Topic: Education
Centrist Education With the election in full swing, the education of our children is a huge issue. I am endeavoring to present a realistic approach to the problem that can work for everyone.by Kishi
(Centrist)
Monday, February 18, 2008
You know, I think it's time I came out of the closet and just admitted it. Straight up. I don't know how comfortable I am with it, but I really don't see how I can hold it back anymore.
I... oh, Lord, this is hard... I am publically educated. There! I said it! I confess it: I am a product of the State. I attended good elementary schools, got into the magnet program in middle school, and stuck with it all the way through high school. I go to a public university now, and I've got to say, I'm glad for it. I'm glad for the education that the State gave to me.
I bring this up because education is something that I find important. As a Centrist, it is my duty to be educated; I find a lack thereof to be unacceptable. And I think that a State education has the best chance at providing our children and all of us with a well-rounded outlook on the issues. Provided it can be carried out with proper funding and a lack of intellectual bias, public education has the greatest hope for us all.
Let's be realistic, though. It's not without its flaws. My Libertarian friends are quick to point out to me that not all public schools are created equal. They don't all have equal funding or a high-quality teaching staff. I've seen it before myself. I've worked in counties before where the school system was corrupt, siphoning funds from the government to line the administrator's pockets. Recent studies show that kids in the public school system, by and large, are way behind kids in other countries. Compared to them, we have lower scores all over the board - particularly in math and basic geography. This is damning to the case for public education.
The Libertarian solution actually sounds really good, at first. You do away with public schools. With the money that is freed up from paying the taxes, parents and communities can set up something similar to the charter school system. They individually fund the schools, set the educational agenda, and select the teachers they feel would be best suited to teaching those subjects. Students, supposedly, will be self-motivated, because they will influence their parents to set those subjects that the kids would want to learn.
It sounds really good, doesn't it? A classic case of the Libertarian solution: let people do what they want, so long as it doesn't get in anyone else's way. But I find fault with this. This stance is presuming a certain inherent goodness about people, and that they will do only good things to advance themselves. I'm not convinced we possess that quality. I am convinced, though, that we are passionate, and that we as people do things based on our passions. That's why people find issues and vote for presidents based on them, rather than on his ability to 'preserve and defend the Constitution.'
If you let parents set the agenda for their schools, without any kind of base regulation from the State, you'll have no guarantee that these schools will have full curricula. There are people in this country who are utterly content to teach their kids nothing but the Bible. And unless you want to build an Ark, there is no math in the Bible. Or, alternatetly, you'll have parents who teach their kids nothing but math; nothing quite so grand as having an engineer or an investor in the family. That idea, frankly, scares me. Math people simply can't spell.
I'm sorry, they really can't. I've seen them misspell the word 'yellow.' You can't mess that up. At least, I thought not.
I hope you get my point, though. Allowing the individual groups to set the agenda for their kid's education does not automatically guarantee that these schools will somehow be better. It will increase the local satisfaction with those schools, maybe, but being content with a certain way of things doesn't make it the right way.
Let me give you a personal example. A friend of mine tutors a couple kids for her church. She's planning to go into math education, so she tutors these two kids on their mathematics. These two kids are homeschooled. Homeschooling, it should be mentioned, is the closest thing we have right now to a Libertarian education platform. Individuals choose it, individuals run it, individuals hold their own children accountable to it.
The result? Well, one child does not do well with math. Her mother didn't like math, and chose what she termed to be the most important aspects. She chose number lines. Let me repeat that for you: she chose number lines. The least empirically useful math piece ever. The other child does much better, though. She can do algebra. Except for the part where her mom skipped factoring binomials - just on accident, though, not on purpose.
And the Libertarian response? Well, they say, there's nothing in the Constitution that says we have the right as a whole to a good education. If the State should have the right to mandate what our kids learn, let it be amended to the Constitution.
If only it were that easy.
The very minute you propose to amend the Constitution, you'll have 535 people trying to wrangle it and get a standard for what exactly should be taught, because what you'll be trying to do is use the Constitution to legislate, which is the one time when it fails. You all remember Prohibition, right? That's what will happen again. Only this time, it'll hurt more. It'll be No Child Left Behind II. And it'll be worse because the State will have no other choice but to carry it out.
The Libertarian solution, both in its real and theoretical form - as of now - is ineffective. That's not to say it'll be so forever, but we deal with the now, as a friend of mine says.
I don't mean to say that a Statist solution works either. The Statist would basically force a standard for education on everyone, and make sure that each school progresses along a planned curriculum. If that school doesn't measure up, it gets shut down, and students and teachers are reallocated. And props where they're due - this is a brutally efficient system that ensures only the best schools survive, and they do so with concrete, measurable results. Eventually, as the schools get bigger, new schools can be built with teachers who were matriculated into their positions, so that this Educational Darwinism can continue.
That doesn't necessarily make it right, though. Statist education eventually evolves into something more efficient - an assembly line for speeding kids through a curriculum designed to make them the best whatever-it-is the State needs. And realistically? I doubt that parents would let something like that happen. Parents, by and large, want their kids to have the freedom to do whatever they want with their lives, and the Statist solution curtails that.
Liberal and Conservative solutions are just a question of whether you let God in to the schools or not. They're the two big ones, and everyone knows about them already.
So what, then? Are we just condemned? Are we stuck with a system that's just unworkable, leaving us to fall behind the rest of the world? Well, no, of course not. It's just that none of these camps are willing to accept a solution that concedes to an opposing point of view. That doesn't mean, however that there is no solution.
The core of the problem is that America is obssessed with getting kids to be educated. It's all about shoving so much into the kid's heads so they can pass x standardized test and go off to become lawyers and doctors and businessfolk. You don't build a country on lawyers and doctors and businessfolk alone, but it's such prestigious positions as these that drive our obsession with learning.
They get all the cool parts on television, for crying out loud, so surely those must be the best, and we should all strive to be the best! And if you want to be an athlete instead? Well, scouts go to colleges more often than not, so get your kids there if you want them to have any chance at anything, right?
Let's be realistic. Kids start off wanting to be all the great, prestigious jobs, but by the time High School is done, a lot of kids have changed their tune. But what choice do they have? College is all that is offered to them. Kids may not want to be learned anymore, but there's no other way for them to be useful. There's nothing else out there for them. Community college proposes to fulfill that role, but that's just College Jr. It's clearing school - pass, and you go to College. Fail, and you're stuck flipping burgers.
That's not fair. Our children deserve better than to be shunted aside just because they don't like school.
What I humbly submit for your approval is a modified version of the German education system. The German system provides public and private education all the way through college. If a student doesn't like college, though, then there's a Trade School provided by the government. Students are trained and immediately put to work.
My modifications are as follows:
-Set a minimum standard for High Schools to meet for grades in a given period of time. If the schools fail by a large margin, shut them down and redistribute the funds to boost struggling schools.
-Build Trade Schools that can take and teach High School-aged kids.
-Establish a standardized test to be given yearly in Middle School, determining whether or not a given child leans toward academic pursuit or not.
-If they do, children go to High School and to college from there. If not, children go to Trade School. They learn a trade, and get set to work.
This is not a perfect solution. Parents don't dream of their kids becoming truckers or mechanics. And no one group of political thought would be happy with this. However:
-Liberals get a bright, eager, educated body of students who will be interested in the world and the question of isolation and globalization.
-Conservatives get a new backbone of labor to stem the bleeding-away of our jobs to foreign shores, as well as the influx of immigrants.
-Libertarians finally get those educated conservatives they've been hoping for. They also get individuals who are truly choosing their own path and making their lives for themselves.
-Statists get the chance to let the State intervene in local affairs in a positive way.
Think about it.
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2008 Kishi, all rights reserved.
Published: Monday, February 18, 2008
Last modified: Monday, February 18, 2008
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I'm calling for a "voice" vote of all extremists on this sight to "Burn the Centrist!"...vote with an Aye or Nay...
:P
Just kidding, but you realize that the German system is already relatively statist in its conception and effect right? While giving a child more choices is all well and good, that system pigeonholes people, and often for the rest of their lives. In Germany if a child falls through the cracks they are often S.O.L. for options; so their system also has issues. You also should realize that Germany is relatively much more orderly and regimented than American society. Germany is roughly the size of Ohio, so its much easier to find consensus about what and how to teach children.
I'm a libertarian, I genuinely believe that laisez-faire economics and education can most effectively do the job. But like every libertarian I have my own ideas and interpretations. I don't think public schools are necessarily bad, unless of course they are run by a central bureaucracy that dictates terms to locals. I fully understand your fear that children might not always get the best educations through a decentralized system, but getting an adequate education would be better than many students are getting today.
I think the answer to making decentralized schools work is quite simple.
Local Control
The only use of central bureaucracy (if at all) is to research methodologies, observe best practices, diseminate those practices, and where appropriate provide reasonable choice based advocacy for those practices. (this could be handled by a non-gov't organization as well)
An NGO organization is created/adapted to provide standardized comprehensive threshold grading tests. Functionally these tests are used like ACT/SAT tests to rank skill sets and determine learning level. Passing a test of a threshhold means that a student has completed an Xth graders Knowledge and is capable of progressing.
These tests results (and analysis) are provided to students, parents, and the local schooling institutions to compare results and determine the need for change.
This would effectively create a system that is both responsive, innovative, and unbiased in its evaluation of individual students and their potential. It would also allow local decisions and advocacy to push for improvement in the system. Rather than graduating as many people as possible the goal will be on acquiring the knowledge to achieve. Further specialized tests could be created and administered for topics and studies that are not currently well served...music, philosophy, higher math, or advanced levels of any other topic.
Hee hee, I know. Germany, compared to the US, is kind of a Statist government. And I get that it's not perfect, that it has its issues. And even the system I suggested isn't perfect. You fail out of trade school, you're out of options. And it's so easy to get pigeon-holed, like you said.
On the other hand, at the risk of sounding cold, we need people who can ply trades. We need construction workers and cooks and craftsmen, because they serve a practical purpose. The only reason people grow up not wanting to be those things is because of this concept of success as a purely material thing. I would say that a construction worker who enjoys his work and lives his life to the fullest for it is a greater success than the Wall Street analyst who can't take much more, you know? I mean, who's more successful?
And besides, there's nothing saying they have to stay that way. I'm sure that if this system ended up getting implemented there'd be a provision for an equivalency test to get you into college, if that's really what you wanted.
I think I see what you're saying regarding decentralized education. There's one thing I don't understand, though. For all the talk of decentralizing it, your model still relies on some degree of centralization and trust in some kind of org that is basically dictating your education. Rather than use the government - which is obligated to be accountable - you're putting your faith in an organization that doesn't have that accountability.
I guess the easy answer to that is that people will self-regulate and handle the NGO themselves, but they can't just send the thing packing if it decides to overstep itself. If they do that, they lose their test data and the entire course of their education. Sure, they could hire another NGO, but that would mean everything starting from scratch, and in the meantime you have this backup in the system, with kids falling behind.
It just seems inefficient, and I was wondering how you'd deal with that.
Ahh, but the centralisation part of it is simply for comparison, not for control. Giving students, parents, and schooling organizations an understanding of where individual students, or schools rank would help keep the system honest. While local control is encouraged, people might hijack the system to serve their needs rather than students, having accessible and unbiased data would allow anyone in the process to compare their interests with those of other local systems, nationally, or by type. Further having the standard test for the homeschooler who might be getting more bible than bibliography would hopefully give the parent, student, and interested local organizations the insight to get help where its needed. The successful use of ACT/SAT tests today in comparing students from across the country shows a much better standard than "No-Child-Left-Without-A-Budget-Deficit-Behind" testing.
As for putting faith in an organization notice I said both the ACT and SAT as examples. From the origination it would be prudent to have standardized testing institutions, but having a choice of which test a student or facility used wouldn't be an issue. So long as the weaknesses and strengths of those tests were understood. It would also give the opportunity to create tests that were better tailored towards regions and cultures that are currently underserved by standardized tests, because in theory a test could be designed for them. An evaluator might say "test A is more valuable than test B for science, but the student still achieved highly on test B." Since there would presumably be several NGOs looking for ways to serve the market there wouldn't be an issue if one of the tests fell out of favor, simply choose another test.
If local schools have control over the curriculum, you end up with students in the bible belt never hearing of darwin or evolution, and that is just wrong. Too much local control can lead to the biases and predjudices of a community being passed on to another generation of "endoctrinated" youths.
Posted By: Walt Thiessen
Date: 2008-02-18 08:03:12
I'm always astonished and disgusted at the way and degree to which people believe they know what's best for other people (in this case, children) where education is concerned. The arrogance of this belief crosses all party lines in this country, and yet there is not a shred of evidence to back it.
The simple fact is that there is not a single individual in this country...or indeed, anywhere around the world, who knows better than the kid in question what that kid most needs to learn. I realize that this goes against the grain of all the educational traditions you have listed in your article. I don't care. I don't even care whether or not other libertarians agree or disagree with me.
The simple fact is that this arrogant belief by so many people that they know what's best for others is nothing more than unfounded arrogance. It has no reality other than what's in the fevered imaginations of those who advocate it.
I live in the bible belt, and although I have heard of some horrific biases against evolutionary thinking (they have a creationism "museum" near here in Northern Kentucky which gives me the willies just hearing about it). But I've also seen plenty of people who are godly and still accepting of modern science. My argument that standardized testing should be used would make it clear to anyone involved (student, parent, school, social organization) that a student was or was not getting an "acceptible" level of learning, and whether or not there should be a correction.
By allowing that very freedom to make choices at the local level it opens up curricula for debate. It opens up the level of comparable eduction (compared to other communities and methods) to see how that has an economic effect on the community and its residents. It moves people to become involved and volunteer their time, efforts, and intellects towards offering better educations rather than ignoring what the state bureaucracies are doing because 'we don't have much choice about that'.
Yes, some students might not get a perfectly rounded education, but under the current method we have had an English Teacher who was illiterate teaching our children! Local control was able to do a much better job than the public schooling we have today prior to the bureaucratic nightmare of centralized school planning. Will all students get the same education and specific subject depth? Of course not, but diversity of ideas and education has long been a boon to this country. The real threat to this country is the overzealous actions of your average public school which teaches indoctrination through "sit down, shut-up, and do what you're told" messages.
Here's a question: why should rural bible belters have to let their children be force fed "Californian" left wing globalist ideas, when the Californian kids are never even given a real understanding of our Constitutional Republic and the ideals of limited government? Is the Department of ED in fact being used for cultural warfare from one group of Americans vs another group? I think that in some ways that is exactly what is happening, and the overall bureaucracy to make that happen is undermining the educational opportunities of all children.
There is definitely something to that Walt. Give a child the opportunity to learn about things that he or she chooses and they will learn a lot more about it and other things while never loosing the spark of desire to learn. There is certainly something to be said for encouraging and not indoctrinating.
Posted By: Walt Thiessen
Date: 2008-02-18 11:54:37
Thanks Chad, but I go much farther than that, and I have direct experience to back my claims. I believe that all kids should be completely and totally in charge of their own education, including setting their own standards, deciding what they're going to study (or not study) and how they're going to spend every minute of every day. The students also administer the school via the "school meeting" and the school "judiciary committee" system It works great, except from the point-of-view of those parents and "educators" who aren't willing to put their own prejudicial blinders aside or who become staff members and insist on manipulating the system until it fits their own, personal standards.
The system I'm referring to is called the Sudbury model, and it's been highly successful (although used in very few schools) since the 1960s. I helped to found a Sudbury-model school in Connecticut. The original Sudbury Valley School in Framingham Mass is still in operation today and has a long and successful track record. Their website is www.sudval.org.
Even though the school I helped open is much, much smaller than SVS and has typically less than a dozen students in it each year, I already know the positive results it has accomplished.
The simple fact is that every kid has a built-in compass. Let him or her follow it completely, and they'll learn everything they need to learn. Interfere with it (as virtually all other forms of education do), and you end up with various forms of dysfunctionalilty and stunted personal growth. None of these negative results, of course, are ever documented by traditional education studies.
I also think it's a tragedy that so little attention is given to the damage that is caused to kids through coercive education. No one wants to document it, because no one can make a fortune off it and because it benefits none of the "all-knowing" attitudes and belief systems of the educational elite. Politicians can't increase their power with it either, so it continues to be unknown by most of the population.
By the way, Sudbury model education is also considerably cheaper than both public education and traditional private school education. It's not unusual for Sudbury schools to run on budgets that are half the cost per student of a typical public school system within the same regional area. The reason for all the cost savings is that you don't end up having to pay exhorbitant salaries to administrators and overpaid tenured teachers.
Walt, I get that you feel passionately about this. Believe it or not, I do. It's a libertarian idea, that the individual should, can, and ultimately will take responsibility for all aspects of the life given to them. SVS is a fine example of how that concept can work.
What strikes me about your examples is the exceedingly small numbers. According to Wikipedia, the school currently hosts 186 students. Your school routinely admits a dozen or so. I'm wondering about why that is, and there are two answers that immediately come to my mind.
The first is that it's a function of the community. Your schools are designed to serve small communities, so they have small student bodies. I sincerely doubt that this is true, though, because SVS's website says that people are trying to get in from all around. Who can blame them? Go to school and do whatever you want? Who wouldn't want a piece of that?
So let's consider the second answer: that SVS works because it only admits those kids who will actually benefit from this kind of learning environment. If you read the admissions page, it says that prospective students are required to spend a week there as visitors so that the student, the student's family, and the school itself can decide if the kid actually belongs there. I have the sneaking suspicion that the student is always fine with doing whatever the heck he wants, and it's the school and the family that decides he won't benefit.
That's the problem with the compass of any given person no matter how old s/he is. It's drawn to what you're passionate about. I wouldn't say it's wrong to follow your passions, but I think your passions are aided by having a good, well-rounded knowledge of subjects at least at the practical level - roughly 8th grade or so.
That's why I think my system works. It is regimented, sure, but students can choose their regimentation and what course they follow with it. Realistically, I think that's about all the freedom we can really allow students in general. You have your exceptions in SVS etc. and I won't deny them, but I think they are the exceptions, and not the true norm.
I don't see much difference in your new ideas that amount to anything substantial. On setting standards: Who sets them? Based on what? We've seen schools giving away higher grades to make them appear better. As to the trade schools: They already have vocational schools, where many kids take auto mechanics and metal shop, etc. if they weren't going the college prep route. And they do standardized testing SATs, etc. in Middle School.
Understand that public school = government school = indoctrination. I, too, had a public school education, but it wasn't until after I had my degree and really started studying philosophy was I made aware that the measure of an education is not only what they teach, but what they do not teach, or more nefariously, what they do not want you to know.
Consider the level of education before "public education" was thrust upon us by the social engineers. Compare the reading level in your typical one-room schoolhouse with what passes for reading today. Back when they used McGuffey readers, they did not produce high school grads that can't read.
You might want to check this out: A book that shows that the root of public education was and still is the control and dumbing down of the masses: By John Taylor Gatto - former NY State Teacher of the Year, "The Underground History of American Education". You can read it in its entirety online:
Gosh, so many book recommendations everywhere I go these days! Thank you. I'll be glad to give this guy a look.
Now, on setting standards: I believe that there should be a State-mandated standard, based on the grades of students nation-wide. The standard would be set maybe a little bit higher than the median, just to make the schools sweat a bit and see who steps up to the challenge. That way, the State can see which schools are honestly trying to help their kids out and which ones have just given up on their students.
I'll admit, it's not a perfect way, because schools have been known to give away grades, like you said. That doesn't change, though, that grades are usually the best way we have to measure a student's success in a given school.
I know we have trade schools and standardized tests already, but you're missing the underlying point. The point of those standardized tests is never to get a person on to a path that they genuinely want. It's to get them on the path to a college degree. If you don't want that degree, you have to fail the test, and then endure the stigma of being 'dumb' or 'unable.' This is compounded by the idea that trade school is for washouts and idiots who aren't good for anything other than skilled labor. What I'm proposing is to remake the tests so that people who don't want more than a basic education can say so and get on with their lives in whatever way they see fit. I would think you'd agree with me on that point.
I know that public school = indoctrination. I really get it. They teach you what they want you to know, and they make sure that you have an impression of it as the complete picture. But that's irrelevant. The other countries who are so far above and beyond us are using the same basic model of the government providing education. We are being outperformed, and they're not using schoolhouses to do it.
I think it's a question of them having a motivated student body, and with us forcing college on everyone, we're killing that motivation, because we won't leave open other alternatives for students. I don't think we should have complete freedom because that gives individuals the mandate to choose their ignorance, as opposed to State mandate, and I'm not sure what's worse. I believe it's the State's job to provide those alternatives, and I tried to outline a realistic way to do so.
Thanks again for the rec. I'll check it out when I claw my way out of my other reads.
Posted By: Walt Thiessen
Date: 2008-02-22 08:10:09
Actually, Kishi, the main reasons that Sudbury schools have small enrollments are that (a) many people are afraid of the concept of letting kids make their own decisions, (b) many people have trouble justifying paying tuition when they're already forced to support public schools via their taxes...they feel (quite correctly) that they're being required to pay for education twice, (c) since the Sudbury model isn't widely accepted, many people are afraid to try it, and (d) as is the case with the school I helped open, we couldn't afford to buy a school building, so we ended up renting space in a church, and many parents falsely assume that the school is actually a theological extension of the church and will religiously brainwash the kid (which doesn't happen at all...the church stays out of it completely).
SVS's requirement about being there for a week on a trial basis is common to all Sudbury model schools. The time varies, but the requirement exists. Contrary to your impression, however, most students are accepted after the week. The few who don't work out usually don't end up wanting to enroll after all. Very, very, very rarely someone is asked not to come who wants to come. The reasons for the requirement are to ensure that (a) the parents really are okay with the kid making all his own decisions, and (b) finding out that the kid isn't so troubled and dysfunctional that nothing short of a boot camp would keep him under control.
It's amazing how many parent will claim that they're all for the educational approach, but once the kid starts in the school, they start micromanipulating him behind the scenes, constantly urging him to "study this" or berating him if he is "wasting his time" on something the parent doesn't approve of. This creates all kinds of dysfunctionality that are not only extremely unfair to the kid, but they also end up disrupting the school by extension, as the kid acts how his frustration. For this reason, a very small percentage of students (typically less than 1%) are urged not to enroll permanently despite wanting to anyway, because nothing is gained by anyone and much is lost for everyone (including the kid) when the parents are actively working against the model.
Further, there are a large number of professional educators who scoff at the Sudbury model, primarily because they don't believe for a second that kids can manage their own day appropriately. These are invariably people who think they know what's best for others...the exact point I was originally making.
So I'm afraid that none of your assumptions about the school are correct, except for the one where you say that libertarians are often attracted to it. However, liberals are usually even more attracted to it. It's the conservatives who are usually the most afraid of it and the micromanaging statists who oppose it philosophically.
Well, let me play devil's advocate with each of your first points, if I may:
a) "Many people are afraid of the concept of letting kids make their own decisions." I think there's a good reason for this. Kids simply don't have the wisdom to make their own decisions. I don't think that they have the patience to think out for themselves the best possible action. They just know what they want, and giving them license to do that is no guarantee that they'll automatically learn.
b)"Many people have trouble justifying paying tuition when they're already forced to support public schools via their taxes...they feel (quite correctly) that they're being required to pay for education twice." That's true. So why not change the public system so they only have to pay once?
c)"Since the Sudbury model isn't widely accepted, many people are afraid to try it." Good point. It's not even like the model I proposed would be much different. Like I said, nobody grows up wanting their kids to be janitors or auto mechanics. I think we can both agree, though, that what I've proposed is at least a step in the right direction. It allows kids to make the overall choice of what kind of education they want, as opposed to state-mandated degree programming. It's not the individual day-to-day decision making you want, but it's closer than we are now.
d)"Many parents falsely assume that the school is actually a theological extension of the church and will religiously brainwash the kid." It's definitely not religious brainwashing. However, it is voluntary brainwashing - voluntary intellectual specialty; the kid choosing what he'll be ignorant to. How is that any better than state-mandated ignorance?
I feel that henpecking parents are inevitable in this system. If the state isn't going to set the structure, the parents feel it's their role to do so. Like, this would never work in the Jewish community. Jewish parents always tell their kids to be lawyers and doctors and high-class white collar folk. The idea of letting their kids learn at will is hopelessly absurd to them. And once parents observe their kids learning all kinds of weird things, they naturally feel it's their job to curtail it out of their concern. The only way this system could possibly work was if everybody in the country had Sudbury-style education, which just isn't happening for now.
On the other hand, I do appreciate your clarification of the issues facing the Sudbury model and its application. So thank you.
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