Public Schools - Bad for American Students?

[jakspar0w]

I agree that many of the public schools are doing poorly (learning-wise) I forgot the word I was going to put, haha.
There are also schools that are doing great. Personally, my school is one of the top 10 and we've had 3 people pass the SAT with a 30.
What would we do without public schools? The (in a ever so non-degrading way) Dubya passed the "No Child Left Behind Act", as in every kid should go to school or DIIIIE. (not really, but okay?) So, if that is still in session, would people honestly want to pay for private schools?
Public schools may seem to be doing bad, but the majority of them are doing well.
The paying issue is just like work. The better you do, the more money you get/raises you get. I like to think of it as an equality issue. It's not who offers the most, but who works the hardest. (did that even make sense??)
Okay.

[atalkingcow]

Problems: Teachers are there to make money.

Students are there because they have to be.

Many teachers don't even grade work, they just check if you did it.
(so you don't learn from your mistake, I myself have passed math classes with A's, but I still can't multiply at all.)

At least once a month the "lesson" consists of the "teacher" popping a tape in a VCR and demanding that you watch it while they go out in the hall and have a nice coffee convo with the teacher across the hall.

Gym teachers very often can't perform the very tasks they as of their students. (I've only had one that could, and he was a sub.)

Instead of working with students on the areas they are having trouble with, there is an overwhelming tendency to just assign extra homework. This seems like a good idea as far as getting in extra practice..but there's ~NO~ point in practicing FootBall if you don't know the rules, is there?

In my school, there is a Remedial/Special Ed class, but no advanced class, which means that once again, the ones who understand the material are forced to sit through it again and again. (My Algebra1 class sat through ~ratios~ for ~2 MONTHS~ because 3 out of 29 students didn't get it.)

Unless you are absolutely braindead, you aren't tested for LD. This of course becomes a problem with kids like me, who excel in one subject, but have an incredibly hard time in others. Ex: I can read like lightning, and spell awesome too, but I can't do math above simple addition/subtraction at all. And of course, my low math scores were blamed on "behavioral issues". W T F?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I just felt that those screaming issues needed to be voiced, I'm currently 17 and ~STILL A FRESHMAN~ because of my inability to pass a math class.

What really bugs me is, they wonder why I get pissed off at them for yelling at me about my low math scores, which ~I can't help~, and then they say it must be some sort of behavioral issue in my brain, instead of trying to help.

My possible explanation for this phenomenon, THEY'RE JUST THERE FOR THE MONEY!

I've had my say, I'm going to sleep now.
~+~Night~+~
~+~COW~+~

[Kilroy_x]

I'm really glad to hear stories that confirm my perspective on this. However I don't think it's just money which is the issue, but also how the educational system is arranged; that is, you either have a job in it and make money, or you don't, rather than any incentives. There's also the fact that educators owe their job to Uncle Sam and not Mr. and Ms. Smith.

Teachers can't teach, teachers can't blame parents, so teachers blame kids. It's really that simple. Whether or not kids might actually have differences in brain architecture is irrelevant, diagnosis of behavioral disorders today exist as a handy tool in a corrupt social and political system.

IE, "bad kids", which reflects poorly on parents, has become "disabled kids" which reflects on biology, something no one has control over so no one takes offense at.

[lord_carbo]

Generally, the worst kids behave poorly. I'm sure you can all agree and observe this in your own school. This is unsurprising because those are the kids less likely to pay attention and do work in school. Bad behavior is almost always because of the parents. Blame the parents.

But after working in a number of communities with kids (with a variety of social classes, mainly lower-class though), I can tell you that social class does play a role for two reasons--the first being that low-class communities spawn more bad parents. But that's a scapegoat when blamed on entirely for that reason because there are bad middle-class kids just like there are good low-class kids. The main area in which social class would come in is the fact that a poor community is more likely to have a worse school. The town in my area stereotyped as rich has by far the highest grades and school system. It's also overflowing with whites and Asians, hehe.

[Kilroy_x]

Actually a lot of the kids who suffer from bad parenting are the same ones who relish opportunity when it's presented to them.

Also saying "the worst kids behave poorly" is kind of redundant, and doesn't actually mean anything substantive.

The main area in which social class would come in is the fact that a poor community is more likely to have a worse school.

True. Friedman already covered this though.

[lord_carbo]

Oh, I meant the kids who get the worst grades in school.

Anyway, Friedman said it so it must be true 8)

[MarisaKirisame]

Originally Posted by lord_carbo

stuff

Of course the lower classes will generally consist of people who aren't very well disciplined and/or don't work very hard. Most people who are willing to work hard end up with a nice, well-paying job because of how much they're willing to work.

Of course there are really tough low-paying jobs and really easy high-paying jobs, and of course there are tons of rich, lazy people and poor, hard-working people, but I'm just saying IN GENERAL, this is a LIKELY FACTOR of being where they are.

But really, is a high school drop out gonna go make $30 an hour at some job? Probably not, if it's a legal job(no drug dealing, prostitution, etc).

Will a college graduate wind up with a $6/hr job for the rest of their life? Probably not, unless they're awfully lazy.

How hard they're willing to work in school determines a lot.

[devonin]

But really, is a high school drop out gonna go make $30 an hour at some job? Probably not

Eh, managers of fastfood restauraunts may not make 30 bucks an hour, but they make a hell of a lot more than minimum wage.

[MarisaKirisame]

Yeah, but not even close to the majority of dropouts are gonna be managers of anything.

I mean, no matter how smart they are, it just looks bad to companies.

There are TONS of exceptions of great jobs that people can still get. I mean, you could even buy and sell on Ebay and make way more than $30 an hour if you really got into it. In fact, you could make more money than mostly any other job and have absolutely no education at all. I know a dropout in her 40's who's now pretty wealthy because she did exactly this after having a crappy job. She got sick of it all one day and tried Ebay and now she has a lot of extra cash.

However, this is about the majority.

[Kilroy_x]

Many if not most extremely high paying jobs are in sectors with high economic interference. A college degree is in some senses literally a passport to the dominant class.

Hard work and laziness have just about nothing to do with anything. They certainly aren't dominant factors. In fact if you actually stop to think about it for a second, differences in income are correlated mainly to differences in types of labor, not to amount of labor energy invested. Different skill sets are what are in demand, not pure energy, and you certainly don't attain different skill sets simply by way of pure energy.

BTW, how many jobs have you had in your life?

[Cavernio]

To get back to the OP, firstly, I did not watch the video, but read your commentary. I'd like to comment on your idea of kids having vouchers. It's not gonna work. People go to the schools near them because they're near. We've not quite developed teleports yet. Your voucher idea won't change that situation at all. Furthermore, this voucher thing's saying that it costs as much to teach 1 kid as 100. I'm pretty sure the relationship between cost of public schooling/child only nears linearity once you've gotten a large enough number of students.

There's been discussion of who's to blame? going around. Everyone is. Some teachers don't care about their jobs, some students don't care about learning, and some parents aren't picking up where the education system leaves off. But what do we do to fix all these issues?
Relambrien, I don't agree with you AT ALL about working through the capitalism to get better teachers. The problem is on the level of values, and if that's what we actually want. Most of us have had teachers which they really like, along with ones they hate. Most of the teachers kids end up liking are the ones which love their job. They like kids, and they like learning, and passing knowledge and wisdom on to other people. People who're money grubbers aren't exactly the ones I'd like to attract to teaching. People who search after money CAN be people who value respect and knowledge, but they don't go hand in hand. I really don't know who you'd 'weed out' so to speak from the teaching pool by increasing money to them, unless you think we're not attracting people who would like to teach because it's a paltry salary, which it's not.
Anyone who's done grad work will tell you that the things people do for funding, and for praise, to have power is especially predominant among the highly-successful, and the way they go about getting it is often un-ethical and un-scientific. It's sad.

What the 'problem' basically is, is our values in the first place. How exactly do you propose you get motivated teachers to motive kids? How're you gonna get kids to enter school with an open mind, even after negative experiences? How exactly DO you teach critical thinking anyways? Why is not having a good education a 'problem' anyways? How're you going to give people well-rounded educations when there's only 24 hours in a day, and when most jobs out there are for highly-specialized people? How does that value fit into a capitalist society? How do you get around the 'problem' that people in rural areas don't have the choice that people in urban centers do? Why is it better to have highly motivated kids like there are, apparently, in China?

[Kilroy_x]

Originally Posted by Cavernio

Relambrien, I don't agree with you AT ALL about working through the capitalism to get better teachers. The problem is on the level of values, and if that's what we actually want.

I'd just like to point out, in addition to there being a pretty serious grammatical error here there is also a dramatic misunderstanding. The free market satisfies values as close to perfectly as any system could.

Every issue here boils down to:

*Subjective Preference
*Population Variance

Both can be handled by a free market, both cannot be handled with any degree of competence by central administration.

[TK_yesillkillubitchboez]

With no child left behind it slows down my academic progress. There are just too many distractions.

[Kilroy_x]

Well, the only way not to leave any child behind is not to take any child anywhere in the first place

[Cavernio]

Well, you're going into another issue than what I intended Kilroy, so I shouldn't be saying this at all, but the problem with free markets is that they never seem to exist. You can either have a centrally appointed administration, or you can have monopolies take over that position. Anyways...

My real concern is this: If we want teachers who value education and learning, why is increasing competition by giving people money going to give us better teachers? As soon as you throw in external motivators, like money, you immediately weaken any internal motivators a person has, like wanting people to be knowledgeable.
It seems to make more sense to me that we actually decrease salaries for teachers, so that the only ones which will stay will be those who want to teach.

[Relambrien]

Originally Posted by Cavernio

My real concern is this: If we want teachers who value education and learning, why is increasing competition by giving people money going to give us better teachers? As soon as you throw in external motivators, like money, you immediately weaken any internal motivators a person has, like wanting people to be knowledgeable.

That's the thing; we don't -necessarily- want teachers who value education and learning. Those values can and do exist separately from being able to teach well. You can be absolutely amazing at something without liking it, and you can be absolutely horrid at something you love.

Instead of teachers who value education and learning, I'd prefer teachers who are great at what they do. I've had several such teachers. For instance, my ninth grade Economics teacher hates children and hates teaching, but he's ridiculously good at getting students to learn and like the subject. Why does he teach, you ask? He only does so because of the schedule, and the proximity to his house. He is well-versed in his subject, even though he doesn't particularly like it, and he teaches incredibly well, even though he hates teaching.

And I don't see how adding in extra money somehow causes people to become less motivated. Let's use an example. Say I'm tutoring a fellow student at my school, and he pays me...oh $20 a session (just for the sake of the example). Then, due to my tutoring, he aces his class, and decides to pay me $25 a session in recognition of my tutoring skills. Why on Earth would I be less motivated to tutor him? Even if I hated it, I'd work just as hard if not harder, in order to be "worthy" of the raise.

And like you said, those who love to teach will do so regardless of salary, so giving them a bonus for doing well is a nice plus to them that doesn't make them do any worse.

Originally Posted by Cavernio

It seems to make more sense to me that we actually decrease salaries for teachers, so that the only ones which will stay will be those who want to teach.

And among those who -want- to teach, how many actually -can- teach? My school's Calculus teacher loves his job and loves teaching, but he's absolutely horrific when it comes to getting students to learn. He would stay even if he made minimum wage, but that doesn't make him a better teacher.

Now just to clarify, not for a second do I think higher salaries will motivate teachers to become better. That's just naive. No, I believe that under a voucher system, the schools with the best teachers will receive the most students, and therefore those teachers will make the most money.

Of course there are other solutions than a voucher system, but a monopoly on -anything- usually ends up bad for the consumer. And the government has a monopoly on public schooling, just as each public school has a monopoly on all the students in its area (since they are assigned to the school). Get rid of the monopoly and introduce competition, and the competing schools will strive to be better than each other, constantly improving, which can only help the students.

[Kilroy_x]

Originally Posted by Cavernio

the problem with free markets is that they never seem to exist. You can either have a centrally appointed administration, or you can have monopolies take over that position.

That's nonsense. Monopolies are almost impossible to attain in a completely free market. If the free market tends towards statism it's because there are statist elements in society independent of the market.

As soon as you throw in external motivators, like money, you immediately weaken any internal motivators a person has, like wanting people to be knowledgeable.

That's also nonsense. If that were the case we shouldn't pay teachers at all.

It seems to make more sense to me that we actually decrease salaries for teachers, so that the only ones which will stay will be those who want to teach.

Let's decrease their salaries to nothing then, it would have the greatest effect towards that end.

[MarisaKirisame]

Originally Posted by Kilroy_x

Hard work and laziness have just about nothing to do with anything. They certainly aren't dominant factors. In fact if you actually stop to think about it for a second, differences in income are correlated mainly to differences in types of labor, not to amount of labor energy invested. Different skill sets are what are in demand, not pure energy, and you certainly don't attain different skill sets simply by way of pure energy.

BTW, how many jobs have you had in your life?

Never had a "normal" job in my life. Nothing that I think would be considered a job, at least. I'm simply trying to say that in general, the more difficult the job is, the more money you're usually going to make.

We could get into awkward jobs, and we could get into management, but I'm just saying for the jobs the majority of the people will end up having. I'd say not even 1 out of 20 will end up managing other people and making decent money, but that's just a complete guess, and I'd really have no idea about something like that.

But really, you're not going to get $20 an hour for holding up a sign in the street. At least, most people won't. Same way you probably aren't going to make only $6 an hour if you work in an office dealing with documents and numbers all day. Salaries are generally pretty fair in comparison to the effort put in.

But even in management of other people, some people may not find it terribly difficult, but I'd say most people won't be able to make huge decisions for an entire company which could determine if the company even survives. It'd be awfully stressful, even for the good chunk of money earned.

I'm not saying there aren't tons of exceptions to this, I'm just saying that, for the most part, the amount of money earned is probably going to reflect how difficult the job is. I'm not saying it has to do with how much energy you put into it, however.

Oh, and I know what you mean when you say,

Many if not most extremely high paying jobs are in sectors with high economic interference. A college degree is in some senses literally a passport to the dominant class.

But the thing is, people weren't just born one day with a college degree. They had to work through it in the years of their life when they were probably the least willing to work, during their young and teenage years.

I mean, someone can work awfully hard and still drop out, just as someone and go through college without even thinking for a second and still manage to graduate. This is just speaking for the completely average person.

I mean yeah, intelligence plays a pretty big factor. If someone's IQ is 80, they'll probably have to work quite hard compared to a person whose IQ is, say, 150.

Is it fair? No. Is it fair enough? In my opinion, yes. As fair as I think it can be.

And really, I'm an extremely lazy person. I'm not just saying this just because I'm some hard worker or something.

[Kilroy_x]

Originally Posted by MarisaKirisame

But the thing is, people weren't just born one day with a college degree. They had to work through it in the years of their life when they were probably the least willing to work, during their young and teenage years.

And where did the money for high tuition come from?

Is it fair? No. Is it fair enough? In my opinion, yes. As fair as I think it can be.

Virtually every economist disagrees with you, although admittedly not for the same reasons.

Anyways you're still missing the point. Is punching numbers into spreadsheets all day harder than running orders and busing tables? That's really just a matter of opinion. What can be said definitively is that both require different skill sets. Therefore, possession of different skill sets is what will dictate your economic status, not particularly the amount of energy you put into anything.

Well, that and a piece of paper.

[MarisaKirisame]

Personally, I think it'd be more of a hassle to punch numbers into spreadsheets than be able to interact with people and not have to think terribly much, just using your memory and some common sense.

I'm not saying punching numbers into spreadsheets isn't mindless. In fact, it doesn't require much thought at all, I'm just saying it seems like it'd be a lot more of a pain in the butt to me.

Anyways you're still missing the point. Is punching numbers into spreadsheets all day harder than running orders and busing tables? That's really just a matter of opinion.

I'm just giving my opinion. Sorry if I made it sound like I was saying "if it is more of a hassle, then it IS better pay." I mean to say "in my opinion, most jobs have pretty fair salaries in comparison to how much work/thought is put into them."

And where did the money for high tuition come from?

Well there are tons of ways to get money for even very expensive colleges, we could go on all day naming ways. But yeah, people with less money are therefore slightly less likely to get a good education, but if they try hard enough when they have the right chances, it's highly unlikely they'll be poor for more than one lifetime.