Does it work? I won’t present my argument until later. I’d like to see how it goes from here.
I say: no.
… it works for some people.
Public schools are set up like factories. No matter how much noise they make about giving kids individualized attention, it’s still set up to simply move large masses of people through with as little disruption as possible.
I often question my participation in such a system. But I suppose my justification is the same as many other teachers - that I personally care about the kids, and do my best not to treat them impersonally. And if not me, who else?
Maybe if I actually had a pair, I’d up and quit and become a full-time critic of the system. But I must admit, I don’t have the answers to the problems. And I’m not going to open the “funding public schools” can o’ worms right now…
I have never attended any school other than a public school. If I can claim to be well educated, how do we show whether it was because of or in spite of those schools?
(I’ll admit I could be better educated, but I think I can attribute most shortcomings in that regard to myself, not the schools I attended.)
Currently, I think there are several things which most public schools are doing wrong, but all are solvable within the public school system. No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Of course it works. Our job, as educators, is to provide students with the opportunity to learn whatever curriculum has been imposed upon us/them. The teachers succeed, as do any of the students who make the effort required.
Another question associated with this issue is: Is the curriculum any good? Do we teach the right things in school? I think we teach a lot of good things, but we don’t teach enough – we’re still trying to force all students to be a certain type of learner. We don’t make enough allowances for different interests. For example, the High School at which I teach does not have an auto mechanics department. And the guidance counselors actually recommend that students avoid Vocational study.
Bleah. I could go on for a while. Does the American (U.S.) public education system work? Yes, for some people.
What is the American Public School System supposed to do? What is the criteria? On what are we judging this decision on?
Which public school system? Each district has it’s own. Here in California, the LA Unified School District is a corrupt and horribly mismanaged bureaucracy, while other districts just outside of the LA city coundaries are quite successful.
So, while there is a basic nationwide system of public schools, each little part controls itself.
There is no such thing as the “American” public education system. There are several thousand local systems. Some of them work brilliantly, and some are utter failures.
A far more interesting debate, IMHO, would be whether we should have a standardized national system. I would say no, on the grounds that each school system is different and things that work on a small scale almost never work on a large scale, but I’m curious to know what others think.
It seems like it more or less works. Students who are smart and motivated go on to college while lazy and stupid students become bartenders or factory workers.
Other than teaching students to read, write, and writhmatic, I’m not sure what else public school is supposed to teach. If certain students are destined to become ditch diggers, whats the point of educating them on anything more than what they need to function in society? If they want to learn Plato or Socrates or some shit, they can go to the public library.
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*Originally posted by msmith537 *
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Exhibit A. 
Oh dear me!
Does “lazy” and “hard-working” explain why one quarter of my high school (in a poor area and very ethnically diverse area) went on to college, while my boyfriend’s high school (in a rich, largely white area) has a 100% college rate?
Economics are an issue, and it is true that if you go to a rich school you go on to a rich future, and if you go on to a poor school your future is…well…at my high school the people present at our career fair were the military, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and a couple trade schools.
In that aspect our schools are failing miserably. Quality of education is uneven and depends largely on economics. I, for the life of me, can’t understand why America continues to so blatantly value its rich kids more than its poor ones.
msmith said that bartenders and factory workers are LAZY? Huh. They have to work harder and put up with more crap than most jobs. I know a couple of bartenders and they work their butts off(and make good money too).
My dad was a factory worker(building tires for a large company) and he worked HARD in a hot, noisy, smelly environment I wouldn’t have been able to take. We kids were well supported and never lacked. So DON’T tell me factory workers are lazy, and DON’T imply their jobs are somehow not as worthy! By the way, what high-toned, sophisticated position do YOU hold?
If we are talking about elementary and high school, I don’t believe it’s the “system” but rather the kids and the parents that determine how much they want to learn. It seems to me that a lot of people expect to put their kid in school and have them come out a genius with no effort put out by the kid or themselves. I grew up in a very poor school district and it was the kids with good grades that got scholarships. The kids with poor grades didn’t. The kids who studied their butts off at home got good grades. The kids who went out partying all the time didn’t. Yet somehow it’s always the fault of the teachers that the druggie with the D average didn’t get accepted to Yale. Kids with lower grades had to pay for college. Rich folks can send their kids to college. Poor folk have a harder time of it. Grants and loans are available, but to me, grades are like credit. Would you loan money to someone to go to college when they had a 2.0 GPA in high school meaning they stand a better chance at not getting through college or if they do, barely squeaking by and thus having less of a chance at getting a job that would enable them to repay the loan?
If we are talking about college’s, then money talks. You can walk into most universities, pass the final exam in all courses required for a PhD in Astrophysics, but you aren’t going to get a degree. Why? Because you didn’t pay that school to teach you what you already know. Why else does a former USMC physical training instructor have to take Badminton classes to satisfy the Phy Ed portion of a curriculum? Money money money.
I agree with Turbo on this point-education is all a matter of motivation. Still, I went to a really well-funded school district, because it was in a town of about 30,000 people and the local oil refineries paid school taxes. It offered AP classes, journalism, language classes, theater, band, choir, etc. Some kids took advantage of this, some didn’t. No amount of money spend on education will make a difference to someone who keeps muttering,“I don’t see why we have to learn this crap.”
I’ve always been a big reader, and I like to think that I would have been able to educate myself well if I hadn’t gone to a good school, but I think the truth is that I never would have learned half the stuff I did if I was left to my own devices. I know I would have never picked up Candide, or Crime and Punishment, or any of the other books I had to read in order to take AP English. I know I wouldn’t have studied any math, because I really dislike it.
I can attest that at least least one school system works-at least for motivated kids whose parents can afford to send them to college. I was never taught anything that I didn’t need to know at some point.
I didn’t say that bartenders and factory workers are lazy or stupid. I said students who are too lazy or stupid to get a decent education end up in dead end jobs that are in “hot, smelly, noisy environments”.
So other than an ability to read, write, perform some basic math, and perhaps possess some basic history knowledge, how much education does your father require to perform this job?
If you must know, I have just started a job as a consultant for one of the largest management consulting firms in the world. Basically, I work on a team that goes into other companies and helps them run better. Typical salary ranges for my position (which requires an MBA) can be $60,000 - $200,000 or more, depending on what firm you work for and how much experience you have. But I’m sure you won’t respect my work because it doesn’t involve working with heavy machinery.
Turbo Dog - I think you hit the nail on the head. I think most parents think that their kids have the necessary drive, ambition, and ability to go to Harvard and become lawyers and doctors. The reality is that some kids are destined to be doctors, others are destined to build tires. The world needs tires as much as it needs doctors.
IMHO public schools don’t work nearly as well as they should. I went to school in the Bronx, starting in 1948; my classmates and I got a perfectly decent education. Kids in the Bronx today aresn’t as lucky.
Public schools also don’t work as well as parochial schools, especially in the inner city.
It’s striking that today’s public schools have far more money (inflation-adjusted) than they had in the 1940’s and 1950’s, and far more money than the parochial schools. Something has gone wrong. I have my own ideas about what went wrong, but will leave it here for the moment.
Don’t forget that the parochial schools can accept/reject whoever they want, while the public schools have to accept everybody, no matter how disruptive/difficult/problematic they may be.
Trying to compare public schools to private/parochial schools is very often an apples-and-oranges situation, despite the attempts of some politicians to hide that fact.
Well, to answer the OP, I’d have to say that overall NO the American public “education” system doesn’t work. No offense to the teachers trying to teach in the system, you have my deepest sympathies with all that you have to contend with. While I agree with Turbo Dog that a child’s success is determined by the level of involvement that a parent takes in his/her child’s education and the motivation of the student to learn, I have to say that the system fails because there is not enough support for teachers. You can’t teach effectively if you have discipline problems and red tape to deal with. You certainly can’t teach effectively, if you have to work an extra job or two because your salary as a teacher is so low. I could go on . . .
Biggirl said:
“What is the American Public School System supposed to do? What is the criteria? On what are we judging this decision on?”
Excellent question. IMHO what the system SHOULD do is prepare students to be productive members of American society: those well-versed in ALL facets of American history, not just the white-washed version; those who understand how the government works and the necessity of all citizens to take an active role in voting and advocating their representatives for legislation that works to their benefit; those who can write a DECENT ARGUMENT and THINK CRITICALLY; those who can do basic math and understand how to balance their checkbooks, know the best ways to finance the mortgage on a home or to make an otherwise major purchase, know how to avoid credit card debt, and know how to make short-term and long-term investments; those who have proficiency in more than one language besides English; those who have a good understanding of the location, history, and cultures of the people who occupy the continents outside of the US. I could go on, but I’m getting too disgusted to.
At this juncture, however, I am not certain what the American public education system’s “criteria” is or even if the people who run it know for that matter. And I certainly have no idea what they think they’re supposed to be doing, but it’s certainly not preparing students to be productive American citizens.
Yes, indeed. And why can’t today’s public schools expel disruptive students? This limtation was foisted on them somehow during the past 30 or 40 years.
I’ve seen it in my children’s schools. With one disruptive student in a class, teaching becomes difficult. With two, it’s impossible.
When I went to elementary school in the inner city (the Bronx) in the 40’s and 50’s, disruptive students COULD abd WERE suspended and expelled, which permitted the rest of us to get an education. Dr. Thomas Sowell has described how he got a good education in Harlem 10 years earlier than that.
The requirement to tolerate disruptive/difficult/problematic students is one of the ways in which public education has gone wrong. Unfortunately, this problem cannot be dealt with by an individual teacher nor even by a principal. This situation must be fixed by the proper authorities for the good of the public school education.
This begs the question. Did the 3/4’s of your High School not go to college because they weren’t prepared or because they couldn’t afford it? We can ask a similar question about the 100% kids. Were they prepared, or did money grease the skids? Economics may only be an issue when moving on to higher education.
IMHO, public education provides an opportunity to learn the basics(math, reading, science) needed to get along in society. If a student shows inititive, that student should pick up considerably more than the basics. Of course, all students don’t have the same potential.
I’ve taken classes at a local community college with kids right out of high school(I’m an old geezer). Some of the kids are bright. Some are lucky to have tied their shoelaces correctly. A lot of them don’t seem to care to learn anything. They’re just hanging out. This makes me doubt the value of standardized test scores as basis for judging how well a school is doing.
In my case, half the students at the community college I attend are just “hanging out”. In a sense, I’m one of them (although I’ve been taking only art classes this semester, which explains that).
My opinion regarding the OP? Public education has been designed to take on many, many responsibilities, more so than they had thirty years ago. As such, the quality of each specific area that is covered has diminished.
More subjects, less time spent on each. I mean, if you’re going to spend a month teaching about black history, you have to be ready to sacrifice a month with which to teach about other aspects of history. (Note: I do not mean to imply that black history is something which shouldn’t be studied, simply that there’s a little give-and-take involved. Also, I’m aware that schools don’t teach just black history during the month… it’s only an example, people!)