No, it’s the responsibility of society, as a whole. Aren’t all the kids part of society? Aren’t *all *the parents?
Teaching others helps you retain topics you’ve already learned, but preventing smart students from spending time on learning new topics by forcing them to instead provide free tutoring to their slower classmates is not equitable. Every student deserves the most advanced learning he or she can handle.
I agree all people in society should carry the burden of the parents who don’t care but the burden of the parents who care should be the same as the DINK couple down the street or two random single dudes. Which is to say pay your taxes at an appropriate level for the state to create a floor that society agrees is high enough. That is all though they shouldn’t have to have their student teaching algebra to more fully understand it rather than learning calculus.
Parents should have the option of improving their children’s life as much as possible and it should be the state’s job to ensure that those who don’t have that help still reach a minimum. Telling a parent that their kid can’t succeed unless they also shoulder the burden of every kid who’s parents are worthless isn’t fair and everyone should pitch in to carry that load.
How is getting the same education as others *not *succeeding? Only if your definition of succeeding is the same as your definition of exceeding.
The complex problems faced by U.S. schools is not an area I’ve studied, but my impression is that magnet schools are an excellent way to improve public school systems. They try to get students into the right school based on interest and aptitude rather than race or income.
The priority must be to improve opportunities in public schools, so magnet schools may be an excellent way forward. Contrast this with the DeVos plan which is to reduce public budgets while using tax dollars to enrich private schools and privately-operated charter schools. (What does the Witch of Blackwater think about publicly-run magnet schools?)
Because the same education is not sufficient to allow all students to reach their potential. That’s why we have ESL, teachers who use different methods, classes that move at different places, vocational tracks, Finnish IB schools that you have to apply to and take an exam to get into, 8th graders split into pre algebra, algebra 1, geometry, and algebra 2, depending on what they are ready for, not based on some fantasy about building community.
And deciding that the kids whose parents don’t value education should get a substandard education isn’t fixing a problem either. Are you expecting that will help those kids put more value on their own children’s education or less?
In the last 15 or so years, there’s been a drastic improvement in schools in London. The gap between the poorest kids and the richest has plummeted. What has this been traced to? Increased parental involvement? Trying to pick the best and brightest kids out?
Nope, the difference has come from more focus on getting good teachers, tracking individual kids better to get them more focused help, more support from local authorities and faster intervention in ‘problem’ schools. The kids haven’t changed, the parents haven’t changed, but the schools have and the results have.
You keep touting the IB schools as though their existence was some sort of gotcha…
Even in “crappy” american schools those really talented and determined to go somewhere can still do so.
Excellent!
Merely pointing out the incongruity in suggesting we avoid a type of school by emulating a country that has that very type of school.
Yes, of course, when I said “Finland is the model I wish we all would follow”, I *obviously *didn’t mean “Emulate the successful elements of the Finnish public school system” but instead meant “Emulate Finland in all ways. Including the few private and post-secondary schools that follow a different model that they allow for”. How foolish of me to be so hypocritical. You really showed me.:rolleyes:
How do you know which elements are successful and which aren’t? Finland has the schools you think we shouldn’t have, and their results speak for themselves, don’t they?
So what?
I mean, I’ve read of a homeless kid in India who taught himself computer programming to the level that he was accepted to University to study it, without ever touching a computer until his interview, by huddling in shop doorways under the lights so he could read borrowed books, after an 8 hour a day shift sorting trash for roughly 50 cents and a smack in the face a day.
The exceptional will always go somewhere.
I’m more concerned about the 99% of kids who aren’t exceptions, are just normal kids in a shitty life situation, but could make it better with the right bit of help and support. Those kids are currently written off and dumped in a shitty school situation to go along with the home one if their parents can’t or won’t give that support, and the rest of society basically goes ‘Well, if they were talented and determined enough they could do something’ then goes on to hire a private tutor for their own child, because they’re not quite hitting their science grade and that’s important for their future.
Because Finnish education was already turning around *before *the first IB schools came in. And because the IB schools also exist in other Nordic countries that aren’t as good as Finland in education, like Norway -surely if they had such an impact it would show there, too. So, in my view, the existence of a handful of IB schools have nothing to do with the success of Finnish public education overall.
The problem with this thinking is that it assumes and mandates that kids who might benefit from more challenging teaching and curricula are just shit out of luck, because they’re not poor, or don’t have incompetent parents.
Which isn’t fair- the idea that “they’re smart, they’ll manage” is shitty to an extreme. And, I suspect it’s why magnet schools exist- so that those kids and the kids with motivated parents can self-select into environments where they can excel and get the resources they need to make the most of their educations. They shouldn’t be thrown to the wolves because they’re smart, and their parents shouldn’t be expected to shoulder the load for the unmotivated/incompetent parents because they want better for their kids.
In other words, the school system has just as much obligation to challenge and stretch that gifted kid academically as it does to bring that poor kid up to level, and feed him and all that other stuff.
Which makes your objection to magnet schools and even mentioning Finland in the first place even stranger.
My objection to magnet schools is that they’re non-egalitarian elitism factories embedded in an already competitive system.
The existence of a few IB schools doesn’t magically render the Finnish system *not *much more egalitarian than the US public school system, or change any of the other elements of Finnish schools that I like. So I fail to see what you find strange.
Half the schools in Finland could be IB schools and it still wouldn’t affect my argument - I like elements of the Finnish system that are independent of the IB schools and internal to the Finnish comprehensive system. The only part of what I like about Finnish schooling that IB schools affect is that I like that private schooling is discouraged. And that still stands. At no point has my argument been “Finland doesn’t have any magnet schools” (which is all that the existence of IB schools refutes), it’s been “I prefer a model like the Finnish comprehensives”
You don’t sound like you’re that familiar with magnet schools as they actually exist in the wild.
The VAST majority are specialized subject matter schools- for example, in Dallas, the Booker T. Washington HSPVA (High School for the Performing and Visual Arts) is a fine arts magnet. Its entire goal is to educate high schoolers in performing and visual arts. It’s NOT some sort of elitist academic school where high-performing students go for the sake of the academics. It’s located in the downtown arts district even.
Similarly, there are language immersion programs in Houston, IB programs in both districts, and G&T programs in both, as well as STEM programs, etc…
Nowhere are there strictly high-performer schools, unless you count gifted and talented, in which case you’re missing the point- it’s really a form of special education in that G&T students need specialized education to achieve their potential. It’s often times easier and more effective to set up a few district-wide magnets than to try and provide it to the handful of kids in each school separately. Better use of your money and all that.
I’m still confused about how for example, it’s elitist and non-egalitarian to set up a school for say… prospective musicians or artists to pursue their interests at a higher level, instead of making them languish in a regular school with artists/musicians of a lower caliber?
Sounds totally elitist…
…which I’ve already said I have no problem with. I was referring to the type in the OP.