Free mandatory universal education is self-defeating

Great Debates
1

I am a teacher. I am certified in California and Texas in multiple areas: Art (K-12), Language Arts (4-12), Science (4-8 and General Science), Social Studies (4-8), Health (K-12), and Gifted and Talented (K-12). I have four years full-time teaching experience and another year or so of student teaching and substitute teaching. I am by no means an expert in teaching, but the time I’ve spent in the trenches has, I think, given me a little insight.

First, I strongly believe that education through high school graduation should be made available to all children, whether they are citizens, nationals, legal immigrants, or undocumented immigrants. There is no better way to ensure the success of our country and world as a whole than to give our children a foundation of knowledge and skill.

However, I strongly disagree that it should be completely free (or, more accurately, tax-payer supported) to the student and family. California has taken this to an extreme. I cannot, for instance, require students to purchase supplies of any sort. I can suggest. I can cajole. I can recommend. But, when it comes down to it, if a student arrives in my classroom with nothing but the clothes they wear, I am expected to equip that student with every thing from a #2 pencil to a graphing calculator to a sketchbook to a pen a day if they lose each one I give them.

The fact that everything is provided free of charge and replaced if lost/damaged/destroyed means that the student has no incentive to care for the item, no ownership of the resources, and suffers no consequences for the loss. What this means is that I see examples of waste, negligence, and outright vandalism on a daily basis.

A five-pound bucket of wheat paste (used for paper mache) soaked with water and hidden behind other supplies. That’s the equivalent of enough paper mache glue for 75 or more student projects deliberately ruined. Two or three paintbrushes lost every day because a student left them in a cup of water or at the bottom of a sink or didn’t wash paint out properly. Reams of paper wasted. Dry erase markers stolen. Textbooks left out in the elements. Five times as much plaster mixed as necessary, and no attempt to share with other students before it hardened. Art is certainly the most supply-intensive subject I’ve ever taught, but the others aren’t that far behind.

Much of this waste would be prevented if I had fewer students to supervise and a better designed classroom. For instance, there is no point in my current classroom where I can see the entire classroom and all the students in it at the same time. The difference between a class of 20 students and one of 38 students is light years in terms of how much instruction and facilitation I can do.

Even so, if students and their parents were responsible for a reasonable financial obligation - say their own individual supplies and replacement cost of any lost/damaged/destroyed class items, the waste would decrease tremendously. If a student could not take a class without purchasing the necessary supplies, that student (and the parents who foot the bill) would be far more involved in both the class and the maintenance of their learning environment.

Second, the idea that all children must attend school no matter their wishes is, at best, naive. While some children may be resistance in primary school, they can usually be brought around to understand the importance of learning with a minimum of effort. Beyond the age of 13 or so, the resources of time, skill, and personnel needed to manage a person who simply does not want to be there steals those resources from the children who really do want to learn. Resistant children become parasites, weakening the school, exhausting the teachers, administrators, and counselors, and stealing precious time from their peers.

Any child past the age of 13 who does not want to learn should be allowed to withdraw. Any student who disrupts the learning process of other students and refuses to alter their behavior should be expelled. If they wish to re-enter the school system, they may pay for the privilege at the per capita rate. If they legitimately cannot afford the cost but have had a genuine change of heart, they may apply for a scholarship, agree to participate in a work program on campus, or find someone else to foot the cost.

Oh, I have so many other points I would like to rant on - the lack of choice for both teacher and student in class assignment, the ridiculous proliferation of “no tolerance” policies, the deprivation of age-appropriate responsibilities for the students, the lack of nation-wide standardized curricula, norm-based testing as opposed to benchmark testing, the disappearance of the most relevant topics and subjects (home economics, among others), the education fads with absolutely no foundation in empirical research, the ghetto-ization of students by age, the idea that a piece of paper makes a teacher, and the lack of community involvement in schools - this is what I will begin with.

2

Heretic! All children are special rainbows! If they fail it’s because of the teachers/society/racism.
I couldn’t agree more. If you are able to read, write and understand basic civics, you should be allowed to drop out as soon as you are legally allowed to hold a job (14 or so). Allowing 5% of students to get on with their life’s work at McDonald’s a few years early will be better for everyone concerned.

3

If you can convince me that the lazy, unmotivated sons and daughters of the rich are going to be dropping out at the same rate as those of the poor, I’ll think about your idea.

But if you can’t, then I am going to be more concerned with how we can fix these inequalities and give every child and equal chance to succeed from the beginning, rather than how we can push those that the system failed out faster so we don’t have to deal with our failure.

4

The lazy, unmotivated sons and daughters of the rich may be expelled at a rate equal or greater than those of the poor, as their inbred sense of entitlement would lead them to disrupt classes at a greater rate.

At least in my pretty universe.

5

Also, by ensuring that everyone graduates, you eliminate the power of the diploma as a signal to employers. That makes it harder for employers to find good employees, which hurts productivity. It also increases pressure for more people to go to college. But then you get the same problem - if everyone is now getting a college degree, you lose its signaling value as well. Then what?

The people most hurt by that are the people whose degrees or diplomas are really only valuable as signals of intelligence and hard work. Primarily, people with humanities degrees. A degree in engineering or medicine is still valuable because there are objective measures of ability directly related to job performance.

But it used to be that a degree in, say, European history would be useful in getting a job as a manager. Not because managers need European history knowledge, but because the degree signaled employers that you had the kinds of personal qualities they were looking for - intelligence, the ability to see projects to completion, the ability to defend an idea or write a proposal that made sense, etc. Take that away the signaling power by giving everyone a degree, and the degree becomes worthless to employers.

Likewise, a high school diploma signaled not just that you knew enough math, physics, and English to do the work on the job, but that you were capable of finishing a program and carrying out tasks to conclusion. If everyone has a diploma, that value is gone.

6

VocEd. Make it so you can drop out of school at 14, but you then have to attend and pass Vocational Education classes for the next 2 years. If you aren’t going to college, you have to at least have the training for a job.

7

The solution to your problem is both simple and complex. Teach them to be respectful of other people’s property. Part of your job as a teacher is to produce good members of society. Start with the basics, whether it’s how to be a good audience member, how to recognize and create art, or how to respect other people and their property. My wife is a music teacher. Every student touches instruments on at least a weekly basis - no one has bought any of those instruments besides herself and her school (and she doesn’t really have a budget - so keeping functional what’s she’s been given is a priority). One of the ongoing themes in her class is how to be safe and respectful of the instruments in addition to playing them properly. Some classes require more of these basics than others.

8

What job is allocated to the parents?

Oh yeah, nvm.

9

I guess employers will actually have to talk to people, and evaluate their work rather than making blanket assumptions then.

Plus, you are operating on the assumptions that a degree has been a valid measure for an employers to use, and that employers were, at any given time, heavily relying on college completion as an objective benchmark instead of a means of rationing.

There are still so many incidents of people hiring a former colleague, or throwing out resumes with ethnic names that I have a hard time imagining that most employers are unbiased and rational enough to interpret the “signals” you mention even if they are useful.

10

Do you know many rich kids? Because I do. There’s a reason that private schools blow away public schools, and I’m pretty sure it’s the liberal Dopers that keep telling me it’s because rich kids are better behaved and take their schooling more seriously. Are you saying that’s not the case?

And furthermore, who do you think is more likely to say “Someone should give me ___” - the haves or the have-nots? If you think it’s the haves, you are seriously mistaken.

OP, you’re always going to have stupid kids and good-for-nothings. No program you implement is going to fix that. Instead of kicking them out of school, why not hold them back until they figure it out? You have a certain level of achievement you have to make in order to advance to the next grade. If you fail three times (or whatever), then you can kick them out. But I fail to see how it’s a good idea to give a 14 year old such an important choice about his/her future.

11

My issue with removing universal education is that it removes an avenue for all people to succeed in life. I’m not comfortable neglecting those who are too poor to afford an education.

12

Ever consider that 14 yea olds are not mature enough to make this kind of decision? Or do you think that 14 year old mothers and fathers became so after careful reflection?
Would you at least allow free continuing education for those who decide that this was a really bad decision?

13

Not it is not the case. Private schools are populated by parents, rich or not rich, who care enough to get involved in their children’s education. It is the same reason why public schools in rich districts do better than public schools in poor ones.

Haven’t checked out the salaries of CEOs lately, have you?

14

Look, no matter how this board spins it, people get rich because they express the traits necessary to make that happen. Over 80% of millionaires in America made their fortune on their own. It is NOT handed down from their parents. One of those traits is a strong respect and passion for education. Rich people recognize its importance. Since apples don’t fall far from trees, it therefore follows that rich kids respect education and value it much more than poor kids.

And what does a person’s salary have to do with their sense of entitlement? That’s silly! Why would you demand things from other people if you’ve already got your own stuff?

15

More to the point, do we really want to live in a society with more dropouts? Don’t dropouts disproportionately turn to drugs and crime? Isn’t that why we make education free to begin with? Because we don’t want to surrounded ourselves with uneducated criminals?

Amazingly, I heard this same basic argument this weekend from a veteran teacher. She was complaining that her school was overfunded – money wasn’t the problem, she said, it was that the kids were worthless and didn’t want to learn. Said she spent the whole day yelling at her students and wasn’t able to teach.
It got me thinking – if that guy from Stand By Me can teach calculus to a bunch of cast-offs, shouldn’t that be the standard for teachers? Is it right for a high school teacher to just throw their hands up in the air because (big surprise) kids aren’t properly motivating themselves? Isn’t it the job of a leader to motivate?

16

Yeah! If they can’t teach, they should at least encourage boys to find bodies in the woods by train tracks!

Or did you mean Stand and Deliver?

17

Dammit.

Yes.

18

I agree. However, it’s too radical of an idea. Proponents of universal education (for teenage children) believe that even if an adolescent is not interested in school, he will still actually learn something with lasting value. Well, I guess you can teach a chimpanzee to ride a bike if you really want to force something into his primate brain. However, the chimp doesn’t know where to go with that bike or why he’d ever want to ride one outside of a circus show. I’ve come to the conclusion that some folks think this type of “learning” is acceptable.

Unfortunately, expelling students would be too radical.

However, it would be interesting if we could set up 2 parallel school systems. (At least as a thought experiment.)
One track would be called The IWTBIS (I-Want-To-Be-In-School).
The other track would be IDWTBIS (I-Dont-Want-To-Be-In-School).
Both schools would cost the same; they would both be free public institutions.

The age 14 kids that are well-behaved and value education can go to IWTBIS High School. They don’t need to be “disciplined” and are a joy to teach.

The other kids that think school is a waste of time would be “forced” to attend IDWTBIS. We (the well-meaning govt) knows that this is in their best interest so we force them to go there. We know that some type of chimpanzee “learning” is better than nothing, right? Anyways, this type of school would be much tougher disciplinary procedures (more restrictive hall passes, cell phones not allowed, no sharp objects at the cafeteria, etc.)

The “good” IWTBIS campus would a zero-tolerance school. Any wrong move that shows you don’t want to be there for learning gets you transfered to IDWTBIS.

Of course, some immediate criticism would arise: the good teachers would only want to work at IWTBIS instead of IDWTBIS (gee I wonder why?). To counteract the IDWTBIS difficulty in recruiting teachers, you could pay a salary premium. Or force teachers to work rotating assignments between both types of schools.

Another criticism would be a Scarlet Letter aspect of attending the IDWTBIS. For example, colleges would favor the IWTBIS student applications.

All the above can be seen as “unfair” advantages therefore the “solution” is to just jumble everybody together. To me, it means that the students that want to actually learn are the sacrificial lambs for the unmotivated disruptive students. Why can’t we just place the too-immature-to-value-education kids in a separate IDWTBIS campus?

If something like IDWTBIS could exist, the whole dynamic of could change. The parents would then be worried about their kid getting transferred over to IDWTBIS. It’s no longer an issue of just attending a school. The parent would have to exert extra effort to make sure his kid is in the “right” school and stays there. Would that pressure spur more parental involvement?

The IDWTBIS system could also be interpreted as a roundabout “vocational” school. I didn’t intend it that way. The IDWTBIS would teach the same subjects as the IWTBIS – just with more time consuming restrictive discipline. It wouldn’t be about woodshop and welding. That said, if the child knew he wanted to something along the vocational route, attending that type of school would be superior to IDWTBIS.

IWTBIS vs IDWTBIS. What would be the negatives of dividing up the teenagers like this?

19

Part of my job is reinforcing what their parents have taught them. If their parents haven’t taught them basic concepts of respecting other people’s properties in the years they’ve had their children, I’m not going to be able to accomplish much in an hour a day they share with 37 other students.

How often do your wife’s students get to go to music class? Once a week? Once a day? For how long? Fifteen minutes? Half an hour? An entire hour? Are the students entrusted with taking home instruments or practicing without supervision? How old are the students?

Believe me, any six or seven year old who only gets to put hands on an instrument once a week will be a great deal more respectful and careful than a high school student put into an art class without request or interest. At that age, music class is a fascinating break from the routine. Treating the instrument with disrespect is met with the instant loss of the instrument and possible removal from the class. The children are not required to be there. It’s a privilege, and they treat it appropriately.

Unlike you, chessic sense, I make a differentiation between stupid and unwilling. A stupid child can be taught, and is often desperate to learn, because they sense just how far away they are from their peers. I happily spend extra time with students you label stupid because the students and I derive so much satisfaction from mastering abilities and knowledge.

The good-for-nothings? Usually they’re not stupid. In fact, they’re often quite clever, especially when it comes to working the system for their advantage. They want to skate along? I’ll tolerate it so long as they don’t interfere with others’ learning. The minute they do, I want them out.

The private school students, rich or otherwise, have made an investment - of money, of time, of prestige, or of family identity. Those who are willing to make the cut to be there remain. Those who blow it off are expelled, because private schools have the ability to follow through.

As for the “give me _______” attitude, in my experience (five years, approximately 750+ students (more considering substitute teaching)), it’s far more prevalent in the ranks of the families who claim they cannot afford pencils but send their children to school wearing $150 jerseys. Most of these families meet the definition of poor according to the Federal gov’t. They are some of the “have-nots”. They are also the “will-nots”, and they are happy to waste what is given to them, because it has no value for them.

The rich kids, the ones who attended public school, always, IME, provided their own supplies, because they could afford higher quality than what the school district could. Sometimes, they treated them poorly, because they had no concept of the relative value of what their parents gave them. Usually they treated their supplies quite well.

The choice is not between well-educated high school graduates and uneducated drop-out, drug-addicted criminals. The individuals I speak of will not and do not choose to value education. They are, almost always, already using drugs and committing petty crime. Without some internal motivation, they will never be well-educated, law abiding high school graduates. They commit crimes while they’re in high school, they refuse to take advantage of the education offered them, and they leech off resources from students who are willing to put in the work. The fact that they’re handed a diploma just because they manage not to be expelled simply means that the diploma itself is devalued.

If the ability to take a classroom full of castoffs and teach them the relevance and value of higher mathematics were so very common that a teacher not accomplishing it was worthy of notice, movies like Stand and Deliver would not be made.

The teachers who can accomplish such things are the Olympians of teaching, and they should be treated as such. Adulation, respect, and financial rewards should be showered upon them. Their teaching techniques should be studied, analyzed, and as much as possible, replicated. They should command higher salaries and be asked to mentor as many other teachers as possible.

But even if that were the norm, a student who does not want to learn should not be entitled to space in a school.

20

You don’t have to be rich to have respect for education. It can also be cultural. I’m Jewish, and I assure you I got the full shot. My parents were not rich by any means, and they both were doing better than their parents. My father grew up very poor, and couldn’t go to college, but he was ready willing and able to pay for the best college I could get into.
I don’t think any of the intellectuals who attended City College in the '30s and '40s were rich. It is the same deal in the town I live in now, though the Asians are the ones with respect for education.

Everything. Dan Ariely notes in his book Predictably Irrational that the CEO salary boom began after there was a requirement for their compensations to be published. Instead of shaming them into moderate raises, it set off an arms raise where each CEO, however incompetent, demanded more money than the guy down the block. It should be obvious that for a lot of people having your own stuff is no reason not to demand more.