Probably the biggest incentive to make someone study would be to charge them for studying. Things that are free (perceived or otherwise) are perceived of having no value. On the other hand, I view free schools as part of the public good and as a critical infrastructure. So, whatever.
No, it would be to pay them for studying. Charging them for studying will simply result in a higher drop out rate.
I am not advocating either plan, for the record.
FWIW, the public good is increasingly perceived as having no value.
Education, infrastructure, care for the needy, etc., don’t meet the definition of value we are coming to believe in: something that pays back the same way it needs to be paid for - in dollars, short term.
Any nation whose level of intellectual rigor is such that: less than 50% of the people can be bothered to learn enough about evolution to realize it is a slam dunk; well over 50% have such little interest in the evidence for global warming that they reject it out of hand (and even laugh at it); an awful lot of people (I don’t know what percentage and am too lazy to try to find out) believe that Sara Palin wasn’t lying when she ranted about death panels; the most important news about most colleges for their alumni is how their football team is doing; etc., etc., will obviously have children unmotivated in school.
That’s not a bug, it’s a feature of the system. It’s an excellent excuse to crack down and exercise harsh treatment on kids, and in so doing, make ourselves feel righteous even if the effects are even more apathy and motivation-less-ness.
See, it doesn’t always come down to dollars and cents; getting one’s rocks off is a core value, too.
From A Nation At Risk: The Imperative For Educational Reform (April 1983)
Well, you see, we found out the educational experts we’d put our trust in were a bunch of dirty lib’rul Jew humanists. But the public, they were still on board, they were all education, education, education. They had no idea the whole enterprise was rotten to the core and would have turned little Johnny and Susie into critical-thinking commie bohemian pot-smokers who would never again listen to a parent or a boss or a drill sergeant. What else could we have done but quietly drop the ball?
Part of the problem is that we expect THE LATEST educational fad to cause scores to skyrocket.
Personally, I think we need a bunch of different schools with all sorts of philopshies. there’s no one size fits all pancea. Every kid is different.
Second of all, maybe something that would cause acheiement to rise is stop automatic inclusion/mainstreaming. Yes, some kids with disabilites can really thrive in the mainstream…but others don’t…we need a contium of placements for them…now it’s just "stick them in regular classes with minimal accomondations and they’ll do fine…arughhhhh don’t even get me started on that! :mad:
We stick to the three-months-off system. That’s your main, and probably only, real problem. During those three months you get pretty much all the education gap between the rich and middle and poor and between th USA and other countries (the very existence of which is debatable…but that’s another thread).
If you want to try to change the summer break system, good luck. I teach and I’d be OK with working an extra 30-40 days a year just so long as my pay went up proportionally. This, along with other expenses, would require a 20% increase in school funding.
Not.
Gonna.
Happen.
I agree that the lack of tracking and the fact that there are fewer dropouts is a major contributing factor. The US wants everyone to get a high school diploma, while making the curriculum more difficult. The result of that is exactly as expected: grades don’t improve over time.
Another factor is this: any new educational movement lasts about five years, tops. Then something new comes along. The general trend is:
- Someone comes up with a new idea.
- It’s tried in a small number of schools, run by teachers who are specially trained in it and who think it’s a great idea and who give extra attention to making it work. Students and parents become involved.
- Success!
- It starts getting adopted more widely. Not all the teachers like the idea. Others don’t get good training. Still more don’t have the time or motivation to give special attention. Students and parents have better things to do.
- Results are disappointing.
- Go to Step 1.