# 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:** 5
**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, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/81 "2011-06-09T17:28:15Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > 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. Then why do U.S. students rarely come in near the top in international rankings and assessments? > [@](#): > > Other systems may be better at teaching rote skills, but the US system creates critical thinkers, coherent writers, and skilled researchers. Why do I see many of our top-tier universities’ graduate schools populated by so many international students, then? In many of the most elite departments (particularly in engineering and sciences, though increasingly in the humanities), foreign students are as common or even more common than Americans. As for “coherent writers,” there is not a single older professor that I know who doesn’t think that the writing level of college students has markedly decreased over the past few decades. > [@](#): > > Our universities are still the best in the world, and there is a reason for that. I travel in international academic circles, and I know American professors who not only have lectured in lots of countries but also have books published in a dozen languages. Trust me when I say that many of these professors are very anxious about the continuing quality and superiority of the American university system. Some of that is because of the crisis in funding at many colleges that happened after the recent downturn, some of that is because administrations are moving increasingly toward a model where teaching is never, ever, ever rewarded and the majority of teaching is done by part-time lecturers paid a couple thousand dollars per class (including at top schools), and… part of it is because the **quality of students is not high** , and an increasing percentage of high-performing students are from foreign countries. The latter has been true for some time, but the difference is that those high-performing students used to stick around to work and teach in the U.S., but they often now return to their own countries instead. The American university system is still on top, but I don’t have high hopes for 20-30 years from now. But this is a bit of a digression. ---
**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, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/82 "2011-06-09T18:00:42Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > While it is possible schools are getting worse, it is also possible people are getting dumber and dumberer. Or both. 😛 As mentioned by someone else in the thread, the Flynn effect (gradually rising IQs over the population as a whole) suggests otherwise. If you believe IQ testing methodology, native cognitive abilities actually seem to be going up. By the way, I don’t actually think schools are getting worse. I think they’re reasonably successful at what they were designed to do – maintain social order, create good loyal citizens, and keep social classes relatively static. (I know this may sound inflammatory, but please have a look at what many of the major reformers who advocated mandatory schooling the 19th century and then those who advocated secondary schooling the early 20th actually said on these topics.) If anything, the original reformers who advocated the system didn’t anticipate the social changes of the late 20th century, which has basically abolished a lot of the social system that maintained the former “educated class” – though remnants of that are still around… witness how many Ivy League schools admit such a high percentage of New England private feeder schools, for example. ---
**Author:** ![kushiel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbce88/32.png) [@kushiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kushiel)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2011, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/83 "2011-06-09T20:19:53Z")
I don’t think moving to trade schooling is the answer. It has to be something cultural in the US. I live 4 hours from the US border, and I just can’t figure out where the gulf in education comes from. I try thinking of the differences between the American and Canadian education systems, and all I can come up with is standardized testing and salaries. I’ve gone to schools with a huge population of low-income students and others with a huge population of high-income students. There was definitely a difference there: not so much with the teaching, but with the number of students trying to learn. Canada does education on a provincial basis, so I can only speak for the province I was schooled in. There’s no yearly mandatory standardized testing. Certain grade levels are picked out for specific subjects every few years, but it had no bearing on your grades or school funding - I believe every education system needs to figure out a basic baseline for effectiveness of the curriculum. There’s no standardized testing for post-secondary like the SAT. Some provinces allow you to take the IB test, but all Canadian universities go off specific class scores and not a general test. Teachers receive salaries here that are considered good, so people don’t avoid a career in education because it pays badly. I think you would need to evaluate America’s attitude towards education before changing the system so drastically. Europe, Oceania and Canada manage to follow a similar system to yours but without as many issues. ---
**Author:** ![nymersic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ec9cab/32.png) [@nymersic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nymersic)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/84 "2011-06-10T04:50:51Z")
I’ve been observing this with a lot to say, but I have a habit of instead keeping quiet to watch where discussions go. I think I’ll butt in now. > [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > While it is possible schools are getting worse, it is also possible people are getting dumber and dumberer. Or both. 😛 Silly one to address first: of course you’re being facetious, but while I think the answer is no, this has never been the case so far, I do believe this may be the case in the coming centuries (via “The Idiocracy Effect”). As Athanasius said, Flynn Effect. Really, I think we’ve been getting smarter quicker ever since we figured out fire. > [@AthanasiusKircher](#): > > …(I know this may sound inflammatory, but please have a look at what many of the major reformers who advocated mandatory schooling the 19th century and then those who advocated secondary schooling the early 20th actually said on these topics.)… I’ll help out, since this is a topic I’ve been rather interested in since I first started being educated, about five years ago. “In our dreams, people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present eduction conventions of intellectual and character education fade from their minds, and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people, or any of their children, into philosophers, or men of science. We have not to raise up from them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen – of whom we have an ample supply. The task is simple. We will organize children and teach them in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.” -John D. Rockefeller’s General Education Board, 1906 I’ll directly address prior posts about the jail/prison rhetoric in another post. I think the rhetoric is actually quite fair. Athanasius, your posts remind me of John Taylor Gatto’s complains. Is that a coincidence? If not, you should go peruse some of his books. He’s put a couple decades of similar thinking from his years as a NY teacher into some good concrete analytical writing. > [@kushiel](#): > > I think you would need to evaluate America’s attitude towards education before changing the system so drastically. Europe, Oceania and Canada manage to follow a similar system to yours but without as many issues. Oceania! Haha, does anyone else just think 1984 when they hear Oceania? ---
**Author:** ![nymersic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ec9cab/32.png) [@nymersic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nymersic)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/85 "2011-06-10T05:28:06Z")
> [@AthanasiusKircher](#): > > A lot of threads complain about various aspects of public schooling, but what about the underlying question – **is mandatory public schooling actually useful in any way**? > … > By the way, I’m not at all advocating the abolition of public schools – only that mandatory schooling doesn’t seem to work and there is little evidence that it ever worked in achieving a better-educated public. Many people might be better off in apprentice programs or whatever in their teenage years (and there should be no shame in encouraging such things instead of the “dream” of going to some crappy college to waste more years and money); but some sort of public school should still be available for those who wish to go. > > (Full disclosure: I have taught in both public and private schools as well as at the college level, so I am very supportive of the idea of education in general. I simply question whether our mandatory school system was designed to educate or was ever actually successful in educating.) I think our compulsory public school systes entirely fulfilled the use that was intended. As you’ll mention later, the intentions of those funding the rise of compulsory education in the late 19th century were hardly selfless. Thinkers aren’t useful people, unless they are the inventing-engineering types who will only be inventing for corporations. Renaissance men are useless people today; the world demands only extremeties of specialization. The system worked as it was intended: the Industrial Revolution was fulfilled in its entirety, and the U.S. became the most powerful country for a century. The same system is what is forcing its decline. Does it have a use today? Those who use it aren’t the ones who attend it. > [@Acid\_Lamp](#): > > Mandatory education means that everyone at least \*has the chance \*to be exposed to literacy, mathematics, logic, scientific realities, and critical thinking skills. > … > What we SHOULD be doing though, is separating out students at the end of middle school for vocation, technical, academic, arts/ entertainment, and professional tracks and tailoring their programs accordingly to produce a more competent, efficient populace. You imply that mandatory schooling is the only way everyone has a chance to be exposed to literacy, math, logic, science, and critical thinking skills. I, on the other hand, would argue that every person has the chance to be exposed to these skills without any schooling whatsoever. No, before continuing on, I do not advocate simply getting rid of required schooling - our society couldn’t handle that right now. > [@CitizenPained](#): > > Humph. Since when do 13 year olds know what they want to do with their lives? > It’s not a matter of ‘Is education effective?’ It’s about what _kind_ of education is effective. Education by its nature is effective. Schooling teaches some things to some. Education is a sort of product. If you get it, then you have it. The only way I know for myself to be educated is to educate myself. I’ve never seen another method work for me. And as a 13 year old I had a better idea of what to do with my life than I do now, at twice that age. 13 year olds should still be interested in things - they should be allowed to pursue those things, and not be locked indoors against their will all day. If it is their will to learn in such an environment, then more power to them. > [@bahia\_hombre](#): > > Some education is better than no education. Ignorance is the enemy…school must be mandatory everywhere. I’ve never in my life seen school impart education. I addended relatively good grade, middle, and high schools, as well as an extremely good community college and a relatively good university. “Schools have not necessarily much to do with education… they are mainly institutions of control, where basic habits must be inculcated in the young. Education is quite different and has little place in school.” - Churchill I don’t believe this is simply semantics. CitizenPained mentions the Academy. The Academy is education; School is schooling. School has always schooled well. > [@Renee](#): > > What are you suggesting, here? I don’t want to speak for him, but I believe he was suggesting there are underlying problems with a system we put a lot of faith in. Faith and money. And time, oh yeah, lots of time. > [@Ravenman](#): > > But what does any of that have to do with whether school is mandatory or not? You are suggesting that poor literacy rates mean mandatory schooling has failed (please correct me if I’m misreading you). So why would abolishing mandatory schooling make people better educated? I think the compulsory nature of American schools is being addressed because of its obvious failure relative to expectations and expenditures. It may be true that on average people will be less educated without our current system - I would argue that a significant portion would be _more_ educated, and I’m certain I would have been one of them - but I would ask, are the resources we put into this education system worth the return? It’s not just the trillions of dollars each decade, but also the _millions and millions_ of hours our children are locked up, regardless of what they or their parents want. It’s something that at least needs to be _considered_. > [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > Why do you insist on the word “mandatory”? Public education is NOT mandatory. I’m not aware that it ever has been. There have always been private school options, though not always universally available. _Some form_ of education is mandatory in modern times. Schooling clearly appears mandatory now, doesn’t it? If public education was not mandatory for me in my youth, I had no idea, and I don’t think my parents did either. I lost thousands of hours of my life, and the only thing I took from it was haunting memories of a decade of suicidal thoughts. That’s a different thread. You know, my grandmother taught me numbers, adding and subtracting, and the ABC’s before I started kindergarten. Oh, chess too. At fourth grade I read at what (if I remember right) NY called the 12+ level - better than average high school graduates. When I was leaving high school seven years later - didn’t graduate the first time around - my reading was scarcely better, I could now do algebra, and I knew, I dunno, that the Qin Dynasty came before the Han Dynasty, or something like that. I mean, of course I learned more than that. Was it worth it? No - I could have learned that stuff in months, it didn’t require (up 'til then) half my lifetime. > [@boozilu](#): > > If you look at many countries in Central America, where there is no free public education, many children don’t go to school. > > I have a friend who adopted a girl at age 9 who had never been in school; today she’s in high school (a few grades behind but doing well otherwise), Her parents couldn’t afford to send her to school. > > It seems to me that without free public education you end up with the populace trapped in a cycle of poverty, and virtually no middle class. > > (Of course, I’m not an educator or sociologist or economist, so what do I know?) I don’t think anyone works harder than immigrants who once had nothing, but now have everything, including good role models. It’s a wonderful thing - those whose desire to learn has not been destroyed by painful time schooling still retain a wonderful blessing. ---
**Author:** ![nymersic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ec9cab/32.png) [@nymersic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nymersic)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/86 "2011-06-10T05:57:27Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Learning aside, I think the societal benefit of not having millions of 8-16 year olds roaming the streets with nothing to do is totally worth the $800 billion or so we spend on public education. I’m not sure if you’re joking around, but today I think that’s the sad truth. It’s a sad truth because it’s not simply a societal benefit, but a societal necessity. > [@Markxxx](#): > > Archie Bunker said it best… > From _All In The Family_ Seventeen million percent accurate. > [@guizot](#): > > Moreover, the “mandatory” in the phrase “mandatory public schools” has changed as well. Making school “mandatory” for the “population” of Mass. in 1852 could have meant (and probably did mean) something entirely different than LAPD issuing tickets to parents of LA Unified kids picked up on 9th and Alvarado at 11:00am today. Over time we need to know who actually found their way into the class rooms (and who didn’t), as well as who actually got tested for all of these figures. As it stands, they’re almost abstractions, really. Good point. > [@TriPolar](#): > > Yes, something is wrong. The goal of anyone would be acceptance to college because that’s how you make more money. Being an educated adult, being happy, and making a useful contribution to society are secondary to the societal priority of making more money, which is the reason to go to college, which is the reason for taking the SATs. I was taught for more than a decade that the sole purpose of my schooling was to go to a good college; the sole purpose of college, to get a good job; the sole purpose of a good job, to make money. That’s what life was. > [@TriPolar](#): > > Education itself is the skill people need, and schools don’t care much about it at all. I’m constantly surprised at the number of people, including on this board, who believe that you don’t learn to educate yourself until you reach college level. This to me is a clear indictment of the failure of schools. Above basic literacy, which basically means reading street signs and price tags to me, the primary goal of an educational system should be learning to learn. It is not something that can’t be achieved before adulthood. There are plenty of pre-adults who have learned how to learn how to play video games, without any coverage of that topic in school. Wonderfully said. > [@CitizenPained](#): > > Life skills? I think we are sorely underestimating kids. We tossed out home ec and cooking classes for a reason. They are inefficient uses of time. > > Not sure how long it’s been since you were a teenager, but **most** kids don’t have the mental capacity to propel themselves along out of their own volition. I’m likely misunderstanding, as the rest of the post seems to disagree with this assessment, but _you_ seem to be underestimating kids, or at least what kids are supposed to be. That is, by the time they finish grade school, kids really should have the mental capacity to propel themselves along out of their own volition, as you said. > [@robert\_columbia](#): > > I also suspect the same thing. I find it very easy to believe that there were a lot of people in times past in English speaking countries who basically couldn’t make heads nor tails of the written word, and if they saw “SHOES FITTED HERE” on a sign, they would have no idea it was a cobbler’s shop. > > Nowadays, in the English speaking world, I’m thinking that there are a huge number of people who can’t reason logically, can’t make sense of the King James Version of the Bible and Shakespeare, but can find the intersection between “MAPLE AV” and “5TH ST”. I don’t think that there are a lot of people who don’t recognize any letters or can’t make out a cross street. Entirely true. A wonderful benefit [SARCASM] _of twelve years of schooling_ [/SARCASM]. > [@AthanasiusKircher](#): > > I was talking about 13-year-olds. If a 13-year-old can’t yet read, add, and subtract, after 7-8 years of school, something is seriously wrong in our educational system. The Truth. Why do we decide that he should stay in school? Obviously he doesn’t belong there. If he ever really wants to learn that stuff, we have a wonderful nationwide library system, and believe it or not, millions of people who are willing to help each other out. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > As a teacher, phrases like “babysitting” and “jail” burn me up. Five hours ago, I finished my school year. My kids did the standard curriculum, of course. I also taught them Joseph Campbell’s theory of the Hero’s Journey (with the caveat that it’s not universal) and helped them write stories in his vein; instituted a rich service-learning project around Heifer International that substantially incorporated science, social studies, math, reading (nonfiction research skills), and persuasive writing; used a modified version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma in a discovery-based unit to help them model some basic ethics; devised experiments to help them determine the best uses of various weather instruments; helped the better readers form a self-directed book club; and more. I work my butt off. At the end of the year I asked my students what their favorite activity was, and we made a list about fifteen items long of units they’d really enjoyed from throughout the year. You sound like a wonderful teacher. I think I knew one like that (but I’m not sure), he taught creative writing at my high school. I never had him. I don’t think I ever had a really good teacher. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > And there are tons of teachers like me across the country who are passionate about their teaching. We are not babysitters. We are not jailers… When I was out with bronchitis, but decided to pop into school to grab my books for some schoolwork, and after seeing me come in the side door, the security guard refused to let me leave, even though I could point out my mom waiting in a car 30ft away - you know, the sort of security guard with a gun and nightstick, and an assholish disposition - he’s the jailer. The endless streams of substitute teachers who say “I have nothing.” and sit up front at the desk reading newspapers the whole day long - they’re the babysitters. The 53 year old English teacher who either diddled the cheerleaders, or at least obviously wanted to - it was OK, 'cause they always got 100’s in the course - he was the corrupt warden. Mr. Left Hand of Dorkness, I like the sound of you, but I think you are unwittingly part of the problem. I referenced John Taylor Gatto above - I’d really love to know what you, the one who truly wants to educate, would feel about his writing - he was once like you, and for a long, long time. > [@Acid\_Lamp](#): > > As to your second point, most _adults_ lack motivation as well. I honestly feel it’s schooling that destroys motivation. It seems ingrained in the word “Schooling.” Just think about it. Schooling. Schooling. School. To school. > [@Acid\_Lamp](#): > > Secondly, what’s wrong with tech schools? Tech fields can be extremely lucrative, and the earlier you start the faster you make professional pay. Not everyone has the chops to be a doctor, lawyer or CEO and we shouldn’t sell our kids a bag of crap. The worst part is, one of the few things we successfully teach, is that university education _is the whole point_ of the kids being there. ---
**Author:** ![nymersic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ec9cab/32.png) [@nymersic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nymersic)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 9:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/87 "2011-06-10T09:24:42Z")
> **[Cuban literacy campaign](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Literacy_Campaign)** > > The Cuban literacy campaign (Spanish: Campaña Nacional de Alfabetización en Cuba) was an eight-month long effort to abolish illiteracy in Cuba after the Cuban Revolution. > The dictator Fulgencio Batista was overthrown by an armed guerrilla movement known as the 26th of July Movement (Movimiento 26 de Julio) on January 1, 1959. The new revolutionary government, led by Fidel Castro, immediately began a series of social and economic reforms. Among these were agrarian reform, health care reform, and ... To me, that shows how bad our system must be at teaching. Remember, those guys were working hard at jobs at the same time. It takes a year to teach 90% of people who don’t know how to read and write, even while they work their regular jorbs? It doesn’t make sense that we spend any money on what we get. No, public schools aren’t working, even at a basic level. I think those basic skills would almost always be acquired without school. ---
**Author:** ![kushiel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbce88/32.png) [@kushiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kushiel)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/88 "2011-06-10T14:39:44Z")
> [@nymersic](#): > > You know, my grandmother taught me numbers, adding and subtracting, and the ABC’s before I started kindergarten. Oh, chess too. People like you aren’t the issue. The issue is kids with families who don’t care at all about education. Your family would have educated you without school. But there’s a lot of kids out there without that support who would not learn those things without school. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/89 "2011-06-10T18:29:35Z")
> [@nymersic](#): > > You sound like a wonderful teacher. I think I knew one like that (but I’m not sure), he taught creative writing at my high school. I never had him. I don’t think I ever had a really good teacher. I had several absolutely wonderful teachers growing up, people who really encouraged me, who taught me great things, who helped me through some tough times. I’m sorry you didn’t have that experience. ---
**Author:** ![nymersic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ec9cab/32.png) [@nymersic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nymersic)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/90 "2011-06-10T18:58:45Z")
> [@kushiel](#): > > People like you aren’t the issue. The issue is kids with families who don’t care at all about education. Your family would have educated you without school. But there’s a lot of kids out there without that support who would not learn those things without school. I wish that were the case. My grandmother died when I was 6. The rest of my family assumed school to have the sole role in educating me (my parents just had high school diplomas, what could they know about teaching me?). My intellectual development was practically halted for more than a decade. To be fair, I’m sure my parents would have taught me if I showed interest and they understood they had the capability. Things didn’t work out that way. The main players in this drama didn’t understand their roles at all. I honestly think school drove all desire to learn out of me. I think I was the issue, along with the large body of students around me who also had no desire to learn. Kids are born wanting to learn. I’m certain of that. By the time kids reach middle school, I think at least half have no desire to learn, and want nothing to do with school, beyond socializing. What happens? I understand and even agree with your methodology, but as far as this thread goes, you are wrong: the family isn’t the issue here, the kids aren’t the issue here; the issue is with the school system, 'cause that’s what the subject of the thread is. I do _strongly believe_ the family should be the principal educators of our children, but that is seldom the case. In society today, school - usually public, compulsory - is assumed to have this role. I honestly believe schools employ intentionally bad systems so that students lose the desire to learn. To me that is unquestionable after looking at the history of compulsory education in this country, and the school systems ours were based on (those of Austria and Germany, notably). I’ll put on my tinfoil hat for the rest of the discussion so that there is no mistaking where I stand. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t think that the teachers ever intend to stunt kids’ development. They are the well-meaning ones. It’s the architects of the system we’re running - mostly industrialists a hundred and more years ago - that are mostly to blame. ---
**Author:** ![pbbth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f9ae1b/32.png) [@pbbth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pbbth)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/91 "2011-06-10T20:03:28Z")
> [@nymersic](#): > > I wish that were the case. My grandmother died when I was 6. The rest of my family assumed school to have the sole role in educating me (my parents just had high school diplomas, what could they know about teaching me?). My intellectual development was practically halted for more than a decade. To be fair, I’m sure my parents would have taught me if I showed interest and they understood they had the capability. Things didn’t work out that way. The main players in this drama didn’t understand their roles at all. So you’re saying that you had essentially no one who made any effort to teach you anything at all (save your grandmother for the precious years you had her around) and a natural curiosity and desire to learn but that when you were put in a place with access to books, educated individuals with answers to your questions, and regular classes where you could absorb tons of information at no cost to you it was stifling and you would have been better off at home with nothing but a library card and a calculator? Color me skeptical. I don’t doubt that you could have learned something on your own but one of the big complaints that most people have with homeschooling is that people _don’t know what they don’t know_ and will leave huge gaps in the education of their children if they aren’t very careful to make sure to learn the things that they need to teach their kids. I imagine that the problem would be significantly worse if a 6 or 7 year old child were expected to educate themselves because the people around them didn’t have the time or aptitude for providing an education to someone else. If you had shitty teachers that is bad and you shouldn’t have experienced that, but I would bet dollars to donuts that you still got a better education from less than stellar teachers than you would have trying to educate yourself as a child. ---
**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 10, 2011, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/92 "2011-06-10T20:18:57Z")
> [@nymersic](#): > > I honestly believe schools employ intentionally bad systems so that students lose the desire to learn. To me that is unquestionable after looking at the history of compulsory education in this country, and the school systems ours were based on (those of Austria and Germany, notably). I’ll put on my tinfoil hat for the rest of the discussion so that there is no mistaking where I stand. > > Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t think that the teachers ever intend to stunt kids’ development. They are the well-meaning ones. It’s the architects of the system we’re running - mostly industrialists a hundred and more years ago - that are mostly to blame. Honestly, the tinfoil hat fits, in my opinion. I’ve heard similar views from other people, and they all seem to stem from the same book–or else many people are reaching eerily similar conclusions through eerily similar faulty logic. And the fault is this: even stipulating the evil of early educators, something I’m not remotely willing to stipulate having read the likes of John Dewey, what’s important in today’s schools is the thoughts of today’s educational movers and shakers. Have you read your Lucy Calkins about how to teach language, your NCTM materials about teaching math, your Michael Klentschy about how to teach science, your Stephanie Steffey about how to teach social studies? These are modern theorists who shape how beginning teachers are taught to teach their subjects, and I guarantee you they have a lot more influence on the modern classroom than any Rockefeller. Teaching material so it’s relevant and interesting is hard work. But I think often of something my father told me about a trip to China. The students in the classroom he visited were amazingly well-behaved, studious, and hardworking. If they daydreamed by looking out the window, they’d see the alternative: other children their age working in the rice paddies. (My dad sometimes exaggerates for the sake of a story, granted, but the dynamic is real even if the scene is not). Compare that to a US classroom, where students who take a day off of school watch TV, play computer games, or maybe play outside. If your students’ alternative to your lesson is backbreaking work, you don’t have to be all that good to command their interest. If their alternative to your lesson is Plants vs. Zombies, you gotta be damned good. And that’s what we modern teachers are up against: we have to be more interesting than a video game. So when you talk about how your love of learning was lost to you, are you sure it was school, and not television, that did it? ---
**Author:** ![Kearsen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/82dd89/32.png) [@Kearsen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kearsen)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/93 "2011-06-10T20:22:48Z")
> [@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. > > 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. I don’t think the determining factor is money. Poor smart kids should and do go on to college. It’s the poor dumb ones who get left out. These are the kids that encouraging some sort of trade school would be good for (so they don’t get stuck doing remedial labor their entire lives) The rich dumb kids might get coerced into going to college but usually they don’t finish school. ---
**Author:** ![Kearsen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/82dd89/32.png) [@Kearsen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kearsen)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/94 "2011-06-10T20:28:27Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > 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. And this is why even parents of smart kids think that the system fails, imo. Without accounting for individual teachers who may go beyond those ‘federal law’ statutes to promote those 4 students, they eventually either get bored and lose interest, get bored and cause problems or are left to themselves to continue growing intellectually. Teachers are constantly told to help those 1’s and 2’s to get to threes and we end up using up all resources to do so instead of encouraging those 1’s and 2’s towards some sort of vocation that may very well put them in a much better place later in life. In your opinion, how many 1’s and 2’s do you ‘save’? (By save I mean, go on to graduate and attend college) ---
**Author:** ![kushiel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbce88/32.png) [@kushiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kushiel)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/95 "2011-06-10T20:28:41Z")
> [@nymersic](#): > > I wish that were the case. My grandmother died when I was 6. The rest of my family assumed school to have the sole role in educating me (my parents just had high school diplomas, what could they know about teaching me?). My intellectual development was practically halted for more than a decade. To be fair, I’m sure my parents would have taught me if I showed interest and they understood they had the capability. Things didn’t work out that way. The main players in this drama didn’t understand their roles at all. And if we’re throwing out anecdotes, neither of my parents have high school diplomas (my dad went back for GED in his 50s) and they didn’t spend a lot of time on at-home education. By some fluke of nature, they ended up with two kids who could both read at early ages and were A students. My report cards said things like ‘will voraciously read anything, even product labels’. School didn’t douse the flame of learning for me, it enabled it. I think concessions need to be made for advanced students, but that’s hardly the same as scrapping the whole system. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/96 "2011-06-10T20:44:55Z")
> [@nymersic](#): > > [Cuban literacy campaign - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Literacy_Campaign) > To me, that shows how bad our system must be at teaching. Remember, those guys were working hard at jobs at the same time. It takes a year to teach 90% of people who don’t know how to read and write, even while they work their regular jorbs? It doesn’t make sense that we spend any money on what we get. > No, public schools aren’t working, even at a basic level. I think those basic skills would almost always be acquired without school. But Spanish spelling is a lot more regular than English spelling. I’d expect there to be variances in how long it takes to teach basic literacy in a language that a person already speaks, depending on what language it is. Teaching literacy for illiterate French speakers might take a while, but maybe not as long as teaching English speakers to read and write English. Chinese and Japanese is going to take forever - I understand that high school students in Japan are still being taught new characters every year, when American students already read well and can write and English classes have pretty much moved to literature and poetry and how to write a research paper, with perhaps a few sidetracks on complex grammar issues and questions of usage (e.g. when is it OK to write in the first person?). ---
**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 10, 2011, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/97 "2011-06-10T20:48:26Z")
> [@Kearsen](#): > > In your opinion, how many 1’s and 2’s do you ‘save’? (By save I mean, go on to graduate and attend college) I have no opinion on that. Not trying to be snarky, I really don’t have the data. I can say that I had six students begin the year reading at a 1 or 2, and two students end the year reading at a 1 or 2. (In the terms we use, six students began the year reading at 14 or below, i.e., below grade level; only two students ended the year reading at 26 or below, i.e., below grade level at the end of the year.) So yeah, I do some good for students, I know it. I also know that first grade did the same: a lot of those 1 or 2 students suffer tremendous loss over the summer. I’m not saying our system is perfect; on the contrary, I think there are very deep flaws in the system. I am saying that conspiracy theories involving 19th century Prussians and Rockefellers don’t get at those problems, and I am saying that mandatory education is absolutely vital. ---
**Author:** ![nymersic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ec9cab/32.png) [@nymersic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nymersic)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/98 "2011-06-10T22:28:53Z")
You know, I didn’t want to talk about me. I just wanted anecdotes that would support my point of view. Sorry guys, this ends up pretty personal, and is obviously mostly subjective; you may want to skip on to better posts below. “I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.” - Thoreau > [@pbbth](#): > > So you’re saying that you had essentially no one who made any effort to teach you anything at all (save your grandmother for the precious years you had her around) Beyond what my dad taught me about “doing the right thing”, gardening and growing vegetables and such, yes. Honestly, entirely, yes. I admit my memory was bad, but outside of school (I’ve never indicated or meant to indicate that school made no effort to teach me) nobody made any effort. > [@pbbth](#): > > and a natural curiosity and desire to learn but that when you were put in a place with access to books, educated individuals with answers to your questions, and regular classes where you could absorb tons of information at no cost to you it was stifling and you would have been better off at home with nothing but a library card and a calculator? Color me skeptical. I don’t doubt that you could have learned something on your own but one of the big complaints that most people have with homeschooling is that people _don’t know what they don’t know_ and will leave huge gaps in the education of their children if they aren’t very careful to make sure to learn the things that they need to teach their kids. I imagine that the problem would be significantly worse if a 6 or 7 year old child were expected to educate themselves because the people around them didn’t have the time or aptitude for providing an education to someone else. If you had shitty teachers that is bad and you shouldn’t have experienced that, but I would bet dollars to donuts that you still got a better education from less than stellar teachers than you would have trying to educate yourself as a child. I’m pretty certain I had a natural curiosity and desire to learn, but that was defeated by the structure of school. Everything from the drab color of the walls to the new social studies books every 3 years, which say the same things, except progressively tell us more and more about Harriet Tubman and less and less about Benjamin Franklin. Oh, and being from Niagara Falls, I was baffled when I discovered who Nikola Tesla was, and angry that I never once heard his name in school. I understand well the _don’t know what they don’t know_ idea, and wholeheartedly agree. It’s also a sign of why standardized testing isn’t that grand of an idea. Yes, if I imagine that I left school after elementary, and had to teach myself, I believe I would have been better educated. I would be a smarter man today. I know I’m a minority in that I’m certain I learn better most of the time researching whatever I feel like on my own. I think it’s a crime that between myself and my parents, another option was never available/was never made known. I really don’t think my teachers were shittier than average. It’s considered to be a good school district. You know, we get higher than average grades. It’s well funded. This is the way it goes. I was bullied daily about my appearance: clothes obviously hand-me-downs, that sort of thing. People weren’t like that in my little city. I didn’t want class periods to end: I knew I’d have to deal with the people in between classes, and the assholes at the start of classes before the teacher showed up. Almost every class. Definitely every day. I wasn’t particularly timid. I’d end up suspended (usually in-school, niiice) a dozen times for self-defense, as I wasn’t the type to start a fight. Taking my stolen books back was enough to get in-school suspensions. Pushing someone who poured mayonnaise into my jacket got me suspended. Great! It’s Niagara Falls, it’s cold, I gotta put this jacket on with mayonnaise down it’s sleeve. It’s alright, he was scolded and got detention for it. I lived in detention. (This is the type of thing, where if he was my friend, and I had a warm way of getting home, this would be a prank. I like pranks. I already wasn’t a happy youth. This wasn’t a prank.) I was told in high school I’d be arrested if I ever stepped foot on the grounds of our elementary school again, because my “friends” (the only ones who didn’t overtly treat me like shit; only covertly) instigated some fight between kids there the day before. Just things like that. I thought I was a pretty good kid. In hindsight, I know I was. Getting told I’d be arrested for being near something that happened - somehow I became a standard Usual Suspect - well, it clearly put me at odds with administration. How could I not view them as the enemy? I was clearly their enemy. I never had a doubt. And enemy or not, I never really did anything to them. Ever. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Honestly, the tinfoil hat fits, in my opinion. I’ve heard similar views from other people, and they all seem to stem from the same book–or else many people are reaching eerily similar conclusions through eerily similar faulty logic. I think you’re right, switching “same book” with “same author.” I know the one that comes to mind is the most vocal/known, though I also know there’s dozens others, as his sources are usually well cited. I may have had no joy in learning at the time, but I’ve always been observant. I know what was described is reality. The way he saw it from the teachers’ point of view is a rarity, as evidenced by… well, everything around. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > And the fault is this: even stipulating the evil of early educators, something I’m not remotely willing to stipulate having read the likes of John Dewey > … I guarantee you they have a lot more influence on the modern classroom than any Rockefeller. True, I am well aware I’ve read a couple biased books, from one biased source. I’ve only read excerpts of the “evil of early educators.” If you think President Obama has “a lot more” influence on our government today than James Madison, then yes, in that parallel, I agree. I admit I only know the names of a couple of those educational thinkers [aside from Dewey], and do not know their specific ideas. On the other hand, I cannot for a second believe the Prussian school system, Rockefeller, etc, has had a negligible influence on the development of our school system. Quite the contrary, I believe that the vast majority of our problems stem from them. I do not support simply abolishing our school system. I support immediate alternatives, and the awareness of such. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Teaching material so it’s relevant and interesting is hard work. But I think often of something my father told me about a trip to China. The students in the classroom he visited were amazingly well-behaved, studious, and hardworking. If they daydreamed by looking out the window, they’d see the alternative: other children their age working in the rice paddies. (My dad sometimes exaggerates for the sake of a story, granted, but the dynamic is real even if the scene is not). Compare that to a US classroom, where students who take a day off of school watch TV, play computer games, or maybe play outside. > > If your students’ alternative to your lesson is backbreaking work, you don’t have to be all that good to command their interest. If their alternative to your lesson is Plants vs. Zombies, you gotta be damned good. And that’s what we modern teachers are up against: we have to be more interesting than a video game. > > So when you talk about how your love of learning was lost to you, are you sure it was school, and not television, that did it? Wonderfully said. See, you employ nice anecdotes that are easier to relate to. 🙂 I think I mentioned something about how much more of a work ethic comes into play in learning when the alternatives are very poor - in reference to someone adopting a child from another country. If I didn’t, I intended to. I don’t really feel the story is an exaggeration. At the age of 13, I would have been more interested in Plants vs Zombies. Today, while I know and even occasionally enjoy a game like Plants vs. Zombies (it’s a good one!), I find more entertainment in… well, of current windows open, I have a biography of Cato the Younger, Antony Flew, and quite a few describing Bitcoins, which I only recently heard of - fascinating. Recent things have been re-reading some Tolkien, reading Moby Dick for the first time, and learning more about troubleshooting motors electrically, as our pool motor died. That’s natural! That’s how it’s supposed to work! Today, we have all the information in the world at our fingertips, and half of each generation has no real desire to learn! To think how much I can’t stand it when I read the text messages of people I went to school with! Can you tell? I’m screaming in text! Cato the Younger! How many of our Founding Fathers knew his names and ideas and the stories about him by the time they were 18? 16? Probably every single one. What do I remember about Ancient Rome from my 13 years in public education? Julius Caesar was some emperor who was murdered on the Ides of March by Brutus and his conspiracy of mostly senators. Aqueducts. What do I remember about Greece? I remember Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns, and that I had to know how to label them; though back then, I likely would have conflated that with Ancient Rome. Did I ever hear of Ionia back then? Did I know Corinth was the city and civilization that inspired the name, or anything about them? Did I know that the Ancient Greeks never even invented the arch, which is wonderfully displayed in contrasting the Columns and the Aqueducts? Nope, none of that. What’s my problem with this? I remembered a lot more than most of the people around me! I remember to this day! So what’s the problem? The problem is **how freaking stupid** what I remember is. Why the hell would I have to be able to label which column is which by appearance? Isn’t there something _interesting_ that could have been learned from the Greeks? Hell yes. So why, WHY, **WHY?** The material is intended to be boring. I’m only supposed to know the basic facts. I’m supposed to know what everyone knows - a soothsayer told Caesar he would die; I’m not supposed to know the revolutionary ideas of Cato, and what he did when Caesar became emperor. > [@robert\_columbia](#): > > But Spanish spelling is a lot more regular than English spelling. I’d expect there to be variances in how long it takes to teach basic literacy in a language that a person already speaks, depending on what language it is. (About Che’s Cuban Literacy Campaign) Yes. You are entirely right. The differences are significant. There’s even the great factor stated above, that those Cubans likely wanted to learn to get away from the alternative. But you’re ignoring the should-be similarities. We are supposed to be more advanced today, as LeftHand will describe, with modern teaching methods. Our schools are better than theirs - shit, they barely had any schools. Our teachers are more knowledgeable. Our kids are less worked. Put all the factors together, and there is absolutely no excuse why our system does so poorly. The data are all around, but they don’t add up. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I’m not saying our system is perfect; on the contrary, I think there are very deep flaws in the system. I am saying that conspiracy theories involving 19th century Prussians and Rockefellers don’t get at those problems, and I am saying that mandatory education is absolutely vital. You are entirely agreeable. The questions that immediately come to mind: _how much_ mandatory education is absolutely vital? With all of our current flaws, do you believe what we have is actually worth it, not as opposed to scrapping it all (though it’s a theoretical option far in the future), but as opposed to shrinking it? Do you think our monopolization of 13 years of our childrens’ time is fair for the return? I think you said in an earlier post that you think school hours or the school year should be extended, so apparently your answer is a yes. While I understand you feel your value as an educator to the immeasurable (and I can’t strongly disagree), I can’t see how your logic would add up to support this. ---
**Author:** ![nymersic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ec9cab/32.png) [@nymersic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nymersic)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/99 "2011-06-10T22:30:49Z")
“My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself.” - George Bernard Shaw I honestly feel every word of that. I can’t fathom an intelligent man today who doesn’t. How lucky they must have been! ---
**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 10, 2011, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-mandatory-public-school-in-the-u-s-actually-work-even-at-a-basic-level/584712/100 "2011-06-10T22:32:24Z")
Think about it. People now are expected to learn _more_ information than people 75 or 100 years ago. Hell, my grandmother didn’t learn about Vietnam in high school…but she wasn’t expected to learn about 3,000 years of World History by 8th grade, either. The problem is that schools try to cram it all instead of teaching about what the actual point is. [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=4) [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=6)