Did I hear someone ask for a conservative view on education spending? Since I pride myself on seeing both sides of every story I'll give it a shot: The problems we have with education are hardly financial. While I don't like hearing about the budget cuts and urge for finding other solutions, I know that past a certain level of adequacy in facilities and resources, which all but the worst schools in the US meet, more money does not equal more or better education. Our educational woes are a cultural problem, our culture says learning is uncool and success comes from other qualities, like charm, luck and popularity. Parents and society deemphasize the importance of education. Education is something that needs to go on at home too, but today's parents largely leave everything up to the schools and do little to nothing at to support education, besides maybe try to throw money at it, which is the classic liberal solution, expensive and ineffective. Teachers CANNOT do it all alone, even if they had more money. Teachers and schools must address so much more now with today's students before content learning can take place. Teachers now must deal with such a diversity of students and skill levels that the system is suffering. In fact, they SHOULD earn $400k a year for the job they do: simultaneous baby-sitting 20-30 students, especially when some are peeing/pooping their pants, many have problems at home with divorcing or otherwise overworked or non-existant parents, some in the classroom have IQs of 80 and severe learning disabilities and others have IQs of 120, teaching social skills and manners (that should be taught at home) that distracts from reading and writing all while being held to a bureaucratic system of a curriculum and performance mandates handed down from above, all while being threatened by losing their job every year for things out of their control, all in a culture that works against them by insisting teachers and schools must do all the hard unpopular work themselves so parents and families can focus on other things (fun and entertainment?). I could then argue that the culture that encourages the behavior I see as the root of the problem lies in cultural ideals espoused by liberals, but I won't get into that now.
(As a reminder, I work in private special education in one of the wealthiest, most liberal towns in the US.)
the typical argument i've heard is a classic conservative privatization argument: school choice is about promotion of private entrepreneur-run schools over public. 'let the market educate our kids.'
this is why i've also been very wary of charter schools: if you hand-pick your students and leave those with broken homes, discipline problems, and other issues in the public schools, of course charter school scores will be higher and the public schools will fail and continue to be de-funded.
conservatives i've talked to about this say - hey - if they fail, they fail. obviously the private and/or charter model is working better.
we either have to commit to public schools 100% or give up the belief that we can provide any semblance of an equal educational opportunity. (note that i don't at all claim that we're currently providing equality. too many other variables at play.)
The money thing for one, Steven. The liberal view is to throw money at education. But we should instead work on fixing the root of the problems, which is what conservatives choose to do. If I wasn't convincing enough, maybe I should have gone into what I think of as the many liberal ideals that are at the root of the problem. Here are two: equal rights (being smart doesn't make you special), parents who strive be cool and progressive ("if the child wants to read, he will pick up a book and read it, I won't force him to do anything he doesn't want to"). Maybe I think I have a conservative view because I am in such a liberal town where I see the most extreme of these ideals and the effects of them, not to mention work as an antidote to them.
I strayed from my conservative viewpoint at the end when I suggested teachers should make $400k a year, but I only meant to reiterate that money doesn't solve these problems (and perhaps gain some popularity from readers). If we can reduce the problems leading to the woes of education, let's do that instead. But those ideas are not as popular, nor as self-reflecting on our culture as throwing money around.
Steven, I wanted to attempt a GOOD conservative argument, not that one. Although while I don't share the conservative view of getting rid of and de-funding public schools because it is too extreme, I do support the root idea of that view: putting the responsibility of raising and educating our kids back on parents and communities, providing some relief to schools, and localizing the education standards and using competition to raise the bars of education. I do not advocate federal education standards and mandates which seems to be a liberal view.
straw totally agree with this Our educational woes are a cultural problem, our culture says learning is uncool and success comes from other qualities, like charm, luck and popularity. Parents and society deemphasize the importance of education. Education is something that needs to go on at home too, but today's parents largely leave everything up to the schools and do little to nothing at to support education, besides maybe try to throw money at it, which is the classic liberal solution, expensive and ineffective. Teachers CANNOT do it all alone
however you lost me with this... could then argue that the culture that encourages the behavior I see as the root of the problem lies in cultural ideals espoused by liberals, but I won't get into that now.
If anything I would argue that the problems from the first passage are caused by current conservative (in terms of political not social) ideology....
nam, ideals of equality from the left, for instance, nurtures a culture where success through hard work is marginalized, that we are all equal regardless of talent or intelligence, excellence is not recognized and mediocrity is rewarded through popularity. Also, the celebrity worship and pop culture I associate with progressives is the one that encourages the dumb is cool, it is more important to be charming, pretty, and popular. (I don't necessarily mean archinector liberals, but the ones in the street.)
How about this one, far too unpopular of an idea to discuss anywhere except maybe here: is there any correlation with the feminist movement and the decrease in performance of our students? While the feminist movement created strong female role models that no doubt strengthened and enriched our society, did we do it as the expense of our kids and schools? What are the unintened consequences of moms in the work force and women choosing typically male dominated fields such as architecture instead of, say teaching? I think one of the unintended consequences is an increased burden on our schools to raise our kids, not just educate them.
strawbeary: your feedback is appreciated, and I don't question your ability to see education from both sides of political spectrum.
I think of myself as more of a pragmatist. Thus, your opinion comes off as slightly biased.
You treat money as some kind of a magical fairy dust. "Throwing money" at whatever is a concept best left for cheap political talking points. In real world, additional education funding hires more teachers, buys supplies, and provides for a better learning environment. Whether the schools are efficiently run is a different topic. A topic that conservatives tend to shy away from because working on improving the system is an admission that the system is indeed fixable.
You seem to imply that "throwing money" is only there to increase salaries. That's just dumb. Budgets should reflect the actual need. No teacher that I ever met was in it for money. Quite the opposite. Enabling the teachers to do their work should be the priority. Yes, money will come up as a significant way of improving certain deficiencies. Idea of improving education without increasing the funding would be welcomed. But who's offering?
Blaming parents will only get you so far. Kinds need a careful balance of discipline and self empowerment. Not metal detectors, hall monitors, or being forbidden to leave the school property during the day. Treat them like criminals, and be prepared for crappy results.
err
I started writing this and then left for half an hour. Strawbeary, you have since written a number of additional posts....
Your way of thinking IS by far the exact problem that cripples public education. You actively participate in the blame game. You speak of 'progressives' as some kind of a cult....
I truly wish for you to move away from working in education to something you could contribute to more constructively.
I guess I'm using TC as my personal thought journal again, quoting myself here, I think one of the unintended consequences is an increased burden on our schools to raise our kids, not just educate them. While reforming education to be able to handle the diversity of circumstances surrounding our students to a level where we can begin educating students again will cost a lot of money, but GOVERNMENT money won't get us there as it comes with bureaucratic mandates and is best considered locally and at home.
like i said earlier, strawbeary's first post made a lot of sense to me - a liberal, for certain.
blaming liberals for 'throwing money' is b.s.; it's just not happening. i work in public schools and see how strapped they are. on top of the teachers really not making as much as they're claimed to make - they often spend their own money just to have the things they need in the classroom.
my daughter happen to go to one of the best elementary schools in the district. despite our district's best efforts at equivalence, the difference is the parents. not just that we're involved/engaged, but that we have money, we have time to spend, and we support the school.
obviously parental involvement works - and that's where conservatives and liberals are going to agree. but here's the liberal slant. some parents in the district can't afford to support the schools the way we do. some are single parents, some have three jobs and no time. some send their kids to school with no breakfast.
conservative view: tough luck.
liberal view: do the parents' issues have to be the kids automatic failure? can we feed them breakfast so they can think? can we provide support through after school programs, head start, etc, so they have a chance?
these are not the kids that kid into charter schools and obviously 'school choice' through vouchers will not do them any good.
i'm for all kids having as much opportunity as possible, whatever their parents' failures.
oh, and rusty, thanks for your concerns and advice for me to not work in education, but you should know I work in private education and our students come to us and we are very busy, thank you though.
i actually taught for a year at a local charter school before going back to grad school.
a few points: re: but GOVERNMENT money won't get us there as it comes with bureaucratic mandates and is best considered locally and at home.
I think more government money is the answer. however i think what is needed are things like current admin's approach Race to the Top which offers more money but only if sprograms/school board meet specific performance metrics. Moreover i agree that that education is best considered locally, in the sence of having local boards make funding/hr decisions, however, the performance metrics should be natioanl (in my opion) in nature.
again thias allows for local solutions but at the national scale.
AS I said i worked in charter school is i think is an interesting model. completly agree with Steven that sometimes conservatives use charters as straw man to simply gut the public ed system. Don't agree with that, but the way at least in FL charters work is they get same public funding per student and have same levels of accountabolity but have the ability to meet those standrads using localized/personalized methods..
Also, straw, Also, the celebrity worship and pop culture I associate with progressives is the one that encourages the dumb is cool, it is more important to be charming, pretty, and popular.
I think you are as i said perhaps makign the mistake of confusing conservative and liberal political ideology with contemporary culture. The two aren't the same at all. politically one stands for little/small government and only market based solutions (with regards to education specifically) and the other stands for a basic level of education/access for all with a belief that government's role is exactly to create accountability but not actually run/mandate specifics...
As for the dumb is cool and celebreity worship again i think that is pop-culture which has nothing to do with progressive values of equal rights, and a political attitude favoring or advocating changes or reform through governmental action. See Progressivism for the difference between liberalism and Progressivism.
One final question re: your private education profession, who pays for that? Is it federal/local dollars going to developmentally/challenged (ESOL, Special Ed, etc) kids to assist in education or is it all people with money paying for that extra bit of attention/care? And I would ask depending on your answer, which is a better model?
nam, I must refrain from talking about my job too much because I'm not allowed to, but some of the money comes from gov, but mostly private, but it is actually more complicated than that and I won't get into it. I am having trouble answering your next question about which is the best model because the operations which are in place that I disagree with are some of the very ones that allow me to have this job. I don't like extremes either way, any move too far in one direction is too harmful and inflexible, which is exactly why I'm not for top-down solutions. So I guess my answer for which is a better model is not exciting as I would say "some of both", which is my usual, centrist argument and is actually what we have now. But if you asked which direction I think the trend should move I would say less government intervention.
"oh, and rusty, thanks for your concerns and advice for me to not work in education"
No problem!
"but you should know I work in private education and our students come to us and we are very busy, thank you though."
Private education relies on public education being shitty. The trick to maintaining a crappy status quo is to concentrate on irrelevant issues. As long as public education is demonized, your employment status will be safe.
"Private education relies on public education being shitty." Yes. And you are right about my employment status being safe. But WHY is it shitty? I've proposed some of my views of what I think it is and just as importantly, what I don't think it is.
The expense of schools in not a purely ideological this way versus that way approach.
Architects, of all people, should look at the general school model overall. This is something that I've argued in threads on the subject.
Biggest budget killers?
School buses.
Athletics.
Under-utilized classrooms.
The arguments regarding athletics is practically beating a dead horse. So, I'll avoid most of that since we can mostly all agree that some level of athleticism is necessary for schools but the current manner is a bit excessive.
School buses? Each yellow bus costs a school or school district between $80,000 to $120,000 a year to operate. Throw in the $100,000 or so thousand dollars it cost for the bus itself... we can easily tack on another $10,000 a year in depreciation.
The issue with busing is a larger cultural, community and planning issue.
Since middle and high school facilities are more expensive and more intensive, we tend to centralize those. The problem here is that middle and high school students are the ones typically capable of walking to and from school.
Elementary schools, on the other hand, are less intensive and less specialized and are less centralized. However, younger students are far less capable of walking to school.
The lack of centralization in elementary schools leads to redundancy in bus services. This is a two fold problem-- there is less elementary enrollment in specific area due to the prevalence of private schools and that elementary buses are less filled to capacity than middle school or high school bus route.
In areas that don't have combined schools (elementary-middle or junior-senior), there's even further redundancy.
As for classrooms, in middle and high school settings, they have certain requirements that must be met for more specialized classrooms.
These classrooms are often far underutilized-- science labs may never actually use any of the equipment within them, computer labs maybe used for nothing more than word processing and so on.
The issue here is that these things aren't usually purchased as they are needed. They are purchased during the initial phases of school construction. This leads many equipment to be outdated... and the sneaky thing is that these things are often purchased with the bond money that was borrowed to build the school.
So, think about it this way... a municipal bond yields roughly 5% over thirty years. So, a $1,000 apple computer 30 years from now will cost $1,050 to the county. It's not a lot right?
According to the Education Construction Cost Index, elementary schools run about $190 a square foot, $210 for middle school students and $180 for high school students.
This would blow my centralization theory out of the water. Except for the fact that all three schools have varying enrollment numbers and they all have some basic similarities.
They all have administrative offices, significant athletic development (fields, playgrounds, outdoor furniture, tracks et cetera), lunchrooms, libraries, computer centers and et cetera.
Less students means higher concentration of these expensive extras.
But back to the cost point, a new fully-stocked high school probably runs about $30,000,000 these days? Well, at bond rate... that school actually is going to cost $31,500,000 in 10-30 years. Not to mention that a good portion of things in that school will have to be thrown away in 5-10 years and be repurchased.
$1,500,000 though is enough to employ one teacher for 25 years. And that's $1,500,000 worth of money 'wasted' on interest. So, by cutting out interest, it's not like we're eliminating anything in particular.
But, I think to fix schools... we need to think about where they are located, how students get to them, what kind of things are they actually doing in them and how we can better shape towns and cities to be able to pay for them.
We certainly don't need to be buying $3,000 microscopes if the biology teacher reads from a book. And we certainly can't gaurantee a suburb city services (yes, at one point, education was only obtainable in cities) if it's not shaped or run like a city.
It's the American way. Follow the money. Education being a basic right really pisses of certain types. There's money to be made there.
The purpose of 'No child left behind' was the undermine the essence of public education. Teach to the rhetorical dumb, and have everyone suffer equally. Cash in on the unhappy parents.
"Since I pride myself on seeing both sides of every story I'll give it a shot:
Remove the pride. Your views are very much in line with your employer's opinion.
Same shit happens in architecture. You work on a same project for so long, you can't really tell if it's any good or not.
Luckily, we the architects, are not in charge of screwing up an entire generation of kids.
"Your views are very much in line with your employer's opinion." You think you know me, don't you? I won't bother telling you why that can't possibly be true.
The missing part of the 'discussion' about public education is what is the purpose of 12+ years in a classroom? Is it to create well-informed citizens (the enlightenment model), is it to create well-trained workers (the industrialized model), is it to provide day-care so parents can work, or is it to foster a life-long interest in learning/culture? Depending on political alignment and socio-economic status, the assumed mission of public education varies and so does the value of said education...
nam - "performance metrics" are a misnomer because they don't actually test student development. it tests a different group of students year over year and there can be variations in ability from class to class - and can often be based entirely on shifting demographics within a particular school - not on how well a school is "performing." sure it can have something to do with instruction, but it's almost entirely about who the students are and what kind of family lives they have.
also - standardized tests only test memorization of "facts," not actual thinking skills. it's very difficult to quantify a student's ability to think critically and solve problems - and none of the federal or state tests actually test these skills.
I could go on and on (there's school management, there's shitty curriculums, there's lack of funding and adequate facilities, there's no place to put extremely troubled and disruptive youth except in the regular class, etc...), but I do know the real problem is definitely NOT because of the teachers. Most are trying to do the best they can with limited resources.
I think straw is somewhat correct - we don't value education in this country - but I think this attitude is currently mostly manifested in our policies - we're attempting to view education as a measurable product - and assess teacher's performance as "productivity" through their student's test scores - which to me seems really bizarre. Ideally you'd want students to leave your class with a desire to learn and a love of your particular subject - in addition to picking up important skills that they can use to get ahead in life. IMO - conservatives tend to view education as essentially the same thing as memorizing an encyclopedia.
I think we will see trends forthcoming that being smart is cool, and it will be the fuel we need to see results in our schools. It will take time, but it won't cost anything.
Would all the people who went to public school please raise their right hand...I just want to do a tally. Since Private Secondary Education is a big business in my neck of the woods. I would tell you
it is a privilaged education. Yes it is but you have to fork over $40,000.00 a year to have that privilage, but they don't have any empty slots, near as I can tell.
"I think we will see trends forthcoming that being smart is cool, and it will be the fuel we need to see results in our schools. It will take time, but it won't cost anything."
You still have no concept of money.
Otherwise, relying on devine intervention, or wishful thinking, will get you nowhere. Won't cost anything? Do you work for free? If not, we've established that education costs something. Let's try to get the value of education down!
Toaster: I'm totally with you on standardized tests accomplishing very little.
Barry: your breakdown of educational goals closely reflects the way Germans run their public schools. Tiered vocational education is definitively what every board should look into. Heck, plumbers make more than what we do. For a good reason too.
couldn't agree more about standardized tests toast, especially as someone who worked in a school where he spent a few weeks every years focusing on them exclusively. however, there are non test based metrics like how many students graduate or whatever else...
I just think they should delineated more clearly and tied to funding.obviously they also need to weight issues like percentage of students ESOL or who receive free school meals. In my school both percentages were high.
Also, agree that not everyone (after a certain age..) should 'have' to go to school, vocational/apprenticing programs are great.
and it is a privileged thing to not go to public education. on the flip side i didn't for about half my childhood and wish i had, for all the social aspects i feel like i missed out on growing up. i actually (even though it may not be 'best' choice) want to send my kid(s) to public school specifically for those reasons.
snook, as a product of both public and private schools, i definitely know that each fosters a completely different reality. private school coddled and nurtured - and it's wonderful. public schools do an amazing job with fewer resources and greater challenges.
the most amazing teachers were those in public school, for me. The commitment was at a completely different level. private school teachers have so much more of a support network - people working in concert toward delivering a curriculum and a point-of-view. public schools are at the mercy of a fickle politically-charged and often stingy public.
i've got no grudges against private schools as long as their clients don't begrudge the taxes they pay for public schools. taking your kids AND your taxes out of public schools because you're lucky enough to afford to supplement a voucher is unsupportable.
i was a different kind of lucky: we couldn't afford private school but - when my mother taught in a private school - i got waived tuition. when she didn't, i went back to public!
snook... i went to public schools for K-12, college (U. of Florida), and graduate school (Georgia Tech)... i'm now working on a phd at a private school (Penn)...
wow I just went through a page and a half and had no idea what people were talking about. I'm often afraid of adults using biases of culture or belief as the reasons behind all their actions. Exacerbated by the blame culture... if you hadn't have done that this wouldn't of happened. But enough about that. No really.
Anyway I'm just grumpy. I've been sick for the last couple of days - hacking cough, congestion etc. And it's the worst time to be sick - work due, drawings due, and a good friend's beach/boat trip that I had to miss. And everyone seems to be incredibly occupied whilst I have to stay home wrapped up and fighting this shit. So I'm miserable and a right ass. Considering befriending a bottle of wine... although it sucks to drink alone.
Good night folks I hope it's better on your side. bless
you know i am not sure i understand the definitions of liberal or conservative. strawbeary's description of the conservative point of view sounded real liberal to me. I guess i watch too much liberal tv cuz my view of what conservatives think is rather twisted.
usa pop culture (and canada too) totally distrusts education. it's a pity. we are all lazy too. i agree with steven it takes engagement of parents and community. my kids go to amazing school with fantastic teachers, but the parents are all there too. that is an enormous boost to the system.
i doubt that america will ever think it is cool to be smart. would be nice to be wrong about that but i really don't see it. i see a future not too unlike idiocracy...
Strawbeary, I think you and I could be best friends.
I actually like Glitter's argument of buses and redundancy. Sure, most would take a full on reworking of the entire system, but it's a valid point. I always liked how Rome used its own public transportation buses for students and schools, and that it still made students buy tickets, although at a lower cost.
I think parents are the real difference. I think atheletics is a huge problem - the HS I work at has 18 football coaches, and none are being let go in the budget crunch, counselors and teachers are - and I think that the willingness to place students in special ed with accommodations is another issue. I have one student who's accommodations sheet says that he can't get less than a 70 on his report card. He's also on the football team, which means that no matter how poorly he does in class, he will never fail, and he will always be able to play according to UIL rules. Now tell me, how does this help the student?
The point of education should be to produce competent adults. This should also be the point of raising children, to NOT raise children, but to raise competent adults. Right now, our system is set up to send as many students to college as possible; to create academics, but we all know not everyone is cut out to be an academic, and that a majority of the jobs in the US don't need academics. We should be teaching kids to be problem-solvers.
[i]the HS I work at has 18 football coaches, and none are being let go in the budget crunch[/]
This. This is completely fucked up, and I can guar-an-damn-tee you having 18 coaches isn't what the liberals I know value.
I have nothing to add to this argument because it pisses me off. As usual, I agree 100% with Steven. But I just can't address it intelligently now, because I am utterly exhausted. You know why?
Because I spent an 18 hour day yesterday, plus $500 of my own money, planning, prepping, and having a fundraiser in my home for my public school. We are trying to bring in a really awesome math program, Project SEED, which is a non-profit math program that has crazy positive longitudinal results over the course of its 30-year history and by the way developed out of that hippie-liberal commune known as Berkeley where apparently all they value is dumbness so everyone feels good about themselves.
That math whiz lady at my house last night who teaches in the program, the one making 1/3 the money she would make working in a private school? She's just some bleeding heart ignoramus I guess - it's not like she actually cares passionately about teaching or is actually affecting dozens of students' ability to learn every year by getting them excited about the patterns that exist in math and thus in the universe around us. Those parents all writing checks last night and dropping them in our basket for the program? They just want someone else to take care of their kids while they drink wine and pursue their careers obviously (half of them are one-income families with SAHM moms). And not a one of us is thinking of the greater good of fostering an overall culture of learning and inquiry in our community by sending our kids to public school and being deeply, deeply involved in supporting that school via volunteer hours AND our money - we just want to tax all the rich people two miles north of us so our kids can get lots of free shit and organic food at every meal while being taught their ABCs.
What the fuck. Rant over. I need to go break out some of the leftover wine.
"I always liked how Rome used its own public transportation buses for students and schools, and that it still made students buy tickets, although at a lower cost."
I thought this is how all cities with an actual public transportation did it. NYC's subway system was always full of kids in the mornings.
Agreed on focus on sports being completely out of whack. I played high-school football for a school that didn't give a damn about sports. I got sent off the field during games so many times for not wearing proper equipment (hip and leg pads mostly). We had one coach, and we lost all of our games (all of 'em) with pride. Nothing wrong with that.
If I would blame parents for anything, it would be for having such an unhealthy obsession with little johnny going pro. Not just unhealthy, but very unrealistic.
Donna, SEED program has a very unfortunate name. It's as if it was named to fail.
"I thought this is how all cities with an actual public transportation did it."
Nope. San Fransisco used to have a school bus service. They cut that recently.
It should be noted in most state, money for education is actually taken from the denser area [business district, downtown et cetera] to pay for education and emergency services in the less dense area [rural, suburbs]. It's typically why schools in inner cities are especially bad-- declining enrollment in addition to having most of the budget sent outside of town.
If you really wanted to have a 'perfect' education, you'd need a city of at least 20,000 people. The campus should be located within fairly close of the center of population and should be within 3000 plus or minus a few feet of about 70% of the population. The campus should be split within the appropriate schools (pre-k, elem, middle, high, vocation).
And part of the school facilities should be open to the general public after hours (track, field, that stuff).
glitter where are you getting all of that statistics sounds like the kind of rhetoric that city/urban planners spout out.
this weekend isn't going any better my football team (the one where you use your foot) lost. Worse for a match devoted to beer - the Carling cup.
Donna you are a saint. Taking the time and effort (not mentioning the financial contribution) to host a fund raiser at your house for something that should be federally funded gives you a gold star in my book. Schools here are all some funny mixture of privately and publicly funded. The government has a stake in everything but the parents, fees and others are what keeps them functioning.
Hmmm, as a 3 sport person myself in high school and my mother was a phys ed teacher & gymnastics, volleyball, and basketball coach I must stand up for sports. Sports are so important! They build leadership and brain-body coordination and teamwork! They also keep us healthy. Agree that boys sports are way overfunded though!!!! But that is a problem with how society views WOMEN, not an education or financing problem. With my mom's help, we got new uniforms for both the girls' volleyball and basketball teams when I was in high school, both teams uniforms were over 20 years old with as many laters of pit stains that we were glad one of our school colors was yellow! Boys football equipment was bought new every year of course. Women have a long ways to go in that arena, I was a pioneer in the 90's! I helped start our girls golf team too, although don't think they kept it up. (This was a very small high school.) Every school and every school district is different, thank god. The kids around here play lacrosse.
Donna, I'm sorry this discussion made so you so upset, but thank you, because you are one of the parents who is making a difference! That is what we need more than anything. I def see the parents who will write the checks, but that's about it.
I'm kinda glad I couldn't convince anyone that I had a conservative argument. I know I am confused because I'm seeing this wealthy hippie liberalism every day and am reacting against that, so I felt it was conservative.
Or.... really, I've been trying to find typically conservative views (ex: do it your own damn self, nobody is going to do it for you) and frame them in a way that all my liberal friends agree with, in order to point out that liberal or conservative, we are actually wanting many of the same things, and it is the extreme views that are the ones we need to collectively guard against that will do the real damage. I'm just confused. I DO think that political groups tend to pick out the worst characteristics of other groups and apply those qualities to the whole group, and vice versa. So I've been trying to mend those gaps (at least in my own mind) and bring out the best in both points of view. And I'm always up for starting controversial subjects on archinect, it had been too long. :)
I watched your video jump, I think I could go to any country and find dumber people than that, and I could also go to anywhere in the world and find SMART people. That video solidifies in my mind that we (americans) are a culture that idolizes stupidity so much we edit videos to highlight it and then watch them with our friends. It's disgusting.
The average Japanese has 4 IQ points on the average American and since intelligence is more genetics than we want to admit, without getting into racial conflicts, let's keep it nice, how much of America's sliding school scores can been effected by recent immigration patterns? I'm going to guess A LOT. Afterall, it isn't the Japanese, a group that is both genetically and culturally inclined towards intelligence, that are migrating to the states in large numbers. Will money change that? Or will it need to be a cultural shift?
strawbeary. Are you serious about blaming immigrants for educational woes? You're trying too hard to come off as a conservative. I think you are just apolitical. Most people are. You just don't know it. Otherwise you wouldn't be spouting cheap talking points that you see on the tee-vee.
You are right about jump's video being biased, but then again, Americans ARE horrible in geography. Both world and domestic.
jump, do you remember Rick Mercer's Talking to Americans? Highlight is when he gets Mike Huckabee to congratulate Canada on building a dome over their igloo parlament building.
"then again, Americans ARE horrible in geography. Both world and domestic."
It always used to annoy me when I was younger when you hear Americans always say, for example, "Paris, France" not just Paris. It was always the city, then the country. Then I realised that you have this issue:
New Paris, Indiana
New Paris, Ohio
New Paris, Pennsylvania
Paris, Arkansas
Paris, California, former name of Loraine, California
Paris, Idaho
Paris, Illinois
Paris, Kentucky
Paris, Maine
Paris, Michigan
Paris, Missouri
Paris, New York
Paris, Ohio
Paris, Pennsylvania
Paris, Tennessee
Paris, Texas
Paris, Virginia
Paris, Grant County, Wisconsin
Paris, Kenosha County, Wisconsin
Paris Township, Michigan
South Paris, Maine
St. Paris, Ohio
West Paris, Maine
Beresford, South Dakota, formerly Paris, Dakota Territory
What you probably don't realise or underestimate, is that you have been exporting your culture for the last 40 years or so via television and as a consequence, the world knows more about you and you do it (generally speaking).
Which is why I can probably name the 50 states without trying too hard (despite only visiting once), and you will have a problem locating New Zealand on a map ;)
Thread Central
Did I hear someone ask for a conservative view on education spending? Since I pride myself on seeing both sides of every story I'll give it a shot: The problems we have with education are hardly financial. While I don't like hearing about the budget cuts and urge for finding other solutions, I know that past a certain level of adequacy in facilities and resources, which all but the worst schools in the US meet, more money does not equal more or better education. Our educational woes are a cultural problem, our culture says learning is uncool and success comes from other qualities, like charm, luck and popularity. Parents and society deemphasize the importance of education. Education is something that needs to go on at home too, but today's parents largely leave everything up to the schools and do little to nothing at to support education, besides maybe try to throw money at it, which is the classic liberal solution, expensive and ineffective. Teachers CANNOT do it all alone, even if they had more money. Teachers and schools must address so much more now with today's students before content learning can take place. Teachers now must deal with such a diversity of students and skill levels that the system is suffering. In fact, they SHOULD earn $400k a year for the job they do: simultaneous baby-sitting 20-30 students, especially when some are peeing/pooping their pants, many have problems at home with divorcing or otherwise overworked or non-existant parents, some in the classroom have IQs of 80 and severe learning disabilities and others have IQs of 120, teaching social skills and manners (that should be taught at home) that distracts from reading and writing all while being held to a bureaucratic system of a curriculum and performance mandates handed down from above, all while being threatened by losing their job every year for things out of their control, all in a culture that works against them by insisting teachers and schools must do all the hard unpopular work themselves so parents and families can focus on other things (fun and entertainment?). I could then argue that the culture that encourages the behavior I see as the root of the problem lies in cultural ideals espoused by liberals, but I won't get into that now.
(As a reminder, I work in private special education in one of the wealthiest, most liberal towns in the US.)
Good try, Straw, but I don't see anything there that's inconsistent with the liberal view of education.
the typical argument i've heard is a classic conservative privatization argument: school choice is about promotion of private entrepreneur-run schools over public. 'let the market educate our kids.'
this is why i've also been very wary of charter schools: if you hand-pick your students and leave those with broken homes, discipline problems, and other issues in the public schools, of course charter school scores will be higher and the public schools will fail and continue to be de-funded.
conservatives i've talked to about this say - hey - if they fail, they fail. obviously the private and/or charter model is working better.
we either have to commit to public schools 100% or give up the belief that we can provide any semblance of an equal educational opportunity. (note that i don't at all claim that we're currently providing equality. too many other variables at play.)
The money thing for one, Steven. The liberal view is to throw money at education. But we should instead work on fixing the root of the problems, which is what conservatives choose to do. If I wasn't convincing enough, maybe I should have gone into what I think of as the many liberal ideals that are at the root of the problem. Here are two: equal rights (being smart doesn't make you special), parents who strive be cool and progressive ("if the child wants to read, he will pick up a book and read it, I won't force him to do anything he doesn't want to"). Maybe I think I have a conservative view because I am in such a liberal town where I see the most extreme of these ideals and the effects of them, not to mention work as an antidote to them.
I strayed from my conservative viewpoint at the end when I suggested teachers should make $400k a year, but I only meant to reiterate that money doesn't solve these problems (and perhaps gain some popularity from readers). If we can reduce the problems leading to the woes of education, let's do that instead. But those ideas are not as popular, nor as self-reflecting on our culture as throwing money around.
watch this and laugh Louis CK asks Donald Rumsfeld if he is a Lizard
Steven, I wanted to attempt a GOOD conservative argument, not that one. Although while I don't share the conservative view of getting rid of and de-funding public schools because it is too extreme, I do support the root idea of that view: putting the responsibility of raising and educating our kids back on parents and communities, providing some relief to schools, and localizing the education standards and using competition to raise the bars of education. I do not advocate federal education standards and mandates which seems to be a liberal view.
straw totally agree with this Our educational woes are a cultural problem, our culture says learning is uncool and success comes from other qualities, like charm, luck and popularity. Parents and society deemphasize the importance of education. Education is something that needs to go on at home too, but today's parents largely leave everything up to the schools and do little to nothing at to support education, besides maybe try to throw money at it, which is the classic liberal solution, expensive and ineffective. Teachers CANNOT do it all alone
however you lost me with this...
could then argue that the culture that encourages the behavior I see as the root of the problem lies in cultural ideals espoused by liberals, but I won't get into that now.
If anything I would argue that the problems from the first passage are caused by current conservative (in terms of political not social) ideology....
nam, ideals of equality from the left, for instance, nurtures a culture where success through hard work is marginalized, that we are all equal regardless of talent or intelligence, excellence is not recognized and mediocrity is rewarded through popularity. Also, the celebrity worship and pop culture I associate with progressives is the one that encourages the dumb is cool, it is more important to be charming, pretty, and popular. (I don't necessarily mean archinector liberals, but the ones in the street.)
How about this one, far too unpopular of an idea to discuss anywhere except maybe here: is there any correlation with the feminist movement and the decrease in performance of our students? While the feminist movement created strong female role models that no doubt strengthened and enriched our society, did we do it as the expense of our kids and schools? What are the unintened consequences of moms in the work force and women choosing typically male dominated fields such as architecture instead of, say teaching? I think one of the unintended consequences is an increased burden on our schools to raise our kids, not just educate them.
nam, I would love to hear your arguments too!
strawbeary: your feedback is appreciated, and I don't question your ability to see education from both sides of political spectrum.
I think of myself as more of a pragmatist. Thus, your opinion comes off as slightly biased.
You treat money as some kind of a magical fairy dust. "Throwing money" at whatever is a concept best left for cheap political talking points. In real world, additional education funding hires more teachers, buys supplies, and provides for a better learning environment. Whether the schools are efficiently run is a different topic. A topic that conservatives tend to shy away from because working on improving the system is an admission that the system is indeed fixable.
You seem to imply that "throwing money" is only there to increase salaries. That's just dumb. Budgets should reflect the actual need. No teacher that I ever met was in it for money. Quite the opposite. Enabling the teachers to do their work should be the priority. Yes, money will come up as a significant way of improving certain deficiencies. Idea of improving education without increasing the funding would be welcomed. But who's offering?
Blaming parents will only get you so far. Kinds need a careful balance of discipline and self empowerment. Not metal detectors, hall monitors, or being forbidden to leave the school property during the day. Treat them like criminals, and be prepared for crappy results.
err
I started writing this and then left for half an hour. Strawbeary, you have since written a number of additional posts....
Your way of thinking IS by far the exact problem that cripples public education. You actively participate in the blame game. You speak of 'progressives' as some kind of a cult....
I truly wish for you to move away from working in education to something you could contribute to more constructively.
All the best.
ps. Fully agreeing with what nam and Steven said.
I guess I'm using TC as my personal thought journal again, quoting myself here, I think one of the unintended consequences is an increased burden on our schools to raise our kids, not just educate them. While reforming education to be able to handle the diversity of circumstances surrounding our students to a level where we can begin educating students again will cost a lot of money, but GOVERNMENT money won't get us there as it comes with bureaucratic mandates and is best considered locally and at home.
rusty - I don't think you understand what I'm saying at all.
like i said earlier, strawbeary's first post made a lot of sense to me - a liberal, for certain.
blaming liberals for 'throwing money' is b.s.; it's just not happening. i work in public schools and see how strapped they are. on top of the teachers really not making as much as they're claimed to make - they often spend their own money just to have the things they need in the classroom.
my daughter happen to go to one of the best elementary schools in the district. despite our district's best efforts at equivalence, the difference is the parents. not just that we're involved/engaged, but that we have money, we have time to spend, and we support the school.
obviously parental involvement works - and that's where conservatives and liberals are going to agree. but here's the liberal slant. some parents in the district can't afford to support the schools the way we do. some are single parents, some have three jobs and no time. some send their kids to school with no breakfast.
conservative view: tough luck.
liberal view: do the parents' issues have to be the kids automatic failure? can we feed them breakfast so they can think? can we provide support through after school programs, head start, etc, so they have a chance?
these are not the kids that kid into charter schools and obviously 'school choice' through vouchers will not do them any good.
i'm for all kids having as much opportunity as possible, whatever their parents' failures.
oh, and rusty, thanks for your concerns and advice for me to not work in education, but you should know I work in private education and our students come to us and we are very busy, thank you though.
i actually taught for a year at a local charter school before going back to grad school.
a few points: re: but GOVERNMENT money won't get us there as it comes with bureaucratic mandates and is best considered locally and at home.
I think more government money is the answer. however i think what is needed are things like current admin's approach Race to the Top which offers more money but only if sprograms/school board meet specific performance metrics. Moreover i agree that that education is best considered locally, in the sence of having local boards make funding/hr decisions, however, the performance metrics should be natioanl (in my opion) in nature.
again thias allows for local solutions but at the national scale.
AS I said i worked in charter school is i think is an interesting model. completly agree with Steven that sometimes conservatives use charters as straw man to simply gut the public ed system. Don't agree with that, but the way at least in FL charters work is they get same public funding per student and have same levels of accountabolity but have the ability to meet those standrads using localized/personalized methods..
Also, straw, Also, the celebrity worship and pop culture I associate with progressives is the one that encourages the dumb is cool, it is more important to be charming, pretty, and popular.
I think you are as i said perhaps makign the mistake of confusing conservative and liberal political ideology with contemporary culture. The two aren't the same at all. politically one stands for little/small government and only market based solutions (with regards to education specifically) and the other stands for a basic level of education/access for all with a belief that government's role is exactly to create accountability but not actually run/mandate specifics...
As for the dumb is cool and celebreity worship again i think that is pop-culture which has nothing to do with progressive values of equal rights, and a political attitude favoring or advocating changes or reform through governmental action. See Progressivism for the difference between liberalism and Progressivism.
One final question re: your private education profession, who pays for that? Is it federal/local dollars going to developmentally/challenged (ESOL, Special Ed, etc) kids to assist in education or is it all people with money paying for that extra bit of attention/care? And I would ask depending on your answer, which is a better model?
nam, I must refrain from talking about my job too much because I'm not allowed to, but some of the money comes from gov, but mostly private, but it is actually more complicated than that and I won't get into it. I am having trouble answering your next question about which is the best model because the operations which are in place that I disagree with are some of the very ones that allow me to have this job. I don't like extremes either way, any move too far in one direction is too harmful and inflexible, which is exactly why I'm not for top-down solutions. So I guess my answer for which is a better model is not exciting as I would say "some of both", which is my usual, centrist argument and is actually what we have now. But if you asked which direction I think the trend should move I would say less government intervention.
No problem!
"but you should know I work in private education and our students come to us and we are very busy, thank you though."
Private education relies on public education being shitty. The trick to maintaining a crappy status quo is to concentrate on irrelevant issues. As long as public education is demonized, your employment status will be safe.
Refer to health care debate for inspiration.
straw fair enough... i totally understand the centrist stick with what we have approach.
"Private education relies on public education being shitty." Yes. And you are right about my employment status being safe. But WHY is it shitty? I've proposed some of my views of what I think it is and just as importantly, what I don't think it is.
The expense of schools in not a purely ideological this way versus that way approach.
Architects, of all people, should look at the general school model overall. This is something that I've argued in threads on the subject.
Biggest budget killers?
School buses.
Athletics.
Under-utilized classrooms.
The arguments regarding athletics is practically beating a dead horse. So, I'll avoid most of that since we can mostly all agree that some level of athleticism is necessary for schools but the current manner is a bit excessive.
School buses? Each yellow bus costs a school or school district between $80,000 to $120,000 a year to operate. Throw in the $100,000 or so thousand dollars it cost for the bus itself... we can easily tack on another $10,000 a year in depreciation.
The issue with busing is a larger cultural, community and planning issue.
Since middle and high school facilities are more expensive and more intensive, we tend to centralize those. The problem here is that middle and high school students are the ones typically capable of walking to and from school.
Elementary schools, on the other hand, are less intensive and less specialized and are less centralized. However, younger students are far less capable of walking to school.
The lack of centralization in elementary schools leads to redundancy in bus services. This is a two fold problem-- there is less elementary enrollment in specific area due to the prevalence of private schools and that elementary buses are less filled to capacity than middle school or high school bus route.
In areas that don't have combined schools (elementary-middle or junior-senior), there's even further redundancy.
As for classrooms, in middle and high school settings, they have certain requirements that must be met for more specialized classrooms.
These classrooms are often far underutilized-- science labs may never actually use any of the equipment within them, computer labs maybe used for nothing more than word processing and so on.
The issue here is that these things aren't usually purchased as they are needed. They are purchased during the initial phases of school construction. This leads many equipment to be outdated... and the sneaky thing is that these things are often purchased with the bond money that was borrowed to build the school.
So, think about it this way... a municipal bond yields roughly 5% over thirty years. So, a $1,000 apple computer 30 years from now will cost $1,050 to the county. It's not a lot right?
According to the Education Construction Cost Index, elementary schools run about $190 a square foot, $210 for middle school students and $180 for high school students.
This would blow my centralization theory out of the water. Except for the fact that all three schools have varying enrollment numbers and they all have some basic similarities.
They all have administrative offices, significant athletic development (fields, playgrounds, outdoor furniture, tracks et cetera), lunchrooms, libraries, computer centers and et cetera.
Less students means higher concentration of these expensive extras.
But back to the cost point, a new fully-stocked high school probably runs about $30,000,000 these days? Well, at bond rate... that school actually is going to cost $31,500,000 in 10-30 years. Not to mention that a good portion of things in that school will have to be thrown away in 5-10 years and be repurchased.
$1,500,000 though is enough to employ one teacher for 25 years. And that's $1,500,000 worth of money 'wasted' on interest. So, by cutting out interest, it's not like we're eliminating anything in particular.
But, I think to fix schools... we need to think about where they are located, how students get to them, what kind of things are they actually doing in them and how we can better shape towns and cities to be able to pay for them.
We certainly don't need to be buying $3,000 microscopes if the biology teacher reads from a book. And we certainly can't gaurantee a suburb city services (yes, at one point, education was only obtainable in cities) if it's not shaped or run like a city.
It's the American way. Follow the money. Education being a basic right really pisses of certain types. There's money to be made there.
The purpose of 'No child left behind' was the undermine the essence of public education. Teach to the rhetorical dumb, and have everyone suffer equally. Cash in on the unhappy parents.
"Since I pride myself on seeing both sides of every story I'll give it a shot:
Remove the pride. Your views are very much in line with your employer's opinion.
Same shit happens in architecture. You work on a same project for so long, you can't really tell if it's any good or not.
Luckily, we the architects, are not in charge of screwing up an entire generation of kids.
glitter unicorn: WTF dude? That was just painful to read. I can't even begin to logically disagree...
"Your views are very much in line with your employer's opinion." You think you know me, don't you? I won't bother telling you why that can't possibly be true.
The missing part of the 'discussion' about public education is what is the purpose of 12+ years in a classroom? Is it to create well-informed citizens (the enlightenment model), is it to create well-trained workers (the industrialized model), is it to provide day-care so parents can work, or is it to foster a life-long interest in learning/culture? Depending on political alignment and socio-economic status, the assumed mission of public education varies and so does the value of said education...
nam - "performance metrics" are a misnomer because they don't actually test student development. it tests a different group of students year over year and there can be variations in ability from class to class - and can often be based entirely on shifting demographics within a particular school - not on how well a school is "performing." sure it can have something to do with instruction, but it's almost entirely about who the students are and what kind of family lives they have.
also - standardized tests only test memorization of "facts," not actual thinking skills. it's very difficult to quantify a student's ability to think critically and solve problems - and none of the federal or state tests actually test these skills.
I could go on and on (there's school management, there's shitty curriculums, there's lack of funding and adequate facilities, there's no place to put extremely troubled and disruptive youth except in the regular class, etc...), but I do know the real problem is definitely NOT because of the teachers. Most are trying to do the best they can with limited resources.
I think straw is somewhat correct - we don't value education in this country - but I think this attitude is currently mostly manifested in our policies - we're attempting to view education as a measurable product - and assess teacher's performance as "productivity" through their student's test scores - which to me seems really bizarre. Ideally you'd want students to leave your class with a desire to learn and a love of your particular subject - in addition to picking up important skills that they can use to get ahead in life. IMO - conservatives tend to view education as essentially the same thing as memorizing an encyclopedia.
I think we will see trends forthcoming that being smart is cool, and it will be the fuel we need to see results in our schools. It will take time, but it won't cost anything.
Would all the people who went to public school please raise their right hand...I just want to do a tally. Since Private Secondary Education is a big business in my neck of the woods. I would tell you
it is a privilaged education. Yes it is but you have to fork over $40,000.00 a year to have that privilage, but they don't have any empty slots, near as I can tell.
You still have no concept of money.
Otherwise, relying on devine intervention, or wishful thinking, will get you nowhere. Won't cost anything? Do you work for free? If not, we've established that education costs something. Let's try to get the value of education down!
Toaster: I'm totally with you on standardized tests accomplishing very little.
Barry: your breakdown of educational goals closely reflects the way Germans run their public schools. Tiered vocational education is definitively what every board should look into. Heck, plumbers make more than what we do. For a good reason too.
couldn't agree more about standardized tests toast, especially as someone who worked in a school where he spent a few weeks every years focusing on them exclusively. however, there are non test based metrics like how many students graduate or whatever else...
I just think they should delineated more clearly and tied to funding.obviously they also need to weight issues like percentage of students ESOL or who receive free school meals. In my school both percentages were high.
Also, agree that not everyone (after a certain age..) should 'have' to go to school, vocational/apprenticing programs are great.
and it is a privileged thing to not go to public education. on the flip side i didn't for about half my childhood and wish i had, for all the social aspects i feel like i missed out on growing up. i actually (even though it may not be 'best' choice) want to send my kid(s) to public school specifically for those reasons.
snook, as a product of both public and private schools, i definitely know that each fosters a completely different reality. private school coddled and nurtured - and it's wonderful. public schools do an amazing job with fewer resources and greater challenges.
the most amazing teachers were those in public school, for me. The commitment was at a completely different level. private school teachers have so much more of a support network - people working in concert toward delivering a curriculum and a point-of-view. public schools are at the mercy of a fickle politically-charged and often stingy public.
i've got no grudges against private schools as long as their clients don't begrudge the taxes they pay for public schools. taking your kids AND your taxes out of public schools because you're lucky enough to afford to supplement a voucher is unsupportable.
i was a different kind of lucky: we couldn't afford private school but - when my mother taught in a private school - i got waived tuition. when she didn't, i went back to public!
snook... i went to public schools for K-12, college (U. of Florida), and graduate school (Georgia Tech)... i'm now working on a phd at a private school (Penn)...
wow I just went through a page and a half and had no idea what people were talking about. I'm often afraid of adults using biases of culture or belief as the reasons behind all their actions. Exacerbated by the blame culture... if you hadn't have done that this wouldn't of happened. But enough about that. No really.
Anyway I'm just grumpy. I've been sick for the last couple of days - hacking cough, congestion etc. And it's the worst time to be sick - work due, drawings due, and a good friend's beach/boat trip that I had to miss. And everyone seems to be incredibly occupied whilst I have to stay home wrapped up and fighting this shit. So I'm miserable and a right ass. Considering befriending a bottle of wine... although it sucks to drink alone.
Good night folks I hope it's better on your side. bless
wow thats a lotta education related text.
you know i am not sure i understand the definitions of liberal or conservative. strawbeary's description of the conservative point of view sounded real liberal to me. I guess i watch too much liberal tv cuz my view of what conservatives think is rather twisted.
usa pop culture (and canada too) totally distrusts education. it's a pity. we are all lazy too. i agree with steven it takes engagement of parents and community. my kids go to amazing school with fantastic teachers, but the parents are all there too. that is an enormous boost to the system.
i doubt that america will ever think it is cool to be smart. would be nice to be wrong about that but i really don't see it. i see a future not too unlike idiocracy...
bangkok is hot.
hope you feel good soon archi.
ahahah
i know this ain't truly for realzy but still...
which ones throwin the rocks?
bloody hell! s'al i gotta say.
Wow. I'm out for one day, and all this?
Strawbeary, I think you and I could be best friends.
I actually like Glitter's argument of buses and redundancy. Sure, most would take a full on reworking of the entire system, but it's a valid point. I always liked how Rome used its own public transportation buses for students and schools, and that it still made students buy tickets, although at a lower cost.
I think parents are the real difference. I think atheletics is a huge problem - the HS I work at has 18 football coaches, and none are being let go in the budget crunch, counselors and teachers are - and I think that the willingness to place students in special ed with accommodations is another issue. I have one student who's accommodations sheet says that he can't get less than a 70 on his report card. He's also on the football team, which means that no matter how poorly he does in class, he will never fail, and he will always be able to play according to UIL rules. Now tell me, how does this help the student?
The point of education should be to produce competent adults. This should also be the point of raising children, to NOT raise children, but to raise competent adults. Right now, our system is set up to send as many students to college as possible; to create academics, but we all know not everyone is cut out to be an academic, and that a majority of the jobs in the US don't need academics. We should be teaching kids to be problem-solvers.
like with strawbeary, i agree with everything sarah just said. no liberal/conservative divide there.
[i]the HS I work at has 18 football coaches, and none are being let go in the budget crunch[/]
This. This is completely fucked up, and I can guar-an-damn-tee you having 18 coaches isn't what the liberals I know value.
I have nothing to add to this argument because it pisses me off. As usual, I agree 100% with Steven. But I just can't address it intelligently now, because I am utterly exhausted. You know why?
Because I spent an 18 hour day yesterday, plus $500 of my own money, planning, prepping, and having a fundraiser in my home for my public school. We are trying to bring in a really awesome math program, Project SEED, which is a non-profit math program that has crazy positive longitudinal results over the course of its 30-year history and by the way developed out of that hippie-liberal commune known as Berkeley where apparently all they value is dumbness so everyone feels good about themselves.
That math whiz lady at my house last night who teaches in the program, the one making 1/3 the money she would make working in a private school? She's just some bleeding heart ignoramus I guess - it's not like she actually cares passionately about teaching or is actually affecting dozens of students' ability to learn every year by getting them excited about the patterns that exist in math and thus in the universe around us. Those parents all writing checks last night and dropping them in our basket for the program? They just want someone else to take care of their kids while they drink wine and pursue their careers obviously (half of them are one-income families with SAHM moms). And not a one of us is thinking of the greater good of fostering an overall culture of learning and inquiry in our community by sending our kids to public school and being deeply, deeply involved in supporting that school via volunteer hours AND our money - we just want to tax all the rich people two miles north of us so our kids can get lots of free shit and organic food at every meal while being taught their ABCs.
What the fuck. Rant over. I need to go break out some of the leftover wine.
I thought this is how all cities with an actual public transportation did it. NYC's subway system was always full of kids in the mornings.
Agreed on focus on sports being completely out of whack. I played high-school football for a school that didn't give a damn about sports. I got sent off the field during games so many times for not wearing proper equipment (hip and leg pads mostly). We had one coach, and we lost all of our games (all of 'em) with pride. Nothing wrong with that.
If I would blame parents for anything, it would be for having such an unhealthy obsession with little johnny going pro. Not just unhealthy, but very unrealistic.
Donna, SEED program has a very unfortunate name. It's as if it was named to fail.
"I thought this is how all cities with an actual public transportation did it."
Nope. San Fransisco used to have a school bus service. They cut that recently.
It should be noted in most state, money for education is actually taken from the denser area [business district, downtown et cetera] to pay for education and emergency services in the less dense area [rural, suburbs]. It's typically why schools in inner cities are especially bad-- declining enrollment in addition to having most of the budget sent outside of town.
If you really wanted to have a 'perfect' education, you'd need a city of at least 20,000 people. The campus should be located within fairly close of the center of population and should be within 3000 plus or minus a few feet of about 70% of the population. The campus should be split within the appropriate schools (pre-k, elem, middle, high, vocation).
And part of the school facilities should be open to the general public after hours (track, field, that stuff).
glitter where are you getting all of that statistics sounds like the kind of rhetoric that city/urban planners spout out.
this weekend isn't going any better my football team (the one where you use your foot) lost. Worse for a match devoted to beer - the Carling cup.
Donna you are a saint. Taking the time and effort (not mentioning the financial contribution) to host a fund raiser at your house for something that should be federally funded gives you a gold star in my book. Schools here are all some funny mixture of privately and publicly funded. The government has a stake in everything but the parents, fees and others are what keeps them functioning.
and jump - that video is frightening
Hmmm, as a 3 sport person myself in high school and my mother was a phys ed teacher & gymnastics, volleyball, and basketball coach I must stand up for sports. Sports are so important! They build leadership and brain-body coordination and teamwork! They also keep us healthy. Agree that boys sports are way overfunded though!!!! But that is a problem with how society views WOMEN, not an education or financing problem. With my mom's help, we got new uniforms for both the girls' volleyball and basketball teams when I was in high school, both teams uniforms were over 20 years old with as many laters of pit stains that we were glad one of our school colors was yellow! Boys football equipment was bought new every year of course. Women have a long ways to go in that arena, I was a pioneer in the 90's! I helped start our girls golf team too, although don't think they kept it up. (This was a very small high school.) Every school and every school district is different, thank god. The kids around here play lacrosse.
Donna, I'm sorry this discussion made so you so upset, but thank you, because you are one of the parents who is making a difference! That is what we need more than anything. I def see the parents who will write the checks, but that's about it.
I'm kinda glad I couldn't convince anyone that I had a conservative argument. I know I am confused because I'm seeing this wealthy hippie liberalism every day and am reacting against that, so I felt it was conservative.
Or.... really, I've been trying to find typically conservative views (ex: do it your own damn self, nobody is going to do it for you) and frame them in a way that all my liberal friends agree with, in order to point out that liberal or conservative, we are actually wanting many of the same things, and it is the extreme views that are the ones we need to collectively guard against that will do the real damage. I'm just confused. I DO think that political groups tend to pick out the worst characteristics of other groups and apply those qualities to the whole group, and vice versa. So I've been trying to mend those gaps (at least in my own mind) and bring out the best in both points of view. And I'm always up for starting controversial subjects on archinect, it had been too long. :)
I watched your video jump, I think I could go to any country and find dumber people than that, and I could also go to anywhere in the world and find SMART people. That video solidifies in my mind that we (americans) are a culture that idolizes stupidity so much we edit videos to highlight it and then watch them with our friends. It's disgusting.
The average Japanese has 4 IQ points on the average American and since intelligence is more genetics than we want to admit, without getting into racial conflicts, let's keep it nice, how much of America's sliding school scores can been effected by recent immigration patterns? I'm going to guess A LOT. Afterall, it isn't the Japanese, a group that is both genetically and culturally inclined towards intelligence, that are migrating to the states in large numbers. Will money change that? Or will it need to be a cultural shift?
strawbeary. Are you serious about blaming immigrants for educational woes? You're trying too hard to come off as a conservative. I think you are just apolitical. Most people are. You just don't know it. Otherwise you wouldn't be spouting cheap talking points that you see on the tee-vee.
You are right about jump's video being biased, but then again, Americans ARE horrible in geography. Both world and domestic.
jump, do you remember Rick Mercer's Talking to Americans? Highlight is when he gets Mike Huckabee to congratulate Canada on building a dome over their igloo parlament building.
It always used to annoy me when I was younger when you hear Americans always say, for example, "Paris, France" not just Paris. It was always the city, then the country. Then I realised that you have this issue:
New Paris, Indiana
New Paris, Ohio
New Paris, Pennsylvania
Paris, Arkansas
Paris, California, former name of Loraine, California
Paris, Idaho
Paris, Illinois
Paris, Kentucky
Paris, Maine
Paris, Michigan
Paris, Missouri
Paris, New York
Paris, Ohio
Paris, Pennsylvania
Paris, Tennessee
Paris, Texas
Paris, Virginia
Paris, Grant County, Wisconsin
Paris, Kenosha County, Wisconsin
Paris Township, Michigan
South Paris, Maine
St. Paris, Ohio
West Paris, Maine
Beresford, South Dakota, formerly Paris, Dakota Territory
What you probably don't realise or underestimate, is that you have been exporting your culture for the last 40 years or so via television and as a consequence, the world knows more about you and you do it (generally speaking).
Which is why I can probably name the 50 states without trying too hard (despite only visiting once), and you will have a problem locating New Zealand on a map ;)
the world knows more about you THAN you do it (generally speaking).
By the way Strawbeary, NZ'ers are smarter than Americans also ;)
diabase, you just think kiwis are smarter, but in fact you're just big on smugness factor just like your northern neighbor France.
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