heh teenagers

[Fusion]

It only make to much sence. Sad thing is, schools can't do anything about half the problems because they fear they will get sued.

[SolidusRaccoon]

It only make to much sence. Sad thing is, schools can't do anything about half the problems because they fear they will get sued.

No, problem is they just don't care. Education for public schools is not about teaching kids, it's about money. Where else can you get more money fordoing a poor job? Schools failing? toss more money at it. Funny how education has been going downhill right from the same time the teachers started screaming for union rights.

[Fusion]

You forgot to mention football teams!

[SirBob]

No, problem is they just don't care. Education for public schools is not about teaching kids, it's about money. Where else can you get more money fordoing a poor job? Schools failing? toss more money at it. Funny how education has been going downhill right from the same time the teachers started screaming for union rights.

That's a really humorous assertion, given that your average high school teacher effectively makes less than minimum wage for the time they put in.

As a high-schooler, I was pretty surprised to learn that my personal income from my part-time web design gig was actually higher than the yearly salary of the guy who taught my English class.

[SolidusRaccoon]

No, problem is they just don't care. Education for public schools is not about teaching kids, it's about money. Where else can you get more money fordoing a poor job? Schools failing? toss more money at it. Funny how education has been going downhill right from the same time the teachers started screaming for union rights.

That's a really humorous assertion, given that your average high school teacher effectively makes less than minimum wage for the time they put in.

Ever study how strong the PA unions are? The NEA and it's cohorts benefit from poor education, it means having to hire more pork workers. Look at all the corruption at the top of the NEA.

[Kerry Skydancer]

No, problem is they just don't care. Education for public schools is not about teaching kids, it's about money. Where else can you get more money fordoing a poor job? Schools failing? toss more money at it. Funny how education has been going downhill right from the same time the teachers started screaming for union rights.

That's a really humorous assertion, given that your average high school teacher effectively makes less than minimum wage for the time they put in.

Ever study how strong the PA unions are? The NEA and it's cohorts benefit from poor education, it means having to hire more pork workers. Look at all the corruption at the top of the NEA.

Not going to argue about the NEA as a whole - but remember that the drek that floats to the top is the folks who want power. There are a lot of good teachers out there who are being hamstrung by administrators who prevent effective discipline for fear of parental lawsuits, and the union won't help because the idiots at the top actually believe all the tripe they spew about self-esteem. A lot of schools are snakepits because there is no way to toss out the 5% who only wish to disrupt things for everyone else.

I've said this myself, and eventually had to leave public teaching because the powers-that-be didn't want to hear it. A lot of kids should be in vo-tech type apprentice programs, not in academic classes; but parents want all their kids to be doctors and lawyers. The government is suffering from Lake Wobegon Syndrome (where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the kids are above average) and tries to mandate impossible results. The only solution I can see is a voucher program, and it will need to allow personal apprenticeship to be included in the voucher options.

[SolidusRaccoon]

Or eliminate government schools, let the people keep their money, and educate their children as they see fit. Little Billy likes to play football and smash things? Send him to a voag school. And children who truly want an education can go to private schools where the lowlies will not be.

[Somber Cat]

I'm curious Solidous if you would dedicate 6 years and 60-80 thousand dollars to a career where you only make, on average 37,000 a year. I'm equally curious if you would do so knowing that you are effectively turning over much of your free time, creativity, and free will do a state, federal, and local shitstorm over what you'll teach, how you'll teach it, and how much it's going to be paid for doing it. That is what your average teacher has to go through. It requires, with few exceptions, a minimum a BA in the subject or in education, followed by the equivalent of a masters. All for the privilage of teaching. People don't make a career out of teaching because there's nothing better to do. They do it because it is one of the most emotionally rewarding experiances they will ever experiance. America has excellent teachers, equal to Europe and Japan. What hampers American schools is our attitude as parents, politics and our nation's educational strategy.

America has had a mentality of "My kids will be if not equal to me, then better than me." for about a century now. My child won't be a potato farmer. He's going to be a doctor! My child won't wash linens. She's going to... be married to a doctor. Well not after the 70's, but still, the mentality has been that our children are supposed to turn out better than us and that if they don't that some one has failed and should be held culpable. That leads to the push that our children must be educated, and education is done by ploping them into seats and pouring facts into their skulls till they magically metamorphose into college geniuses. But that's an unrealistic point of view. Not all kids become doctors, lawyers, and scientists. MOST won't become doctors, lawyers and scientists. Most will settle into a mediocre lifestyle of self sustainability with enough surplus for a few percieved luxuries. That's it. But we still believe that to be good parents we must push our children to be something better than we are... because if we don't they might just become... gasp... hippies.

The politicial mess occurs from this mentality. Politicans want to be elected. People care about education. Thus as a rule it helps if a politician says they'll do something better or make something different that will improve things for YOUR kid. The govenor of NY was the first politician to do so in the 1890's and since then EVERY politician has made promises of improving education. To their credit, there were things in the 1890's that needed fixing, like the fact that many schools did not have heating, at all, or mixed ages, or had no cirriculum, or the teachers were teaching to classes of a hundred plus.

Now. You look at schools today and yes they are dry, tedious, painful things to go through. This was not always the case. Once upon a time in Gary Ohio there was a school in which the kids decided what classes they would go to, what homework they would do, what they would make, and they even had a student run zoo. That's right. A public school with a zoo. The idea was to keep the children doing, and that by doing they would do whatever they wanted to do and would learn in the process. Sewing requires math. Writing a report on the mating progress of the bunnies requires english. Making a wooden see saw for the younger kids required team work. And it worked. Vocational studies were highly emphasized and much "Traditional" book learning fell away. After all, how many kids are going to willingly read War and Peace if given a chance.

So what happened to this school? Like good ideas it got old. While it taught, there were no grades so how could progress be tracked? How did breeding bunnies prepair a student to become a lawyer or doctor? WW2 and the baby boom pretty much finished it off as once again traditional graded methods of teaching were reasserted. The three R's. The college bound. No time for frivolities, there's a cold war on and we need all the scientists and doctors we can get. You don't want to have to work in a factory, do you son?

But, again, this did not remain the case. In the 70's there was an educational and cultural swing away from the traditional. What it swung to I'm not sure (I tend to think of the 70's as a wasted decade, with the exception of the ending of Vietnam and my conception.) but regardless it broke American schools out of traditional means of education. Alternative schools thrived at this time. Masserati schools and naturalist schools became very popular by allowing kids to freely express themselves. They may not have learned beans, but they expressed themselves. Fortunately things slowly eased towards traditionalism with a blending of elective courses. The idea of "core" cirrculum was established, with core knowledge and electives required and a surrounding selection of electives. And it was good.

Then the Reagan administration screwed it up. They adopted a book that outlined decaying education as dooming America as policy. America's schools were failing according to the Administration and something needed to be done! Nevermind that all the research of the day said that schools were improving the quality of education both over the short term and the long term, even taking the 70's into account. Like the war on drugs and the war against poverty and the war against terrorism we went to war against bad grades. State cirriculum, which before had been guidelines, became requirements. Cirriculum was reviewed, changed, rechanged, reviewed, revised, and repeated. Small wonder schools suffered as "Something has to be done." Legislation was enacted to punish schools that didn't live up to snuff, and then the legislation was recinded, and then reapplied. From 1986 to about 1996 the federal government played an almost sadisitc game of cat and mouse with school and their students, all with the best of intentions.

The next step in this game came with two big changes. One was the technology revolution. The other was the influx of non-english speakers into the school system. ESL students are handicapped in American schools. There is an expectation of them to learn english, but how can they when they don't know english and the schools are in english. Segregated schools? No. Unconstitutional. So the schools were dumped with the burden of having to teach kids who couldn't even understand what was being taught to them. Add to this a technology push for schools to get "up to date" and you had millions being wasted in poorly applied computer systems. So going into the next millenium we have schools who have gone through years of fidding with what they will and won't teach, a push to do better when they're all ready doing the best they can, and students who don't know what is going on.

It doesn't stop there. The most recent and devistating political tweeking schools have had to endure is No Child Left Behind. What an ironic title of broken policy. NCLB, if you have been living in a cave, is the idea that school must meet benchmark tests in order to graduate. Now, these tests are theoretically purely optional, with the states being allowed to choose what is and isn't passing. However, schools that don't administer the tests don't recieve funding. The tests come in standardized form, meaning that there really isn't a choice for schools. There are only two companies that produce the majority of these tests and they are virtually identical. So there really isn't a choice at all. The state must administer a test, this is the only test there is that is standardized, so it must be the one that is used. Now it's not grades that matter. Now it's not students that matter. Now it's the test that matters. A schools survival is hinged on meeting AYP (annual yearly progress). This same test is administered to every student. Even students who don't know a word of english. Even students who are so handicapped that they can't hold the pencil. Students with learning disabilities are not exempt. They take the test AND if enough students don't take the test, then every one fails and they have to take it again. So this test, assuming that all children are average, is administered to the school. If ONE portion of the school fails... every one fails. That's right. Every average student could pass but if your ESL or Learning Disabled students fail, the SCHOOL fails.

Oh, but it gets better. After two years of failing to meet AYP, parents can take their student and move them into another school. Right. Same student. Same learning disability. Same test. Same results. So now a school that wasn't failing is now failing NCLB because it can't meet AYP, because those students transfered in. But the fun doesn't stop there. Since student advancement is also hinged on passing these tests, you have students getting held back. What's wrong with that? Consider this, one of the growing problems at middle schools is lack of parking. That's right. 8th graders unable to advance are driving to school. They're 16 and they can't drop out, and they can't pass the test and they aren't going to have a life. So maybe the schools should do a better job of teaching them, right? But the schools aren't teaching any more. What they are doing is forced test preparation. Because that's what matters. And when students hit 18 and can drop out what do you think they do? Stay in school and get a diploma? As if.

So Solidus, would you put up with all of that garbage for 37,000 a year? I wouldn't. I tried, but quit. My lover teaches 4th graders. I don't know how or why but she does. All because we have this idiotic notion that our children have to go to college. NCLB is structured under the assumption that 100% of all high school graduates go to college, when in reality only 25% do. Private contractors are dying on the utter lack of vocationally competent students entering the work force. Why? Plumbers make more money than many doctors, but plumbing isn't a socially upward move for our children. There are people who profit greatly from this. Food services. Retail. Casinos. Oh yeah when there's a glut of uneducated workers they don't need to pay squat. The test makers are sitting pretty, as schools must test to recieve funding. Meanwhile kids who can drop out will drop out. The national average is 33%. Why? What does school offer them except failure? Many public schools have zero electives. They can't waste money on electives when another year of failing to meet AYP means the state takes over (and what are they going to do? Wave a magic wand?).

"My apologies for the exceedingly massive thought brick but it's a subject I am very familiar with and care deeply about."

Somber

[SolidusRaccoon]

Bitter much? Yeah we don

[Celidah the Bardess]

Hmmmm.

I think that Somber is right.
And I also think that Solidus is right.

It sounds to me like you both agree on at least one fact: The public school system (or government school system) is massively screwed up.
The issue here seems to be whether individual teachers are part of the problem or victims of the problem, am I right? Personally, I'd offer up the proposition that it's both.

I don't study education or its history really in-depth, but having been in two different public school districts, home-schooled, and in a Christian school, having taken a Christian college course in educational history, being a follower of education news, and just knowing a lot of teachers, including my mom (Special Ed., if you're curious), I present my thoughts:

I think that it differs from teacher to teacher, and oftentimes, teachers are both victims and part of the problem. In terms of pay, it's true--on average, at least--that teachers don't live hand-to-mouth, but they are and have been among the lowest-paid professionals for a while. On average. I can back that up with numbers, too.

Of course, this differs from area to area, too. In the upper Midwest, where I live, a public school teacher makes roughly 30,000-35,000 a year. That's even better than what private school teachers make--there's Christian schools known to pay their teachers only 20,000 a year. Plus, if teachers aren't in a union (as many in my area aren't), then they're REALLY screwed-over, because according to both corporation and the guys who are supposed to be *ahem* "representing" them, they don't count.

But I digress. For the most part, teachers do have a crapload to put up with, from their own coroporations, from the district, state, from federal red tape...often from their own students, too. (How many parents expect their schools to parent for them and "fix" their failures? Ugh.) But often it seems they channel their frustration wrongly, and end up transferring it back to their students, through bad personal or academic treatment, whatever. And then again, there are some teachers who are part of the system, and cheerfully screw over their students.

Solidus is right, schools do need accountibility. if nothing else because of human nature, dontchya know. The dilemma though, is how to accurately measure progress. Standardized testing, such as it is, often does not account for those students with handicaps, learning disabilities, etc., but averages them in instead, so that what the "score" SHOULD be is brought down by the exceptions to the school's actual learning curve. (Did that make any sense?) Consistently failing schools--even those that are rightfully failing--often lead to teaching to the test, because it would be just too much effort to actually work with students and make sure they're learning this stuff! But again, that's not the case everywhere, just most places, it seems.

I know a good number of teachers who could easily transition from public to private school, and some have. But again, that is just my area. No doubt some states have so dumbed-down their teacher standards that their teachers are, for all practical purposes, incompetent. I also know of a few private school teachers who would never make it outside their little conclave, either, not even in a different private school.

In short, is the public school system a massive crash-and-burn that needs to at least be torn to the ground and restarted? Yes. I think it's beyond reform at least now, if reform could have ever helped in the first place.

But are teachers only pawns of the system? Not always. Sometimes, they're just as frustrated as everyone else is, but they have the courage to stay in there and try to make a difference anyway, because that's the only way they feel they can. One of the saddest things I heard about school came from my sister, which talked about her geography class. At the very beginning of class, just before they were going to dive into the evolution of the world, her teacher said, "Look guys, for the record, I don't believe in this stuff, but I have to teach it to you, so I will." He is one of the most beloved teachers in that particular schoool, by students and parents alike, and does a fine job, too.

After all, raiding and burning the school corporation offices might not be such a good idea nowadays. Fun though it would be.

That's my two cents, anyway.

[Somber Cat]

Private school and public school are two very different critters. For one, Private school sets their own rules, within legal limits. Two, private schools discriminate. That is, they are allowed to pick and choose who attends their schools. Do you think Exeter accepts many ESL children who's parents are illegals? Doubtful. Wealthy private schools are holdovers of an elite aristocracy. Religious private schools organize education along with dogmatic principle. Regardless, they play by different rules. They also don't have a direct tap on tax money either. So long as that remains so, I have no problem with private schools.

The idea of having a set of standards is always appealing at first glance, but many fail to recognize that we've had standards for decades. The first state cirriculum was in illinois in the 1910 requiring all children as of grade 4 to be able to read and write the first paragraph of the declaration of independance. Testing this was simple. The state would go to the school and ask a 4th class to write the paragraph from memory. If they couldn't then the school was reviewed. When we talk standards what we're really talking about is "What our children should know before they become 'educated' adults." Personally, I have no clue why high school seniors are not required to take a fiance class. Or learn how to do their taxes. Or learn general manners and civics. Just things we'd like others to be able to do. Currently our standards are arbitrary and they are linked exclusively to punishment responces with no ability to fix the problem.

My suggestion is experimental reformation. Take some schools across the US and break down just wear the failures are occuring. Is it the ESL kids? The learning deficient? The low socio-economic status kids (ie, poor)? The blacks? The whites? What is causing the problem IN THIS SCHOOL? Again. In the school. Not in the nation or the state or the county. The school. One of NCLB's utter failings is that it treats a school in upstate New York identically to schools in east central LA. Schools are not identical. They are unique and the problems they face, while similar to other schools, may not be able to be fixed uniformly. Thus schools need to be examined according to a pathology of success and failure.

My next selection is a reintroduction of vocational high schools. That's right, high schools where the students don't want to go to college. Where they're interested in shop, or mechanics, or plumbing, or whatever. Where apprenticeship programs are possible because the school is not focused on passing a benchmark exam. For the college bound, it's college prep. For school districts too small or too low populated then introduce vocational programs along with core cirriculum.

A more radical idea is the elimination of grades. REally, what does it matter if you're in 8th grade or 10th grade so long as you can pass geometry. The idea of subject advancement and scoring is that students go through school taking whatever classes they want. If they're 15 and they've aced everything the school requires then congradulations. AP college courses for you. If they hit 18 and the best they can do is basic addition and subtraction, then that's the score they show to colleges and employers. I got a 1 out of 10 for math, but I got a 10 out of 10 for english. It breaks the link between the notion that by 8th grade you can write a paragraph and by 9th grade a three paragraph essay and by tenth a five paragraph essay. I could write a five paragraph essay when I was in 6th grade. Heck, I was writing short stories then. Yet I had to plod along because that was the way school worked.

Another idea is to adopt the european model where children are pathed. While it smacks of indoctrination at time, it also works. America is currently headed for the Japanese model. Japan, if you don't know, has the highest teenage suicide rate in the modern world. Fail a test and your life is over.

Also, I do believe that teachers need to be held accountable for being competant teachers. Their pay should be increased accordingly. Good teachers should be paid well. Bad teachers should not be employed at teahers. Tenure needs to be redefined. Once upon a time it was intended to protect teachers from bigoted politicans. Now it is a hindrance to the employment of teachers (many school districts fire and rehire teachers yearly to avoid establishing tenure). School need to be empowered to remove a shitty, abusive, or ineffective teacher that's just skating along until retirement.

Incidentally, I do approve of monitored charter schools and home schooling, providing the parent is dedicated to providing educational content to their kids.

I don't believe that public education should be removed. Democracy depends on an intelligent, informed, and educated populace. Private schools, without the availability of public education, become bastions of elitism, religious indocrination, or industrialized education where the school is intended to turn a profit margin. Worse, those that need education the most, the poor and disenfranchized, are incapable of recieving it.


"A step backwards"

Somber

PE: By the by Solidus, if you have nothing but hate and contempt for a thing then how are you supposed to be able to understand it objectively? How can you understand its merits along with its faults? The KKK had nothing but hate and contempt for blacks. Do you believe that that kind of mindset is a good thing? Or do you rather think that because you think it it must be true? I intensely dislike christianity for a wide variety of reasons yet I am still capable of recognizing both its virtues and possibilities and reserve judgement for individuals of that faith. Would you rather I adopt your attitude and make a nusance of myself screaming how "under God" infringes on the rights of atheists, or that crusifixes perpetuate the belief that murder and mutilation encourage children to hammer their neighbors to crosses, or some other nonsense simply because I think it and thus it must be so? I think not.

"Truth is found in the contrasts."

Somber

[Steltek]

Come to that, I suppose I have been somewhat unfair, in light of one of Ralph's points in his last post. See, I angsted like any red-blooded American teenage boy, but I resisted the temptation to blow my problems out of proportion and retract into a nightmare realm of clown white and fishnet t-shirts. But Ralph points out something worth mulling over about Penny and the lion's share of the kids like her -- they're public schooled. I was not -- I was homeschooled by my parents, with the support of a local homeschooling coop. I got just about the best education and upbringing a kid could hope for, and I still had trouble with angst. I just learned to regard angst as a vice like anger, and shake it off, but that was in large part due to the fact that that's how I was raised. A kid who wasn't raised that way doesn't have all the tools I had.

In my defense though, there is a secondary reason for my aversion to goths -- I've seen what they turn into. I've personally observed today's angsty, depressed, hot-topic shopping goth turn into tomorrow's gun-grabbing, tax-raising, socialistic moonbat. Think about it -- if as a kid you decide that "people suck" and your fellow man is never worth trusting, then when you get older, are you likely to be inclined to trust him with anything so wild and dangerous as freedom? Or their money? And if you block out all the good in the world and only see the bad, is it any wonder that you'll decide your country is and has always been nothing but a bunch of sexist, racist, patriarchal, genocidal bastards?

[Mutant for Hire]

I know a pile of former goths, most of whom are settled down in various paths of life, one of whom jokingly refers to herself as an "elder goth" and still likes to wear black, though she doesn't write the self-indulgent poetry anymore.

Yes, there are a lot of goths who end up joining the dregs of human society. I've seen a lot of former football stars from high school who likewise end up joining the dregs of society. I don't think goths are necessarily more prone to ending up in a gutter somewhere than any other social clique. Most of them just drop it when they get older and go on with their lives.

[SolidusRaccoon]

Somber, hating a bloated government bureaucracy is not the same as hating an ethnic group. Somber hating a bloated government bureaucracy is not the same as hating an ethnic group.

Silly me, I want the youth of this country to have a real education, not some hippie drivel where they don

[StrangeWulf13]

Eh, I think the whole thing needs an overhaul. My dad, a public school teacher, thinks it just needs reform, but that's his opinion.

I'd be satisfied with our schools teaching kids to think. Heck, my dream school would be full of classes like the one we saw in Ralph's Questor comic. About 20 to 30 students, one teacher, and a blackboard. And all they do is discuss the topic. The teacher doesn't force facts into their heads, but instead guides the discussion where it needs to go. They're forced to think about the subject. Which is what they should be doing.

You'll also note that the average age a child in the Seven Villages goes to college is 14. This is usually after Choosing Day, when they declare their personal career choice. Think we could take a few notes from their book.

And Somber? That "elite aristocracy" that dominate the private schools? They start at middle class and go up. The "rich people" in this country are not as rich as you think. I, for one, would love public school to be abolished. Private schools would fill the gap nicely as they are subjected to something public schools aren't: market forces.

If you cannot understand why private schools would do a far better job at education then public ever could, I cannot help you. It requires knowledge of capitalism and the belief that it is not killing the world.

[Deflare]

If I ever have kids there is no way in heck they will ever go to a public school, no way, no how.

You know, I actually doubt that public schools are much worse than private schools in this regard. Jerks are jerk, no matter where they are. Perhaps the abuse isn't as physical in a private school, but mental abuse can be worse because it can't be erased the way wounds can be.

Another point in favor of public schools- variety. Every day, I deal with a wide variety of opinions and viewpoints on all issues, from politics to music. Frankly, I like it. For example, there is a significant number of Mexican students at my school. Far better that I and my classmates actually interact with them, rather than reserve ourselves within the ivory halls of a private school, never having to deal with the poor or ethnic minorities and therefore developing no sympathies or connection to poor non-whites. I would find the homogeny of a private school to be downrate grating.

[SolidusRaccoon]

If I ever have kids there is no way in heck they will ever go to a public school, no way, no how.

You know, I actually doubt that public schools are much worse than private schools in this regard. Jerks are jerk, no matter where they are. Perhaps the abuse isn't as physical in a private school, but mental abuse can be worse because it can't be erased the way wounds can be.

Another point in favor of public schools- variety. Every day, I deal with a wide variety of opinions and viewpoints on all issues, from politics to music. Frankly, I like it. For example, there is a significant number of Mexican students at my school. Far better that I and my classmates actually interact with them, rather than reserve ourselves within the ivory halls of a private school, never having to deal with the poor or ethnic minorities and therefore developing no sympathies or connection to poor non-whites. I would find the homogeny of a private school to be downrate grating.

Yeah there are no minority groups out there with money, no minorities in private schools; everyone is the same in private schools. Whiles in public school you get to meet the downtrodden and oppressed minorities, see how the evil white males keep them in poverty, it

[Wayfarer]

If I ever have kids there is no way in heck they will ever go to a public school, no way, no how.

You know, I actually doubt that public schools are much worse than private schools in this regard. Jerks are jerk, no matter where they are. Perhaps the abuse isn't as physical in a private school, but mental abuse can be worse because it can't be erased the way wounds can be.

I don't know, I think it depends.

Whenever I hear about how bad schools are and how much people get picked on, I always wonder how I escaped, and I think it is in part due to the fact that I went to a private school. Yes, I did get teased (as in the made-fun of sense, here and in the rest of the post) some - mostly the boys during elementary school - and it probably bothered me at the time, but I no longer really remember that; I remember toward the end how I learned to be entertained by it. ('Course then, obnoxious as people are, they stopped! )

I would always have thought that I was the type who would have gotten teased pretty badly. I don't know, maybe I just missed the radar. (Or maybe there was teasing, and I was too busy reading to notice! ) I'll grant that I know of cases in which people got teased at my school. But I don't remember it being nearly as much or as bad as a lot of the portrayals get.

[Somber Cat]

Again, I have no problem with private schools, religious schools, Home schooling, or charter schools that meet state guidelines SO LONG, that would be a flagged conditional, so long as public school remains available to all children.

Another history lesson of school and education. This is roughly 18t century, britian. Once upon a time the only schools were private schools and religious schools. At the former you would learn how to become a minster of law for parlement. At the latter, prepair yourself for entry into the clergy. The only other form of education was apprenticeship. If you didn't have the connections and the aptitude (after all, masters didn't just pick anyone off the street or accept all comers) then you were SOL. This is the time of the industrial revolution, and a new kind of school developed in the orphanages and poorer districts "Houses of Industry." These houses of industry took poor and orphaned children and put them to work while claiming to teach them what they needed to know to be productive adults. Attrition was very high, with two meals a day and twelve hour work days... oh yes, did I mentioned they weren't paid in money? That's right. They were being paid in education.

Going into the 19th century this status quo shifted. More wealth was being generated by the working masses than could be absorbed by the capitalist owners. This began the uplifting of a working middle class. These skilled individuals sought out schools to educate and better their children. Private schools answered due to a curious shifting of educational trends. The rich hired tutors for their children, and schools had to accept these 'new wealth' students. This differed from the Houses of Industry in that students were actually taught something. Private schools of all types flourished in the 19th century, but quality of education differed greatly. Poor students recieved terribly poor, incomplete, or falsified educations. After all what did the largely ignorant population know about reading or writing or history?

Communities started the first grass roots public education system in the middle of the 19th century, mostly in rural areas. After all, private schools made profit in bulk. Rural areas lacked the numbers or wealth to make private schools economically viable. Education then was very simple. Literacy. Basic math skills. A smattering of national, religious, and local knowledge and that was it. Around the time of the civil war, that education diversified and evolved into much more specific cirriculum. Geography. Literature. Algebra. Universities were becoming more accessable and schools began to feel the need to measure up to a collegate level. The idea that a farmer's son could be a doctor if he were smart enough and worked hard enough began to be established.

Around 1890 reformists began to try to fix anything and everything and education was no exception. Child labor laws were established, and cities were left with the dillema of what to do with these children no longer in factories? The answer was schools. Public schools and manditory attendance was established on state tax to keep children from "wilding" on the street. So your first schools weren't focused so much on education as control. Standards and funding varied greatly. The houses of industry disappeared as their workforce was outlawed, and elite education swung once more towards privately owned schools. In the early 20th century, people started beating the standards drum and the federal government stepped in. After all, who could ensure that measures were applied equally state to state?

A small digression: There is no federal law or passage in the constitution saying that the US or anyone else for that matter is required to see to the education of the population as a whole. Public education's legitimacy comes from primarily state consitutions and amendments to those consitutions to provide education for the population paid for by tax money.

End of history lesson. Private schools are just that. They are private. They can accept or turn away whomever they want. They can charge whatever price they want. They can assign homework or not assign homework. They don't take federal placement exams. They are little islands of whatever you want. Pray in each class. Whatever. When you start to turn education into an industry then you have a problem identical to that facing the medical mess America is in. Students and education comes second, and the bottom line comes first. It's that way in EVERY business. Businesses that don't look out for the bottom line don't stay in business, and where then are the kids to go. What private school is going to accept children who's parents are broke and destitute? What private school is going to teach when there's no profit to be made? Public school is just that. Public. Every child gets in. White black rich poor whatever. They get in. A public school can not say "no, you can't come to this school." Not if they have four hundred kids to a class. It is a public school, and it has become the burden of the state to provide an education and (as of NCLB) ensure that every graduate has a level of profiency in subjects state cirriculum says the student must know.

"So long as every one gets taught, I'm happy."

Somber

[RHJunior]

Tell me, Somber Cat,
Is it REALLY that you're happy that everyone gets educated? Or is it merely that you don't care if the education is substandard.... you are happy <i>so long as nobody gets a better education than anybody else?</i>

Do you support more and more funding because you think pouring cash into the problem will solve it, <I>or because you get to stick it to "all the rich bastards" by plundering them for largesse?</i>

Charity is so wonderfully easy for the leftist, because they're always using someone else's income... they don't have to care how much it costs, or how poor the quality is. They get to feel self-righteousness and schadenfreude at the same time. And if the charity produces an across-the-board failure? Why, even better.

For a leftist would rather be "equal" in squalor than "unequal" in prosperity... and be forced to admit that those who strive hardest are the ones who succeed most.

Our nation's public students rank FIFTEENTH IN THE WORLD. We're behind nations that eat DOGS, for Christ's sake. They're coming out of the 12th grade of government schooling emotionally stunted, sociopolitically brainwashed, and educationally unfit for college-level courses.

<I>Homeschooled kids, however, are surpassing them at all these points.</> These government school kids are routinely SPANKED by homeschooled kids in every aptitude test.... <I>including social development and emotional health evaluations by psychologists.</i>

The government education experiment is a dismal and unredeemable failure, by design. There are only two things that government is good for, and that's fighting wars and shooting crooks. Anything else is a job someone in the private sector could do better. Asking government to do anything else is merely handing vast power to something incompetent to handle it.