence is NOT based upon school grades. In fact, I believe that our current school system makes people dumber, and more submissive to authority. Also, this is just for you, Joshelplex, since intelligence is not based upon grades, how would grades be based upon intelligence? They aren't. Grades may be important for getting into a good college, but other than that, in high school, grades are more a measure of how well you do menial tasks (ie crossword puzzles) than how well you know the information.

However, of all the standardized tests that I've ever taken, the AP exams did the best job of measuring how well you had absorbed the required information. Any test that combines multiple choice, short answer AND essay/long answer and counts them nearly equally is good.

I will define intelligence for you so that you understand your mistake now:
Intelligence - the measure of how quickly a person learns.

Intelligence is the end all and be all. Plenty of people who asked me for help learning things in high school went on to FAR more prestigious Universities and jobs than I did, because intelligence doesn't indicate your willingness to do work, or your ability to overcome obstacles.

Intelligence is by far my biggest disadvantage.
#1 cause of laziness.

Edit:

Originally Posted by Me

(one tried to tell the class that the moon revolves around the sun)

Just thought I'd clarify this statement, because it looks a little vague. That teacher told the class that the moon revolves around the sun and the earth revolves around both of them. Yeah. What a moron. Especially for a science teacher.

[Lord of Joshelplex]

Originally Posted by Elminster_Amaur

I take offense to that. Not every intelligent person is going to get a 90% average in schools, and I'll tell you why I know that.

See, when I was in public school, I was well above the curve, 100% on almost everything, up until the point that I hit about 7th grade. This is because I began to realize that my teachers were either stupid (one tried to tell the class that the moon revolves around the sun), or were teaching to the least intelligent students in the class. So, I stopped paying attention. Completely ignored everything, because there was no reason to do work that was made for the purpose of giving the teacher a chance to do absolutely nothing in class. This continued until, oh, wait, I'm in college and still have that attitude. I didn't have a 90% average in high school, I had a 3.6 WEIGHTED GPA and about 3.2 unweighted. That means that my honors and AP courses were bringing my GPA up, which is completely opposite of most "normal" people. So, no, intelligence is NOT based upon school grades. In fact, I believe that our current school system makes people dumber, and more submissive to authority. Also, this is just for you, Joshelplex, since intelligence is not based upon grades, how would grades be based upon intelligence? They aren't. Grades may be important for getting into a good college, but other than that, in high school, grades are more a measure of how well you do menial tasks (ie crossword puzzles) than how well you know the information.

However, of all the standardized tests that I've ever taken, the AP exams did the best job of measuring how well you had absorbed the required information. Any test that combines multiple choice, short answer AND essay/long answer and counts them nearly equally is good.

I will define intelligence for you so that you understand your mistake now:
Intelligence - the measure of how quickly a person learns.

Intelligence is the end all and be all. Plenty of people who asked me for help learning things in high school went on to FAR more prestigious Universities and jobs than I did, because intelligence doesn't indicate your willingness to do work, or your ability to overcome obstacles.

Intelligence is by far my biggest disadvantage.
#1 cause of laziness.

Edit:
Just thought I'd clarify this statement, because it looks a little vague. That teacher told the class that the moon revolves around the sun and the earth revolves around both of them. Yeah. What a moron. Especially for a science teacher.

Certyainly not that way my parents have been raising me. I am under the impression I am stupid and useless with 70% and people with 90% are smart and will become something. I have been told I will never make it into any university in North America with a 70% because they only want intelligent people.

[Fifthfiend]

Originally Posted by Elminster_Amaur

I think that the real solution would be privatizing all schools, so that there is no more insane government interference where they have no clue what they're doing.

If everything were privatized, the schools would have to actually compete with each other based on the level of the student's learning upon graduation, instead of based on silly tests like the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT. The government could still fund certain schools, hopefully those not in rich neighborhoods, but it'd be preferrable if entrepreneurs would take over the schools and provide most of the funding, hoping that they could get all the smart and creative people from their privately owned school(s) working to make them more money.

So you're proposing... what, exactly? Private education subsidized via indentured servitude?

Anyway, if you're wondering how for-profit education actually works out in the real world well, just for starters there's this:

For-Profit U.S. Schools Sell Off Their Textbooks

Students already have to worry about exams, essay deadlines and staying awake through math class. In Philadelphia, they have a new worry: What if your school becomes a victim of the stock market meltdown?

Facing an educational crisis last year, the city handed 20 of its worst-off high schools, in some of the most abject slums in the country, to a private, for-profit company called Edison Schools Inc. Now, those institutions appear to be going the way of Enron, Tyco and WorldCom.

Edison, a high-flying firm that was the first school-management company traded on a stock exchange, promised to provide computers, books and new curriculums, and to raise test scores. In exchange, the school board would give the company $881 (U.S.) a student.

Then came the crash. Over the summer, Edison's shares slid from the year's high of $21.68 to less than a dollar on the Nasdaq Stock Market. (The company traded yesterday at about 50 cents.)

In the classroom, this has had some bizarre effects.

Days before classes were to begin in September, trucks arrived to take away most of the textbooks, computers, lab supplies and musical instruments the company had provided -- Edison had to sell them off for cash. Many students were left with decades-old books and no equipment.

A few weeks later, some of the company's executives moved into offices inside the schools so Edison could avoid paying the $8,750 monthly rent on its Philadelphia headquarters. They stayed only a few days, until the school board ordered them out.

As a final humiliation, Chris Whittle, the company's charismatic chief executive and founder, recently told a meeting of school principals that he'd thought up an ingenious solution to the company's financial woes: Take advantage of the free supply of child labor, and force each student to work an hour a day, presumably without pay, in the school offices.

"We could have less adult staff," Mr. Whittle reportedly said at a summit for employees and principals in Colorado Springs. "I think it's an important concept for education and economics." In a school with 600 students, he said, this unpaid work would be the equivalent of "75 adults" on salary.

Although Mr. Whittle said he could have the child-labor plan in place by 2004, school board officials were quick to say they would have nothing to do with the proposal.

Mr. Whittle's past ventures included buying Esquire magazine in the 1970s and introducing Channel One, a commercial-sponsored educational television system, into public schools in the 1980s.

But now he appears to have fallen on hard times, and has put up for sale his 4½-hectare estate in New York's Hamptons. The home, which was listed for $46-million, has eight bedrooms, a gym, an elevator, a pool, tennis and basketball courts, and guest house.

Edison operates 150 schools in 23 states, but Philadelphia is its largest and most visible challenge. Last year, the school board picked the 45 worst-managed schools and announced that it would privatize them. At first, Edison was to take control of them all; later, in the face of political protests, 25 of the schools were put into the hands of non-profit school companies.

Edison officials were unable to implement some of their more innovative educational policies, including longer school days and years, because of Philadelphia's unions and low budgets.

School board officials in Philadelphia are now debating their options. "We want to make sure they have the financial resources to sustain [the schools] through the school year," said Paul Vallas, the board's chief executive.

Mr. Vallas has taken a tough disciplinary stand with the company, withholding a $5-million payment to Edison this fall because the company was seven weeks late delivering its financial statements.

Edison executives say the company is sound, and that its schools will begin showing educational improvements.

"We are not going bankrupt. There is no threat of bankruptcy. It is simply, flatly not true," Edison president Chris Cert told Michigan school board officials last week.

Mr. Whittle has predicted a profit of $20-million this year and announced Monday he intends to buy back 5.4 million of his company's shares, or 10 per cent.

He also said that 84 per cent of his schools have seen "increased student performance," against 8 per cent registering declines. Test-score results for the Philadelphia schools are not yet available.

I mean sure it's a great idea, if cannibalizing schoolrooms for office space, selling off resources for profit, and instituting mandatory child labor are what you would consider a good idea.

Education is pretty much the ultimate example of a public good; costs are borne by the institution

[Elminster_Amaur]

Why not fifth? That's what goes on anyway. I mean, you start working for a company after high school and they pay for your college under certain conditions? That sounds like the same thing to me. I'll take it even farther. The only way a physicist can do the experimentation that they want is to be either incredibly rich, or become a professor at a University. They get to use the labs for their research, in exchange they have to work for the school. This kind of deal is normal in today's society. Why not make primary and secondary education like that too? The companies would have FAR more incentive to give the students a good education than the government does. After all, when the common man is well educated, there's less need for government controls.