Quote: Original post by trzy
At the very least, the federal Dept. of Education ought to be disbanded. There is no reason for it to exist. The strength of the United States is that it is like 50 independent policy laboratories that can compete and learn from each other. Enforcing nation-wide norms stifles this process.


Don't hate the children, LessBread. Help save their future! Give them a quality education!

Let's see if you would be just as specific about how the new institutions will work to provide this superior education as they replace the system you'd have disbanded.

Cell phones,computers and other hi-tech machinery kills education faster than absence of money.Under information waterfall boys and girls stop to think and solve problems independently,so-called "Bologna process" just hide decreasing of teachers and pupils level.
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">exam 50 years ago:)

Quote: Original post by Krokhin

Quote: Original post by Alpha_ProgDes
Tying tests to funding is not working. I believe this is causing some of the "dumbing" down of the standards. I know the US makes alot of the new tech (not all but alot) so we've moved more into the intellectual realm.

Sure.Taking in account how mush very talent people migrated in US...

Taking into account that they migrated to go to college not elementary or high school. I'm speaking of Kindergarten - 12th grade, not undergrad, graduate, post-grad.

Quote: Original post by trzy
At the very least, the federal Dept. of Education ought to be disbanded. There is no reason for it to exist. The strength of the United States is that it is like 50 independent policy laboratories that can compete and learn from each other. Enforcing nation-wide norms stifles this process.

Is it an intrinsic of being a national education policy-setting body that causes it to stifle advancement? Are there any countries where national education policy-setting bodies thrive, and students excel?

In effect, is it a peculiarity of how Americans develop policy and legislation - our politicians employing religious moralizing and pandering to "traditional values" rather than examining issues and ideas on their merits, evaluated intellectually - that causes this stifling and inefficiency?

Quote: Original post by Alpha_ProgDes

Quote: Original post by Krokhin

Quote: Original post by Alpha_ProgDes
Tying tests to funding is not working. I believe this is causing some of the "dumbing" down of the standards. I know the US makes alot of the new tech (not all but alot) so we've moved more into the intellectual realm.

Sure.Taking in account how mush very talent people migrated in US...

Taking into account that they migrated to go to college not elementary or high school. I'm speaking of Kindergarten - 12th grade, not undergrad, graduate, post-grad.

Well,I meant scientists etc.,already having high school education.What about western high school itself-I doubt that it is much better than Russian,Belorus or Ukrainian for example.Of couse when a parents migrate from former SU countries to US,their children have to go to local school.Exepting reach people-they prefer Great Britain elite schools and collenges.But it's rather a kind of fashion than necessity.Or you meant something else when said "moving into selling intellect"?

Quote: Original post by HostileExpanse

Quote: Original post by trzy
At the very least, the federal Dept. of Education ought to be disbanded. There is no reason for it to exist. The strength of the United States is that it is like 50 independent policy laboratories that can compete and learn from each other. Enforcing nation-wide norms stifles this process.


Don't hate the children, LessBread. Help save their future! Give them a quality education!

Let's see if you would be just as specific about how the new institutions will work to provide this superior education as they replace the system you'd have disbanded.

Here's the crux of the problem: you're an avowed statist and an elitist. Don't feel too bad about it, it's not your fault. The media has arguably taken on a statist bias, as has the state-run education system, and this has even seeped into our pop culture. Large institutions, and in particular the "highly qualified" elite who manage them, are endowed with almost omniscient capabilities in popular legend. Government economists, scientists, policy makers, and "experts" are working on a "plan" to save the economy, we are told by the media. Despite decades of mismanagement, we are assured they have finally worked out the kinks in the health care system, the TV talking heads coolly inform us. On the silver screen, we are entertained by top-secret military operations that direct the course of world events. Back in reality, the newspapers inform us about all the "intelligence" the CIA, FBI, and NSA are gathering to keep us safe, and we wonder aloud why our all-seeing government, staffed with the best and the brightest, didn't see 9/11 coming. Or why Saddam fooled the world into thinking he had dangerous WMDs. The stated assumption is that they should have been able to see these things. If only the right people are put in charge, surely they could orchestrate a coherent and fully internally consistent foreign policy that would avert all future enmity and bring us lasting peace and prosperity!

Well, I'm sorry to have to burst your bubble, but this is all indicative of a pathologically warped reality. Everyone who has worked as part of a large organization should know by now that even the most intelligent, knowledgeable, and educated experts are themselves only a tiny part of the system and are not infallible. Extremely large bureaucracies are all the more difficult to wield. Planning society is impossible. Some people feel they are qualified to do just that. They believe that their intelligence and education gives them a right to authority, privilege, and wealth. Don't be fooled: many of these people are simply unable to succeed in the real world, the real market place of ideas, and so they do everything in their power to change the rules in their favor -- ultimately for your own benefit, of course ;) Society naturally doesn't really care for their intellectual prowess, but they'll make damn sure it does.

I'm not smart enough to design an education system for one of the world's largest and most diverse nations. Neither are you. Neither is anyone working for the government. But I do believe that unleashing the creative force of countless educators, entrepreneurs, parents, philanthropists, and people with a passion for learning and education will result in a dynamic and ultimately self-optimizing educational landscape, guided by the needs of society and the economy.

And pray tell, what's your brilliant idea?

Quote: Original post by Krokhin
Cell phones,computers and other hi-tech machinery kills education faster than absence of money.Under information waterfall boys and girls stop to think and solve problems independently,so-called "Bologna process" just hide decreasing of teachers and pupils level.
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">exam 50 years ago:)

Absolutely. There is no need for computers in the classroom. Geometry, algebra, and calculus have not changed in a long time. What has changed are attitudes toward education and the cultivation of the intellect.

Quote: Original post by Oluseyi

Quote: Original post by trzy
At the very least, the federal Dept. of Education ought to be disbanded. There is no reason for it to exist. The strength of the United States is that it is like 50 independent policy laboratories that can compete and learn from each other. Enforcing nation-wide norms stifles this process.

Is it an intrinsic of being a national education policy-setting body that causes it to stifle advancement? Are there any countries where national education policy-setting bodies thrive, and students excel?

I don't want to get into a discussion about the semantics of the term "intrinsic", but effectively, the answer to your first question appears to be "yes" in our case. Imposing rigid, inflexible policies on a vast education system with very diverse needs makes it more difficult to experiment and tailor schools to the needs of their students. The more insidious effect of such national policy is that, by its very nature, it will impose rules backed up by the considerable legal and bureaucratic force of the Federal government. Such large bureaucracies tend to eliminate personal risk-taking and initiative that are vital to leadership at the lower levels, where teachers and school administrators exist. Bureaucracies act swiftly and decisively to eliminate trouble makers.

As to your second question, Finland sprung immediately to mind for some reason. I recall seeing an article somewhere about the Finnish education system. They seem to do everything wrong over there: less homework, less discipline, etc, etc., yet they perform much, much better than Americans. Why? Well, one starting point is cultural factors and the relative homogeneity of the comparably small Finnish population.

Quote:
In effect, is it a peculiarity of how Americans develop policy and legislation - our politicians employing religious moralizing and pandering to "traditional values" rather than examining issues and ideas on their merits, evaluated intellectually - that causes this stifling and inefficiency?

Pandering is a different matter altogether. The notion that the government, a political bureaucracy, can examine issues and ideas on their merits, evaluated intellectually, is probably impossible. Perhaps even intrinsically so. Society can solve problems if given adequate freedom to do so. So just let it.

I think what prevents people from simply letting go of the government elitists that their income supports is the fear that some people will be shortchanged whereas with government programs, everyone is protected, theoretically. All you have to do to snap out of this mental paralysis is realize that people are already being shortchanged and that the government is not doing its job. Who cares if everyone can go to school when it's not doing a lick of good for so many of them? The problems people worry about with regards to minimizing the government's role in education are already present!

Quote: Original post by Eelco

Quote: Original post by LessBread
That's absurd. The idea that the system prevents talented competition from entering the teaching labor pool is false on it's face. That an argument is always made does not make the argument invalid. California used to have the best schools in the nation. Then it cut property taxes and funding and the expected happened and the quality of it's schools fell to the bottom. Attacks on teacher's unions are part and parcel of the general attack on unions that conservatives have made for 150 years, but they're also part of the war on science of recent years. People that want to destroy teachers unions also want to put an end to the teaching of evolution, to the separation of church and state, to sex education, and the history of the civil right movement, they want to restore prayer in school and establish that the Constitution is crafted on biblical principles. The idea that abolishing public schools would result in better educated kids and a more skilled labor force is utterly ridiculous and anyone who thinks that ought to made a laughingstock. That's a sure fire prescription for a massively unskilled labor force and an end to any semblance of a middle class.

Nice smear. Religious nonsense and economic issues are however entirely orthogonal matters.

Either way, these conservatives of lore, didnt they hold the presidential office and congress not too long ago? Have they not done so fairly often, often the past 150 years?

It seems to me all that ever happened was further centralization of education. And it is silly to expect any different from a central government.

Bringing up religious conservatives is a common smear tactic of the left-leaning statist-elitists. You immediately noticed that it had nothing to do with the issue in question. It's the fallacy of guilt by association. Just because religious loonies have also advocated state's rights (with regard to education), home schooling, or whatever, in order to have license to teach their silly beliefs does not mean I'm supporting similar ideas for the same reason.

I would never want to allow creationism into public classrooms. If people want to home school their kids about how Eve rode around a Mesopotamian jungle wearing fig leaf pasties on the back of a Triceratops six thousand years ago, that's their prerogative. I don't give a shit. Their kids will most likely not succeed in the biological sciences. On the other hand, maybe they'll emerge from their education knowing that Africa is not a region of South America (I'm not joking, I recently met someone older than me who thought this -- no, they weren't complete idiots, either), so it'll all even out in the end. No harm done.

Forgive me if I've missed anything in the thread that's already been addressed. I haven't posted here for a while, but as a teacher, I found this one too interesting to pass up.

Quote: Next, some states should eliminate teacher's unions and disband the education system entirely after grade 6 and then maybe everything altogether. I think the education system does a decent job through elementary school but then fails to teach anything valuable after that. My own personal experience (and that of many of my friends) has been that apart from mathematics and science, nothing was learned in middle school and high school. I learned history out of my own personal curiosity. Most of my fellow students "learned" it from school, which is to say they have no knowledge of history or even basic geography at all. I never read any of the required literature in high school because it was boring. I instead found ways to cheat. I re-read most of it later on of my own free will. My fellow classmates stuttered aloud through Shakespeare and absorbed nothing. And those fellow classmates of mine mostly elected not to take additional math classes beyond the bare minimum required. So what exactly did they learn?

First, for as liberal as I am, I do agree that teachers unions are stifling education more than they are helping it. I am the only teacher I know who is not in the union and the only reason I wish I were a part of that union is the law suit coverage it provides in the case of something crazy happening. NEA basically only serves to promote laziness, seniority over competancy, and the idea that whining about things is better than manning up and actually being productive with what you have.

On the other hand, I do think that getting rid of public schools on the whole would be a very bad idea. You may have been inspired enough to take it upon yourself to learn outside of the classroom, and your classmates may not have been smart enough to do this and instead learned some shaky information from bad teachers, but what if they have no teachers at all? Would they have learned anything? There has to be some system in place (I am perfectly in agreement that local scale is better than national scale) to give them the chance to learn, or they won't. So many of these kids do not have the encouragement or the resources outside of the public education system to learn anything at all without it. And then where do they end up? I don't think I'm arguing with you, I guess I'm trying to get to a question: if not public school, then where? What system should be in place instead? Apprenticeships from grade 6 (11 years old) up?

Quote: Kids and teenagers have a great deal of curiosity and legitimate intellectual interests that ought to be nurtured by the education system rather than destroyed. Some things are appropriate, even necessary, to learn in a linear, rote fashion but other subjects require a more tailored approach, which the bureaucratized education system cannot handle. Different communities face different educational challenges as well.

Have you ever looked much in to the Montessori method? http://www.montessori.edu/index.html

It's an interesting concept if you haven't. I have worked at one montessori school and it was one of the more interesting things I've seen. Not perfect, but a lot more creative and practical than any other method I've had shoved down my throat over the last few years. Anything would be better than the "teach to the test or you're doomed" philosophy we've been living on.

Quote: I'm not smart enough to design an education system for one of the world's largest and most diverse nations. Neither are you. Neither is anyone working for the government. But I do believe that unleashing the creative force of countless educators, entrepreneurs, parents, philanthropists, and people with a passion for learning and education will result in a dynamic and ultimately self-optimizing educational landscape, guided by the needs of society and the economy.

Well said.