The Anti-education movement

[Squishy Cheeks]

There's a flaw in your logic. Private schools cost about 1/2 to 2/3 as much as public schools. So, say your school district spends an average of $6000/year per student, and a voucher system was started that paid $4000/year per student. For every student that switched from public to private school, there'd be an extra $2000/year for the students who stayed in public school, plus the public school would be less crowded and you'd be sending a kid to a more successful private school.

Private school superiority is a myth. The teaching at a private school is higher quality since they can actually have an ability public schools don't have, the ability to reject students. If Public schools didn't have to educate even the stupidest of kids they'd be just as good as private schools.

[AnonCastillo]

Originally Posted by JADGuy

Private schools superiority is a myth. The teaching at a private school is higher quality since they can actually have an ability public schools don't have, the ability to reject students. If Public schools didn't have to educate even the stupidest of kids they'd be just as good as private schools.

Did you edit your post shortly after posting it? I swear it looked totally different when I read it, from what's showing up in the quote box now. Looks like you took out the part about my either being from a private school (was publicly schooled and hated it) or being a Republican (I hate most of them too). Anyway....

If public schools could reject students the way that private schools can, they'd be extremely unjust and unfair, because the parents of stupid children would still have to pay for other people's children to go to school, when their children were denied the use of the schools that they pay for. At least with private schools, you only pay for the school your child goes to.

Besides, that's only one of many factors that makes private schools better than public schools. Another one is that private schools actually have to teach things to students in order to get parents to pay to send them there. Public schools generally get more money when they're failing, so it's in a public school's best interests to do a poor job of educating children.

[Squishy Cheeks]

Funny. In my state if a school fails their funding get's pulled. The problem is public schools funding is tied to standardized test performance. So this means the teachers can only teach tested material, or lose their jobs do to lack of funds.

[Mental-Rectangle]

A lot of it just sounds like lame excuse after lame excuse.

Let's hear some then. I'm really eager to learn what the lame excuses in evolutionary theory are.

Besides, that's only one of many factors that makes private schools better than public schools. Another one is that private schools actually have to teach things to students in order to get parents to pay to send them there. Public schools generally get more money when they're failing, so it's in a public school's best interests to do a poor job of educating children.

How? Any extra funds a school gets will always go into pointless extracurricular programs or field trips. Never for improving teaching conditions or salaries. And as you said earlier, teachers generally get cut if their students aren't doing well.

I'd also like to know how we'd overcome particularity in private schools? They can grant scholarship benefits to certain groups. They can bias their material. And how do you solve the problem of impoverished families unable to send kids to private school? The initial fees for families have to cover the entire education (and often aren't refunded if a student gets dropped). They pay probably nothing for public schools, but their kids can still attend.

It's not a quick or easy fix, but a combination of public coordination and private funding could be a good mixed school system. You pay for your kid's education; he/she can choose a path of study to take; and the kids that don't go to school don't have to pay. The motivation for improving the system to reflect more advanced learning standards is always going to be tough, whether public or private. Dropping all the worst kids to compete with other schools isn't a good idea. Dropping all the teachers that don't perform well isn't a good idea (how do you know if it's the course, or the teacher, or the funding, or the students?) Choosing to send your kids to another system might work, if we broke it up into districts and kept the funding local, but again that shows preferance towards suburban areas, and reduces the ability for low-income urban areas to have good schools (perhaps gov't tax assistance for the most critical areas?) And then you have the problem of needing enough schools to be able to have them compete for enrollments, while at the same time being able to handle wide variations in the populations of students.

Basically: lassaiz-faire-everything might seem like a romantic obvious fix for all of our problems, but it comes with just as many complications as federal programs. In the end the mixed system always looks the best, but it's a matter of which parts of each system to use.

[Muffin Mage]

OF course, we could steal the old British system, where everyone takes the same path to eighth grade, then the defective students are shunted off into blue-collar training and the more intelligent ones are given schooling for whatever they wish.

[Lucas]

Let's hear some then. I'm really eager to learn what the lame excuses in evolutionary theory are.

the lightning + water = life? i don't see why creationism and evolution aren't reconciled, call god the creator of the divine spark in yon bacteria, and bam, you're theologically secure yet once again.

[Mental-Rectangle]

Lightning + Water makes hydrogen and oxygen gas sometimes, but not life. I think the leading hypothesis for the 'beginning' of life is a mudpool similar to those in Yellowstone, where RNA nucleotides can be naturally assembled and sheathed in a fatty membrane: the template for all cells. Diffusion just takes time; it doesn't need a god.

[AnonCastillo]

Originally Posted by Mental-Rectangle

How? Any extra funds a school gets will always go into pointless extracurricular programs or field trips. Never for improving teaching conditions or salaries. And as you said earlier, teachers generally get cut if their students aren't doing well.

Public schools that aren't doing well can usually either convince their community to raise taxes to pay for "improvements" (which, as you point out, rarely go towards actual improvement), or con either the state or federal government into giving them more money.
Even if your state government gives schools money based on performance, and even if the federal government gives money based on performance (as they're apparently starting to do with the NCLB act), it still doesn't help much, because the people running the school don't actually profit much off of it. Tying salaries specifically to student learning might help more, but then you've got to pay for a huge bureaucracy and standardized test programs (which aren't a very accurate gauge of in-class learning) to see which teachers are doing the best job, and it'd be difficult to make a really accurate system, so improving public education is pretty damn tricky at best.

Originally Posted by Mental-Rectangle

I'd also like to know how we'd overcome particularity in private schools? They can grant scholarship benefits to certain groups. They can bias their material. And how do you solve the problem of impoverished families unable to send kids to private school? The initial fees for families have to cover the entire education (and often aren't refunded if a student gets dropped). They pay probably nothing for public schools, but their kids can still attend.

Particularity only matters if there's no competition. Sure, one school may choose to only admit Catholics, but if there are non-Catholics in the town/city who are willing to pay for their kids' education, a non-Catholic school will open up to take their money.
Business segregation in the South didn't catch on until state governments began forcing businesses to segregate. The vast majority of businesses didn't care who was paying them, as long as they got paid. It wasn't until a bunch of "moralists" got into office and passed laws requiring segregation that businesses actually started segregating.

As for sending poor families to school, did you not notice my support of vouchers? Even without vouchers, there are already plenty of charity-run schools. I ddi volunteer work at one over the summer a couple years ago. My church helps fund a few of them.

Originally Posted by Mental-Rectangle

It's not a quick or easy fix, but a combination of public coordination and private funding could be a good mixed school system. You pay for your kid's education; he/she can choose a path of study to take; and the kids that don't go to school don't have to pay. The motivation for improving the system to reflect more advanced learning standards is always going to be tough, whether public or private. Dropping all the worst kids to compete with other schools isn't a good idea. Dropping all the teachers that don't perform well isn't a good idea (how do you know if it's the course, or the teacher, or the funding, or the students?) Choosing to send your kids to another system might work, if we broke it up into districts and kept the funding local, but again that shows preferance towards suburban areas, and reduces the ability for low-income urban areas to have good schools (perhaps gov't tax assistance for the most critical areas?) And then you have the problem of needing enough schools to be able to have them compete for enrollments, while at the same time being able to handle wide variations in the populations of students.

Public coordination with private funding is the worst idea I've ever heard. First of all, it still has the problem of poor students not being able to afford to go, since their parents would have to pay, while even the voucher system I've suggested doesn't have that. Second, it doesn't have competition, which is the main thing that causes private schools to excel over public schools. A publicly funded, privately coordinated system would actually let everyone, regardless of income level, attend school, while ensuring that parents had a choice over where to send their children, and ensuring that bad schools would get less money while better schools would get more money and be able to expand and take on more students.

The motivation to advance learning standards is actually pretty easy in a private system - money. The motivation in a public system falls on things like good will, kind-heartedness, wanting to make a difference, etc. - things that would still motivate people in a private system, only that in a private system they'd also be making more money for doing a good job.

[Lucas]

Diffusion just takes time; it doesn't need a god.

and according to leading evolutionary models, the probability of creating a fully formed organism made for a time frame that should have had bacteria sprouting around the time of the dinosaurs. even with the science, its like saying "damn, we just rolled a twenty sided dice and got 20's 100 times in a row!" or "damn, we just rolled bruce willis and scarface together, and the new being DIDNT kill everyone" and so on.

[Elminster_Amaur]

Look people, I thought Religious arguements were not allowed. And as far as I can see, you guys going on and on about the superiority of evolutionism are just religious fanatics that say they are men of "logic."

The theories of the creation of the Universe are all religious in nature, no matter what you say. And unless someone invents a time machine (which according to your Einstein would involve going faster than light and becoming infinitely massive and ceasing to exist, and as such is impossible) then any theory of the creation of the universe is just that...a theory. No one theory needs to be stressed more than the other, unless someone has some sort of proof, which you can't get, since nothing and/or god was around at the beginning, so we should take all theories of the creation of the universe out of the school system.