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Post by Rook on Aug 6, 2011 8:34:40 GMT -5
www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/16/atlanta-schools-created-c_n_900635.htmlThis is an article on how the administrators and teachers in Atlanta were cheating for, or helping their students cheat, to get more federal money. No Child Left Behind is getting a lot of popularity, but in the last few decades American public education has been steadily declining. Which makes one wonder: is public education worth it? Should Uantir create a system, or should it simply provide free homeschooling resources and allow the private schools to compete for business?
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Post by Mira O'Halloran on Aug 7, 2011 4:08:24 GMT -5
I was shocked when I read this... The whole point of a program like that is to help the students up their school levels. I've heard of a book called "dumbing down our kids" and read several reviews about it, and it seems that school isn't designed to encourage anyone to think, it's about training the next lot of no-questions-asked, blindly obediant, repetetive tasking doing, worker monkeys. After my experiances at school, I agree! When I have kids, I'm homeschooling.
So given my above stated stance on school systems, I'm all for free homeschooling resources and private schools to be availible.
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Post by Rook on Aug 7, 2011 23:02:42 GMT -5
Many of the more cynical refer to schools as 'government indoctrination camps' that work not in education but in programming. The conspiracy theories assert that the police on campuses, searches of lockers and drug dogs are simply ways to condition children to grow up and accept a police state. The lack of praise for creativity, ingenuity and critical thinking creates people who cannot think and thus cannot dissent. Whether those are the actual intent or not, running schools by standards has been repeatedly heralded as poor practice and then pushed out of light.
Regardless of the motive, it is difficult to get an immediate and quantifiable indication of critical thinking, intuition, work ethic, professional aptitude, reasoning or creativity. The rote regurgitation of information on standardized exams, as much of a red herring as they may be, can be measured. That's the problem. You cannot test an entire nation's population of individuals on a standard test. I am not against public school. I understand that some people cannot afford to pay for a private school (though there's some argument that school would be affordable if there was a market for it) and can't have someone home to homeschool (or don't feel comfortable with the idea.) But how do you prove that the kids are learning without standardized tests? I guess the question is about the necessity for proof.
The need for proof comes down to money really. Those schools who perform better get more money, which is fair. At the same time, with an abstract method of judging education that becomes much more subjective. Perhaps the answer is to give all public education facilities equal funding? I'm sure there's a counter argument to that I can't think of right now. This is Gelare's territory...I'll go try and drag him back for this discussion. He has a keen eye for economics and finds the other end of these discussions but better than I can.
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Post by Mira O'Halloran on Aug 8, 2011 17:03:58 GMT -5
I agree with them.
Every person is different, which is why the one size fits all approach annoys the ever living out of me. Maths doesn't teach you how to live, Science doesn't teach you how to deal with the red tape of trying to get into a rental house, and English doesn't teach you how to cope with disabling illness. I stopped learning academically when I was about nine.
Oh, yes! Gelare would be perfect for discussing this!
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Post by Rook on Sept 28, 2011 14:16:59 GMT -5
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