# Does mandatory public school in the U.S. actually work, even at a basic level? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 8, 2011, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712 "2011-06-08T04:20:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![AthanasiusKircher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@AthanasiusKircher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AthanasiusKircher)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2011, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/61 "2011-06-08T20:10:56Z")
> [@Finagle](#): > > Actually, 1988 was a pretty bad year based on some Googling of SAT percentiles, so it does sound cherry picked. It was a low point for verbal scores. And, as I pointed out in the OP, scores did begin to rise slightly again around that time. I meant that the 1983 numbers were not picked because they were completely out of whack with the overall trend, which had led numbers gradually downward for decades. > [@](#): > > But what’s more, it sounds wrong. Can we get a cite? I can’t find a link I can give you online where you can see this. But if you type in “986 sat 1988 verbal” in Google Books, you’ll get a number of mostly snippet-view publications that you can see mention this number. For example, I see it in “The Journal of social, political and economic studies, Volume 18” on the second page of links that comes up for me. > [@](#): > > I mean, in 2006, [984 students got perfect scores on reading and mathematics.](http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/SATPercentileRanksCompositeCR_M.pdf) So either your numbers are suspect or public education has gotten a lot better in the past 20 years or so. No, the test has changed radically in the past 20 years, mostly in ways that make it easier. (Basically, questions requiring significant amounts of critical thinking have been eliminated – quantitative comparisons, analogies, etc.) > [@](#): > > Also, it looks like ~62,000 students did 700 or better on both math and verbal. I know the SAT has been jiggered with so the results may not be directly comparable, but I’m not seeing an abject failure of the educational system in those numbers. “Jiggered” is not strong enough. When 100 points is supposed to be a standard deviation for each section and the test was recentered in 1994 by raising all the scores by about 100 points, that is pretty significant. Couple that with the gradual elimination of harder questions and sections from the test over the past couple decades, and there’s your explanation. ---
**Author:** ![AthanasiusKircher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@AthanasiusKircher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AthanasiusKircher)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2011, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/62 "2011-06-08T20:16:31Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > Most schools don’t teach history, government, and literature the way they ought to. This is why people ‘don’t learn anything until they get to college’. > > It doesn’t mean that compulsory secondary education isn’t useful - it just means we need to change how we do it. The original intent of mandatory education was to create citizens of the world. People who were schooled in philosophy, arts, languages, and math would become ‘natural’ moral citizens and leaders. > > Don’t abolish the liberal arts. Bring back the Academy. I absolutely and wholeheartedly agree. That’s what good secondary schools used to do in the late 19th century, when secondary education was not mandatory. But your argument seems to go in the wrong way. The traditional liberal arts have fallen out of college curricula (and secondary curricula) in part because the more people go to college, the more it is treated as a sort of trade school. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2011, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/63 "2011-06-08T20:21:07Z")
> [@AthanasiusKircher](#): > > If you look into the history of public education, there were significant currents in the 19th and early 20th centuries that clearly saw school as a method of social control. If the terms “babysitting” or “jailing” are upsetting, what would you call it if adults were forced _under penalty of law_ to sit – mostly quietly – for a large portion of their day, under regimented conditions, in rows of desks where they had an assigned seat? I’m sorry, but it doesn’t have the least relevance what I would call it. Frankly, what would you call a system in which an adult wasn’t allowed to choose what they were going to eat each day, wasn’t allowed to choose where they live, was forced to obey every order of another adult, and that other adult could remove privileges from them or even administer corporal punishment at whim? Whatever you call such a system doesn’t have any relevance to parenting. > [@](#): > > You make some good points. But the fact still remains that we are graduating millions of functional illiterates from high school. I’m willing to believe that the social factors you bring up might justify the fact that lots of people today are not big readers. But that’s very different from not having basic literacy after 13 years of education. Another factor you’re missing is one that we reviewed yesterday at a staff meeting: summer loss. Low-achieving students tend not to have much academic support at home; high-achieving students tend to have such support. Low-achieving students tend to lose a lot over the summer; high-achieving students actually gain academic proficiency over the summer. But here’s where it gets interesting: low-achieving students actually gain **more** over the school year than high-achieving students. It’s just that their summer loss more than outweighs their gains during the school year. Our agrarian school calendar, designed to let students crop tobacco for their families, no longer serves us. It does an especial disservice to kids whose parents aren’t academically oriented. Students who are functionally illiterate may be so because we refuse to send them to school–where they show tremendous real growth–during the summer, and they consequently spend ~20% of their lives in a totally non-academic environment, and lose a lot of what they learned. And here’s something else to consider: in the past, the typical family had one adult fully responsible for the household, including child-rearing. Today, the typical family has both adults with full-time work outside the home. That means household responsibilities happen after a full days’ work. There may be a greater temptation than ever before to let children after hours be raised by electronic devices. This is not a failure of our educational system, except inasmuch as we send kids home from school instead of keeping them there 24 hours a day. As for boredom: while I do my best to keep my students engaged and interested, that’s not my ultimate goal. My ultimate goal is for them to learn. And I’m straight-up with them about this. I tell them that I’ll try to give them interesting awesome things to do, but some of the things we need to do at work are boring, and this is their job, and they’ll need to do the boring things as well as the interesting things. That’s not some modern man industrial bullshit: ask any stone-aged farmer just how interesting it is to drive a plow, or any medieval peasant wife how fascinating it is to weave cloth. ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2011, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/64 "2011-06-08T20:23:24Z")
> [@AthanasiusKircher](#): > > I absolutely and wholeheartedly agree. That’s what good secondary schools used to do in the late 19th century, when secondary education was not mandatory. Because they used to be what we now call ‘college’. You’re talking sixteen year olds that aren’t working. (: > [@](#): > > But your argument seems to go in the wrong way. The traditional liberal arts have fallen out of college curricula (and secondary curricula) in part because the more people go to college, the more it is treated as a sort of trade school. Then make an argument to change college gen ed programs. If we prepare students to _think_ and reason and read with a critical eye, they can do anything. ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2011, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/65 "2011-06-08T20:25:50Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I’m sorry, but it doesn’t have the least relevance what I would call it. Frankly, what would you call a system in which an adult wasn’t allowed to choose what they were going to eat each day, wasn’t allowed to choose where they live, was forced to obey every order of another adult, and that other adult could remove privileges from them or even administer corporal punishment at whim? Whatever you call such a system doesn’t have any relevance to parenting. > > Another factor you’re missing is one that we reviewed yesterday at a staff meeting: summer loss. Low-achieving students tend not to have much academic support at home; high-achieving students tend to have such support. Low-achieving students tend to lose a lot over the summer; high-achieving students actually gain academic proficiency over the summer. > > But here’s where it gets interesting: low-achieving students actually gain **more** over the school year than high-achieving students. It’s just that their summer loss more than outweighs their gains during the school year. > > Our agrarian school calendar, designed to let students crop tobacco for their families, no longer serves us. It does an especial disservice to kids whose parents aren’t academically oriented. Students who are functionally illiterate may be so because we refuse to send them to school–where they show tremendous real growth–during the summer, and they consequently spend ~20% of their lives in a totally non-academic environment, and lose a lot of what they learned. > > And here’s something else to consider: in the past, the typical family had one adult fully responsible for the household, including child-rearing. Today, the typical family has both adults with full-time work outside the home. That means household responsibilities happen after a full days’ work. There may be a greater temptation than ever before to let children after hours be raised by electronic devices. This is not a failure of our educational system, except inasmuch as we send kids home from school instead of keeping them there 24 hours a day. > > As for boredom: while I do my best to keep my students engaged and interested, that’s not my ultimate goal. My ultimate goal is for them to learn. And I’m straight-up with them about this. I tell them that I’ll try to give them interesting awesome things to do, but some of the things we need to do at work are boring, and this is their job, and they’ll need to do the boring things as well as the interesting things. That’s not some modern man industrial bullshit: ask any stone-aged farmer just how interesting it is to drive a plow, or any medieval peasant wife how fascinating it is to weave cloth. A+. And let’s not forget that low academic performance tends to beget the same. It’s a cycle that’s only broken if teachers are given appropriate supports. I don’t mind working harder for kids who come from homes where English is not a primary language, or they are foster kids, or whatever. I don’t mind. But I need a curriculum and a system that supports what I’m doing. Unfortunately, too many admins expect teachers to babysit and push kids through while simultaneously turning out academic scholars. Pshaw. I can teach conceptual history and political science without losing the ‘facts’. Unfortunately, when a non teacher walks into my room and goes, WTF are you doing? Where are the details in your exam? I get frustrated as I have to explain that in order for my students to successfully complete this essay/project/assignment, they _have_ to know the details. Hey, I’m a teacher and I have to review all the time. Of course I’m not going to remember the specifics of every single battle in the Civil War. It doesn’t mean that I’m a bad teacher or that my students aren’t learning because they can’t recall a detail in four weeks. If they got the _point_ of the lessons and can apply them, they’ll remember the ‘important’ stuff. I only do well on those ‘How well do you know…’ exams because I went to a university where history and political science were taught properly. My students only get Big Ideas because I applied the same standards for their performance. ---
**Author:** ![AthanasiusKircher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@AthanasiusKircher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AthanasiusKircher)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2011, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/66 "2011-06-08T20:28:37Z")
> [@Finagle](#): > > I mean, in 2006, [984 students got perfect scores on reading and mathematics.](http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/SATPercentileRanksCompositeCR_M.pdf) So either your numbers are suspect or public education has gotten a lot better in the past 20 years or so. Even going to the SAT article in Wikipedia will give this bit of info about the test before recentering: “The older SAT (before 1995) had a very high ceiling. In any given year, only seven of the million test-takers scored above 1580. A score above 1580 was equivalent to the 99.9995 percentile.” The article notes that a perfect 1600 on the 2006 test only put you in 99.93 percentile. ---
**Author:** ![pbbth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f9ae1b/32.png) [@pbbth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pbbth)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2011, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/67 "2011-06-08T20:38:51Z")
> [@AthanasiusKircher](#): > > You should know the alphabet after a few years of primary school, if that. I’m not sure the possibility that you might get a job putting things in alphabetical order justifies a decade more of secondary education. > > A theater class?? The only schools I know which actually offer classes in drama are rich private schools and an occasional public magnet school. The average high school does not have the money for such luxuries – which are much more rare than wood shop or art. > > And by the way, I was in our drama _club_ at my high school for four years, but as an actor, I never had to paint anything or build anything (and nor did most of the students in drama club). There were other students who did though. > > It seems that most students pick up some sort of typing on their own, then. What’s the schooling for? > > The sort of information that can be used functionally in daily skills in secondary school is rather small. Primary school, yes. Secondary school, no. Wow, you went to and taught at some really shitty schools then. I went to a basic public high school in podunk nowhere, TX that had a full theater program, choir program, orchestra, band, art, etc. If you were in theater and an actor you also painted and built sets, learned to work the lighting board, and all that other stuff that is part of the theater system. Those were are part of your class load so when I went to my first period theater class I worked on set building, lights, performances, blocking, set design, etc. For the people who chose band they had a class period where they drilled marches, learned sight reading, practiced playing their instuments, and all that other stuff you do when you play an instrument. They also allowed for wood shop, cosmetology, and work experience classes where you could get school credit if you were legitimately working during the hour you normally would have been in class. When I talk about the benefits of mandatory school it is with this kind of experience in mind. As far as what the schooling is for, it is so that u dunt type liek a n00b. It is so that you have a good deal of information in your brain so that if you end up not being able to do something forever you aren’t left with no way to provide for yourself and your family. The classic example is the buggy whip manufacturer but it can happen in any industry, even mine. If we as a nation switch over from our current insurance based health care system to a single payer I will lose my job but since I have a college degree (that I couldn’t have gotten without a secondary education) I would be able to move to another industry with minimal issue. Schooling is so that you have enough of an understanding of biology and pathology and such that you don’t spend your life being afraid of catching AIDS from a toilet seat. Schooling is so that you have enough of an understanding of history that you don’t go off half-cocked and try to invade Russia during the winter. If you are arguing that you could effectively teach 1st-12th grade to children by the time they turn 13 and send them off for more specific knowledge that is one thing, but to argue that the average 6th grader gets nothing of benefit from graduating high school that speaks very poorly of the schools you went to as a student and the schools you worked in as a teacher rather than the entire education system as a whole. ---
**Author:** ![AthanasiusKircher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@AthanasiusKircher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AthanasiusKircher)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2011, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/68 "2011-06-08T20:40:31Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > I am confused. Are you saying that _secondary_ education should not be mandatory? You’ve been making comments about “locking kids up for 13 years”. Are you now saying that 6 or 8 years of “jail” is long enough - so they learn the basics, and can move into the working world? > > Perhaps I failed to see it, but I did not see you qualify eliminating the ‘mandatory’ part to only after kids become teens. If education is not mandatory at all, then most kids will be even less prepared than they are now for the real world, IMO. I think it would require greater social changes to dispense with mandatory education altogether. If we could get something close to a 99% literacy rate and basic math skills from mandatory primary education (6-ish years), I think it could be justified. Right now, we seem to get about 80%, which I’m not sure is better than it would be if we didn’t require mandatory education at all (since most parents would still want to get their kids to do basic skills, in school or otherwise, even without legal enforcement). My point in the OP was that making schooling mandatory historically (which was originally only primary and done for all sorts of reasons that had nothing to do with education, as well as educational goals) may not have made a marked improvement in the basic skills of the population. I was questioning whether mandatory schooling actually achieved the goals most people think it did. But I do think that “all-purpose” secondary schooling should not be mandated. ---
**Author:** ![Kearsen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/82dd89/32.png) [@Kearsen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kearsen)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2011, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/69 "2011-06-08T20:51:05Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I’m sorry, but it doesn’t have the least relevance what I would call it. Frankly, what would you call a system in which an adult wasn’t allowed to choose what they were going to eat each day, wasn’t allowed to choose where they live, was forced to obey every order of another adult, and that other adult could remove privileges from them or even administer corporal punishment at whim? Whatever you call such a system doesn’t have any relevance to parenting. > > Another factor you’re missing is one that we reviewed yesterday at a staff meeting: summer loss. Low-achieving students tend not to have much academic support at home; high-achieving students tend to have such support. Low-achieving students tend to lose a lot over the summer; high-achieving students actually gain academic proficiency over the summer. > > But here’s where it gets interesting: low-achieving students actually gain **more** over the school year than high-achieving students. It’s just that their summer loss more than outweighs their gains during the school year. > > Our agrarian school calendar, designed to let students crop tobacco for their families, no longer serves us. It does an especial disservice to kids whose parents aren’t academically oriented. Students who are functionally illiterate may be so because we refuse to send them to school–where they show tremendous real growth–during the summer, and they consequently spend ~20% of their lives in a totally non-academic environment, and lose a lot of what they learned. > > And here’s something else to consider: in the past, the typical family had one adult fully responsible for the household, including child-rearing. Today, the typical family has both adults with full-time work outside the home. That means household responsibilities happen after a full days’ work. There may be a greater temptation than ever before to let children after hours be raised by electronic devices. This is not a failure of our educational system, except inasmuch as we send kids home from school instead of keeping them there 24 hours a day. > > As for boredom: while I do my best to keep my students engaged and interested, that’s not my ultimate goal. My ultimate goal is for them to learn. And I’m straight-up with them about this. I tell them that I’ll try to give them interesting awesome things to do, but some of the things we need to do at work are boring, and this is their job, and they’ll need to do the boring things as well as the interesting things. That’s not some modern man industrial bullshit: ask any stone-aged farmer just how interesting it is to drive a plow, or any medieval peasant wife how fascinating it is to weave cloth. Fascinating. How do schools go about grouping those high and low end students together? How do they measure success? Is it still a standardized test designed to “pass” the lowest common denominator? Or is there some excellent upward teaching going on to help the more talented ‘learners’? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2011, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/70 "2011-06-08T21:26:28Z")
> [@Kearsen](#): > > Fascinating. How do schools go about grouping those high and low end students together? I’m trying to remember the basis for the research’s grouping–I think it was performance on the California Achievement Test, and they divided students into thirds (tertiles? I have no idea what the correct word is here). They tracked all three groups, and saw the biggest difference between low groups and high groups overall. In our own system, we don’t separate medium students and high students in our stats (although I’ve been working on some spreadsheets that’ll enable us to do that at least at the primary level). However, even if you lump medium and high students together, you see a similar effect: the low students show greater growth over the course of the year, as judged by the level of book they’re able to read at 95% accuracy and retell, but they also show much greater loss over the summer. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2011, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/71 "2011-06-08T21:31:08Z")
> [@Kearsen](#): > > How do they measure success? Is it still a standardized test designed to “pass” the lowest common denominator? Or is there some excellent upward teaching going on to help the more talented ‘learners’? I should’ve answered this. There’s a huge pressure in education to get everyone on a 1 or a 2 score on EOGs (failing grades) to a 3 (passing) score. There’s no pressure to get the 3 students to a 4, and the 4 students suffer from neglect: teachers are often encouraged to let them work independently instead of giving them direct instruction. I have a huge freakin’ beef with this, but it’s federal law. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/72 "2011-06-09T01:49:00Z")
> [@AthanasiusKircher](#): > > Which is why I gave the educators’ explanation, which is essentially the same as your rhetorical question. > > But I get to ask you one now. I understand that there may be all sorts of reasonable explanations for the gradual downward drift of the mean. But can you come up with some good explanation for why the actual numbers of topmost achievers (with scores over 700 or 750) consistently dropped as the pool of students got larger? Haven’t looked at it, but could the scores of top achievers be explained similarly to the disappearence of .400 hitters in baseball? i.e. reduced variation at the very top? ---
**Author:** ![straight\_man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/straight_man/32/3027_2.png) [@straight\_man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/straight_man)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/73 "2011-06-09T03:24:46Z")
I’m pretty seriously dubious about these claims based on the SAT’s, seeing as the [Flynn Effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect) has been observed during that same period. Care to explain the discrepancy? ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/74 "2011-06-09T11:32:02Z")
The problem with the “some kids just aren’t school material” argument is that it is never, of course, _your_ kids who don’t belong in school. Everyone is happy to gush about the fabulous lives of plumbers and the dazzling wonders of trade school. But not for their own kids, goodness no. Their own kids are on their way to college, of course. But those _other_ kids, well, _they_ just don’t realize how grateful they should be to have a life of manual labor to look forward to, and really how dull and unrewarding office work is anyway, and how they’d be better off with the simple and happy lives of the underclass and leave the path to the middle-class for the middle class. It’s condescending. And, given how predictably the various lines of education haves and have-nots would work out in practice, it’s a whole host of ugly “-ist’s” as well. I travel in international teachers circles, and know Americans who have taught in more than a dozen countries. Trust me when I say that by international standards, the US system is fabulous. Other systems may be better at teaching rote skills, but the US system creates critical thinkers, coherent writers, and skilled researchers. Our universities are still the best in the world, and there is a reason for that. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/75 "2011-06-09T12:06:59Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > The problem with the “some kids just aren’t school material” argument is that it is never, of course, _your_ kids who don’t belong in school. Everyone is happy to gush about the fabulous lives of plumbers and the dazzling wonders of trade school. But not for their own kids, goodness no. Their own kids are on their way to college, of course. But those _other_ kids, well, _they_ just don’t realize how grateful they should be to have a life of manual labor to look forward to, and really how dull and unrewarding office work is anyway, and how they’d be better off with the simple and happy lives of the underclass and leave the path to the middle-class for the middle class. I’m not sure whether we’re joking or not, but currently we talk about how we don’t want our 2-year-old daughter to get a liberal arts degree like both her parents, about how we want her to be an electrician or something, so she can support us in her old age. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/76 "2011-06-09T12:26:22Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I’m not sure whether we’re joking or not, but currently we talk about how we don’t want our 2-year-old daughter to get a liberal arts degree like both her parents, about how we want her to be an electrician or something, so she can support us in her old age. That’s all well and good. But when it comes down to the numbers, middle class people go to college. They send their kids to college. They are perfectly capable of sending their kids to trade school, but by the whole they don’t. They are capable of choosing the fabulous life of plumbers, but they generally don’t. In general, they choose clean sit-down work in a climate controlled environment that offers some intellectual challenge. If this is the dream that the middle-class pursues, why shouldn’t the poor have their chance to pursue it as well? Where do we get off telling them that they should be happy with a life of manual labor. (And we are talking about the poor here- as mentioned, the middle-class can already choose manual labor.) If there was any chance that some kind of system like this would work out fairly in practice, maybe I’d have a different attitude. If the dumbass drunk frat-boy son of a banker had the same chance of getting relegated to trade school as the dumb ass drunk frat-boy son of a laborer, I might have a different attitude. But it wouldn’t work out fairly. You’d still have the same dumb and irresponsible sons and daughters of the middle class clogging up the schools. The only thing that would change is that the bright strivers from other backgrounds would have even more of a chance of being streamed into something that’s less than their dreams. It wouldn’t be the dumb and lazy kids who got pushed out- it’d crack on the same old lines these things tend to crack along. ---
**Author:** ![AthanasiusKircher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@AthanasiusKircher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AthanasiusKircher)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/77 "2011-06-09T16:42:09Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > That’s all well and good. > > But when it comes down to the numbers, middle class people go to college. They send their kids to college. They are perfectly capable of sending their kids to trade school, but by the whole they don’t. They are capable of choosing the fabulous life of plumbers, but they generally don’t. In general, they choose clean sit-down work in a climate controlled environment that offers some intellectual challenge. Your plumber example could skew the perspective somewhat. There are plenty of occupations that don’t require a four-year degree (or shouldn’t, but the upward trend in credentialing now seems to push that way) and also have “clean sit-down work in a climate controlled environment,” and many more that aren’t “sit-down” but don’t require any significant physical labor. (For example, most of the office staff anywhere.) As for intellectual challenge, that’s usually up to the worker to make for him/herself. When I was fresh out of high school, I got a temp job for part of a summer at a cell phone company doing collections. It could have been incredibly boring, but I amused myself by figuring out ways to make my work more efficient by making use of various computer shortcuts, including database and spreadsheet tricks and other things. When my supervisor checked in on me one day, she asked what the heck I was doing. But when I showed her how much faster I could process accounts using a few simple tricks, she mandated that approach for the whole office. Even though I wasn’t in the fraud department, I managed to track down (in my spare time I was saving from processing accounts so quickly) a set of fraudulent accounts that probably saved the company hundreds of thousands of dollars. I had visits from the supervisors three levels above me to thank me for my contributions, and I have no doubt that if I stayed there for more than six weeks I would have ended up with a significant promotion. Those who want to challenge themselves can probably find ways to do it in almost any line of work. Those who stand out can often work themselves up into a position with the benefits you describe, and if they’re at all bright, they can probably do it in fewer years than four years of college, and without all the debt. I have no strong designs that my children have to go to college – it depends on their interests and abilities, and I have no belief that it’s the best thing for everyone (or even most people). ---
**Author:** ![AthanasiusKircher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@AthanasiusKircher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AthanasiusKircher)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/78 "2011-06-09T16:52:59Z")
> [@straight\_man](#): > > I’m pretty seriously dubious about these claims based on the SAT’s, seeing as the [Flynn Effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect) has been observed during that same period. Care to explain the discrepancy? Your link provides you your own answer to that question: > [@](#): > > Because children attend school longer now and have become much more familiar with the testing of school-related material, **one might expect the greatest gains to occur on such school content-related tests as vocabulary, arithmetic or general information. Just the opposite is the case: abilities such as these have experienced relatively small gains and even occasional decreases over the years.** The greatest Flynn effects occur instead for g-loaded tests such as Raven’s Progressive Matrices. SATs don’t test g directly, instead focusing mostly on vocabulary, reading comprehension, and basic algebra-level math. (If you’re not familiar with intelligence test lingo, g is the supposed abstract intelligence that IQ tests should favor, particularly the matrix-based tests and other culture-free tests.) In fact, though it’s not relevant to my argument, the SAT has been moving away from g-loaded questions, by omitting sections that rely more on abstract reasoning rather than “skills-based” assessments in the past 15 years. Your observation perhaps makes the SAT trend all the more disturbing – if students’ abstract reasoning abilities are for some reason increasing, the fact that they couldn’t do better on tests that actually relate in part to material that is supposed to be covered in schools means that schools are even less effective than I originally argued. ---
**Author:** ![AthanasiusKircher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@AthanasiusKircher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AthanasiusKircher)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/79 "2011-06-09T17:03:03Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > Haven’t looked at it, but could the scores of top achievers be explained similarly to the disappearence of .400 hitters in baseball? i.e. reduced variation at the very top? I’m not an expert in baseball, but I would think that the number of .400 hitters would depend greatly on the overall quality of pitching in the league, which has obviously increased over the years. Thus, although batters may improved as well, they were fighting against more challenging opponents. Do you really think if you put the greatest hitters of today against the overall set of pitchers of yesteryear (not just the great pitchers, but all the pitchers a hitter would come up against over a season) that there wouldn’t be some with very high batting averages? Anyhow, regardless, I don’t think such an analogy is relevant to students who are taking the same test with the same type of questions (which are all normed ahead of time to the same standard) scored to the same standard over a 30-year period. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/80 "2011-06-09T17:27:50Z")
While it is possible schools are getting worse, it is also possible people are getting dumber and dumberer. Or both. 😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712.md?page=5)