My Dream City: No Public Schools

[Mountaineer]

I went to a small high school in a very small town; 52 in my graduating class.

32 in mine.

WV lulz

Congrats man! WV Rocks! Seneca that is.

^^^Mountaineer^^^

[doodle]

Tom, I think you'd enjoy SSC's graduation address. I mean... all of you probably will.

I'm not sure where Krieg stands in this debate but given his fondness of Sparta where the state essentially decided whether your child lived or died at birth and who wrested children from their parents at the age of six to train them to be warriors I'm thinking he'd be all for a strong centralized system.

[Kriegsspiel]

Tom, I think you'd enjoy SSC's graduation address. I mean... all of you probably will.

I'm not sure where Krieg stands in this debate but given his fondness of Sparta where the state essentially decided whether your child lived or died at birth and who wrested children from their parents at the age of six to train them to be warriors I'm thinking he'd be all for a strong centralized system.

That's one reason I'm against abortion. At least let them pop out so you can see if they're capable of being one more soldier in the fight against Communism!

[Xan]

I think if you delve into charter schools you will find that on the whole they don't perform much better than public schools and in some cases are far worse...the same goes for private school. In the cases they perform better those gains can largely be attributed to students being drawn from specific socioeconomic classes or having more engaged parents.

Well, for one thing, you're assuming that the point of an education is to make money. That is only one definition of "success".

https://www.aei.org/research-products/r ... ily-ethic/

Adults who attended Protestant schools are more than twice as likely to be in an intact marriage as those who attended public schools. They are also about 50% less likely than public-school attendees to have a child out of wedlock.
Among those who have ever married, Protestant-school attendees are about 60% less likely than public-school attendees to have ever divorced.
Compared with public-school attendees, ever-married adults who attended a secular private school are about 60% less likely to have ever divorced.
Catholic-school attendees are about 30% less likely to have had a child out of wedlock than those who attended public schools.

As far as parents, I'm not saying that they shouldn't play a role in their child's education. Parents are of key importance to a child's learning. Parents are of key importance to their child's health as well but they don't chart the course of action to treat their child's cancer...they defer to medical experts. Of course they have room for input, but why have any experts at all if we are just going to allow lay people to decide how many milligrams of medicine should be dosed out or what treatment regimen should be followed?

But they do. It's up to the parents to decide which experts to follow. Which doctor they trust. And yes, if they want to do the research and come to a different conclusion on the number of milligrams of medicine, "are we just going to allow" that? YES! Who is the "we" who would step in and not allow it?

I also believe there is a danger in parents indoctrinating their children and exerting control over them that is even scarier in some ways than the big bad boogeyman government that you fear....think scientologists and other religious cults. In public schools teachers are actively prohibited from indoctrinating students into a particular way of thinking. I'm not allowed to express my personal opinions or attempt to persuade students to think a certain way. I'm there to try to open up pathways of critical thinking and to challenge students to question things. As a public school teacher I would have felt extremely uncomfortable trying to persuade students to think about the world in a particular manner....that's indoctrination, not education. When Trump talks about the need for patriotic education it sounds like he wants to create public centers of indoctrination.

What a joke. My local public kindergarten is literally covered in flyers, banners, and whatever other things that actively indoctrinates kids that men having buttsex with each other is the bee's knees.

Parents indoctrinating kids is literally their job. It's part of being a parent.

[doodle]

Tom's the one in fantasyland, about getting people to actually stop supporting paying for kids' educations.

I think my proposal is perfectly realistic, and avoids another fantasyland of public schools working particularly well.

And then the idea of parents not being in charge of their kids' education is a really outlandish fantasyland which I hope would find zero support anywhere.

ditto..

Many here are in my age group. How many of your parents were involved in your education? I'd say none for both me and my (nearly 7 year older) sister.

We went though a good, huge school system - 693 in my graduating class.

I do not remember them promoting any forms of ideology to us.

Vinny

Public schools are prohibited from promoting ideology...at least that is how I was instructed to teach. You would occasionally hear of teachers who violated that principal and allowed their personal persuasions to infiltrate their lessons...although it was pretty rare. Ideally a teacher would attempt to incorporate socratic dialogue into controversial lessons...students would grapple with difficult topics by having ideas and assumptions challenged. There was very little teaching of this is how you need to think about something. It was more process oriented. Of course, our teachers like our politicians are a reflection of our society. Because of the low pay and difficult conditions it is often hard to recruit the best and brightest to the classroom. That is more a damning reflection of the values of our society however and not a mark against our schools.

[doodle]

I think if you delve into charter schools you will find that on the whole they don't perform much better than public schools and in some cases are far worse...the same goes for private school. In the cases they perform better those gains can largely be attributed to students being drawn from specific socioeconomic classes or having more engaged parents.

Well, for one thing, you're assuming that the point of an education is to make money. That is only one definition of "success".

https://www.aei.org/research-products/r ... ily-ethic/

Adults who attended Protestant schools are more than twice as likely to be in an intact marriage as those who attended public schools. They are also about 50% less likely than public-school attendees to have a child out of wedlock.
Among those who have ever married, Protestant-school attendees are about 60% less likely than public-school attendees to have ever divorced.
Compared with public-school attendees, ever-married adults who attended a secular private school are about 60% less likely to have ever divorced.
Catholic-school attendees are about 30% less likely to have had a child out of wedlock than those who attended public schools.

You are comparing apples and oranges. There are cultural and socioeconomic explanations for all of that. Public school is the great dumping grounds for the masses. They have to deal with the kids that get kicked out of the private schools you extol that can't handle them. The ones with deadbeat parents. Their mission is much more difficult and complicated so to compare the two in that way is a disingenuous misuse of statistics. It would be like calling Tom's libertarian fantasyland a rousing success because it is solely comprised of wealthy millionaires with 150 IQs...come on, Xan. The world is full of problems. Closing your eyes doesn't make the monsters disappear.

As far as parents, I'm not saying that they shouldn't play a role in their child's education. Parents are of key importance to a child's learning. Parents are of key importance to their child's health as well but they don't chart the course of action to treat their child's cancer...they defer to medical experts. Of course they have room for input, but why have any experts at all if we are just going to allow lay people to decide how many milligrams of medicine should be dosed out or what treatment regimen should be followed?

But they do. It's up to the parents to decide which experts to follow. Which doctor they trust. And yes, if they want to do the research and come to a different conclusion on the number of milligrams of medicine, "are we just going to allow" that? YES! Who is the "we" who would step in and not allow it?

Nope you are wrong. In the case of minors, parents do not have the right to deprive their child of life because they are stupid religious zealouts who don't believe in blood transfusions or some other such nonsense.

I also believe there is a danger in parents indoctrinating their children and exerting control over them that is even scarier in some ways than the big bad boogeyman government that you fear....think scientologists and other religious cults. In public schools teachers are actively prohibited from indoctrinating students into a particular way of thinking. I'm not allowed to express my personal opinions or attempt to persuade students to think a certain way. I'm there to try to open up pathways of critical thinking and to challenge students to question things. As a public school teacher I would have felt extremely uncomfortable trying to persuade students to think about the world in a particular manner....that's indoctrination, not education. When Trump talks about the need for patriotic education it sounds like he wants to create public centers of indoctrination.

What a joke. My local public kindergarten is literally covered in flyers, banners, and whatever other things that actively indoctrinates kids that men having buttsex with each other is the bee's knees.

Parents indoctrinating kids is literally their job. It's part of being a parent.

Yeah, that seems like an exaggeration. Maybe you are talking about promoting tolerance. One of the ironies of tolerance is that you have to be intolerant of intolerance in order to have tolerance. If they are promoting buttsex then that's a different story, but I highly doubt that.

[Xan]

Yeah, that seems like an exaggeration. Maybe you are talking about promoting tolerance. One of the ironies of tolerance is that you have to be intolerant of intolerance in order to have tolerance. If they are promoting buttsex then that's a different story, but I highly doubt that.

So you agree that they do in fact promote their ideology, in this case "tolerance"?

[doodle]

Yeah, that seems like an exaggeration. Maybe you are talking about promoting tolerance. One of the ironies of tolerance is that you have to be intolerant of intolerance in order to have tolerance. If they are promoting buttsex then that's a different story, but I highly doubt that.

So you agree that they do in fact promote their ideology, in this case "tolerance"?

Is this the hill your going to die on? That teaching respect and tolerance is idealogical indoctrination?

[Xan]

Yeah, that seems like an exaggeration. Maybe you are talking about promoting tolerance. One of the ironies of tolerance is that you have to be intolerant of intolerance in order to have tolerance. If they are promoting buttsex then that's a different story, but I highly doubt that.

So you agree that they do in fact promote their ideology, in this case "tolerance"?

Is this the hill your going to die on? That teaching respect and tolerance is idealogical indoctrination?

You can't say it isn't ideological indoctrination. So your premise that public schools don't do that is incorrect.

And, it's far more than that. It's not respect and tolerance. At an absolute minimum, it's "celebrating differences".

By the way, the statistics for higher family formation success of private school students remain even when controlling for demographic factors.

[doodle]

Yeah, that seems like an exaggeration. Maybe you are talking about promoting tolerance. One of the ironies of tolerance is that you have to be intolerant of intolerance in order to have tolerance. If they are promoting buttsex then that's a different story, but I highly doubt that.

So you agree that they do in fact promote their ideology, in this case "tolerance"?

Is this the hill your going to die on? That teaching respect and tolerance is idealogical indoctrination?

You can't say it isn't ideological indoctrination. So your premise that public schools don't do that is incorrect.

And, it's far more than that. It's not respect and tolerance. At an absolute minimum, it's "celebrating differences".

By the way, the statistics for higher family formation success of private school students remain even when controlling for demographic factors.

I think that discussing 'celebrating differences' would make an interesting lesson plan. What does that mean? What does it mean to call yourself an American? How should we deal with a nation full of different peoples with different cultures and beliefs and at the same time remain unified? Should we just disband into tribal identities? What would be the upsides and downsides of that? Would make a good school lesson I think....I'd feel comfortable talking about that in a public school classroom.

Yes,

Public schools are prohibited from promoting ideology...at least that is how I was instructed to teach. You would occasionally hear of teachers who violated that principal and allowed their personal persuasions to infiltrate their lessons...although it was pretty rare. Ideally a teacher would attempt to incorporate socratic dialogue into controversial lessons...students would grapple with difficult topics by having ideas and assumptions challenged. There was very little teaching of this is how you need to think about something. It was more process oriented. Of course, our teachers like our politicians are a reflection of our society. Because of the low pay and difficult conditions it is often hard to recruit the best and brightest to the classroom. That is more a damning reflection of the values of our society however and not a mark against our schools.

i think even the most cursory look at public education would prove all of the above wrong... immediately.... the public school system is pro indoctrination and anti critical thinking... unless doodle is posting from an alternate universe.....

I'd argue that's because the low wages are not able to attract people capable of living up to mission. That's a failing of our society

i would argue that it is due to a push to achieve ideological goals more than anything, the entire Prussian method of education was designed to create dutiful solders that follow orders unquestioningly (because they don't have the thinking skills to do it) which is the basis for all modern education and has been adopted almost universally..

[doodle]

I spent 15 years of my life working in education. I worked with kids who were homeless, abused, pregnant, hungry, dying from aids, going blind from syphallis.. I also had kids in the same class who got bmws on their 16th birthdays from daddy. I challenge any of you to take a few years and go into a classroom and work with people from all walks of life. Parents with third grade educations, or with drug problems, or who work 70 hours a week to put food on table. I have a feeling that most of you are completely disconnected from the reality of our society.

[doodle]

All of your libertarian plans are so cute and wonderful but I think like Mike Tyson says, "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face."

[Xan]

I spent 15 years of my life working in education. I worked with kids who were homeless, abused, pregnant, hungry, dying from aids, going blind from syphallis.. I also had kids in the same class who got bmws on their 16th birthdays from daddy. I challenge any of you to take a few years and go into a classroom and work with people from all walks of life. Parents with third grade educations, or with drug problems, or who work 70 hours a week to put food on table. I have a feeling that most of you are completely disconnected from the reality of our society.

This is an argument against the "let everybody pay entirely for his own kid's education" plan.

I don't see how it relates to my proposal to give education vouchers to every kid. How would every single person you describe not be better off if they had some choice in the school they went to, rather than being assigned based on their address to their local public school?

[Mark Leavy]

I spent 15 years of my life working in education. I worked with kids who were homeless, abused, pregnant, hungry, dying from aids, going blind from syphallis.. I also had kids in the same class who got bmws on their 16th birthdays from daddy. I challenge any of you to take a few years and go into a classroom and work with people from all walks of life. Parents with third grade educations, or with drug problems, or who work 70 hours a week to put food on table. I have a feeling that most of you are completely disconnected from the reality of our society.

Why would I ever do that? That sounds horrible.

I’ve gone to great lengths to disconnect from society.

Mark

[doodle]

I spent 15 years of my life working in education. I worked with kids who were homeless, abused, pregnant, hungry, dying from aids, going blind from syphallis.. I also had kids in the same class who got bmws on their 16th birthdays from daddy. I challenge any of you to take a few years and go into a classroom and work with people from all walks of life. Parents with third grade educations, or with drug problems, or who work 70 hours a week to put food on table. I have a feeling that most of you are completely disconnected from the reality of our society.

This is an argument against the "let everybody pay entirely for his own kid's education" plan.

I don't see how it relates to my proposal to give education vouchers to every kid. How would every single person you describe not be better off if they had some choice in the school they went to, rather than being assigned based on their address to their local public school?

I asked this of a liberal friend earlier in the year and his response is that vouchers cripple public schools and result in increased homophobia.

Because there will be private Christian schools who hate gays, and these schools will be better than public schools, so people will use their vouchers to go there, and without any money, the public schools will fail and close down, and all that will be left are gay-bashing Christian schools.

Yes, but gay-bashing aside, if the public schools had competition and therefore were forced to be as good as the private schools to survive (or stay open in the Covid world while public education stays closed), they would improve so they don't fail. Capitalism 101.

You guys are clueless. Private schools don't perform notably better than public schools. Public school IB students are extremely high caliber. You forget that public schools have to deal with all the students with extreme learning disabilities, behavioral issues etc etc. Those problems don't go away when you just give parents vouchers.

[sophie]

Actually, there's a very simple way to arrange for parents to shoulder the costs of good schools: found communities that don't have any schools, but instead have some arrangement with a nearby town so parents can send their kids there for a fee plus cost of transportation. The result will be very low property taxes in that community. People who prefer to send their kids to private or religious schools, or who opt to homeschool, would really appreciate an option like this - in addition to retirees, singles, and people who don't plan to have kids.

There is already more or less a system whereby you trade off school quality for property taxes. There are towns and counties in the NYC metro area that are known for extremely high quality public schools - and sky high property taxes come with it. Many towns in Westchester County for example have taxes that are upwards of $40K/year for an average home. People choose to move there because if they have multiple kids, or kids with learning disabilities, that $40K is a bargain compared to private schools. After the kids are out of the school system, they then leave for lower tax locations. Same thing happens in NJ (Bergen County). If you want the best public schools and are willing to pay for it, you move to Ridgewood or Tenafly. If you don't care about schools and you're looking for low property taxes, you move to Paramus.

My sister lives in a rural community with low taxes terrible schools, but it's only about 20 minutes away from a suburb with outstanding schools. She managed to get her kids into the nearby outstanding schools by paying a non-resident charge. The nearby suburb had a lottery system, and once your number comes up all your kids can go to their schools. I think it took a couple of years for her to get lucky.

[doodle]

I spent 15 years of my life working in education. I worked with kids who were homeless, abused, pregnant, hungry, dying from aids, going blind from syphallis.. I also had kids in the same class who got bmws on their 16th birthdays from daddy. I challenge any of you to take a few years and go into a classroom and work with people from all walks of life. Parents with third grade educations, or with drug problems, or who work 70 hours a week to put food on table. I have a feeling that most of you are completely disconnected from the reality of our society.

This is an argument against the "let everybody pay entirely for his own kid's education" plan.

I don't see how it relates to my proposal to give education vouchers to every kid. How would every single person you describe not be better off if they had some choice in the school they went to, rather than being assigned based on their address to their local public school?

I asked this of a liberal friend earlier in the year and his response is that vouchers cripple public schools and result in increased homophobia.

Because there will be private Christian schools who hate gays, and these schools will be better than public schools, so people will use their vouchers to go there, and without any money, the public schools will fail and close down, and all that will be left are gay-bashing Christian schools.

Charter schools exist...they don't perform better. And I have no idea about the gay bashing christian schools but yeah, I don't think turning over education to religious indoctrination would be good for the country as a whole.

[doodle]

In libertarian fantasy land would teachers be allowed to sue parents for unruly children?

[Kriegsspiel]

I suggest that they can't sue the parents, but they can administer a light beating.

[yankees60]

I spent 15 years of my life working in education. I worked with kids who were homeless, abused, pregnant, hungry, dying from aids, going blind from syphallis.. I also had kids in the same class who got bmws on their 16th birthdays from daddy. I challenge any of you to take a few years and go into a classroom and work with people from all walks of life. Parents with third grade educations, or with drug problems, or who work 70 hours a week to put food on table. I have a feeling that most of you are completely disconnected from the reality of our society.

This is an argument against the "let everybody pay entirely for his own kid's education" plan.

I don't see how it relates to my proposal to give education vouchers to every kid. How would every single person you describe not be better off if they had some choice in the school they went to, rather than being assigned based on their address to their local public school?

I asked this of a liberal friend earlier in the year and his response is that vouchers cripple public schools and result in increased homophobia.

Because there will be private Christian schools who hate gays, and these schools will be better than public schools, so people will use their vouchers to go there, and without any money, the public schools will fail and close down, and all that will be left are gay-bashing Christian schools.

Yes, but gay-bashing aside, if the public schools had competition and therefore were forced to be as good as the private schools to survive (or stay open in the Covid world while public education stays closed), they would improve so they don't fail. Capitalism 101.

Where I live, I know for at least my county (don't know if for the entire state of Massachusetts but would assume so).....we have one charter school which accepts students by lottery...but, more importantly, each student / family has complete choice of what school system they want to attend in the county. And, as I just wrote that I'm realizing my friend told me he is doing that with his children who are in a different county. Therefore must be a Massachusetts state-wide thing. How many others of you have that form of choice? I don't know if it is just within your county or any other public school. I am almost certain, though, if you choose outside of your town's school then you are responsible for the transportation to and from the other town's school.

Vinny

[doodle]

In libertarian fantasy land would teachers be allowed to sue parents for unruly children?

No. The solution is you kick them out of class. They are disturbing the rest of the class from learning. All it takes is 1 out of 40 students to ruin the class for everyone.

In a libertarian fantasy land, there would be no public schools and no mandate for kids to be guaranteed an education and no mandate that kids must get an education.

The reason private schools are way better than public schools is, the private school has the discretion to send the asshole kid home, permanently. Goodbye.

Yes, the private school loses the money from that student's tuition, but if they allow that asshole kid to remain, then the parents of the other 39 kids in the class will transfer their kids elsewhere and the school loses 39x the tuition.

Actually, the math would be different, because in public schools it's about 40 students per teacher but in private schools it's a lot less. Because it has to be, to get parents to pay for it.

But, my answer is get rid of the asshole kid, goodbye, good riddance. Maybe the parent can pay to send their asshole kid to a more expensive school that's more like a prison to teach discipline. And maybe that parent can't afford it, but charities spring up in the community. I could easily see every parent in a community chipping in cash to get rid of the asshole kid for a year that's a bad influence on their children.

If even 1% of kids are assholes, and more are, then public schools with 40 students each means at least 1 in 3 classrooms has one asshole ruining education for all of those kids. So 33% of the students get a crappier education.

^This. Lots of public school teachers in my family and extended family and you're talking about their #1 complaint.

I don't disagree. Unfortunately public schools are mandated to deal with these societal problems. Really these cases should be turned over to social workers. Usually, the asshole kid is the product of asshole parents...so a bit unfair to blame a six year old for his bad behavior. So you send him home because he's acting out in class and his parents whoop on him. I know it's nice to think that these problems have easy solutions...unfortunately a bit more complicated.

[Libertarian666]

2) How do such un-democratic societies [Russia and China] motivate their students to be such better students compared to those of the United States?

Discipline.

When I was in college, many (perhaps even most) of the highest-achieving students in my engineering classes were Asian. Some of them made it quite clear that they weren't really interested in engineering. They were more interested in less lucrative subjects, but their families expected them to be engineers, so that's what they were majoring in. And their families expected them to be the best, so they studied their asses off to earn good grades.

Discipline in American culture seems to be sorely lacking.

You reminded me of a news story that came out of Texas in the early 90's, Corpus Christi I think. The top ten students in a handful of high schools in the district were all or mostly Vietnamese. It was overwhelming how much they dominated the test scores and GPA averages. Well someone went there to do a deeper dive and came away with an interesting conclusion. Basically all these kids were the children of Vietnamese war refugees from South Vietnam (boat people they were called). The attitude among these families was that the access to education they found in the US was a brass ring of opportunity whereas the other kids just took it for granted. In the end, the conclusion was that the Vietnamese weren't any smarter than the other kids, it was just that they had a different attitude which allowed them to excel.

Now that I think about it, similar conclusions were made about the reasons for the Vietnamese defeat of the US in the war despite being outmatched in resources.

I taught some college courses on programming in Dallas when I first got down here, around 1997.
In one of my classes, there were about 70 students.
About 40 of them were Vietnamese.
I couldn't understand their English at all, but I guess they understood mine.
Why do I say that? Because they all got A's.

(Some of the other students did well too, but there were some really lazy ones, all of whom were native-born Americans as far as I could tell.)

[yankees60]

2) How do such un-democratic societies [Russia and China] motivate their students to be such better students compared to those of the United States?

Discipline.

When I was in college, many (perhaps even most) of the highest-achieving students in my engineering classes were Asian. Some of them made it quite clear that they weren't really interested in engineering. They were more interested in less lucrative subjects, but their families expected them to be engineers, so that's what they were majoring in. And their families expected them to be the best, so they studied their asses off to earn good grades.

Discipline in American culture seems to be sorely lacking.

That go to first unread post feature failed again. I only saw your answer today when someone else responded to it.

I agree with all you have to say above. However, how does that address those students in the theoretically inferior un-democratic countries outperforming us? How does their inferior political system lead to having more disciplined students in country than our "superlative" democratic system with its personal liberties and all else we lord over the non-democratic countries?

Vinny

[yankees60]

2) How do such un-democratic societies [Russia and China] motivate their students to be such better students compared to those of the United States?

Discipline.

When I was in college, many (perhaps even most) of the highest-achieving students in my engineering classes were Asian. Some of them made it quite clear that they weren't really interested in engineering. They were more interested in less lucrative subjects, but their families expected them to be engineers, so that's what they were majoring in. And their families expected them to be the best, so they studied their asses off to earn good grades.

Discipline in American culture seems to be sorely lacking.

You reminded me of a news story that came out of Texas in the early 90's, Corpus Christi I think. The top ten students in a handful of high schools in the district were all or mostly Vietnamese. It was overwhelming how much they dominated the test scores and GPA averages. Well someone went there to do a deeper dive and came away with an interesting conclusion. Basically all these kids were the children of Vietnamese war refugees from South Vietnam (boat people they were called). The attitude among these families was that the access to education they found in the US was a brass ring of opportunity whereas the other kids just took it for granted. In the end, the conclusion was that the Vietnamese weren't any smarter than the other kids, it was just that they had a different attitude which allowed them to excel.

Now that I think about it, similar conclusions were made about the reasons for the Vietnamese defeat of the US in the war despite being outmatched in resources.

Just seeing this response for the first time. When I was in junior high school I made the comment to my older sister that the Jewish people were the smartest around because I knew of only one Jewish kid who was NOT in an accelerated learning program while it was only the elite of we Italians who were in it. She explained to me that their parents pushed them to achieve.

Vinny

[yankees60]

I'll throw in these tangential questions.

Many non-Democratic countries such as Russia and China surpass U.S. States students in standardized tests such as math....

1) Their schools are mostly public? State funded? Or, what percentage of private schools do they have?

2) How do such un-democratic societies motivate their students to be such better students compared to those of the United States?


Vinny

Easy, they don't let the dumb kids go to school or take standardized tests. The dumb ones are assembling iphones and sneakers in China, or mining minerals/coal or whatever Russian child labor does.

How does that explain their countries' technological achievements on the world stage, many times equal to ours. Russia was ahead of us sometimes in the Cold War. How did that inferior political system produce students and workers that were superior to the greatest country in the world? No matter how you try to motivate me or threaten me I'm just not going to be able to achieve certain tasks. Accomplishing those tasks take both talent, motivation, and application. Need all three to achieve. Those countries seem to have no lack of it.

Vinny