Public schools are failing. I was able to protect my kids during Covid in a top ranked private, conservative Christian school that stayed open, without forced masking, in person since mid August 2020, and the school demands excellence.
It’s not unfair we can afford it and others can’t. It’s unfair parents who protect their kids pay twice and it’s unfair the system blocks families who can’t afford to pay twice from deciding how to spend the funding purported to be for their kids’ education. The outcome is trapping most of the vast middle in failing schools (though parents are finding ways out). It’s unfair that so many kids were so unnecessarily damaged. The world would not be better off if only more kids were more damaged in the name of “fairness.”
School choice is the civil rights issue of our time. As a society we are going to fund education in some manner, no matter how much that irritates the libertarians. Solutions aren’t found in ideological fantasies. The funding is there, children are living humans who don’t have decades for trial and error, the solutions are evident, and progress is really as simple as a law change.
The guardrails are also simple - like the cash for school, the guardrails follow the kids. Every other year kids not tested in their schooling choice should have to take a standardized tests for basic skills in reading, writing, arithmetic. If the child is highly deficient in demonstrated skills, not subject matter curriculums but demonstrated skills, two tests in a row then the child’s school money must go to a school where a majority of students are proficient. No accrediting individual schools or necessary, nor is some state written curriculums guidance. But it is fair to have guardrails on skill sets that are assessed at the student level.
i can see some of the attractiveness here, but what worries me in this proposal is "who sets this standardized test"?
such tests create yet another potential "commanding heights" to force and shape what is taught. who decides what "history" they cover? i remember being taught in gradeschool that the new deal ended the depression. shall that be a test question? how about decolonized math?
watching many of these testing bodes writhe and wrangle around race, gender, and content as is makes me very nervous about just how nastily and deeply politicized tests might become if they were the only real handle by which to grab and steer school curricula.
one cannot simply assume the existence of "good, valid, and impartial" standardized testing and letting "private companies" do it is not necessarily of much help if the state picks them.
Standardized tests are also part and parcel of what I consider among the most loathsome guiding principles of modern education:
The lowest common denominator dictates everything.
We had to pull our son from his first private school because of this. Not only was he subject to punishment for the actions of others, which was intolerable, but the straw that broke us was that his last teacher actually expected him to "act as a role model" and "help other students" with their issues.
Adios lunáticas.
He, and we, are now in a far better place, albeit at a far higher price...
There is absolutely no need for standardized tests in this day of instant communication. Just post the results for every school, in terms the parents and students want to see: what fraction of their grads have a full-time job in a field they were trained for (vocational students); what fraction of their grads are attending a top rated university (pre-college students); what fraction of the students beginning at that school finished the program (dropouts); etc.
Put the info out there, and the market works. It will work, too, for the schools: they will be motivated to perform in whatever way attracts more students to their school, and to provide the information to parents and students that demonstrates their performance.
It will soon evolve into something that none of us are able to foresee. Just as less than 20 years after WWII ended, there would be men (and women) in space, and not long after, walking on the moon. Who could have foreseen the modern tech world where your personal computer, and for that matter your cellphone, would have a million times more processing power than the computers that were able to guide and navigate the Apollo spacecraft safely to the moon, and back again? And rescue a mortally-wounded craft halfway there, and bring THEM home safely?
Nobody could have foreseen any of those things, but this is what happens when you let minds run free, and reward them for success. We are at risk of losing all of that right now. Education is a great way to get started, but people in all 50 states will have to force it. If we take the feds out of education (we must), then it will be up to the states. Just as it is today with many things, the states compete and people vote with their feet.
I hear you, and half of me agrees. But, the other half says, "If you haven't studied history, (or lived in a communist nation,) how will you recognize Tyranny when it raises it's ugly head??
If you've never studied genetics or biology or the history of "medicine," how will you know that experimental mRNA injections with code for a toxic spike protien (with a prion attached,!) wrapped in nano lipid particles, is a VERY bad gamble?
Or is you know nothing of economics, and the fact that drops in economic production translates more human disease, mental ill health, and crime, how can you assess the real cost of "lockdowns?"
Or going "Carbon Neutral?"
If you never read the Pentagon Papers, or the Project for a New American Century, or Agenda 21, or The Great Reset, how will you know what the "Government" is up to?
I really believe a good education is the only thing that can save the United States and our unique Freedoms and Liberties this Nation staked it's existence upon.
"For lack of Wisdom, my People die."
True today, true thousands of years ago, will always be true. Being proficient in a field that supports you well and that you enjoy, good as that is, is not good enough.
Of you would keep Freedom alive you must have an EDUCATED citizenry who understands a) How Truly Rare and Precious Liberty is,
and b) It Is Theirs' To Protect or Theirs' To Destroy, through either ignorance or neglect or malevolence within or without. From those ranks must come the people who serve in all branches off government and in the media, who honor their responsibility to keep government honest and accountable. It takes Everyone to make this work....
No one else can do this, only the People. And that takes a solid background for the vast majority that only a good education can provide.
People everywhere studied all this and still failed to see it. The difference would be that the indoctrination that lead to compliance would never have silenced those that do see it.
I enjoyed reading this whole exchange. Just to add another perspective, when I came to the Netherlands with a degree in American Studies my MIL asked me what the heck value I thought it had and one of my arguments at the time was that understanding history is key to avoiding its repetition. She laughed at me and said: if the economy gets as bad as 1930s Germany, the people would elect Hitler all over again no matter what they learned in school. Now almost twenty years later I’m afraid she was the insightful one.
I went to an elite private high school too and had the freedom to explore all kinds of subjects that interested me and apply lessons across subjects too. The course that probably shaped me more than any other was called ideas in western literature. Other girls who took that class with me were weeping and wailing about school closures along with me in March of 2020 and I thought, see? our education has helped us think out of the box! Fast forward another year and these mothers were the absolute worst about medical choice. So much for applying the critical thinking and empathy that are core to the mission statement. And I wrote the school and told them how they had failed probably 80 % of their graduates and 100% of their current students. I will never send them another dime! I’ve never been so grateful my husband put his foot down and said he wasn’t putting up the cash to fulfill my third generation graduate aspirations for my children. And as next generation school mates join the illustrious ranks wearing fucking face masks I think, phew dodged that bullet!
Katherine, I've had a bunch of redneck friends over the years who in most cases did not go to college (maybe 2 years of tech school), and they don't teach the stuff you're talking about in very many high schools if any. Yet these rednecks all have the common sense to avoid progressive liberal/communism and support MAGA/America First.
I'm afraid it is your highly educated, suburban liberals that are most on board with the craziness that passes for the democrat party these days. Perhaps they should know better, but for some reason they don't and they have fallen for the mass formation psychosis hook, line and sinker. There aren't very many redneck 'karens' out there -- most of them went to Swarthmore and married a Yale lawyer, or equivalent.
My redneck friends can't quote from Chaucer or Locke and most of them have never had a class in economics. But they know when things are going to hell -- they just look around at riots in the streets, Soros DAs letting hoodlums off without charges, gas at $5 a gallon, food shortages, illegals and drugs pouring across the border, CRT and grooming in the schools, and so on and so on. Liberal suburbanites still support all of this, and vote for people like AOC and think that's a good thing.
Education is important, but it is not the answer. The most important thing is for people to open their eyes and stop letting Trump or Biden or the MSM or anyone else tell them what to think, and think for themselves.
word of mouth from parent to parent about what their kids learned and how they were treated is all that will be needed to identify the schools that work.
that true of every single thing we purchase. you buy what your friends said worked and they liked.
Standardized tests need to be vocabulary, biology, mathematics, geography and critical reasoning skills.
Civics; how our Government is SUPPOSED to function, and your part in that!
At more advanced levels you can include physics, chemistry, spiritual thought & philosophy. We need both our left and right brains to be exercised, and the communication between them developed!
Who was Plato? What exactly the big deal with Galileo? What do Hindus believe? Native Americans? At least one nation, perhaps the Iroquois who helped us conceive of 3 branches of government, if I remember correctly...
(If we had also adopted their "only women can vote, and only men can serve, and only women can hold property" concepts as well, we might be living in a more sane world, lol!)
All these questions matter.
But, these topics should be high school and early college level, before you dive into your subject matter, whether that's English or Pipefitting, Road Building, Software Development, Art, or Physics or Medicine.
If kids can ace those hard fact subjects, and develop critical thinking skills, they can figure out anything else they want to. History need to be taught, IMO, but taught from original source documents. I had a teacher of America History who utilized a history book that contained ONLY original source documents!
NO paragraphs anywhere saying who did what to whom, when and why..absolutely none.
We just studied those Original Source pieces, from private letters, newspapers, legal actions, etc., and then through discussions tried to understand what was going on; it was absolutely revelational!
Good Teachers, like Good Doctors, are PRICELESS.
I think the biggest mistake we ever made was losing so many of our great teachers because public schools became nightmares that anyone with a heart or brain would run from.
Wokism is not education. And when half the kids have autoimmune diseases and or behavioral issues and teachers cannot discipline or control the situation in the classroom, and have to worry about insane gunmen coming in and killing everyone, WHO would tolerate this??
Yes our schools are completely broken, and yes, the fastest way to fix this is the open market.
Give parents control of the 15K and it might be messy at first, but those who choose wisely will rise to the top, quickly, and we will be out of the gutter and back to the races fast!
There isn’t a way to standardize any of that without extreme ideological creep. You think it’s important to teach critical reasoning. I agree. Same for geography. But that doesn’t mean the state should demand it any more than demanding the teaching of the gender ideology crazy parents think is important.
Basic skills to function in life agreed upon by over 95% of the population which can survive state legislatures year after year is fine, beyond that it’s all about who has the power to force kids to learn what they personally think is important. It’s how we got into the mess.
Actually it's my opinion that we got into this mess by very intelligent and 100% malevolent actors deconstructing the mostly quality school system I attended in the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's.
An actually well-educated population would not have been half as likely to fall for the propaganda of the last few years, as the uneducated, manipulated and mind-controlled kids graduating today.
It was in the 1970's that our educational system was systemically destroyed, in my view.
I had a ringside seat and watched it happen.
So for me, the greatest way to "inoculate" ourselves against Evil and Tyranny is to study it.
Ditto bad science is cured by studying science and letting the chips fall where they may.
Small government is a necessity. But no government is a recipe for Thuggery.
Ditto Education. It's neccessary.
"Without Wisdom, my People die."
Wisdom is timeless. Getting there is work. Mentors are required.
But, humans actually love learning, given the chance. We should be supporting all varieties of what used to be called a University Education.
It worked for so, so many!! El Gato included, it appears. ; ))
I agree in theory, and with the material reality of the destruction of public schools beginning before I was born by intelligent people (whom I think were also Marxist inspired activists).
Studying tyranny absolutely prevents it. Very few with genuine knowledge of history failed to see the othering and baseless hysteria during Covid, while those ignorant of it got offended when the fairly accurate comparisons were made to historical atrocities.
I remain firm on not requiring though because my generation is ignorant and the activists control the testing. Give them room for content and an entire generation will be forced to learn revisionist history because my friends, all with masters like me, largely can’t tell the difference. By not requiring it, those who know and love it will teach it to live another day. My position acknowledges we need to start where we actually are, not where we should be in a sane society.
This is coming to the "crux" of the current issue, IMHO.
My generation, born 1960, got the end of real education in America.
I had to read Solzynitchen, (sorry on the spelling,) Dostevesky, again, my spelling is questionable, Milton, Tolstoy, Maslow, B.F. Skinner, the Dark Triad type, and take abnormal psychology classes.
I studied the Spanish Inquisition, the Reformation, and why MY ancestors fled Europe. So lockdowns and govermentally lying were always obvious totalitarian tactics.
I got more than enough epidemiology, virology, and genetics to know 1- Covid was not the threat they made it out to be, 2- there ALWAYS were treatments, and 3- the mRNA vaxxes were a nightmare waiting to happen!
I just wish the rest on my fellow Americans could have seen the same!!
It's nearly impossible to actually score test answers that require anything beyond multiple choice. The scorers need considerable training and are certainly prone to bias on any answers that require judgement. The single best evaluation requires the parent and the teacher assessing the student. While there will always be bias and subjectivity in that assessment, the involvement of multiple teachers help level that out. No system can ever be perfect but what is enough to be adequate?
History isn’t a requirement........ history isn’t a skill set, it’s curriculum content. I think it would need to center on skills and legally define skills.
Also, perfect isn’t a thing and progress involves a lot of wack-a-mole. I’m pointing out well-reasoned guardrails can help, and it’s reasonable to ease minds to have safety nets. Most American adults don’t know history - real supported by historical documents or revised by wokeies. Most can add and subtract. The pitch for school choice with guardrails utilizes this reality when setting standards.
There is absolutely room for creep, but if you legislate the tests look at skill sets with the ability to sue for introduction of pure curriculum content, you’ve got a pretty good guardrail. Being able to perform addition, subtraction, and graphing are mathematical process skills. Being able to write a sentence with a noun and a verb is a skill. Being able to comprehend/ remember what you read and answer questions is a skill (even if it’s wacky). Yes, there is room for creep in everything, but there is also a need for balance based in reality nearly everything.
Transparency also tends to block the extremes. Make the prior year test public information. Covid created far less transparency into school teachings, and the pushback has been relatively fast and more intense than the indoctrinated ever predicted. It lacks some faith in parents, and I think overestimates the capabilities of activists, to think a test of age appropriate skills approved by a legislative body with judicial review protections, assessed at the level of the individual child once every 24 months will easily or effectively be turned into a tool of indoctrination. If we can create a system that works for 50 years, people 50 years from now will be equipped to withstand the inevitable totalitarian pushes at that time. Building a considered framework that acknowledges genuine concerns is the most likely to succeed proposal I am aware of.
No it’s not. The problem we have now is an apathetic public complacent to mass child abuse (note how we treated kids during Covid), combined with too many indifferent parents that are too scared and weak to support implementing policies to actually improve the situation now.
Standardized test didn’t corrupt public schools. Nor does requiring legislatures to approve a minimum standard. Activists teachers were allowed in by indifferent communities elected overtly political school boards. The rot in public education in this country has been evident for decades, yet nothing gets done about it. We just throw more money at the problem with less accountability.
The outcome of “balanced literacy” has been driving up illiteracy for 4+ decades. Eureka math teaching kids to hate math (and by extension science) year after year. Yet beyond complaining, even the majority of people that feign to care inexplicably refuse to support easy steps that would result in near instant progress. No legislature forced schools to accept balanced literacy. No standardized test did either.
Accountability is an inescapable is part of life. Holding adults accountable for their kids education through basic competency skill testing is not going to lead to mass indoctrination. It helps to ensure kids are taught basic skills so they can function in society. And by requiring legislative approval it puts those standards as close to the voters as possible.
While standardized tests aren't perfect, they are necessary if schools are to be freed from a mandatory curriculum.
Let me tell you what has happened in my country which just within the past few years introduced national standardized tests. This is a country with a large public school sector as well as a very robust system of private schools for parents to choose from; in fact, roughly half of students in the country attend public school and half attend private school. Most employers pay a "schooling allowance" to parents so they don't have to pay the full price of private school tuition, similar to how employers in the US pay for employees' health insurance.
However, over the past few decades a serious problem has developed, which has only been revealed by national standardized tests which were introduced within the past 6 years; namely, that private schools have massive grade inflation in Math and Science (but not in language subjects) compared to public schools. The amount of inflation is very large: if a public school student gets a Math grade of C-, on average, a private school student of equivalent ability will get a B. If a public school student gets a B-, a private school student of the same ability will on average get a straight A.
The reason is that private schools have been competing with other for 20 years over grades. If two schools give equivalent quality of education, but one gives grades that are much higher, why would the parents not choose the school that gives higher grades, and thus increases the chances that students will get into college? Public schools, which don't need to compete for students, have had no incentive to inflate grades and have not. However, since the national standardized tests were introduced and revealed the extent of grade inflation in private schools, confidence in high school grades has collapsed and national colleges have actually removed them from consideration completely and replaced them with standardized tests scores. Now, it is obviously not good to have a standardized test be the only admission requirement for college, but with school grades being massively biased against public school students, that is the only fair option for the moment.
What would have been better is if the standardized tests had been given for the past 20 years, so that the developing grade inflation in private schools could have been caught early. However, even then the incentive for private schools would still be to inflate grades to attract customers, as long as grades are used as the primary metric of college admission. There would still need to be a standardized test taken into account to control for differences in grade inflation between different schools.
The biggest issue is this: Our systems (especially our schools) have been captured and corrupted by WEF Globalist Utopian drones. If we don’t fix the point of corruption this will continue to happen and our societies will continue to slide into tyranny. We need to re-infiltrate our own governments with people who agree to a new agreement and who are willing to put fixing the corrupted system above all else. How do we fix it? With transparency and decentralization. Like this:
Yes. Which is where legislative review, transparency, and defining skill v curriculums comes into play. It’s not a perfect solution, I haven’t gear one yet, but it’s a step in the direction of progress that could help kids today.
It would help if the teachers actually paid attention and were intentional about observing how each individual learns.
For illustration purposes, when I was in 3rd grade and learning basic math; I intuitively was using "tens" to do math. I'd approximate then break down to smallest numbers.
For example, if I was asked to figure out the quotient of 637 - 84, I would round up to 640 and round down to 80. That gave me 560. Then I'd just "add back" the 3 and 4...and subtract from my approximation. So, essentially I had a two step strategy; get it to tens and then break down the single digits based on how I rounded.
The teacher recognized that and let me roll with it. That allowed me to skip a lot of unnecessary steps. I could just do it in my head.
Had she not allowed that, I would've got bogged down and bored. And frankly I probably wouldn't have done well in business. For business purposes you have to be able to approximate numbers quickly to negotiate, etc., etc. - you have to be able to "roll" numbers in your head.
I give her credit for the small observation she made. It literally changed my life.
At the same time the basics have to be learned. But I think if teachers paid more attention they'd unleash the creativity of children. Creativity and a successful life path are correlated.
any system that is predicated on "we need really contentious and selfless/sagacious/dilligent folks to be sure it's run properly" seems poised for failure.
it just never works out that way. we need to align incentives and market forces. relying on "good people" to make bad systems work has a poor track record.
I think that is one of the ideas about de-centralization. The less centralized an entity is, the more power is pushed back into the hands of those who need to be making the decision. No system is perfect, but which works better, a central agency determining how 330 million people are educated, or one that determines how 4 million people are educated? Neither system is perfect, but the one that caters towards less people is an improvement over the one-size/no-size fits all of the federal government.
Having the decision placed in the hands of the parents further decentralizes that decision. A parent knows their child better than the state, or hopefully does. Offering even two choices for a locality above no choice at all is an improvement.
Finally, the main function of education should be to teach us how to educate ourselves and all standards and basic skills should have that aim in mind.
I work in a large IT environment for NASA with VERY complex systems. One size fits all causes more problems than software bugs in the 30 million plus lines of custom code written by the lowest bidder.
ONE SIZE FITS ALL HAMSTRINGS THE OUTLIERS, WHICH IS USUALLY WHERE THE MOST VALUE EXISTS.
Example... what's more valuable, 150 computers in Mission Control or the half a million pushing paper to keep those computers running perfectly enough to control a space station? Without the 150 powerful computers, the other half million don't even exist.
But the bureaucrats try to by office PCs for engineers processing critical data on 6 screens where someone might die.
One size fits all is a prescription for mediocrity.
This is so true. Bureaucracy mainly obfuscates innovation. Think of it in terms of entertainment. Which is more interesting, a work of art envisioned by one person, or one that is the brain-child of a committee? The more chefs in the kitchen, the worse a product becomes. This doesn't mean an individual can create bad products, but the cost of that bad product is far less than the collective mediocrity of many.
The fact is; is that if we followed your premise we would attract those types of teachers and therefore children would be better prepared for the real world.
It's all my Gramma's fault. My elementary school challenges I mean. Without television, (or electricity until I was seven), Grams 'calmed me down' by teaching me to read. By the time I started school, I had read all of Thornton W. Burgess, and most of Enid Blyton. I had started into the Hardy Boys, and had discovered the pseudonymous Victor Appleton. By third grade, I had finished the (really bad) encyclopedia my folks purchased. All of which turned my first three years of schooling into a torturous infinity of excruciating boredom. Punishment ensued. Frequently. Report cards were full of teacher comments like “inattentive”, “disruptive”, “uncooperative”, “fails to follow lessons”. There was discussion about “failing” me.
Until fourth grade. A teacher discovered that I liked numbers. A lot. And was willing to work very, very, hard at understanding and working with numbers. Quietly. That teacher forgave the fact that I was reading far beyond grade level. To her, it was not a criminal offense to read ‘grown-up’ books. She took the time to inquire as to WHY I was so “uncooperative”. And began my life-long fascination with mathematics.
She changed my life. In a very positive manner! Thank you, Mrs. Neufeld - RIP. Today, of course …
Sadly, I have to agree. In my nineteen years as a part-time lecturer in the Business Department, I saw many of the "good ones", (the profs who encouraged students to actually think), leave the university. And academia. Some simply retired, others were eased out, and some quit in disgust.
It seems the term "advanced education", like so many other mis-applied labels in today's world, no longer means either "advanced", or "education".
On the topic of private school availability and affordability, here is a 2012 TED talk from Pauline Dixon showing how private schools in the slums of India and the developing world are both affordable to poor locals and outperforming government schools.
It's exactly the same in Guatemala. The poor all pick small fee private schools, and sacrifice a lot for it, instead of opting for the free government schools. Most of the students who go to the free government schools don't even finish elementary school.
If you wish to attend university there are expensive and inexpensive ones in the main city and most of the professors give the same classes at both during the same semester!
I happen to live in an area of the country commonly referred to as America's 3rd world, and it's hard to force this same perspective on the affairs of my state: the middle class and wealthy in my area aren't sending their kids to the schools which are frequently derided in the media. If you plot the nation's school age population by state and essentially compare enrollment in private schools by race you'll see that DC (and by extension MD and DE), LA, and MS top out the list. More of our white students are enrolled in private schools than anywhere else in the country. MS has a relatively high rate of private school enrollment in general, which shouldn't really shock anyone who pays attention to the rankings regarding our public schools.
But I mention all of that to say that 1.) MS and LA already have a robust network of private schools relative to their "poor" population (many are Catholic, but that's an unnecessary aside) and 2.) a voucher system would actually make many more of them accessible to families who are stuck in historically underperforming systems and would probably increase the racial and economic diversity at most private schools.
On the flip side, you could look at that and say we are edging toward competition down here, and still have terrible public schools. I'd argue that's largely an artifact of geography (the poverty of the delta truly is unfathomable to most), but it could potentially be a counterpoint.
I love these two pieces. As a mother to an 11 year old I’m completely on board. Have been reading people like John Taylor Gatto for years. It’s clear how utterly bankrupt the system is. The things that “aren’t working” actually are working. They’re features, not bugs.
Let families decide what works for our children. The vast majority of parents of all income and educational levels are capable of making good choices for our children.
I'm an AZ mom (one of my 5 kids is also 11!) And I'm so happy about the progress we've made in AZ for school choice! Still work to do, but I agree, this is one of THE top issues of our time. My kids have been very successful at BASIS charter school, which are consistently some of the top schools in the country. And part of the reason is they have eschewed credentialism, and have subject matter experts as teachers. They also offer family-funded (through fundraising throughout the year) performance-based bonuses to teachers at the end of the school year. This ensures that the schools can attract and retain the BEST teachers.
That is awesome!!!! Subject matter teachers are great!!! We’ve stated looking at universities for our kids, and one thing that seems to make the biggest difference in actual life outcomes is teaching facility that have done, not just taught. For your kids to get that even younger is a huge plus.
For specials, my kids’ school does this - fine arts, athletics, tech, music, and STEM. The STEM teacher has the funniest background. He’s an engineer that got bored at his “real job” pretty young, and decided to open a company offering kids birthday parties with science experiments (probably 2 decades ago). The party company did the fun stuff - blowing up gummy bears, building rockets (and he lets the kids screw up - they know they did when he backs the group further away for the launch 😂), playing with exotic animals.
A bunch of school parents at the time used him for their little kids’ birthday parties. The school board took notice and about 10 years ago decided to offer him a raise to have his parties at school all day long, decked out the STEM lab, and moved the start of weekly STEM lab back to kindergarten (before that, the science teachers lead lab experiments, but those didn’t start until 3rd or 4th grade).
With this guy the STEM lab looks like myth busters with animals. The parents ALL wanted to be the “volunteer parent helper” in STEM, which unfortunately lead the school to hiring a full time assistant within a year to avoid parent infighting. We can go into the school whenever we want, including STEM, but we can only watch STEM/ sit with our own kid’s group. 😂☹️😂
I’m ready for something outside of the two parties to emerge. I’ve always identified with the Democrats but have had friends and family who I love who are Republicans. Never been in “the other side is evil” camp. But I can’t imagine voting for Dems again and voted for Republicans state-wide in 2020 for the first time in my life. But at this point I’m deeply unhappy with the antics of both parties.
Can we just have a party that speaks to the sensible people who want to make a decent living, be free to make choices that are good for our families and be civic minded in our neighborhoods and communities? I think we’re the majority.
>> and be civic minded in our neighborhoods and communities? I think we’re the majority.
That first phrase answered why the following sentence was wrong.
We are in this position because we want to be catered to, and the only entity big enough to cater to us so thoroughly is the state. Don't worry, though. Soon it will (directly) be corporations.
Not sure I follow what the first phrase was and what followed that was “wrong.”
But agree that our current context has contributed to a loss of capacity for independence and interdependence. Meta will be all too happy to fill the void.
This begs the question, "why do we only have TWO choices,?".
Here locally the same ,question gets posted at least once a week:
Hey I'm shopping for internet service in (insert area), and want to know which is better, AT&T or Spectrum?".
Not, "Why in Sam hell do we only have TWO choices?".
Well that's an easy one for the panel to answer: because the corporate culture by virtue of it's very nature, is predatory (they swallow rivals whole), it is cannibalistic, and DESPISES competition, period. You wanna compete against us? Well we just did a hostile takeover, compete against THAT.
The current political system is what Samuel P. Huntington aptly described as "the perfect dictatorship", and it is, because dictators are relatively easy, insofar as you get the rights guns or people in the right spot at the correct time, no more dictator, new day dawns!
But what if you had a two party system where "overthrow" merely consisted of "replacing these bastards with those bastards?".
Oh my. Now what?
And that is precisely where we have been for decades, and decades with no end in sight.
There is no political solution to this problem, how can there be?
But it gets worse, because those same corporations that despise competition, also control both parties. From the halls of Congress to 1600.
They care not one whit about "issues", kidding right? Issues are for the peons to pick a hill to die on.
Which is why the NDAA sails through every year, our single biggest budget item.
With no competition (see above), maybe 2 or 3 defense contractors left, all no-bid contracts.
Think they cared about the "issue" of Afghanistan? With 85 billion of military hardware to replace?
So this whole "red team blue team" stuff is a trap, no escape folks.
I believe the accreditation issue goes much further than your piece gets into. It's not just accredation of teachers and public school systems that is problematic. Private schools, those outs parents want from public schools that are failing them must be accredited for graduates to be able to attend prestigious colleges. And the accrediting boards now push as much garbage indoctrination as requirements for accreditation on privates and parochial as they do on public schools.
So if parents want the university path to remain open for their children they must still pass their children through the indoctrination system that the accrediting boards colleges recognize construct. Maybe a "lite" version of it in private and parochial schools, but still inescapable for higher academic achievement. And few parents will pay for private schooling that doesn't gain entrance to college.
And since most employers, public and private, require degrees from those same colleges for jobs in managerial and bureaucratic oversight only those who've gone through the indoctrination requirements of accrediting boards will be sitting atop society. Making the sorts of laws and rules we've suffered the past 2.5 years (more before we were awake) and enforcing compliance on workers and customers alike.
Take a knee for Floyd. Repent your privilege. Wear a mask. Get the jab. Ignore the penis on "her." Don't question elections. Don't question, just do as you're told. All brought to society by graduates of an education system with indoctrination required by inescapable accreditation boards as currently constructed.
Until higher education no longer requires enrollment of students from ideological accrediting boards, and employers, public and private, no longer require degrees from institutions that meet the approval of ideological accrediting boards nothing will be meaningfully fixed. The boards, the seal of approval they confer are the tip of the spear pressed on the throat of free people's with free thought and free speech values today.
this sort of credentialing is used everywhere from doctors to lawyers to hairdressers and accountants and sold as "safety" and "quality" when it is mostly just guild systems extracting oligopoly profits and and top down structures of doctrinal control.
True. I was a lobbyist in state legislatures for two decades. Often opposing licensing and registration legislation. Profit sold as public safety. With mixed success.
Thing is, this generation of credentialing has expanded the scope. It's not just for profit, it's for ideological reasons, as well. Think: Communist party membership cards/Nazi party membership cards to get the top positions in the Soviet Union, China/Germany.
That's what the current accreditation system is building to. Only open to the most obedient and ideologically pure, producing good commissars.
Credentialling is a cloning experiment gone bad imo.
If perfunctory collaboration is rewarded more than competition it leads to de facto concealed rituals and symbolism. Which are exploited and ultimately lead to silo thinking.
This was true before the mad hatter ideological adjuvant was added.
Yup. So right my friend. Your foray into the horror story that American Education has become aling with the surest and fastest way to correct it has warmed my heart. Please, Magnificent Creator Cat---- spread your Wisdom out across our World!!
What if education itself is a bad idea? That is, one of the best argument for school choice is that kids in choice have fewer mental health issues, so, even if their education was worse in some say, they're happier & happier is worth something, no?
But what if we extend that a bit - what if education itself is the problem & school choice only alleviates, but doesn't solve the problem.
If you take "multiple intelligences" seriously, it's reasonable to believe that people are simply too diverse for education. You and I might enjoy//benefit from sitting around in school til our mid 20s, but for many people that's a disaster. They'd probably learn more & better by just going to work at 12 (before that there'd be some serious physical/mental limits). They'd learn whatever it was they wanted to learn & they'd learn it in the way the best suited them.
So, if you want to be an electrician or a baker, shouldn't you just be an apprentice? Heck, I have serious doubts about medical school and law school - seems like apprenticeships work best there too. Academia seems like the best preparation for academia, but little else. There's little evidence that the concept of education makes any sense at all - most of us learn best by doing, and - in many instances - learning by doing is about the only way to learn it.
We keep pouring in $ with little results - maybe we need to change our ideas entirely. If you spent a year apprenticed to a baker, then a year apprenticed to an electrician, then a year apprenticed to a doctor, then a year apprenticed to a store owner, wouldn't that be a better high school for most of us? Other than the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic, what do we really need to learn that you can't learn as an apprentice?
I often wonder if the well-documented benefits of homeschooling are the result of eliminating the schooling (or greatly reducing it). I loved school, but I know I'm unusual, eccentric even. Not sure why everyone should be forced to do what I love - might be better to let people try something else.
The idea that Shakespeare makes you a better person or that "science" makes you a better citizen sure has taken a hit these last few years - I see no evidence that "well-rounded" people handled COVID better than others. If anything, it's clearly been the opposite.
Let's rethink "education" entirely. It's about maximizing human potential, not test scores. I think the happy apprentice is more likely to read & more likely to benefit from Shakespeare than the bored high school student, so I think - ironically - less education will lead to more education. Hamlet means more to someone who's watched their master struggle w/ a real world decision than someone who's only read about indecision in books.
Indeed, Shakespeare's original audience wasn't high schoolers, but apprentices & former apprentices. Real world experience works - it's likely the best education for many people. It should be an option at least.
Well, that depends on where you are heading. I’m an Engineer. All that Algebra II and Calculus and Statistics stuff that people don’t like and don’t need — used it on the job a lot. Kept the old text books to look stuff up that I had forgotten. And, to be successful, pretty much needed to start heavy math and science training in junior high to be ready to achieve a Masters by age 26. It was a big investment of time and money. But it was necessary for the purpose. And, resulted in significant lifelong income. Helped that I came from a family of Engineers who assisted in and supervised my education. I suspect (actually know) that something similar is required of good medical doctors. Unfortunately the kind of intense, quality education required to achieve these objectives is less and less available in the public schools and state universities. We need to make a course correction. El Malo Gato is on to something.
But if you are heading there, you go an acquire that knowledge. No one needs to open your head and attempt to pour it in. When my kids needed certain tools, they made that clear and we found them. Mostly, they just did it themselves.
There was a time when I believed, most likely as a result of the way school works, that I could just study something and, if I worked hard, become skilled at it.
This is not true. I could always get *better,* but there are many things I could never get good enough at to make it worth my time or anyone else’s money. Not everyone will be an engineer or an artist or a programmer or a violinist.
Well, people do have advantages. I can’t carry a tune in a bucket. So, I’m not going to be a musician. I’m sure I could get better by training. But I’m not ever going to be playing to sell-out crowds.
Chris, that’s the way it used to be. We need a two tiered system as in Germany and other European countries. One tier trades, the other college. It was this way pretty much until WWII. Folks were educated at 8th grade, then “perhaps” some high school. Certainly HS of those days was equivalent of a BA today. College attendance was in single digit percent. Today, I understand our latest credentialed generation is at 50%. That’s ridiculous and most degrees are worthless in any practical sense. This is also known as the over production of “elites”.
I never “taught” my children anything. There was no kitchen table curriculum. They have followed their interests and attached their scarce attention to their highest perceived ends. The results are amazing. People will stop and ask me or other moms in our circle, “where did these kids *come* from?” They just can’t believe the level of emotional maturity and presence.
You nailed pretty much every objection I could think of, but all of them were me sincerely trying to make devil's advocate points.
I stood up and applauded your takedown of credentialism about halfway through.
Your "red team this for me" paragraph answers its own question, though: the only people it truly threatens are entrenched interests. But some of those interests are very, VERY nasty. Which is why we don't have this or anything like it, and why we won't have it as long as those people are around. They will not "give it to the people" if demanded, because it's demanding that they essentially end their own careers and abolish their own power structure.
Thank you. As a retired teacher, mom of 3 and grandmother of 5 …. All I have is gratitude for your observations, thoughts and musings .
I have been saying for decades that the educational system in USA is broken beyond being “ fixed.” It does not serve our country, our families and their children. It certainly does not nurture, support or encourage our children to grow into their beat selves l. Quite the contrary!!
I am thrilled that we are in the difficult, scary and exhilarating place of beginning, fingers crossed 🤞 ….. a national dialogue on what’s next …..
At this point in time there is no other way forward. Our society depends on all of us to take ownership, offer transparency and kick the state and government out of education,PERIOD.
some do not even understand the concept of merit pay. I have a friend who is a teacher, when I talk about giving my employees merit increases, she was completely befuddled with the concept
“ public school was designed as a tool for public indoctrination.”
Sounds a lot like John Taylor Gatto. We homeschooled for this reason and other reasons. Main reason was because my kid wanted to be an engineer and it was clear the established schools weren’t capable of making that happen.
The true evil is how we've destroyed the chances for non-credentialled people to earn a decent living on their own smarts.
My lifelong friend was pissed as hell, 30 years ago, to learn that I was out-earning her in my job as the office indentured servant for a well-endowed charitable foundation. At the time she was a civil servant accountant. I'm a HS grad with maybe a year's worth of college credits mostly earned at night. She has two master's degrees.
(Narrator: She's still better off now but that's a long story...)
When I stopped full-time employment I got a part-time seasonal job as a tour guide in a children's petting farm in NYC where most of our visitors came from the NYC public schools and I can testify, as long and as detailed as you want, how them schools are nothing more than gang factories and they take little kids who are the most enthusiastic learners you ever want to see and turn 'em into delinquents by third grade, and the most viciously culpable teachers are the ones "who look like them."
If you're revolted by the daily flashmobs looting your local pharmacy chains and the gangs kicking old ladies in the head for laughs--take it from me. They didn't start out that way. They were manufactured in our public schools and there ain't enough gibbets in the world to dispatch everyone guilty of destroying our most vulnerable children.
Which is why school systems get rid of people like me - we have the same problems you and Guttermouth talk about, especially in inner city schools, and double especially since they started putting adult men claiming to be underaged refugees into classes.
As in, 35-year old afghan men, no background checks, in among 15-year olds. To criticise this is racist and a career-ender.
Discipline. Order. Immediate harsh and permanent consequences. That goes double for staff and faculty. Schools do not exist to solve "social problems". My classroom is not the social services, a therapist's couch, a psych ward, borstal or anything else like that.
I did this to colleagues, parents and politicians when they called me old-fashioned (which for some reason is a slur), fascist, totalitarian, and much else:
"This girl's shoes were flung in the toilet, and the boy who did then pissed on them. Tell me, here and now before witnesses, how many times is it ok for him to do that before being expelled? How many? One? Five? How many? Answer me!"
You need to imagine a 6' 230 pounds well-built man with shaven head, scars, missing teeth and a huge red beard doing the "executioner's tread" towards when asking to get the full image. Few things light my fuse as does bullying.
Order. Discpline. Costs and consequences for misbehaving. Especially for faculty.
Thanks, it helps me calm down. The wife wanted to know what I was swearing at the computer for - not joking.
I have a pet theory what makes one a decent teacher. One half is actual real life-experience. Maybe doing a tour of duty, or running a business or raising a family, so that you are in your early thirties when you go into teaching. Just so that you don't go school-college-back to school as teacher this time. I've met plenty teachers like that, 23-25 years old, brought up on daddy's and mommy's money even while a student (which in itself isn't wrong per se, but it robs you of experiences such as choosing between paying the electrical bill or your ER bill...).
Other half is being either a reformed repentent atoner after having been a hellion, or a former victim who overcame and conquered the daemon called Trauma. I feel that it engenders not only empathy but more importantly a basic sense of justice and a willingness to, as SCA put it, accept that rabid dogs must be put down.
Right, I gotta go set the table. Meatballs and lingonberry jam, mush made from kohlrabi, potatoes and turnips, sauce made from the meatjuices in the frying pan and light sparkly bubbly drink we make from fireweed blossoms.
I think you're on to something regarding life experience before teaching. I don't think I had any teachers under 40, the first principal of the school was a WW2 vet, and not too few were active in the civil rights movement of the 50s-70s as they were from the southern states.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there’s a great (recent) Dutch film called luizen moeder where a retired teacher is called in to teach the younger generation how to agitate for changes to a robot surveillance system introduce by a well-meaning but deluded new principal. Don’t write off the old guard! They have lessons we have yet to learn!
I have approximately a dozen scars on my body from the NYC public school system, the most dramatic being stitches across my scalp from being slashed with a yardstick by a "mentally ill" girl who imagined I had talked about her boyfriend and didn't understand enough English to be talked out of it. This was sixth grade.
I was also beaten with sticks and was- I'll never be sure because I was finally rescued- probably going to be set on fire in the same incident because of the color of my skin and because I was weak and submissive. Can you believe I was very close to a principled pacifist as a kid?
This was the sort of thing that happened before I grew up and settled on a default position of viewing all humans as potential combatants until proven otherwise. Thanks, public school system.
I went to a Catholic school but in a horrible city, Lawrence Massachusetts. I tell people I never walked anywhere, I always ran, in hopes the perpetrators would think "someone already has that one". I laugh about it now, only because I survived it.
As I've said before, in similar contexts--once the animal is rabid, it can no longer be saved. Pity is warranted but failure to understand the virulence of the threat endangers everyone.
I know you mentioned it before but it pisses me off to hear about it every time. I went to Chicago Public Schools and even at a school that only chose the best and brightest and the type of students who would have been considered "nerds" at other schools, I was still bullied because I wasn't "black enough" in looks or behavior. Oh okay. I mean, not going to apologize for my heritage or the fact that my parents didn't raise me to act like a damn donkey. 😒
That engendered a lifelong allergy to bullies and other jackasses, as you might could tell. 😄
Biggest problems in the way that I see are 1)teacher's unions (parents? What's that?), 2)The DOE (which hasn't done a single thing to help since it's inception) and 3) politicians (who love to fund raise from these issues). I'm kind of digging AZ right now where they let the family choose where to spend their allotted monies for education. Kind of went around all 3 of those groups...
There is no incentive for greatness in todays teaching world. Do a good job and you get to teach the same thing next year with a $500 raise. Do a shitty job, do the same thing next year with a $500 raise.
Oh and by the way you don’t even get a teaching job if you don’t coach something.
And after 5 years you get tenure. And by definition lazier than you were before..
Did I say I spent 13 years in education as a second career?
the reason why the teachers' unions are so terrified of school choice is that it would put most of them out of work. parents talk. everybody wants their kid to go to the magnet school.
the other big barrier that needs to be overcome is helicopter parenting. terrified that little sparky's gonna burn down the house. well, he will if the only person teaching him is a public schoolteacher.
Yes indeed. In the public sector, competition is a great fear. In the private sector, it is part and parcel of everyday life. Public sector folk have inevitably two choices, reject tenure and unions, or go out of business as the public catches wise.
Why is that a problem? Do they believe that they should be able to suppress certain religions? Which ones? On what criteria? Ask them to explain this a bit.
My kids go to a conservative private Christian school where the vast majority of parent’s support choice. Most of us donate to the scholarship fund to allow kids that can’t afford it to attend anyway.
Before that, my kids went to a Catholic school a couple of years, where the majority of parents adamantly opposed school choice. The new school is superior in every way (teachers, academics, athletics, fine arts, university admissions, life outcomes). Catholic schools are hit or miss, and the one they attended was a miss - something the parents there complained about often, and still do (terrible curriculum and creeping wokeness). Whatever excuse the parents at the Catholic school gave upfront as to why they opposed school choice, the real reason for most was they felt special sending their kids to private school and opposing school choice is their way of gatekeeping.
Some were open they sent their kids to Catholic school to get away from the “kids in public school,” and they don’t want their taxes to fund the the kids they were running away from to follow. I could sway some by pointing out Catholic schools give preference to practicing Catholics, so a certain type of gatekeeping at the center of the school purpose remained.
I think schools should be able to set expectations to attend, since most will center around behavior and that is motivating to get better behavior. I obviously don’t oppose religious schools centering on religion. My kids can’t attend a Jewish school because they aren’t Jewish, but I think Jewish families should have the option for their kids to obtain a Jewish education. Same for any other religion, including woke. Same for secular.
All that said, I’m sure it’s no surprise to this audience the Catholic school parents were far more “liberal” than the ones at my kids’ current school.
I also get many parents who send their kids to private school oppose choice for various gatekeeping or ideological motivations. What I don’t get is parents whose kids are stuck in crappy public schools seeing the rot that has become the public education system, and being convinced to vote against opportunity for their own kids anyway.............. in every district there are far more parents voting against opportunity for their own children than those voting against opportunity for other people’s kids. Until that changes, it’s the kids that suffer.
I agree, I'm a practicing Catholic in a Catholic school. They are going woke. We are looking at high schools looks like it will be a Christian school. It's not what we want, but just scan the web sites and the only schools left on the list are Christian schools.
Apparently that’s what they believe. It’s the usual liberal condescending view of the “deplorable’s,” not smart enough to make smart decisions so, rules for thee but not for me.
It means that certain religions and cultures are sufficiently disfavored as to be safe to criticize, while others that are arguably of at least equal toxicity are given a pass.
Former professor here. I used to be a big proponent of higher education - now I believe it's a waste of time. Vocational Ed is the way to go in most cases.
Higher Ed is required if you want to be a doctor, lawyer, professor, or a few other things. Even Computer Programmer want ads have stated for years, "Wanted 4-year degree or equivalent work experience."
Hint: if you graduate from a 4-year college with no intention of further education, and can't do anything but flip burgers, you've made a very bad choice.
With the expense and debt incurred by higher education, no one should go unless there is a definitive reason. The illustration (degreed vs apprentice) in your article was perfect. Surprisingly, the workers coming to my house are having a very difficult time finding apprentices.
As a comparison to what students are required to know these days:
Arron Burr applied to Princeton at age eleven but was told he was too young. He studied for two years, reapplied, and was admitted as a sophomore at thirteen and graduated in 1772 at sixteen.
Hamilton, at eighteen, was considered to be too old to enter Princeton as the standard age for entrance was fourteen or fifteen. To better his chances of admission, Hamilton lied and said he was sixteen when he applied in 1773.
Students applying to Princeton were required to undergo an oral examination in which they were required to demonstrate proficiency in many subject areas including advanced mathematics, Latin grammar and Greek. They were required to know Virgil and Cicero’s orations and be so well acquainted with Greek as to render any part of the four Evangelists in that language into Latin or English.
Hamilton did not attend Princeton because the Trustees denied his request to take as many classes as he wanted which would have enabled him to graduate sooner.
In December 1773, he entered King’s College (now Columbia University) in Manhattan. At the time, King’s College offered a solid classical curriculum of Greek and Latin literature, rhetoric, geography, history, philosophy, math, science and law.
And now their names are being removed from schools because the woke find them offensive…actually it’s probably better that their names are no longer associated with today’s public schools !
I agree completely in theory; I think the biggest problem you’re going to run into with a (non) system like this is that it’s currently cultural anathema to allow any kind of genuine competition. We’ve essentially—without directly saying so—decided to become a Harrison Bergeron society where if individuals are not handicapped already, we handicap them on purpose, “because equity.” You talk about schools failing to raise the low achievers to the high achiever standards but instead pull everyone down…I got my first degree in special education, and from my own observation that phenomenon is actually the goal. Think of how much of the “We Cannot Possibly Go Back To Normal!” Covid movement sustains itself on the plight of the supposed “vulnerable”….the same psychology applies here. If parents have choice but schools can still have the power to reject students…what happens to the kids with severe non-verbal, violent outburst autism? The fetal alcohol syndrome kids? The profoundly physically disabled kids? By definition these children will never “achieve” to any meaningful degree, and it’s that reality (that everyone knows implicitly, but no one is allowed to say) that fuels much of the “race to the bottom” that public schools have become. Objectively speaking, a child who cannot function above infant level has no business in school…but the law says they have the right to “full inclusion” nonetheless.
I think that continues to be one of the biggest psychological hurdles that keeps public schools limping along: the idea of guaranteed equal access, merit be damned. I’m 36 and I take a client of mine to school. I am *astounded* at what behaviors are now tolerated in elementary schools: screaming, running away, throwing things, swearing at the teacher, kindergartners routinely not toilet trained…etc. *This* is the type of student that comprises much of the US educational demographic, and it’s only getting larger as more and more parents decide their child has “special needs.”
If, as you say, a school under a choice system can kick out the kids who aren’t achieving….yikes. That is going to be a HELL of a pill to swallow for our woke, equal-access-for-all, equity-obsessed education culture (and in this peculiar case I’m not even talking about the teachers; most of them would secretly love to teach a roomful of overachievers—or even normal achievers. I’m talking about the PARENTS—the ones who have a “high risk” or “special needs” child. The ones who brought us lawsuits to keep the whole school in masks because little Breighton is “immunocompromised”.)
Basically, given that IDEA exists, I’m not sure how you square the guarantee of equal access with the idea of two-way school and parent choice. It seems like it would inevitably land back in separate schools “for the disabled,” which was already rejected by the US back in 1974 and has only gotten MORE unpopular since then. Perhaps there are solutions I’m just not thinking of though, so I’m curious to hear thoughts on this.
Public schools are failing. I was able to protect my kids during Covid in a top ranked private, conservative Christian school that stayed open, without forced masking, in person since mid August 2020, and the school demands excellence.
It’s not unfair we can afford it and others can’t. It’s unfair parents who protect their kids pay twice and it’s unfair the system blocks families who can’t afford to pay twice from deciding how to spend the funding purported to be for their kids’ education. The outcome is trapping most of the vast middle in failing schools (though parents are finding ways out). It’s unfair that so many kids were so unnecessarily damaged. The world would not be better off if only more kids were more damaged in the name of “fairness.”
School choice is the civil rights issue of our time. As a society we are going to fund education in some manner, no matter how much that irritates the libertarians. Solutions aren’t found in ideological fantasies. The funding is there, children are living humans who don’t have decades for trial and error, the solutions are evident, and progress is really as simple as a law change.
The guardrails are also simple - like the cash for school, the guardrails follow the kids. Every other year kids not tested in their schooling choice should have to take a standardized tests for basic skills in reading, writing, arithmetic. If the child is highly deficient in demonstrated skills, not subject matter curriculums but demonstrated skills, two tests in a row then the child’s school money must go to a school where a majority of students are proficient. No accrediting individual schools or necessary, nor is some state written curriculums guidance. But it is fair to have guardrails on skill sets that are assessed at the student level.
i can see some of the attractiveness here, but what worries me in this proposal is "who sets this standardized test"?
such tests create yet another potential "commanding heights" to force and shape what is taught. who decides what "history" they cover? i remember being taught in gradeschool that the new deal ended the depression. shall that be a test question? how about decolonized math?
watching many of these testing bodes writhe and wrangle around race, gender, and content as is makes me very nervous about just how nastily and deeply politicized tests might become if they were the only real handle by which to grab and steer school curricula.
one cannot simply assume the existence of "good, valid, and impartial" standardized testing and letting "private companies" do it is not necessarily of much help if the state picks them.
you get debacles like this:
https://medium.com/@newyorkteacher/guessing-c-for-every-answer-is-now-enough-to-pass-the-new-york-state-algebra-exam-93bac55b3e24
and you get "special interest schools" lobbying for a test to be like X.
i can see a lot of ways that a testing system could be badly weaponized or manipulated.
how does one prevent a system like this from being captured?
Standardized tests are already starting to include progressive critical theory nonsense. It has already started creeping in.
Standardized tests are also part and parcel of what I consider among the most loathsome guiding principles of modern education:
The lowest common denominator dictates everything.
We had to pull our son from his first private school because of this. Not only was he subject to punishment for the actions of others, which was intolerable, but the straw that broke us was that his last teacher actually expected him to "act as a role model" and "help other students" with their issues.
Adios lunáticas.
He, and we, are now in a far better place, albeit at a far higher price...
Oh yes I remember several classes where I functioned as an unpaid tutor. In both high school and college. Glad you found a new school.
There is absolutely no need for standardized tests in this day of instant communication. Just post the results for every school, in terms the parents and students want to see: what fraction of their grads have a full-time job in a field they were trained for (vocational students); what fraction of their grads are attending a top rated university (pre-college students); what fraction of the students beginning at that school finished the program (dropouts); etc.
Put the info out there, and the market works. It will work, too, for the schools: they will be motivated to perform in whatever way attracts more students to their school, and to provide the information to parents and students that demonstrates their performance.
It will soon evolve into something that none of us are able to foresee. Just as less than 20 years after WWII ended, there would be men (and women) in space, and not long after, walking on the moon. Who could have foreseen the modern tech world where your personal computer, and for that matter your cellphone, would have a million times more processing power than the computers that were able to guide and navigate the Apollo spacecraft safely to the moon, and back again? And rescue a mortally-wounded craft halfway there, and bring THEM home safely?
Nobody could have foreseen any of those things, but this is what happens when you let minds run free, and reward them for success. We are at risk of losing all of that right now. Education is a great way to get started, but people in all 50 states will have to force it. If we take the feds out of education (we must), then it will be up to the states. Just as it is today with many things, the states compete and people vote with their feet.
I hear you, and half of me agrees. But, the other half says, "If you haven't studied history, (or lived in a communist nation,) how will you recognize Tyranny when it raises it's ugly head??
If you've never studied genetics or biology or the history of "medicine," how will you know that experimental mRNA injections with code for a toxic spike protien (with a prion attached,!) wrapped in nano lipid particles, is a VERY bad gamble?
Or is you know nothing of economics, and the fact that drops in economic production translates more human disease, mental ill health, and crime, how can you assess the real cost of "lockdowns?"
Or going "Carbon Neutral?"
If you never read the Pentagon Papers, or the Project for a New American Century, or Agenda 21, or The Great Reset, how will you know what the "Government" is up to?
I really believe a good education is the only thing that can save the United States and our unique Freedoms and Liberties this Nation staked it's existence upon.
"For lack of Wisdom, my People die."
True today, true thousands of years ago, will always be true. Being proficient in a field that supports you well and that you enjoy, good as that is, is not good enough.
Of you would keep Freedom alive you must have an EDUCATED citizenry who understands a) How Truly Rare and Precious Liberty is,
and b) It Is Theirs' To Protect or Theirs' To Destroy, through either ignorance or neglect or malevolence within or without. From those ranks must come the people who serve in all branches off government and in the media, who honor their responsibility to keep government honest and accountable. It takes Everyone to make this work....
No one else can do this, only the People. And that takes a solid background for the vast majority that only a good education can provide.
People everywhere studied all this and still failed to see it. The difference would be that the indoctrination that lead to compliance would never have silenced those that do see it.
All I can say is they didn't get the education I did. Or they would have seen it.
I enjoyed reading this whole exchange. Just to add another perspective, when I came to the Netherlands with a degree in American Studies my MIL asked me what the heck value I thought it had and one of my arguments at the time was that understanding history is key to avoiding its repetition. She laughed at me and said: if the economy gets as bad as 1930s Germany, the people would elect Hitler all over again no matter what they learned in school. Now almost twenty years later I’m afraid she was the insightful one.
I went to an elite private high school too and had the freedom to explore all kinds of subjects that interested me and apply lessons across subjects too. The course that probably shaped me more than any other was called ideas in western literature. Other girls who took that class with me were weeping and wailing about school closures along with me in March of 2020 and I thought, see? our education has helped us think out of the box! Fast forward another year and these mothers were the absolute worst about medical choice. So much for applying the critical thinking and empathy that are core to the mission statement. And I wrote the school and told them how they had failed probably 80 % of their graduates and 100% of their current students. I will never send them another dime! I’ve never been so grateful my husband put his foot down and said he wasn’t putting up the cash to fulfill my third generation graduate aspirations for my children. And as next generation school mates join the illustrious ranks wearing fucking face masks I think, phew dodged that bullet!
Katherine, I've had a bunch of redneck friends over the years who in most cases did not go to college (maybe 2 years of tech school), and they don't teach the stuff you're talking about in very many high schools if any. Yet these rednecks all have the common sense to avoid progressive liberal/communism and support MAGA/America First.
I'm afraid it is your highly educated, suburban liberals that are most on board with the craziness that passes for the democrat party these days. Perhaps they should know better, but for some reason they don't and they have fallen for the mass formation psychosis hook, line and sinker. There aren't very many redneck 'karens' out there -- most of them went to Swarthmore and married a Yale lawyer, or equivalent.
My redneck friends can't quote from Chaucer or Locke and most of them have never had a class in economics. But they know when things are going to hell -- they just look around at riots in the streets, Soros DAs letting hoodlums off without charges, gas at $5 a gallon, food shortages, illegals and drugs pouring across the border, CRT and grooming in the schools, and so on and so on. Liberal suburbanites still support all of this, and vote for people like AOC and think that's a good thing.
Education is important, but it is not the answer. The most important thing is for people to open their eyes and stop letting Trump or Biden or the MSM or anyone else tell them what to think, and think for themselves.
Or not very popular reply - not everyone is capable of it
🎯
word of mouth from parent to parent about what their kids learned and how they were treated is all that will be needed to identify the schools that work.
that true of every single thing we purchase. you buy what your friends said worked and they liked.
Standardized tests need to be vocabulary, biology, mathematics, geography and critical reasoning skills.
Civics; how our Government is SUPPOSED to function, and your part in that!
At more advanced levels you can include physics, chemistry, spiritual thought & philosophy. We need both our left and right brains to be exercised, and the communication between them developed!
Who was Plato? What exactly the big deal with Galileo? What do Hindus believe? Native Americans? At least one nation, perhaps the Iroquois who helped us conceive of 3 branches of government, if I remember correctly...
(If we had also adopted their "only women can vote, and only men can serve, and only women can hold property" concepts as well, we might be living in a more sane world, lol!)
All these questions matter.
But, these topics should be high school and early college level, before you dive into your subject matter, whether that's English or Pipefitting, Road Building, Software Development, Art, or Physics or Medicine.
If kids can ace those hard fact subjects, and develop critical thinking skills, they can figure out anything else they want to. History need to be taught, IMO, but taught from original source documents. I had a teacher of America History who utilized a history book that contained ONLY original source documents!
NO paragraphs anywhere saying who did what to whom, when and why..absolutely none.
We just studied those Original Source pieces, from private letters, newspapers, legal actions, etc., and then through discussions tried to understand what was going on; it was absolutely revelational!
Good Teachers, like Good Doctors, are PRICELESS.
I think the biggest mistake we ever made was losing so many of our great teachers because public schools became nightmares that anyone with a heart or brain would run from.
Wokism is not education. And when half the kids have autoimmune diseases and or behavioral issues and teachers cannot discipline or control the situation in the classroom, and have to worry about insane gunmen coming in and killing everyone, WHO would tolerate this??
Yes our schools are completely broken, and yes, the fastest way to fix this is the open market.
Give parents control of the 15K and it might be messy at first, but those who choose wisely will rise to the top, quickly, and we will be out of the gutter and back to the races fast!
There isn’t a way to standardize any of that without extreme ideological creep. You think it’s important to teach critical reasoning. I agree. Same for geography. But that doesn’t mean the state should demand it any more than demanding the teaching of the gender ideology crazy parents think is important.
Basic skills to function in life agreed upon by over 95% of the population which can survive state legislatures year after year is fine, beyond that it’s all about who has the power to force kids to learn what they personally think is important. It’s how we got into the mess.
Actually it's my opinion that we got into this mess by very intelligent and 100% malevolent actors deconstructing the mostly quality school system I attended in the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's.
An actually well-educated population would not have been half as likely to fall for the propaganda of the last few years, as the uneducated, manipulated and mind-controlled kids graduating today.
It was in the 1970's that our educational system was systemically destroyed, in my view.
I had a ringside seat and watched it happen.
So for me, the greatest way to "inoculate" ourselves against Evil and Tyranny is to study it.
Ditto bad science is cured by studying science and letting the chips fall where they may.
Small government is a necessity. But no government is a recipe for Thuggery.
Ditto Education. It's neccessary.
"Without Wisdom, my People die."
Wisdom is timeless. Getting there is work. Mentors are required.
But, humans actually love learning, given the chance. We should be supporting all varieties of what used to be called a University Education.
It worked for so, so many!! El Gato included, it appears. ; ))
I agree in theory, and with the material reality of the destruction of public schools beginning before I was born by intelligent people (whom I think were also Marxist inspired activists).
Studying tyranny absolutely prevents it. Very few with genuine knowledge of history failed to see the othering and baseless hysteria during Covid, while those ignorant of it got offended when the fairly accurate comparisons were made to historical atrocities.
I remain firm on not requiring though because my generation is ignorant and the activists control the testing. Give them room for content and an entire generation will be forced to learn revisionist history because my friends, all with masters like me, largely can’t tell the difference. By not requiring it, those who know and love it will teach it to live another day. My position acknowledges we need to start where we actually are, not where we should be in a sane society.
This is coming to the "crux" of the current issue, IMHO.
My generation, born 1960, got the end of real education in America.
I had to read Solzynitchen, (sorry on the spelling,) Dostevesky, again, my spelling is questionable, Milton, Tolstoy, Maslow, B.F. Skinner, the Dark Triad type, and take abnormal psychology classes.
I studied the Spanish Inquisition, the Reformation, and why MY ancestors fled Europe. So lockdowns and govermentally lying were always obvious totalitarian tactics.
I got more than enough epidemiology, virology, and genetics to know 1- Covid was not the threat they made it out to be, 2- there ALWAYS were treatments, and 3- the mRNA vaxxes were a nightmare waiting to happen!
I just wish the rest on my fellow Americans could have seen the same!!
“ Studying tyranny absolutely prevents it. ” that’s what I thought too but didn’t happen in real life during covid and still not fully out of it
It's nearly impossible to actually score test answers that require anything beyond multiple choice. The scorers need considerable training and are certainly prone to bias on any answers that require judgement. The single best evaluation requires the parent and the teacher assessing the student. While there will always be bias and subjectivity in that assessment, the involvement of multiple teachers help level that out. No system can ever be perfect but what is enough to be adequate?
History isn’t a requirement........ history isn’t a skill set, it’s curriculum content. I think it would need to center on skills and legally define skills.
Also, perfect isn’t a thing and progress involves a lot of wack-a-mole. I’m pointing out well-reasoned guardrails can help, and it’s reasonable to ease minds to have safety nets. Most American adults don’t know history - real supported by historical documents or revised by wokeies. Most can add and subtract. The pitch for school choice with guardrails utilizes this reality when setting standards.
There is absolutely room for creep, but if you legislate the tests look at skill sets with the ability to sue for introduction of pure curriculum content, you’ve got a pretty good guardrail. Being able to perform addition, subtraction, and graphing are mathematical process skills. Being able to write a sentence with a noun and a verb is a skill. Being able to comprehend/ remember what you read and answer questions is a skill (even if it’s wacky). Yes, there is room for creep in everything, but there is also a need for balance based in reality nearly everything.
Transparency also tends to block the extremes. Make the prior year test public information. Covid created far less transparency into school teachings, and the pushback has been relatively fast and more intense than the indoctrinated ever predicted. It lacks some faith in parents, and I think overestimates the capabilities of activists, to think a test of age appropriate skills approved by a legislative body with judicial review protections, assessed at the level of the individual child once every 24 months will easily or effectively be turned into a tool of indoctrination. If we can create a system that works for 50 years, people 50 years from now will be equipped to withstand the inevitable totalitarian pushes at that time. Building a considered framework that acknowledges genuine concerns is the most likely to succeed proposal I am aware of.
Sorry, Covid created far MORE transparency. 🤦♀️
"legally define skills."
that's precisely the problem we are in now. having someone define the skills needed leads right back to where we are now.
No it’s not. The problem we have now is an apathetic public complacent to mass child abuse (note how we treated kids during Covid), combined with too many indifferent parents that are too scared and weak to support implementing policies to actually improve the situation now.
Standardized test didn’t corrupt public schools. Nor does requiring legislatures to approve a minimum standard. Activists teachers were allowed in by indifferent communities elected overtly political school boards. The rot in public education in this country has been evident for decades, yet nothing gets done about it. We just throw more money at the problem with less accountability.
The outcome of “balanced literacy” has been driving up illiteracy for 4+ decades. Eureka math teaching kids to hate math (and by extension science) year after year. Yet beyond complaining, even the majority of people that feign to care inexplicably refuse to support easy steps that would result in near instant progress. No legislature forced schools to accept balanced literacy. No standardized test did either.
Accountability is an inescapable is part of life. Holding adults accountable for their kids education through basic competency skill testing is not going to lead to mass indoctrination. It helps to ensure kids are taught basic skills so they can function in society. And by requiring legislative approval it puts those standards as close to the voters as possible.
Doing nothing isn’t working.
While standardized tests aren't perfect, they are necessary if schools are to be freed from a mandatory curriculum.
Let me tell you what has happened in my country which just within the past few years introduced national standardized tests. This is a country with a large public school sector as well as a very robust system of private schools for parents to choose from; in fact, roughly half of students in the country attend public school and half attend private school. Most employers pay a "schooling allowance" to parents so they don't have to pay the full price of private school tuition, similar to how employers in the US pay for employees' health insurance.
However, over the past few decades a serious problem has developed, which has only been revealed by national standardized tests which were introduced within the past 6 years; namely, that private schools have massive grade inflation in Math and Science (but not in language subjects) compared to public schools. The amount of inflation is very large: if a public school student gets a Math grade of C-, on average, a private school student of equivalent ability will get a B. If a public school student gets a B-, a private school student of the same ability will on average get a straight A.
The reason is that private schools have been competing with other for 20 years over grades. If two schools give equivalent quality of education, but one gives grades that are much higher, why would the parents not choose the school that gives higher grades, and thus increases the chances that students will get into college? Public schools, which don't need to compete for students, have had no incentive to inflate grades and have not. However, since the national standardized tests were introduced and revealed the extent of grade inflation in private schools, confidence in high school grades has collapsed and national colleges have actually removed them from consideration completely and replaced them with standardized tests scores. Now, it is obviously not good to have a standardized test be the only admission requirement for college, but with school grades being massively biased against public school students, that is the only fair option for the moment.
What would have been better is if the standardized tests had been given for the past 20 years, so that the developing grade inflation in private schools could have been caught early. However, even then the incentive for private schools would still be to inflate grades to attract customers, as long as grades are used as the primary metric of college admission. There would still need to be a standardized test taken into account to control for differences in grade inflation between different schools.
The biggest issue is this: Our systems (especially our schools) have been captured and corrupted by WEF Globalist Utopian drones. If we don’t fix the point of corruption this will continue to happen and our societies will continue to slide into tyranny. We need to re-infiltrate our own governments with people who agree to a new agreement and who are willing to put fixing the corrupted system above all else. How do we fix it? With transparency and decentralization. Like this:
https://joshketry.substack.com/p/do-we-need-to-re-infiltrate-our-own
Standardized tests are only standards to the agency using them
Yes. Which is where legislative review, transparency, and defining skill v curriculums comes into play. It’s not a perfect solution, I haven’t gear one yet, but it’s a step in the direction of progress that could help kids today.
Tests should be free and private like the GMAT. No need for more.
It would help if the teachers actually paid attention and were intentional about observing how each individual learns.
For illustration purposes, when I was in 3rd grade and learning basic math; I intuitively was using "tens" to do math. I'd approximate then break down to smallest numbers.
For example, if I was asked to figure out the quotient of 637 - 84, I would round up to 640 and round down to 80. That gave me 560. Then I'd just "add back" the 3 and 4...and subtract from my approximation. So, essentially I had a two step strategy; get it to tens and then break down the single digits based on how I rounded.
The teacher recognized that and let me roll with it. That allowed me to skip a lot of unnecessary steps. I could just do it in my head.
Had she not allowed that, I would've got bogged down and bored. And frankly I probably wouldn't have done well in business. For business purposes you have to be able to approximate numbers quickly to negotiate, etc., etc. - you have to be able to "roll" numbers in your head.
I give her credit for the small observation she made. It literally changed my life.
At the same time the basics have to be learned. But I think if teachers paid more attention they'd unleash the creativity of children. Creativity and a successful life path are correlated.
any system that is predicated on "we need really contentious and selfless/sagacious/dilligent folks to be sure it's run properly" seems poised for failure.
it just never works out that way. we need to align incentives and market forces. relying on "good people" to make bad systems work has a poor track record.
I think that is one of the ideas about de-centralization. The less centralized an entity is, the more power is pushed back into the hands of those who need to be making the decision. No system is perfect, but which works better, a central agency determining how 330 million people are educated, or one that determines how 4 million people are educated? Neither system is perfect, but the one that caters towards less people is an improvement over the one-size/no-size fits all of the federal government.
Having the decision placed in the hands of the parents further decentralizes that decision. A parent knows their child better than the state, or hopefully does. Offering even two choices for a locality above no choice at all is an improvement.
Finally, the main function of education should be to teach us how to educate ourselves and all standards and basic skills should have that aim in mind.
I work in a large IT environment for NASA with VERY complex systems. One size fits all causes more problems than software bugs in the 30 million plus lines of custom code written by the lowest bidder.
ONE SIZE FITS ALL HAMSTRINGS THE OUTLIERS, WHICH IS USUALLY WHERE THE MOST VALUE EXISTS.
Example... what's more valuable, 150 computers in Mission Control or the half a million pushing paper to keep those computers running perfectly enough to control a space station? Without the 150 powerful computers, the other half million don't even exist.
But the bureaucrats try to by office PCs for engineers processing critical data on 6 screens where someone might die.
One size fits all is a prescription for mediocrity.
This is so true. Bureaucracy mainly obfuscates innovation. Think of it in terms of entertainment. Which is more interesting, a work of art envisioned by one person, or one that is the brain-child of a committee? The more chefs in the kitchen, the worse a product becomes. This doesn't mean an individual can create bad products, but the cost of that bad product is far less than the collective mediocrity of many.
This is a great post. Not being a sycophant. But, I agree wholeheartedly.
Well I agree with that. But my point and yours can coexist
The fact is; is that if we followed your premise we would attract those types of teachers and therefore children would be better prepared for the real world.
I'm all in on what you're saying.
It's all my Gramma's fault. My elementary school challenges I mean. Without television, (or electricity until I was seven), Grams 'calmed me down' by teaching me to read. By the time I started school, I had read all of Thornton W. Burgess, and most of Enid Blyton. I had started into the Hardy Boys, and had discovered the pseudonymous Victor Appleton. By third grade, I had finished the (really bad) encyclopedia my folks purchased. All of which turned my first three years of schooling into a torturous infinity of excruciating boredom. Punishment ensued. Frequently. Report cards were full of teacher comments like “inattentive”, “disruptive”, “uncooperative”, “fails to follow lessons”. There was discussion about “failing” me.
Until fourth grade. A teacher discovered that I liked numbers. A lot. And was willing to work very, very, hard at understanding and working with numbers. Quietly. That teacher forgave the fact that I was reading far beyond grade level. To her, it was not a criminal offense to read ‘grown-up’ books. She took the time to inquire as to WHY I was so “uncooperative”. And began my life-long fascination with mathematics.
She changed my life. In a very positive manner! Thank you, Mrs. Neufeld - RIP. Today, of course …
I bet you that has made a huge difference in your life. I was the same; if I wasn't outside, then I was reading.
What's sad, is I had several professors who made a meaningful difference in my life. They no longer exist at my alma mater.
Universities are a crisis. I think it's so dire that there's no other remedy - other than people walking away and paying to leave. Start over.
Sadly, I have to agree. In my nineteen years as a part-time lecturer in the Business Department, I saw many of the "good ones", (the profs who encouraged students to actually think), leave the university. And academia. Some simply retired, others were eased out, and some quit in disgust.
It seems the term "advanced education", like so many other mis-applied labels in today's world, no longer means either "advanced", or "education".
Yes. Bottom line, is they're not even professionals imo.
They certainly don't present themselves that way. Could you imagine if all CPA's were that way?
My Grandma did the same, and my hero teacher was Mrs. Samantha Smith - 3rd grade. God bless you forever, ma'am.
On the topic of private school availability and affordability, here is a 2012 TED talk from Pauline Dixon showing how private schools in the slums of India and the developing world are both affordable to poor locals and outperforming government schools.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzv4nBoXoZc (15:29)
In many areas, a clear *majority* of the students attend private, for a small fee, instead of "free" government schools.
That poor people would make this choice en masse puts the truth to the lie that government "education" is necessary, desirable or effective.
Just imagine what a free market in education could be if adopted here in the Land of the Formerly Free.
It's exactly the same in Guatemala. The poor all pick small fee private schools, and sacrifice a lot for it, instead of opting for the free government schools. Most of the students who go to the free government schools don't even finish elementary school.
If you wish to attend university there are expensive and inexpensive ones in the main city and most of the professors give the same classes at both during the same semester!
I happen to live in an area of the country commonly referred to as America's 3rd world, and it's hard to force this same perspective on the affairs of my state: the middle class and wealthy in my area aren't sending their kids to the schools which are frequently derided in the media. If you plot the nation's school age population by state and essentially compare enrollment in private schools by race you'll see that DC (and by extension MD and DE), LA, and MS top out the list. More of our white students are enrolled in private schools than anywhere else in the country. MS has a relatively high rate of private school enrollment in general, which shouldn't really shock anyone who pays attention to the rankings regarding our public schools.
But I mention all of that to say that 1.) MS and LA already have a robust network of private schools relative to their "poor" population (many are Catholic, but that's an unnecessary aside) and 2.) a voucher system would actually make many more of them accessible to families who are stuck in historically underperforming systems and would probably increase the racial and economic diversity at most private schools.
On the flip side, you could look at that and say we are edging toward competition down here, and still have terrible public schools. I'd argue that's largely an artifact of geography (the poverty of the delta truly is unfathomable to most), but it could potentially be a counterpoint.
Well said.
Same!
I love these two pieces. As a mother to an 11 year old I’m completely on board. Have been reading people like John Taylor Gatto for years. It’s clear how utterly bankrupt the system is. The things that “aren’t working” actually are working. They’re features, not bugs.
Let families decide what works for our children. The vast majority of parents of all income and educational levels are capable of making good choices for our children.
I agree. I have twin 11 year old's.
You'd think smart Republicans would run on this issue after the last 3 years. As well as crime and our border.
But they're scuurdy cats.
The ones in AZ did. That is a school choice model for the country!!!!
I'm an AZ mom (one of my 5 kids is also 11!) And I'm so happy about the progress we've made in AZ for school choice! Still work to do, but I agree, this is one of THE top issues of our time. My kids have been very successful at BASIS charter school, which are consistently some of the top schools in the country. And part of the reason is they have eschewed credentialism, and have subject matter experts as teachers. They also offer family-funded (through fundraising throughout the year) performance-based bonuses to teachers at the end of the school year. This ensures that the schools can attract and retain the BEST teachers.
That is awesome!!!! Subject matter teachers are great!!! We’ve stated looking at universities for our kids, and one thing that seems to make the biggest difference in actual life outcomes is teaching facility that have done, not just taught. For your kids to get that even younger is a huge plus.
For specials, my kids’ school does this - fine arts, athletics, tech, music, and STEM. The STEM teacher has the funniest background. He’s an engineer that got bored at his “real job” pretty young, and decided to open a company offering kids birthday parties with science experiments (probably 2 decades ago). The party company did the fun stuff - blowing up gummy bears, building rockets (and he lets the kids screw up - they know they did when he backs the group further away for the launch 😂), playing with exotic animals.
A bunch of school parents at the time used him for their little kids’ birthday parties. The school board took notice and about 10 years ago decided to offer him a raise to have his parties at school all day long, decked out the STEM lab, and moved the start of weekly STEM lab back to kindergarten (before that, the science teachers lead lab experiments, but those didn’t start until 3rd or 4th grade).
With this guy the STEM lab looks like myth busters with animals. The parents ALL wanted to be the “volunteer parent helper” in STEM, which unfortunately lead the school to hiring a full time assistant within a year to avoid parent infighting. We can go into the school whenever we want, including STEM, but we can only watch STEM/ sit with our own kid’s group. 😂☹️😂
agree. There could be some improvements to the model, but what a great start!
Corr: they're complicit cats.
better, much better.
I’m ready for something outside of the two parties to emerge. I’ve always identified with the Democrats but have had friends and family who I love who are Republicans. Never been in “the other side is evil” camp. But I can’t imagine voting for Dems again and voted for Republicans state-wide in 2020 for the first time in my life. But at this point I’m deeply unhappy with the antics of both parties.
Can we just have a party that speaks to the sensible people who want to make a decent living, be free to make choices that are good for our families and be civic minded in our neighborhoods and communities? I think we’re the majority.
>> and be civic minded in our neighborhoods and communities? I think we’re the majority.
That first phrase answered why the following sentence was wrong.
We are in this position because we want to be catered to, and the only entity big enough to cater to us so thoroughly is the state. Don't worry, though. Soon it will (directly) be corporations.
Right on Guttermouth.
BOOM
Not sure I follow what the first phrase was and what followed that was “wrong.”
But agree that our current context has contributed to a loss of capacity for independence and interdependence. Meta will be all too happy to fill the void.
This begs the question, "why do we only have TWO choices,?".
Here locally the same ,question gets posted at least once a week:
Hey I'm shopping for internet service in (insert area), and want to know which is better, AT&T or Spectrum?".
Not, "Why in Sam hell do we only have TWO choices?".
Well that's an easy one for the panel to answer: because the corporate culture by virtue of it's very nature, is predatory (they swallow rivals whole), it is cannibalistic, and DESPISES competition, period. You wanna compete against us? Well we just did a hostile takeover, compete against THAT.
The current political system is what Samuel P. Huntington aptly described as "the perfect dictatorship", and it is, because dictators are relatively easy, insofar as you get the rights guns or people in the right spot at the correct time, no more dictator, new day dawns!
But what if you had a two party system where "overthrow" merely consisted of "replacing these bastards with those bastards?".
Oh my. Now what?
And that is precisely where we have been for decades, and decades with no end in sight.
There is no political solution to this problem, how can there be?
But it gets worse, because those same corporations that despise competition, also control both parties. From the halls of Congress to 1600.
They care not one whit about "issues", kidding right? Issues are for the peons to pick a hill to die on.
Which is why the NDAA sails through every year, our single biggest budget item.
With no competition (see above), maybe 2 or 3 defense contractors left, all no-bid contracts.
Think they cared about the "issue" of Afghanistan? With 85 billion of military hardware to replace?
So this whole "red team blue team" stuff is a trap, no escape folks.
School choice has also been a big deal here in Iowa. We are not there yet but moving towards a voucher system
I believe the accreditation issue goes much further than your piece gets into. It's not just accredation of teachers and public school systems that is problematic. Private schools, those outs parents want from public schools that are failing them must be accredited for graduates to be able to attend prestigious colleges. And the accrediting boards now push as much garbage indoctrination as requirements for accreditation on privates and parochial as they do on public schools.
So if parents want the university path to remain open for their children they must still pass their children through the indoctrination system that the accrediting boards colleges recognize construct. Maybe a "lite" version of it in private and parochial schools, but still inescapable for higher academic achievement. And few parents will pay for private schooling that doesn't gain entrance to college.
And since most employers, public and private, require degrees from those same colleges for jobs in managerial and bureaucratic oversight only those who've gone through the indoctrination requirements of accrediting boards will be sitting atop society. Making the sorts of laws and rules we've suffered the past 2.5 years (more before we were awake) and enforcing compliance on workers and customers alike.
Take a knee for Floyd. Repent your privilege. Wear a mask. Get the jab. Ignore the penis on "her." Don't question elections. Don't question, just do as you're told. All brought to society by graduates of an education system with indoctrination required by inescapable accreditation boards as currently constructed.
Until higher education no longer requires enrollment of students from ideological accrediting boards, and employers, public and private, no longer require degrees from institutions that meet the approval of ideological accrediting boards nothing will be meaningfully fixed. The boards, the seal of approval they confer are the tip of the spear pressed on the throat of free people's with free thought and free speech values today.
of course.
this sort of credentialing is used everywhere from doctors to lawyers to hairdressers and accountants and sold as "safety" and "quality" when it is mostly just guild systems extracting oligopoly profits and and top down structures of doctrinal control.
True. I was a lobbyist in state legislatures for two decades. Often opposing licensing and registration legislation. Profit sold as public safety. With mixed success.
Thing is, this generation of credentialing has expanded the scope. It's not just for profit, it's for ideological reasons, as well. Think: Communist party membership cards/Nazi party membership cards to get the top positions in the Soviet Union, China/Germany.
That's what the current accreditation system is building to. Only open to the most obedient and ideologically pure, producing good commissars.
Credentialling is a cloning experiment gone bad imo.
If perfunctory collaboration is rewarded more than competition it leads to de facto concealed rituals and symbolism. Which are exploited and ultimately lead to silo thinking.
This was true before the mad hatter ideological adjuvant was added.
So disgusting and SO TRUE!
Yup. So right my friend. Your foray into the horror story that American Education has become aling with the surest and fastest way to correct it has warmed my heart. Please, Magnificent Creator Cat---- spread your Wisdom out across our World!!
; ))
Your last sentence is spot-on. Accreditation is a black hole warping the gravitation of institutions.
May I add, “if you disagree with/speak against the narrative, then you are spouting mis/disinformation” to your “take a knee for Floyd” list?
What if education itself is a bad idea? That is, one of the best argument for school choice is that kids in choice have fewer mental health issues, so, even if their education was worse in some say, they're happier & happier is worth something, no?
But what if we extend that a bit - what if education itself is the problem & school choice only alleviates, but doesn't solve the problem.
If you take "multiple intelligences" seriously, it's reasonable to believe that people are simply too diverse for education. You and I might enjoy//benefit from sitting around in school til our mid 20s, but for many people that's a disaster. They'd probably learn more & better by just going to work at 12 (before that there'd be some serious physical/mental limits). They'd learn whatever it was they wanted to learn & they'd learn it in the way the best suited them.
So, if you want to be an electrician or a baker, shouldn't you just be an apprentice? Heck, I have serious doubts about medical school and law school - seems like apprenticeships work best there too. Academia seems like the best preparation for academia, but little else. There's little evidence that the concept of education makes any sense at all - most of us learn best by doing, and - in many instances - learning by doing is about the only way to learn it.
We keep pouring in $ with little results - maybe we need to change our ideas entirely. If you spent a year apprenticed to a baker, then a year apprenticed to an electrician, then a year apprenticed to a doctor, then a year apprenticed to a store owner, wouldn't that be a better high school for most of us? Other than the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic, what do we really need to learn that you can't learn as an apprentice?
I often wonder if the well-documented benefits of homeschooling are the result of eliminating the schooling (or greatly reducing it). I loved school, but I know I'm unusual, eccentric even. Not sure why everyone should be forced to do what I love - might be better to let people try something else.
The idea that Shakespeare makes you a better person or that "science" makes you a better citizen sure has taken a hit these last few years - I see no evidence that "well-rounded" people handled COVID better than others. If anything, it's clearly been the opposite.
Let's rethink "education" entirely. It's about maximizing human potential, not test scores. I think the happy apprentice is more likely to read & more likely to benefit from Shakespeare than the bored high school student, so I think - ironically - less education will lead to more education. Hamlet means more to someone who's watched their master struggle w/ a real world decision than someone who's only read about indecision in books.
Indeed, Shakespeare's original audience wasn't high schoolers, but apprentices & former apprentices. Real world experience works - it's likely the best education for many people. It should be an option at least.
Well, that depends on where you are heading. I’m an Engineer. All that Algebra II and Calculus and Statistics stuff that people don’t like and don’t need — used it on the job a lot. Kept the old text books to look stuff up that I had forgotten. And, to be successful, pretty much needed to start heavy math and science training in junior high to be ready to achieve a Masters by age 26. It was a big investment of time and money. But it was necessary for the purpose. And, resulted in significant lifelong income. Helped that I came from a family of Engineers who assisted in and supervised my education. I suspect (actually know) that something similar is required of good medical doctors. Unfortunately the kind of intense, quality education required to achieve these objectives is less and less available in the public schools and state universities. We need to make a course correction. El Malo Gato is on to something.
But if you are heading there, you go an acquire that knowledge. No one needs to open your head and attempt to pour it in. When my kids needed certain tools, they made that clear and we found them. Mostly, they just did it themselves.
Agree. This should be self-selected. In my track, many started few completed. Things are even more competitive for the medical field.
There was a time when I believed, most likely as a result of the way school works, that I could just study something and, if I worked hard, become skilled at it.
This is not true. I could always get *better,* but there are many things I could never get good enough at to make it worth my time or anyone else’s money. Not everyone will be an engineer or an artist or a programmer or a violinist.
Well, people do have advantages. I can’t carry a tune in a bucket. So, I’m not going to be a musician. I’m sure I could get better by training. But I’m not ever going to be playing to sell-out crowds.
Chris, that’s the way it used to be. We need a two tiered system as in Germany and other European countries. One tier trades, the other college. It was this way pretty much until WWII. Folks were educated at 8th grade, then “perhaps” some high school. Certainly HS of those days was equivalent of a BA today. College attendance was in single digit percent. Today, I understand our latest credentialed generation is at 50%. That’s ridiculous and most degrees are worthless in any practical sense. This is also known as the over production of “elites”.
Agree.
I never “taught” my children anything. There was no kitchen table curriculum. They have followed their interests and attached their scarce attention to their highest perceived ends. The results are amazing. People will stop and ask me or other moms in our circle, “where did these kids *come* from?” They just can’t believe the level of emotional maturity and presence.
You nailed pretty much every objection I could think of, but all of them were me sincerely trying to make devil's advocate points.
I stood up and applauded your takedown of credentialism about halfway through.
Your "red team this for me" paragraph answers its own question, though: the only people it truly threatens are entrenched interests. But some of those interests are very, VERY nasty. Which is why we don't have this or anything like it, and why we won't have it as long as those people are around. They will not "give it to the people" if demanded, because it's demanding that they essentially end their own careers and abolish their own power structure.
It will have to be taken.
Thank you. As a retired teacher, mom of 3 and grandmother of 5 …. All I have is gratitude for your observations, thoughts and musings .
I have been saying for decades that the educational system in USA is broken beyond being “ fixed.” It does not serve our country, our families and their children. It certainly does not nurture, support or encourage our children to grow into their beat selves l. Quite the contrary!!
I am thrilled that we are in the difficult, scary and exhilarating place of beginning, fingers crossed 🤞 ….. a national dialogue on what’s next …..
At this point in time there is no other way forward. Our society depends on all of us to take ownership, offer transparency and kick the state and government out of education,PERIOD.
it's really quite an interesting litmus test.
i hear from so many teachers that they would love to see school choice and academic freedom.
the ones who oppose it tend to be the ones that want career security rooted in seniority as they slowly turn coffee and neglect into a pension.
it's rare to see the better folks in any system oppose assessment and merit pay.
some do not even understand the concept of merit pay. I have a friend who is a teacher, when I talk about giving my employees merit increases, she was completely befuddled with the concept
“ public school was designed as a tool for public indoctrination.”
Sounds a lot like John Taylor Gatto. We homeschooled for this reason and other reasons. Main reason was because my kid wanted to be an engineer and it was clear the established schools weren’t capable of making that happen.
The true evil is how we've destroyed the chances for non-credentialled people to earn a decent living on their own smarts.
My lifelong friend was pissed as hell, 30 years ago, to learn that I was out-earning her in my job as the office indentured servant for a well-endowed charitable foundation. At the time she was a civil servant accountant. I'm a HS grad with maybe a year's worth of college credits mostly earned at night. She has two master's degrees.
(Narrator: She's still better off now but that's a long story...)
When I stopped full-time employment I got a part-time seasonal job as a tour guide in a children's petting farm in NYC where most of our visitors came from the NYC public schools and I can testify, as long and as detailed as you want, how them schools are nothing more than gang factories and they take little kids who are the most enthusiastic learners you ever want to see and turn 'em into delinquents by third grade, and the most viciously culpable teachers are the ones "who look like them."
If you're revolted by the daily flashmobs looting your local pharmacy chains and the gangs kicking old ladies in the head for laughs--take it from me. They didn't start out that way. They were manufactured in our public schools and there ain't enough gibbets in the world to dispatch everyone guilty of destroying our most vulnerable children.
Which is why school systems get rid of people like me - we have the same problems you and Guttermouth talk about, especially in inner city schools, and double especially since they started putting adult men claiming to be underaged refugees into classes.
As in, 35-year old afghan men, no background checks, in among 15-year olds. To criticise this is racist and a career-ender.
Discipline. Order. Immediate harsh and permanent consequences. That goes double for staff and faculty. Schools do not exist to solve "social problems". My classroom is not the social services, a therapist's couch, a psych ward, borstal or anything else like that.
I did this to colleagues, parents and politicians when they called me old-fashioned (which for some reason is a slur), fascist, totalitarian, and much else:
"This girl's shoes were flung in the toilet, and the boy who did then pissed on them. Tell me, here and now before witnesses, how many times is it ok for him to do that before being expelled? How many? One? Five? How many? Answer me!"
You need to imagine a 6' 230 pounds well-built man with shaven head, scars, missing teeth and a huge red beard doing the "executioner's tread" towards when asking to get the full image. Few things light my fuse as does bullying.
Order. Discpline. Costs and consequences for misbehaving. Especially for faculty.
I can remember, with cringing shame, once thinking a globalist perspective was what we all ought to be striving for.
If I'd earned a medal for each stupid take I had, I'd need the chest of the Incredible Hulk to support the weight of my jacket.
Same. I grew up mormon, so I bet I’d have more medals than you!
But yeah just four years ago I moved back to Europe because I thought collectivism was the better path 🙄
Another big hug for you, Rikard. :)
Thanks, it helps me calm down. The wife wanted to know what I was swearing at the computer for - not joking.
I have a pet theory what makes one a decent teacher. One half is actual real life-experience. Maybe doing a tour of duty, or running a business or raising a family, so that you are in your early thirties when you go into teaching. Just so that you don't go school-college-back to school as teacher this time. I've met plenty teachers like that, 23-25 years old, brought up on daddy's and mommy's money even while a student (which in itself isn't wrong per se, but it robs you of experiences such as choosing between paying the electrical bill or your ER bill...).
Other half is being either a reformed repentent atoner after having been a hellion, or a former victim who overcame and conquered the daemon called Trauma. I feel that it engenders not only empathy but more importantly a basic sense of justice and a willingness to, as SCA put it, accept that rabid dogs must be put down.
Right, I gotta go set the table. Meatballs and lingonberry jam, mush made from kohlrabi, potatoes and turnips, sauce made from the meatjuices in the frying pan and light sparkly bubbly drink we make from fireweed blossoms.
I think you're on to something regarding life experience before teaching. I don't think I had any teachers under 40, the first principal of the school was a WW2 vet, and not too few were active in the civil rights movement of the 50s-70s as they were from the southern states.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there’s a great (recent) Dutch film called luizen moeder where a retired teacher is called in to teach the younger generation how to agitate for changes to a robot surveillance system introduce by a well-meaning but deluded new principal. Don’t write off the old guard! They have lessons we have yet to learn!
You and your wife make the happiest food, Rikard. I sincerely hope to feast with you someday.
Recipes, please? 😄🙏
I have approximately a dozen scars on my body from the NYC public school system, the most dramatic being stitches across my scalp from being slashed with a yardstick by a "mentally ill" girl who imagined I had talked about her boyfriend and didn't understand enough English to be talked out of it. This was sixth grade.
I was also beaten with sticks and was- I'll never be sure because I was finally rescued- probably going to be set on fire in the same incident because of the color of my skin and because I was weak and submissive. Can you believe I was very close to a principled pacifist as a kid?
This was the sort of thing that happened before I grew up and settled on a default position of viewing all humans as potential combatants until proven otherwise. Thanks, public school system.
Life tends to be quite educational. I was remarkably naive for a shamefully long time.
Really sorry to hear about what you endured.
It is absolutely not unique. I count it a minor miracle I escaped primary school without being sexually assaulted or permanently injured or shot.
We need a broader range of buttons with which to respond to comments...
You are right, how do you "like" that.
I went to a Catholic school but in a horrible city, Lawrence Massachusetts. I tell people I never walked anywhere, I always ran, in hopes the perpetrators would think "someone already has that one". I laugh about it now, only because I survived it.
I stopped myself from hitting "like" just in time here, too.
Heart doesn't do it for you this time? :)
I'm blunt about the topic only because you've revealed you're fully aware of its complete ugliness yourself.
Oh yes.
As I've said before, in similar contexts--once the animal is rabid, it can no longer be saved. Pity is warranted but failure to understand the virulence of the threat endangers everyone.
I know you mentioned it before but it pisses me off to hear about it every time. I went to Chicago Public Schools and even at a school that only chose the best and brightest and the type of students who would have been considered "nerds" at other schools, I was still bullied because I wasn't "black enough" in looks or behavior. Oh okay. I mean, not going to apologize for my heritage or the fact that my parents didn't raise me to act like a damn donkey. 😒
That engendered a lifelong allergy to bullies and other jackasses, as you might could tell. 😄
Biggest problems in the way that I see are 1)teacher's unions (parents? What's that?), 2)The DOE (which hasn't done a single thing to help since it's inception) and 3) politicians (who love to fund raise from these issues). I'm kind of digging AZ right now where they let the family choose where to spend their allotted monies for education. Kind of went around all 3 of those groups...
There is no incentive for greatness in todays teaching world. Do a good job and you get to teach the same thing next year with a $500 raise. Do a shitty job, do the same thing next year with a $500 raise.
Oh and by the way you don’t even get a teaching job if you don’t coach something.
And after 5 years you get tenure. And by definition lazier than you were before..
Did I say I spent 13 years in education as a second career?
the reason why the teachers' unions are so terrified of school choice is that it would put most of them out of work. parents talk. everybody wants their kid to go to the magnet school.
the other big barrier that needs to be overcome is helicopter parenting. terrified that little sparky's gonna burn down the house. well, he will if the only person teaching him is a public schoolteacher.
Yes indeed. In the public sector, competition is a great fear. In the private sector, it is part and parcel of everyday life. Public sector folk have inevitably two choices, reject tenure and unions, or go out of business as the public catches wise.
Having this discussion with a family member who said; “they’ll end up sending their children to some whacked religious school.”
Knowing the answer I asked, what private school do your children attend? Yep, religious and noted for great education.
Why is that a problem? Do they believe that they should be able to suppress certain religions? Which ones? On what criteria? Ask them to explain this a bit.
My kids go to a conservative private Christian school where the vast majority of parent’s support choice. Most of us donate to the scholarship fund to allow kids that can’t afford it to attend anyway.
Before that, my kids went to a Catholic school a couple of years, where the majority of parents adamantly opposed school choice. The new school is superior in every way (teachers, academics, athletics, fine arts, university admissions, life outcomes). Catholic schools are hit or miss, and the one they attended was a miss - something the parents there complained about often, and still do (terrible curriculum and creeping wokeness). Whatever excuse the parents at the Catholic school gave upfront as to why they opposed school choice, the real reason for most was they felt special sending their kids to private school and opposing school choice is their way of gatekeeping.
Some were open they sent their kids to Catholic school to get away from the “kids in public school,” and they don’t want their taxes to fund the the kids they were running away from to follow. I could sway some by pointing out Catholic schools give preference to practicing Catholics, so a certain type of gatekeeping at the center of the school purpose remained.
I think schools should be able to set expectations to attend, since most will center around behavior and that is motivating to get better behavior. I obviously don’t oppose religious schools centering on religion. My kids can’t attend a Jewish school because they aren’t Jewish, but I think Jewish families should have the option for their kids to obtain a Jewish education. Same for any other religion, including woke. Same for secular.
All that said, I’m sure it’s no surprise to this audience the Catholic school parents were far more “liberal” than the ones at my kids’ current school.
I also get many parents who send their kids to private school oppose choice for various gatekeeping or ideological motivations. What I don’t get is parents whose kids are stuck in crappy public schools seeing the rot that has become the public education system, and being convinced to vote against opportunity for their own kids anyway.............. in every district there are far more parents voting against opportunity for their own children than those voting against opportunity for other people’s kids. Until that changes, it’s the kids that suffer.
I agree with everything you said:-)
I agree, I'm a practicing Catholic in a Catholic school. They are going woke. We are looking at high schools looks like it will be a Christian school. It's not what we want, but just scan the web sites and the only schools left on the list are Christian schools.
The quarterly newsletter I receive from the Catholic HS I attended is full of stories about “social Justice” and “equity” and “climate change”
….ugh
Apparently that’s what they believe. It’s the usual liberal condescending view of the “deplorable’s,” not smart enough to make smart decisions so, rules for thee but not for me.
"Now do Islam"
what's that supposed to mean?
It means that certain religions and cultures are sufficiently disfavored as to be safe to criticize, while others that are arguably of at least equal toxicity are given a pass.
You know, that whole "so for me, but not for thee" gig is the greatest give away of evil intent cloaked in benevolence I have ever seen.
"Do unto others as you would have done unto you," was SUCH a better standard to live by. So, so sad we threw it out.
"Do YOU want to choose where your kid goes to school?" "Well, actually, yes, I do."
Well then, everyone else gets to do so too!
End of story.
Sigh.
The answers are often more simple than we think.
🙌🏼
They aren’t scared of the deplorable as - they are scared of the Democrat base (really poor kids).
exactly
Former professor here. I used to be a big proponent of higher education - now I believe it's a waste of time. Vocational Ed is the way to go in most cases.
Higher Ed is required if you want to be a doctor, lawyer, professor, or a few other things. Even Computer Programmer want ads have stated for years, "Wanted 4-year degree or equivalent work experience."
Hint: if you graduate from a 4-year college with no intention of further education, and can't do anything but flip burgers, you've made a very bad choice.
With the expense and debt incurred by higher education, no one should go unless there is a definitive reason. The illustration (degreed vs apprentice) in your article was perfect. Surprisingly, the workers coming to my house are having a very difficult time finding apprentices.
As a comparison to what students are required to know these days:
Arron Burr applied to Princeton at age eleven but was told he was too young. He studied for two years, reapplied, and was admitted as a sophomore at thirteen and graduated in 1772 at sixteen.
Hamilton, at eighteen, was considered to be too old to enter Princeton as the standard age for entrance was fourteen or fifteen. To better his chances of admission, Hamilton lied and said he was sixteen when he applied in 1773.
Students applying to Princeton were required to undergo an oral examination in which they were required to demonstrate proficiency in many subject areas including advanced mathematics, Latin grammar and Greek. They were required to know Virgil and Cicero’s orations and be so well acquainted with Greek as to render any part of the four Evangelists in that language into Latin or English.
Hamilton did not attend Princeton because the Trustees denied his request to take as many classes as he wanted which would have enabled him to graduate sooner.
In December 1773, he entered King’s College (now Columbia University) in Manhattan. At the time, King’s College offered a solid classical curriculum of Greek and Latin literature, rhetoric, geography, history, philosophy, math, science and law.
I challenge anyone alive today to pass an 8th grade end of year exam from the late 19th century.
These are the People who gave us a Free Nation.
And now has been handed over to criminals and idiots and cowards.
There has never been a greater tragedy.
And now their names are being removed from schools because the woke find them offensive…actually it’s probably better that their names are no longer associated with today’s public schools !
This is humbling.
I agree completely in theory; I think the biggest problem you’re going to run into with a (non) system like this is that it’s currently cultural anathema to allow any kind of genuine competition. We’ve essentially—without directly saying so—decided to become a Harrison Bergeron society where if individuals are not handicapped already, we handicap them on purpose, “because equity.” You talk about schools failing to raise the low achievers to the high achiever standards but instead pull everyone down…I got my first degree in special education, and from my own observation that phenomenon is actually the goal. Think of how much of the “We Cannot Possibly Go Back To Normal!” Covid movement sustains itself on the plight of the supposed “vulnerable”….the same psychology applies here. If parents have choice but schools can still have the power to reject students…what happens to the kids with severe non-verbal, violent outburst autism? The fetal alcohol syndrome kids? The profoundly physically disabled kids? By definition these children will never “achieve” to any meaningful degree, and it’s that reality (that everyone knows implicitly, but no one is allowed to say) that fuels much of the “race to the bottom” that public schools have become. Objectively speaking, a child who cannot function above infant level has no business in school…but the law says they have the right to “full inclusion” nonetheless.
I think that continues to be one of the biggest psychological hurdles that keeps public schools limping along: the idea of guaranteed equal access, merit be damned. I’m 36 and I take a client of mine to school. I am *astounded* at what behaviors are now tolerated in elementary schools: screaming, running away, throwing things, swearing at the teacher, kindergartners routinely not toilet trained…etc. *This* is the type of student that comprises much of the US educational demographic, and it’s only getting larger as more and more parents decide their child has “special needs.”
If, as you say, a school under a choice system can kick out the kids who aren’t achieving….yikes. That is going to be a HELL of a pill to swallow for our woke, equal-access-for-all, equity-obsessed education culture (and in this peculiar case I’m not even talking about the teachers; most of them would secretly love to teach a roomful of overachievers—or even normal achievers. I’m talking about the PARENTS—the ones who have a “high risk” or “special needs” child. The ones who brought us lawsuits to keep the whole school in masks because little Breighton is “immunocompromised”.)
Basically, given that IDEA exists, I’m not sure how you square the guarantee of equal access with the idea of two-way school and parent choice. It seems like it would inevitably land back in separate schools “for the disabled,” which was already rejected by the US back in 1974 and has only gotten MORE unpopular since then. Perhaps there are solutions I’m just not thinking of though, so I’m curious to hear thoughts on this.
Two spectacular pieces. Many thanks.