dagblog - Comments for "Why Public Education Sucks Even More Now"

Correction: Linda

AmericanDreamer — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 18:13:58 +0000

In reply to What passes for debate about

Correction: Linda Darling-Hammond's book, referenced in my comment above, is called The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine the 21st Century. The title is in part a reference to Tom Friedman's book The World is Flat, which she mentions in passing.

My grandkids are doing well

trkingmomoe — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 23:38:11 +0000

In reply to Why Public Education Sucks Even More Now

My grandkids are doing well in school. They amaize me with all they know and how well they read. I had the same education as Cmaukonen and the same books. I don't remember being able to read at the level these kids do and the understanding they have about the world around them. But education is top priority in my household and I don't expect all the teaching to be done just by the teachers. Parents have to lay the foundation for a good education. I am sure there are some very good methods of teaching that would make things better for the kids to learn. We should strive for that.

AA I am glad you did have

cmaukonen — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 22:00:32 +0000

In reply to Oh for the good old days,

AA I am glad you did have such a good experience with parochial school. I know of some kids where this was not so. Where it was a real hell hole. Same for public school. The best ones I was in were small schools in small communities. The worst was in the burbs. Go figure.

Ideally we should have the same quality education for all with small classes geared toward the abilities of the children in them. But alas even private schools at not like this as they have the financial bottom line as well.

Oh for the good old days,

artappraiser — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 20:23:13 +0000

In reply to Wow... I can't get over how

Oh for the good old days, say, like recent reminders of the Truman years?.

Myself, I had the boomer public school kindergartner experience described above of playtime and naptime and learning to socialize, which was very nice and has left me with some good memories of graham crackers and milk and some pretty neat toys, including a full size rowboat and a sort of kitchen where girls could play housewife (the latter was admittedly fun to do.)

After which I was enrolled in parochial school because my parents were under the impression, like many other parents of the time, that a public school education was not the best thing, and that it was worth scrimping and saving to pay that tuition. Nothing new under the sun on that front.

In that boomer-era parochial school, we were in classes sized 40 and up, and most of the teachers were 20-something nuns still working to get college degrees.

No art classes (you made your colored salt maps as homework,) very basic science (labs? what is that?) music consisted of the nun teaching you to sing and to use a plastic flute, no physical education (no gym--when their beloved President Kennedy said we should have some, they took us all out to the parking lot to do jumping jacks; and certain good girls also got to play volleyball with the nuns in their court behind the convent but mostly recess was running around the parking lot screaming or jumping rope.) But we had extremely fine reading, math, humanities, social studies, geography, history, and what would now be called "creative writing," (but then was just Sister Eugenia praising your haiku,).and living skills curriculum. (And I forgot handwriting--boy, that was a major part of the curriculum.) And we always had a lot more homework than those "publicans," and a lot of tests.

When I moved to public education for high school, I quickly learned, by getting to know what kind of basic education others had gotten in the public shools, that my parents had made a fine choice. I was not impressed with the knowledge level or love of learning or even the basic reading level of many of those kids who had had all those fine science labs, art supplies, nice gyms and cafeterias, musical instruments, and mandated class sizes.

These days, I am pretty susceptible to the argument that children are pushed to do things too soon, and that they do need old boomer style kindergarten, and that reading 'rriting and 'rithmatic should be delayed for most untilt age 5 and 6 as it was then. But from my own experience, I am also pretty sure that kids do not need fancy art classes or band or science labs to get a good education, and I don't think frequent testing in itself is a culprit, perhaps standardization is.

Wow... I can't get over how

David Seaton — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 07:34:58 +0000

In reply to Oops, forgot link to Dana

Wow... I can't get over how sad this is. I'm involved in keeping my asbestos pants on in another space here or I'd get involved in this conversation... but truly I read this and weep... I'm younger than Dick Day, but I also had music and art and sports and recess and shop classes.

How can a country commit suicide like this? What sort of a crappy place is it going to be 20 years from now?

Oops, forgot link to Dana

AmericanDreamer — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 03:05:13 +0000

In reply to What passes for debate about

Oops, forgot link to Dana Goldstein's piece in The Nation,"Grading Waiting for Superman", by far the most astute and accurate thing I've seen written in the wake of the release of "Waiting for Superman":

http://www.thenation.com/article/154986/grading-waiting-superman?page=0,0

What passes for debate about

AmericanDreamer — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 03:01:28 +0000

In reply to Why Public Education Sucks Even More Now

What passes for debate about "education reform" these days is pathetic. It consists primarily of promoting limited or counterproductive market-based (what else in this society would you expect?) policies such as creating even more poorly monitored charter schools, and instituting merit pay for teachers, and blaming the teachers unions for all the problems.

Finland, the country du jour in the education policy community now for its excellent results, has a completely unionized teaching force and it's complete non-issue there. They don't teacher-bash there. They realize that making do-or-die decisions affecting students or teachers or schools on the basis of single types of tests or single measures is an intellectually unsupportable and foolish thing to do. We base our entire K-12 education accountability system on doing just that.

Rather, Finland invests heavily in making teaching a full-fledged, honored profession marked by high expectations and career-long support for teacher professional development and growth opportunities.

The education "reform" agenda we are pursuing in this country for the past couple of decades is pretty much the opposite of what the Finns have done. They understand what we apparently do not, not yet anyway--the limitations of applying market logic and policies to the field of education.

We want Finland's results. And we hope to get them by doing the opposite. Let me know if you are able to figure that out.

(Finland has much less poverty and inequality than we do in the US, and so the severe residential segregation in our society that fosters severe segregation of our schools between haves and have nots does not need to be the hippopotamus hiding under the rug that it is here.)

Linda Darling Hammond has probably given more thought to what a comprehensive teacher quality development policy agenda tailored to the US situation would look like (set forth in her book The Earth is Not Flat--warning: not exciting or sexy stuff to read. Just sensible. Very affordable as well, although we would need to stick with it). The teachers' unions, who respect her, dared to say so publicly when her name was surfaced as a possible Secretary of Education for Obama. Guess what happened to her and her nomination? She was viciously slandered and her candidacy destroyed. After all, the teachers' unions think well of her. So she must be for regressive anti-kid policies, right?

Diane Ravitch's book The Death and Life of the Great American Schools is the best thing out there on what is wrong with the market-based reforms being pushed these days (hint: they don't work). As one who served as Assistant Secretary in the US Education department under Bush 41 and by her own account was at one time a believer in those reforms, her book makes for all the more powerful reading.

The person writing the best stuff on the problems--major--with the No Child Left Inside Act, is Richard Rothstein at the Economic Policy Institute. Many here will remember him as the former education columnist for the NY Times.

Deborah Meier--if she were a principal in our area I'd send our kids to her school in a heartbeat--and Ravitch share an excellent blog at Education Week, if you would like to read stuff about education written by people who actually know a lot about education and the history of education reform in our country. Meier's writings over the years reflect an inspired vision of what education could be in our society, one which she has more understanding about how to create on the ground level where it matters for the kids than all of the dominant education policymakers in the country combined.

I was telling my wife that it's interesting to me that Ravitch, Meier, Darling Hammond, and Goldstein--among the most prominent dissenters advocating a different direction than the one we've been pursuing for the past couple of decades--all happen to be women.

The big touters of the market-based reforms--notably the Gates, Broad and Walton foundations, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Joel Klein, Checker Finn at the Fordham Foundation, Rick Hess at American Enterprise Institute, are mostly (with Michelle Rhee, DC Superintendent, an exception) men. They have had their way dominating the "ed reform" agenda for decades now.

The men are in love with the market-based abstractions and policies based on them. The women understand the ways in which the world of education in practice, on the ground and in the schools where it counts for kids, deviates from that nice, neat abstract reality the market-based "reformers" have constructed for themselves and sell to the public, backed by huge philanthropic funding.

Just observing.

The best comics appear to be

Richard Day — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 13:51:56 +0000

In reply to Why Public Education Sucks Even More Now

The best comics appear to be in their forties,nowadays. At least for old men like me.

There is this one comedian who shreiks. But he does it on cue and his timing is impeccable.

He talks about how free kids are--or were. He says:

Just think, you were able to just run outside, go where ever you wished WITH NO ID. hahaha No money, no wallet, no drivers license.

I remember getting on my bike and peddling like crazy to meet my friends on their bikes.

School sucked. But there was a philosophy going on there that we did not know about. And we had recess and by junior high gym class. We had sheet metal shop and drafting. We had biology class and labs on Tuesday and Thursdays to breed fruit flies.

Anyway, fine take on things.

If you add the fact that fifteen states or even more use those fascist texts printed in Texas, things really do look bleak.

God!Thanks for the link... I

David Seaton — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 08:50:06 +0000

In reply to Why Public Education Sucks Even More Now

God!

Thanks for the link... I knew it was bad, but not that bad.

Good public schools are the backbone of a republic... Lord, Lord, nearly everything I hear about the USA nowadays makes me sad, but I think this is the saddest thing I've read or heard yet.

This means that not only is the present bad, but that the future is going to be worse.

Ora pro nobis

This is just sad.Fortunately,

stillidealistic — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 05:37:34 +0000

In reply to Why Public Education Sucks Even More Now

This is just sad.

Fortunately, our grandchildren go to private school, and we are in a position to supplement their education with a variety of activities that teach while they are having fun. I hate to think about them being fed to the wolves in public school.

There is so much wrong with education in this country, I don't even know where to begin...