If a Policy is not Working do you Increase it?
 

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Our education system/philosophy is not working.

That is an opinion but I'll assume most will accept it.

I believe most will agree that 25, 50 or 100 years ago students graduated with a better grasp of what use to be called the "three r's".

Here's another issue, big problem:

Asians and whites do much better academically than Hispanics and blacks.

Our spending, social programs, political correctness (I'm not sure if this is relevant but put it here for completeness) and reverse discrimination policies are not making a dent. Some would argue they are hindrances. Some not.

So, using the structure of classical debate -

If one agrees that our current approach is not working do we increase those programs (which seems to be the goal of a segment of the nation) or do we pursue an alternative?

Oh, here's a link from the W Post giving some context -

Student Evaluations

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I do not see anything to say that the education system is not working OK. Sure it could use some tweaking but I think the system it's self is sound. The problem is with the users. Parents are not as active in school as they used to be. The schools (especially in inner cities) are dilapidated and behind in updates. Class size is increasing. Politics is trying to intervene (fight over teaching creationism as science comes to mind). I am not sure how to fix the user part but the school system it's self is still good IMO.

Bring in Asian educators...now THEY know how to teach.

You might think the asian educators can move mountains and the sky with the moon but I would disagree. That is like saying you have a failing liver and we can transplant a liver to you and life is good. Just you try that and see. It won't be as simple as you think it is. To the layman, yes.

You cannot teach someone who does not want to learn. US kids are different than Asian kids. Different mind set. Not worse or better, just different. An Asian teacher would fail miserably trying to apply the same techniques in a US class room.

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I started saying my two statements were opinions but thought most would agree.

If you don't then you can reject my premise/question and take it where you will.

I think this is a good topic to discuss. Minority disparity is real important as well.

Of course the suggestion of chilcutt and similar ideas are one of the things I think is needed. But I'm primarily encouraging a conversation and seeing what I can learn.

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We cannot know simply because we cannot copy the environment here like they do there. There is no urgency to succeed here like there is there. There is no support from the govt or the parents like there is there. Hence we can never know. That is why I think simply transplanting asian teachers cannot fix the problem.

Parents are the first and most important teachers. With 30+ years of first hand experience, I can say that there is virtually a 1:1 correlation between successful students and parents who are actively involved in their kids' education. Yes, everybody knows a kid (I wrote about one in another thread) who's beaten the odds, but they are a rarity in my experience.

The numbers of single parent households for latinos and blacks are much higher than for asians or whites. 40% and 67% versus 16% and 24%. Given the economic situations most single parents find themselves in, it's virtually impossible for them to be proactive in their children's schooling.
Kids from single parent homes are very often ill-prepared to make the most of any given school day. They come to class unfed, often times unclean and lacking sleep. They frequently were not read to as babies (this in my experience is critical) and there is no reading material in the home. With little parental emphasis on learning, they've lost the natural inquisitiveness that kids are born with.
I don't believe the system itself is broken. The old saw about operating schools like businesses is silly. A factory that makes widgets has the right to send back inferior raw materials. Schools don't. Their raw materials are kids, and you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Beating kids and their teachers over the head with standardized tests isn't the answer either. It's often pointed out that charter and private schools do better on these tests. Of course they do, they don't have to accept inferior raw materials, public schools do.

Culture does have a lot to do with it. Besides, not everyone is capable of learninggeven though we want everyone to " succeed " and get a "degree". Remember what happened in the Wizard of Oz? The Wizard gave the Scarecrow a degree, oh boy, he's got everything he needs!

Plus, there are at least two, and I'm sure, many other, considerations:

1. Not everyone can learn. Some people either can't or are not willing to expend the effort.

2. There is the argument : "Why learn if I can become a rapper and make money talking about fake gangstas and my posse?" It doesn't matter if it's reality or not, as long as you get someone in more of a dream word than you are to believe it, buy the CD and make you richer than you were.

Learning is hard,. But like any skill, it has its rewards if you feel that they are rewards.

A lot of it is personal, some of it is genetic.

I once saw a little poster in a cubicle at the Pentagon, when I went there to teach a class.

It's a box of fries with a smiley on them and the caption: " Not everyone is cut out to be an astronaut..."

Agreed. I think that is as good a rational as any to make an investment in trade schools as well as standard public schools.

The problem is that the consequence of failure is lessened in our culture as much as we can do for the failures. That will NOT encourage the new generation of wannabe failures as much as watching live the results of a painful future and seeing what awaits their failure.

In the subject of learning History:


while kids aren’t getting better, they’re not getting worse. The history of history-education evaluation is littered with voguish pedagogy, statistical funny business, ideological arm wrestling, a disproportionate emphasis on trivia, and a protocol that insures that each generation of kids looks dim to its elders.

“We haven’t ever known our past,” Sam Wineburg, a professor of education and history at Stanford, said last week. “Your kids are no stupider than their grandparents.” He pointed out that the first large-scale proficiency study—of Texas students, in 1915-16—demonstrated that many couldn’t tell Thomas Jefferson from Jefferson Davis or 1492 from 1776.

A 1943 survey of seven thousand college freshmen found that, among other things, only six per cent of them could name the original thirteen colonies. “Appallingly ignorant,” the Times harrumphed, as it would again in the face of another dismal showing, in 1976. (And it’s not just Americans: an infamous 2004 survey revealed that a small percentage of Britons aged sixteen to twenty-four believed that the Spanish Armada was vanquished by Gandalf.)


New Yorker June 2011

I like both of those ideas.

I'm sure all (almost all?) of us think kids need to know how to read, write, add 2-digit numbers, etc regardless of whether they go to post k-12 or box up fries the rest of their life.

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obviously, we need to bring back the bible into the daily curriculum. and prayer as well. and corporal punishment.

Disagree. I'd say vastly worse.

True a US teacher has to waste a staggering amount of time on psychobabble and crowd control.

- Peter.