American Education Redux

[rusmeister]

I'd like to begin to tackle one of the most important secular issues facing us - public schooling. We had a fairly good thread, but it died off just before Pascha, and frankly, I want to own the OP this time.

I think this topic highly relevant to parents planning on sending their kids to school in the fall.

So I would suggest those interested review the old thread, as some good things were said, esp. by Prawnik.
http://www.christianforums.com/t2929374-the-american-education-system.html

Also, Eric, who started the other thread, linked to a must-see 20/20 video about our schools.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfRUMmTs0ZA&search=stupid%20in%20america

The video has a slant toward the solution of vouchers. Back to that later.

If you are interested, here is my 'required' reading list:
0) Start with this (http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/historytour/history1.htm) by Gatto
1) Gatto's Underground History of American Education (http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm)"
2) John Stormer's "None Dare Call It Education (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0914053124/104-0134226-2037558?v=glance&n=283155)"

I'm not saying that their stuff is gospel, but even if you only partially believe it, it's alarming enough for parents with kids in or planning to go public. Stormer doesn't see the bigger picture, but was excellent at collecting details and statistics. That's why you should probably read Gatto first.
If you've already read that stuff, jump on in!

Two central things that should be kept in mind are:
1) The true solution to this mess needs to be a Christian solution. Hope I don't have to elaborate on why here.
2) Almost everybody has an opinion on what to do. This is actually a serious problem. One of the biggest problems with that is that a majority of us have not seen what goes on behind the curtains - when they're not putting on shows for parents and the media. Children in schools see what happens in the classrooms and hallways, but have a child's perspective - they don't know why things are the way they are or how they could be different. Only a fraction - maybe 2% of all adults at best actually work as public school teachers or administrators.

My point - administrators know more about what goes on in state and county ed politics than others. Teachers know more than anyone regarding the classroom situation and what is delivered in the behind-the-scenes staff meetings. A few others have direct, regular professional contact and experience in one capacity or another and see...what they see. Most others know relatively little, what they remember of their own school experience and see in the results that their own children bring home.

I'm sure everyone here has something valuable they have to contribute. This is a tremendously complex topic and no one person knows everything. But part of what I want to do is lay out what I've learned. (Stand by for knee-jerk reaction!)
The reason for this is that my conclusion is that Orthodox Christians need to pull their kids out of public school period.
(Knee-jerk!!)

I think that what I've learned is particularly valuable because of my unique history which has enabled me to see most sides of how both teachers and children are taught, and the ideology driving them. (Yes, Prawnik, Gatto is partially behind what I've come to understand, but unlike Gatto and Stormer, I'm taking an Orthodox, non-political approach.)

Are y'all interested? Shall I write further? Or should we close this one up?

[kamikat]

Sure, I'm interested. However, as a parent of school age children, I don't see pulling my kids out of school as a viable option. If we want a Christian education, our choices are limited to a few private Protestant churches (one Baptist, one Lutheran, one non-denom, and a couple Quacker schools) or Catholic schools that are so crowded that even parish members have to get on a wait list and lottery. And, if one chooses that option, the Catholic schools start at $14,000 per year and the Protestant schools cost even more. Sure, there is always the option of homeschooling, but this is not always the best solution for every family. I know in our case, it would be a disservice to my children. I would definately like to hear what you have to say, but I don't think a blanket statement like "all Christians should pull their kids out of public schools" is helpful without a viable alternative.
kamikat

[Maksim]

A link that's worth taking a look at in this context: http://www.schoolandstate.org/home.htm

Personally, when my wife and I have children in the future (God willing), we do not intend to consider government schooling for them. Which is not to say there aren't good individual people who work in those schools, but the system itself is rotten. The priest at the church I visited this morning mentioned in his sermon that in America today we substitute relativistic faith in government for true faith in God, and I think state-run secular schooling certainly contributes to that.

In terms of solutions, I think we need to look at ourselves as a community. Home schooling is increasingly popular, and something that is worth considering. Fortunately there are increasing groups of people fighting to have restrictions and regulations on homeschooling removed, which should make this a more viable option for many. The natural solution beyond that would be Orthodox schools, though this is difficult for a variety of reasons (spread out Orthodox populations, regulations on private schooling, and so on).

[choirfiend]

I'll listen too--but from what I understand your background experience to have been, I'll also add the caveat that YOUR experience is NOT the experience of educators and parents in other situations. So an admonition or assertion that the only possible productive action is to pull children from public school in America is non-transferrable to all parents or all school systems. But I am interested in your experience.

[EricTheRed]

I am afraid it is too late for me to pull out of public

[Maksim]

I don't want to take over rusmeister's thread here, but I just thought I would make a comment on kamikat's response.

Government schools have one huge in-built advantage over private schools (and homeschooling, to an extent) which makes it very difficult for working families to avoid them. As a friend of mine put it recently, the "tuition" at a government school isn't really lower than that at, say, a Catholic school. It's just that you have to pay it whether you use it or not. Thus, sending a child to private school is a huge financial and psychological sacrifice, since you are still paying for the state-sponsored education anyway.

It's a tough situation for parents who can't afford to make that sacrifice, and really I think it harms poor and middle class kids and minority communities (such as Orthodox people!) disproportionately. Starting small private schools is an extremely difficult and expensive endeavor, in large part because so much of our money is automatically spent on the state system.

[EricTheRed]

so do you think the voucher system could be a viable solution?

[Maksim]

so do you think the voucher system could be a viable solution?

If you are asking me, vouchers don't really get at the underlying problem. Forcing people to pay for things against their will is something I can't support on moral grounds, so ultimately I'm not in favor of state-sponsored schools existing at all. I know that many families have to use them today, but it doesn't have to be that way forever. The idea that poor people need public schools is disingenuous at best. Irish Catholics in the 19th century weren't exactly rolling in money, and yet they built a highly succesful system of Catholic schools. In fact, as the links posted by rusmeister allude to, public schools were popular in part because they "saved" children from receiving Catholic instruction. Something to think about from an Orthodox perspective...

I think the whole idea of schools run by the state is very dangerous, especially to poor and middle class families who have no other choice (for the economic reasons I mentioned in an earlier post). Imagine if we had state-run churches, and tithing to them was mandatory. That's effectively what we've got in education today.

[EricTheRed]

but dont vouchers make it so you pay all ur education money to the schools you want? Like instead of paying taxes and going to public schools. You pay the taxes and they give you that money to go to any school?

[rusmeister]

Well, like I said, everyone has an opinion (see my point #2) - please note that! (Not that I object to them...)

Kami - I gave away the surprise ending on purpose. You have to either reject (ignore) what I'm saying and go on doing what you're doing, or listen to the end, and come to the only conclusion I can see any Christian that loves their kids and wants to raise them in a godly way can come to.

CF - everything hinges on knowing what I know, and what I'm trying to say, after a few years of trying to say it, is that very few people know what I know (it takes a very specific life path to have learned what I have learned) and that most people have built-in defensive reactions (see 'Pavlov's dogs') to what I'm trying to say. This world does belong to Satan for the time being, so please bear with me. I'm fully aware that most people (including teachers - the word educator now has a bad taste in my mouth - every parent should be an 'educator') do not have my experience - this is an extremely complex subject, or if you like, jigsaw puzzle, of which most people only see fragments. I won't even pretend to see every piece, but I will assert that I've got more than most, and the resulting picture is horrifying. If a Christian community won't listen, then maybe I am crazy. At this point, either I need to write a book, or be committed.

(I saw that Prawnik has quite a few pieces himself, btw - so at least I'm not entirely alone...).

My advance hint for now is that it helps a lot to have completed a state certification program, worked for at least a few years in a public school and then to have left the public payroll. Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."

Maksim, a lot of people say what you do about private schools, so as food for thought, I attended public up to and into the 8th grade, at which point my mother pulled her 4 younger children from public, including moi, and sent to a private Baptist school - anybody familiar with A.C.E.? This school was organized by the church, which wanted to have an alternative to public and expensive private schools. My family was quite poor - she fed our family on the $60 or so a month my father gave her (in the 70's and 80's) - so my mother worked at the school full-time to knock down the tuition.* I graduated with a non-state accredited diploma. The Air Force wouldn't recognize my diploma, but the Navy did, and it was in some part due to my efforts through my Congressman that all armed services eventually acknowledged non-state diplomas.
I subsequently darn near aced every ETS and N** test they threw at me.

So my own schooling included both public (from which I learned very little, except for some math, to be fair) and private schools. A basis for comparison.

* There were no 'teachers' at this school. They taught us to teach ourselves and the mothers and principal answered our questions and otherwise helped us.

[OnTheWay]

I went to Lutheran grade school and jr. high and then a high school that was supported by evangelical churches. I knew a lot of my peers had parents that were scraficing a lot to send them, and I don't think I really understood why at the time. I have to say, after spending a couple of years as a tutor I understand why people would give till it hurts to keep their kids out of public schools. I had a girl that was a junior tutoring her in history. It turned out her biggest problem was that she was for all practical purposes illiterate. That's not all the school's fault, but a big chunk of the blame does lie with them.

I think vouchers could be an effective solution to the problem. As it stands public schools don't have to compete to get their funding. If people could decide what schools were getting their tax dollars the public educational system would either have to shape up or cease to be.

[nutroll]

I have a question, which is a bit of a tangent to the discussion, but if vouchers were instituted, how would the transition work? The way I see it, if public schools are really so terrible that we need to come up with a solution to the problem, won't most parents choose to take their children elsewhere? Even if the schools are not that bad, the impression given by instituting such a program is that your children will be better off elsewhere. I can't imagine that there are many private schools capable of taking in a large influx of new students. Certainly not in the numbers such a program could create. Inevitably, there would be those who really need to get out of a public school setting, because of a real problem, that would be unable to go to private schools because they are full. These children would then continue attending a dying public school, a public school that is drastically underfunded, perhaps to the point that they can't even afford to pay the utilities on the giant empty school building.

I know there are problems with public schooling, and that there need to be effective solutions for the sake of the children, but I can't shake the feeling that voucher programs are just a way for people who prefer private schools to not pay extra for them...

[Maksim]

nutroll,


Vouchers are a confusing issue to me as well, I don't really understand what long-term benefits they have over simply abolishing the government-controlled school system and letting people keep their money to begin with. A voucher program would just waste money through bureaucracy, as far as I can imagine.

As far as an influx of kids in such a scenario, remember that private schools would have time to prepare...it's not as though this kind of thing would happen over night. I'm sure parents, churches, community groups, and so on would set up new ones, as well. Furthermore, there would be nothing to stop ex-government schools from becoming private themselves, and competing fairly against the current private schools. It would just bring an end to the gravy train for bureaucrats who can't compete on the free market.

[rusmeister]

The concept of vouchers is not without merit, but it is approaching the problem from the wrong end. Knowing the cause of a disease is the true key to stopping it, not simply treating the symptoms.

The history of education has a lot to do with it. Have you read the reading I recommended and does your own knowledge of the history of US education corraborate Gatto's research?

Anyway, on with my story. I don't know a better way to get all this across.

I escaped from the military as soon as my term of service allowed. Armed with my GED, SAT and CLEP test scores, as well as some Navy-supported overseas academic credit, I was immediately accepted into college and earned my B.A. and M.A. Met a cute Russian girl, got married, had a child, and after long and painful searching, fell by accident into teaching in Moscow. I loved it! The children were great, the adults enthusiastic, and in general I realized that I had found my calling. I spent 4 years there, teaching about 40 hrs in class a week (how about that, teachers, huh?) and accumulated upwards of 6,000 hrs. of classroom experience. I then left that to return to the States (and my family life fell apart), and began trying to obtain a teacher’s certificate. I immediately ran against the wall of requirements that has been created to control entrance into the teaching field. My education and experience was close to worthless. I was flabbergasted. I had hoped to be able to take a few courses and be accepted at least as a ‘beginning’ teacher. What I found was a minimum of 2 more years of full-time study after fulfilling a veritable maze of requirements just to get into the program. (A lot of people go through this and take it for granted, without ever questioning the need for so many requirements.)

I passed their tests (and got a perfect 300 out of 300 on the Russian exam to boot) but severe underemployment forced me to leave, so I went to California, where a childhood friend had assured me that CA was ‘desperate’ for teachers, so I threw my worldly goods into a small trailer and moved west. But there I met the same walls I had encountered in NY. Unemployed, I soon found myself homeless. I was the one that was desperate, and ending it all frequently crossed my mind.

A secular men’s group helped me start to turn myself around, and eventually, to patch my marriage. I found a school that was willing to hire me on an emergency certificate (called credentials out there) as long as I got into a program and made progress toward my credential, which I did. It took me the better part of a year to fulfill the requirements just to get IN to the state program (and I felt like the acceptance requirements themselves would be sufficient for the certificate). So I was working full-time developing an ESL (English as a Second Language program) at my school, a high school, working towards getting a real apartment to bring my family to live with me and pursuing my teaching credential.

What unfolded at the school and district was that they were both in a big mess. I was in a Title 1 school (that was simultaneously a magnet school[!]), where immigrants were deliberately bussed from downtown in the name of desegregation. Large school, nobody knew anybody except for some of the regular teachers (and we had a 15-20% teacher and admin turnover each year). I gradually realized that anonymity in large schools is a prime enabler of all the outrageous behavior that goes on there. Clueless immigrants, many of whom didn’t want to have been ripped away from family and friends in Mexico, initially respectful, by their 5th month at the school they began to behave like all the other kids they saw around them. The teacher’s lounge, where most of the teachers helplessly complain. Some very good people, bewildered as to why all their efforts were constantly frustrated, either by rebellious kids or by the indifferent district. An attendance office with huge prison-like bars, and the school design itself like a prison. (No wonder kids were rebellious – I should add that attendance is mandatory and the kids are not allowed to leave school grounds until 2:30.) Staff meetings where teachers of the same discipline were rarely, if ever allowed to get together to work on improving their craft, where the entire agenda was what was to be passed down from district, county and state offices. Ironic that the very institutions that were ostensibly meant to aid the teachers in teaching are now prime instruments in obstructing the teachers. Having to sit for 2 to 2 and a half hours after school listening to “standards-based education”, blah blah. Everyone knew it was baloney – the career teachers learned to talk the lingo (we all had to, to one degree or another), many without really believing in it. Sure, kids got ‘A’s, honor roll and all that – but when I saw some of that honor work in the teacher’s lounge, it was quite sad to think that what would have passed for mediocre 6th-grade work in my day was ‘honor’ in 10th. And the teachers were relatively pleased, because so much of student work was significantly worse.

...to be continued...

[OnTheWay]

I have a question, which is a bit of a tangent to the discussion, but if vouchers were instituted, how would the transition work? The way I see it, if public schools are really so terrible that we need to come up with a solution to the problem, won't most parents choose to take their children elsewhere? Even if the schools are not that bad, the impression given by instituting such a program is that your children will be better off elsewhere. I can't imagine that there are many private schools capable of taking in a large influx of new students.

Private schools would certainly be able to expand to take on the excess. The high school I went to had 400 students 9-12 when I started and 673 when I graduated. Sure there were a few growing pains, but the simple fact is with the increased funding and the simple fact private schools are vastly more effiecent they could handle the growth.
Even with that fact public schools would have to "get down to business" and it wouldn't be as massive of an exodus as you seem to think. It would also give the parents a lot more control over what goes on in the classroom. For example, the school admin would actually have to listen when parents said they didn't want their children taught about sodomy.

Certainly not in the numbers such a program could create. Inevitably, there would be those who really need to get out of a public school setting, because of a real problem, that would be unable to go to private schools because they are full.

Private schools, by the sheer fact public schools are so bad, are already full. The only problem is they don't have the funding to meet the expansion currently. With the voucher system they would have the funding to meet the needs.

These children would then continue attending a dying public school, a public school that is drastically underfunded, perhaps to the point that they can't even afford to pay the utilities on the giant empty school building.

We're spending $15,000 now and people are still whining about underfunded public schools. The reality is that schools would simply have to cut the fat. Our local high school has two olympic size pools, three gyms, two soccer/football "practice" fields with 1/4 track in addition to a sports complex that seats 9,000 people. That's absurd.

I know there are problems with public schooling, and that there need to be effective solutions for the sake of the children, but I can't shake the feeling that voucher programs are just a way for people who prefer private schools to not pay extra for them...

There are a lot of people that simply don't make enough, even with great scrafice to pay for both public schools and to send their kids to private schools. Basically, what you're telling them is that their kids deserve a second rate, and that's being generous, education so the state can fund a huge waste system that we call public education.

[nutroll]

Private schools would certainly be able to expand to take on the excess. The high school I went to had 400 students 9-12 when I started and 673 when I graduated. Sure there were a few growing pains, but the simple fact is with the increased funding and the simple fact private schools are vastly more effiecent they could handle the growth.
Even with that fact public schools would have to "get down to business" and it wouldn't be as massive of an exodus as you seem to think. It would also give the parents a lot more control over what goes on in the classroom. For example, the school admin would actually have to listen when parents said they didn't want their children taught about sodomy.

I think that the growth you are talking about would be eclipsed if people didn't have to pony up for an education. I also think that if they grew too quickly, the quality of the education would suffer. Also, I don't think administrators would pay that much attention to what parents want. They would teach what they want to teach, and you would take your kids elsewhere if you didn't agree.


Private schools, by the sheer fact public schools are so bad, are already full. The only problem is they don't have the funding to meet the expansion currently. With the voucher system they would have the funding to meet the needs.

That was precisely my point. It is not like there are private schools sitting empty waiting for vouchers to be passed so that kids can go there. There are full schools with parents waiting for a voucher so they can stop paying.



We're spending $15,000 now and people are still whining about underfunded public schools. The reality is that schools would simply have to cut the fat. Our local high school has two olympic size pools, three gyms, two soccer/football "practice" fields with 1/4 track in addition to a sports complex that seats 9,000 people. That's absurd.

That is absurd, but it is part and parcel of the way that all education has become a competition. Look at how colleges have to keep expanding and adding new and better amenities so that children will attend there. Public schools already feel that they need to "bribe" children into coming to school by making it more fun, then in addition, we want them to directly compete with more schools to get the kids to choose theirs? We'll be looking at a lot more sports complexes in the future. And my point still stands that the public schools will be hemorrhaging money if there is a mass exodus, and those that are left in public schools will suffer because of it.



There are a lot of people that simply don't make enough, even with great scrafice to pay for both public schools and to send their kids to private schools. Basically, what you're telling them is that their kids deserve a second rate, and that's being generous, education so the state can fund a huge waste system that we call public education.

I am not telling them any such thing. I just think that vouchers are not tested, and not necessarily the way to go. And I personally think that public schools are not as bad as others make them out to be. I attended public school as did all of my family, and I went into college as prepared as almost everyone else there. For other matters I had my family. I do think it is strange that parents would spend what amounts to an entire parent's salary in some cases to send their child to private school, or would give up an entire salary so that one of the parents can homeschool, when a few extra hours of a parent's time can make a huge difference in the education of their children without spending vast amounts of money. But I have no kids, and am paying for others to attend school. I guess if the voucher system included a voucher for some Dairy Queen Blizzards or better yet a voucher that I could apply against my student loans I might see more logic in it.

[OnTheWay]

I think that the growth you are talking about would be eclipsed if people didn't have to pony up for an education.

That's problem one of your thinking, everyone is already "ponying up" for an education. If you are a property owner you pay property taxes to schools and if you're a renter than you're paying your landlord's property taxes so either way you're already paying.
Furthermore, the voucher would only cover the part of your property taxes that goes to public schools. In the vast majority of cases this would still mean some of the tution comes out of pocket.

I also think that if they grew too quickly, the quality of the education would suffer.

In the last 20 years private education has grown leaps and bounds, and private school students still out preform their peers in public schools across the board. The increased funding would simply make it easier to find teachers.

Also, I don't think administrators would pay that much attention to what parents want. They would teach what they want to teach, and you would take your kids elsewhere if you didn't agree.

But you seem to forget that in this case the admin's jobs depend on the school having enough money to stay afloat. If they don't listen to the parents, and the students leave the admin will have no more jobs. It's a simple fact of business, and the reason monopolies are illegal, if you have one then you can do whatever you want. If you have competion you have to do what the customer wants.



That was precisely my point. It is not like there are private schools sitting empty waiting for vouchers to be passed so that kids can go there. There are full schools with parents waiting for a voucher so they can stop paying.

See, once again we arrive at the basic philosophical issue. You clearly believe that tax money "belongs" to the government. I don't, I believe tax money belongs to the people paying the taxes. No one stops paying because of vouchers, they simply have a choice in what happens to their money.


That is absurd, but it is part and parcel of the way that all education has become a competition. Look at how colleges have to keep expanding and adding new and better amenities so that children will attend there.

Yes, that is absolutely true. And while America's public education system is failing our university system is the hands down best in the world. The competition among our universities drives them to new heights because they have to, or they cease to be.

Public schools already feel that they need to "bribe" children into coming to school by making it more fun, then in addition, we want them to directly compete with more schools to get the kids to choose theirs?

The issue here is parents, not kids. If our public schools had to compete like our universities do then the same level of excellence we see at the university level would be in the school system as well. Competition drives people and organizations to do ever more with what they have so that they can have more resources. As it stands public schools have a monopoly, and do not have to preform to earn they keep. The result is despite spending more than any other nation on earth in education we have the worst schools in the industrialized world.




I am not telling them any such thing. I just think that vouchers are not tested, and not necessarily the way to go. And I personally think that public schools are not as bad as others make them out to be.

By every standardized testing done internationally American public schools are the worst in the industrialized world. There are certainly individual public schools that are fine, however we have to deal with the system as a whole.

I attended public school as did all of my family, and I went into college as prepared as almost everyone else there.

Once again, there are individual public schools that do fine. On the whole however, the fact remains there are graduating seniors slipping through as functional illiterates. That should not be possible given the sheer amount of money spent.

For other matters I had my family. I do think it is strange that parents would spend what amounts to an entire parent's salary in some cases to send their child to private school, or would give up an entire salary so that one of the parents can homeschool,

There's a lot more too it than just quality of education, although that is a top reason. While I can't endorse some of the theology kids going to protestant or Catholic schools would get at least you never have to worry that one day the surprise guest speaker is going to teach your 10th grader about the "joys of fisting." Nor that your 3rd grader is learning that sodomy is perfectly normal and acceptable.
You can count on being able to send your child to an environment were a dress code will be enforced. Where unacceptable behavior won't be tolerated because the teachers and the admin find it more of a headache to deal with paperwork regarding discpline than to just let it go. I can think of no shortage of reasons why someone would make such a scrafice.

when a few extra hours of a parent's time can make a huge difference in the education of their children without spending vast amounts of money.

Parents that send their children to private schools are also much more likely to be involved.

But I have no kids, and am paying for others to attend school. I guess if the voucher system included a voucher for some Dairy Queen Blizzards or better yet a voucher that I could apply against my student loans I might see more logic in it.

Most voucher programs I've seen tend to allow people without children not to have to pay for schools, which is very fair in my opinion.

[nutroll]

That's problem one of your thinking, everyone is already "ponying up" for an education.

Believe me, I know that I pay taxes which support education, by "ponying up" I meant the additional cost of education if you choose to go private. Again, I am not saying that parents should have to, just trying to say that I don't think vouchers are necessarily the way to go. My point was that without the added expense of paying for private school (in addition to paying taxes), there would likely be a huge influx into the private system. Do you not think that this would happen?


In the last 20 years private education has grown leaps and bounds, and private school students still out preform their peers in public schools across the board. The increased funding would simply make it easier to find teachers.

That's over 20 years, I am talking about a massive influx of kids. I understand that it is possible for a private school to expand, I also know that private schools tend to have better performing students, but that says nothing about whether they would be able to quickly expand to accomodate large numbers of students. Also, I tend to think that part of why private schools thrive compared to public schools is that they tend to get kids from good families who are dedicated to their children's education. If any kid can now go to a private school, you would have kids whose parents don't necessarily care to spend time helping their children but had heard that school x was a good school. This may imbalance the system.

But you seem to forget that in this case the admin's jobs depend on the school having enough money to stay afloat. If they don't listen to the parents, and the students leave the admin will have no more jobs. It's a simple fact of business, and the reason monopolies are illegal, if you have one then you can do whatever you want. If you have competion you have to do what the customer wants.

Does Walmart care whether your shopping experience was really pleasureable? They want the bare minimum to keep people from complaining constantly. Do you go into a grocery store and tell them that you want them to sell cars? No. You go to the car dealership instead. Just as you would choose the school that says up-front that they don't teach "the Joys of Fisting." But if they decide to teach something you disagree with, they are not going to change unless everyone complains, You're still stuck with a limited number of choices regardless.



See, once again we arrive at the basic philosophical issue. You clearly believe that tax money "belongs" to the government. I don't, I believe tax money belongs to the people paying the taxes. No one stops paying because of vouchers, they simply have a choice in what happens to their money.

"Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's." Once the check to the IRS clears your bank, it isn't your money anymore. That's economics. Now you can push your representatives to use the money wisely, and I would encourage that, but if the government decided not to provide education at all, you would still have to pay taxes. As I said before, I have no kids and pay taxes, but I was educated by public schools, as are my nephews, so I do so gladly. Do I want the most for my money? yes, and I will vote to get it, but I don't personally think vouchers are the way to go.




Yes, that is absolutely true. And while America's public education system is failing our university system is the hands down best in the world. The competition among our universities drives them to new heights because they have to, or they cease to be.

Our universities are a mess. They think more about sports and cushy dorms than about education. Smart kids are leaving school to work menial jobs because they can't afford the bloated tuition that comes with paying a coach millions of dollars, constantly putting in new facilities, and never caring what the kids learn. There was a PBS special not too long ago that chronicled much of the mess that is our University system and it is appalling... and private.


By every standardized testing done internationally American public schools are the worst in the industrialized world. There are certainly individual public schools that are fine, however we have to deal with the system as a whole.

Again, I agree that there are serious problems with education. I still have no faith in some corrupt economic system to correct the problem. Capitalism works, but it is essentially based on greed, and I have a hard time figuring out how a system based on greed can produce good results.

There's a lot more too it than just quality of education, although that is a top reason. While I can't endorse some of the theology kids going to protestant or Catholic schools would get at least you never have to worry that one day the surprise guest speaker is going to teach your 10th grader about the "joys of fisting." Nor that your 3rd grader is learning that sodomy is perfectly normal and acceptable.
You can count on being able to send your child to an environment were a dress code will be enforced. Where unacceptable behavior won't be tolerated because the teachers and the admin find it more of a headache to deal with paperwork regarding discpline than to just let it go. I can think of no shortage of reasons why someone would make such a scrafice.

I don't really want to get into the "joys of fisting" and sodomy as I don't think that it needs to be a part of this conversation. There are certain things that parents don't want their children to learn from a teacher, and while I respect that I think there should be some instruction for those whose parents won't teach them. There should be an easy fix which is that parents who object can have their kids go to astudy hall. And again, I really don't want to get into all that is wrong with education, I just wanted to discuss vouchers, and I apologize for hijacking the thread.

[EricTheRed]

Couldnt some private school charge some over the voucher?

[Maksim]

"Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's." Once the check to the IRS clears your bank, it isn't your money anymore. That's economics. Now you can push your representatives to use the money wisely, and I would encourage that, but if the government decided not to provide education at all, you would still have to pay taxes.

But with a democratic system, we are Caesar. What right do you have to support money being taken from others for the purposes you want, however noble they might otherwise be? We cannot talk about the money being "owned" by the IRS as if we had nothing to do with it, when the IRS uses force to obtain it and we support that force. Do I have a right to jail my neighbor for not giving enough money to the local public school? Surely not. So I don't see how I have a right to vote for it either.

[nutroll]

But with a democratic system, we are Caesar. What right do you have to support money being taken from others for the purposes you want, however noble they might otherwise be? We cannot talk about the money being "owned" by the IRS as if we had nothing to do with it, when the IRS uses force to obtain it and we support that force. Do I have a right to jail my neighbor for not giving enough money to the local public school? Surely not. So I don't see how I have a right to vote for it either.

You are right to an extent. You can vote for whatever candidate you think will use your money wisely. That being said, once you vote, the candidate can do what they want, and they can collect whatever taxes they choose to, and then they can do with it what they want, and your only real recourse is to vote them out the next time around.

[rusmeister]

I suppose I’ll continue with my story and hope to be heard that way. Simply discussing solutions is useless until you fully understand the nature of the problem.

My experience as a teacher is actually, I think, the least convincing part of my story. Many of you have heard of horror stories in the schools and have become inured to them, and after all, it might be “just that school” or “just that teacher”.

I’ll just reiterate that parents who depend on the school to be a babysitter while they go to work have a solid incentive to at least subconsciously defend the school system, and therefore discount evidence against it, as do teachers and administrators who make their living via that system.

Anyway, when I finally pulled my family back together and brought them to live with me in CA, my son was by then ready for 2nd grade, so I took my wife and we went to visit a local elementary school with an excellent reputation. I was ready for potential problems, but was also ready to put up with them sympathetically, thinking, “Hey, I’m a public school teacher. I know the system’s not perfect!” Upon interviewing the principle, we quickly learned that there was no set curriculum – the teachers taught what they saw fit, and that there was no schedule – the teachers got around to stuff when they got around to them. That made us very uneasy – that’s fine and dandy in homeschooling, when the teacher is the parent, but to entrust those choices to a stranger… The final straw was when he took us to the classroom (in session, it was early October, I think). The library had been converted into 3 classrooms by the expediency of 6-ft high dividers, and in ‘our’ class, we saw a 20-yr old ‘teacher’ sitting on a desk with a can of Coke in his hand, and kids laying on the desks and floor, reading. We said, “That’s great, but our son can do this at home.” So my wife began homeschooling and imported the program used in her town in Russia (where we live now, actually).

Again, in a home or even private school setting, with clear goals and known teachers, I would have no problem with any one of those anamolies. But the combination of all 3, with unknown (and clearly young and inexperienced) strangers, it was intolerable, all the more so because in our case, our son has mostly grown up without TV, and lays around and reads all the time, anyway. To have no idea what is ostensibly going to be taught, and in what timeframe, and to trustingly give your child over to that is insane.

To quote Dr. Seuss, “But that’s not all, no, that’s not all!”

…to be continued…

[OnTheWay]

Believe me, I know that I pay taxes which support education, by "ponying up" I meant the additional cost of education if you choose to go private.

Once again, there would still be additional costs. Even at Catholic schools, which tend to be the most affordable, the voucher would not cover the tutition. It would merely make the out of pocket costs affordable enough that more Americans had an equal chance to see their kids get a better education.

Again, I am not saying that parents should have to, just trying to say that I don't think vouchers are necessarily the way to go. My point was that without the added expense of paying for private school (in addition to paying taxes), there would likely be a huge influx into the private system. Do you not think that this would happen?

The influx is there with or without vouchers. Sure, it would increase but then again there are going to be many people that are simply unwilling to front any out of pocket expenses for their kid's education. And the fact it would take time for private schools to grow to meet the demand would keep many kids in public schools creating a more moderate transition from a big government controled monopoly to a more effecient privitized system.



Also, I tend to think that part of why private schools thrive compared to public schools is that they tend to get kids from good families who are dedicated to their children's education. If any kid can now go to a private school, you would have kids whose parents don't necessarily care to spend time helping their children but had heard that school x was a good school. This may imbalance the system.

Parental involvment is a factor, but at the end of the day the parent is largely a guiding factor. As an example, I took AP Calc in high school. The other day someone asked me to look at college level trig work and I found that I'd forgotten pretty much all of it because I never use it. As such these parents are the ones teaching their kids, but making sure their kids do the work they're exposed to by quality educators. The issue with public schools is that kids aren't be exposed to quality education.
Of course with an increase in volume the margin by which private school students out preform their public counter parts would decrease somewhat, that always will happen when a larger number of people have an option.


Does Walmart care whether your shopping experience was really pleasureable? They want the bare minimum to keep people from complaining constantly.

However, prices are Walmarts competive angle, not service per se.

Do you go into a grocery store and tell them that you want them to sell cars?

That doesn't even make sense. However, what does is to ask whether a grocery store will start carrying a brand if customers ask for it. The answer is often yes, because if they refuse to their customers will go elsewhere to get it.

But if they decide to teach something you disagree with, they are not going to change unless everyone complains, You're still stuck with a limited number of choices regardless.

Once again, not everyone has to complain. If enough students leave the school will close. As it stands the admin and teachers can do what they want because they get their funding regardless. Vouchers simply give people a choice.



"Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's." Once the check to the IRS clears your bank, it isn't your money anymore. That's economics.

There is no Caesar, what we have is an elected government that is obligated to do what the people wish with the people's funding. Since the people are Caesar and govern ourselves everything that belongs to the government remains firmly the property of the people.


Our universities are a mess. They think more about sports and cushy dorms than about education.

Sports are a fairly large funding source for schools, and help keep tutition costs down. Our universities are not a mess, which is why thousands of students from all over the world flock to them.

Smart kids are leaving school to work menial jobs because they can't afford the bloated tuition that comes with paying a coach millions of dollars, constantly putting in new facilities, and never caring what the kids learn.

In state tutition to public universities is averaging less than 7,000 dollars across the country. My first year at the UW the tutition was less than my senior year of HS. That's hardly unafforable. Once again, sports at the university level MAKE the school money. Students aren't paying coaches salaries, the people that attend games and buy merchendise are, and to add to it they also help keep tutition down.
At the university level we're dealing with adults. It's your job to make sure you're learning, not the universities. Which again, considering American university programs are far superior to anything else. The reason is quite simple, if your physics department wants a proton acclerator it has to pay for it. If we limited it to public funding, like Europe does, we'd have fewer universities and fewer resources to provide the expensive technology that is required for that level of education. Which is why American universities have programs and equipment that cannot be matched anywhere else, and it's also why foriegn students come here in droves.


Again, I agree that there are serious problems with education. I still have no faith in some corrupt economic system to correct the problem. Capitalism works, but it is essentially based on greed, and I have a hard time figuring out how a system based on greed can produce good results.

Sometimes we have to deal with human nature. The profit motive drives people to do things and create things they wouldn't have bothered to do otherwise. Let's look at the old USSR. Without the profit motive no one was especially motivitated to do anything. They ran their resources to the brink using bad production methods and old equipment, and the FSU will be recovering for another decade for it. For example, they were using a five pound block of steel to make the reciever for one AK-47, and they churned them out by the millions just to produce them. If you don't have to make money there's no reason to be effecient or to avoid waste.
The profit motive drives people to make the same product wasting as little as possible. The competition created by the capitalist system requires that individuals not only not be wasteful but that they produce ever better products. It's really very basic.



I don't really want to get into the "joys of fisting" and sodomy as I don't think that it needs to be a part of this conversation. There are certain things that parents don't want their children to learn from a teacher, and while I respect that I think there should be some instruction for those whose parents won't teach them. There should be an easy fix which is that parents who object can have their kids go to astudy hall. And again, I really don't want to get into all that is wrong with education, I just wanted to discuss vouchers, and I apologize for hijacking the thread.

But again, those things are taught regularly in American classrooms without the parent's knowledge or consent. Teaching a child sexual values, or not teaching them, is up to the parent not the school. Your position that there should be some forced instruction could very well mean that a school deciding that your Orthodox Christian views are sexuality before marriage amount to "not teaching" and that they're going to tell your kids whatever they want. That's not the role of schools.

[rusmeister]

I'm still working on the next part: the teacher certification programs. It'll take a couple of days and I want to say everything right.

For now, I'd like to offer you 2 critical questions raised by John Stormer:
...If you ever get the opportunity, ask your state or local superintendent these two questions. The questions were:
1) What do you see the nature of man to be?
2) What should be his purpose in life?

...invariably an educator will answer, "We don't deal with questions like that."...it is impossible to construct a system or philosophy of education without consciously or unconsciously making a definite determination about a child's basic nature and what his purpose in life should be. Those answers ultimately control all other education decisions.

These are precisely the answers you will not be able to get out of these people (unless you are a teacher candidate), and yet those answers determine what they intend to have your kids taught. Are you in the slightest interested?

[choirfiend]

I'm going to read this thread in detail (I was giving it some time to develop before heading back in) but a statistic I read recently was interesting when it comes to what/how values and world-views are instilled into our children.
The average student spends, on average, 1.5 times the amount of time they spend in school in front of a media source (whether in school through videos or at home watching TV, listening to radio/Ipods or on the computer).

Me thinks the media are being bigger teachers than the teachers.

[choirfiend]

I'm hearing your experience, Rus, and I'm waiting to hear more, but thus far your experience is directly contradicted by everything I have seen in my experience in two elementary systems in two different states and three high school systems in three different states. I think you experienced some unfortunate things.

[rusmeister]

Let me ask a question here. If we take any field, professional or institutional, are the knowledge and opinions of some greater than others or are all opinions of equal value? Is 20-yr old John's opinion (who wants to apply to medical school) on the American medical system equal in weight to the opinion of Dr. Bob Smith, a 55-yr old doctor with 20 years in ER and 15 yrs of private practice, who has also had administrative experience (perforce) handling malpractice suits at his hospital?

What I would do, with Orthodoxy, professional questions or anything else, is seek out the people with a better basis to know something and listen to them. Even if I don't agree with or like their answers.

But if you're not seeking any answers, if you think there's no problem or you understand why the problems are there, I have nothing to say to you.

I'm trying to tell Orthodox Christian parents what I have learned, what I have seen with my own eyes and what I now believe to be true. If that's of no interest, read no further. I don't want to argue. But I do believe that I have a better basis for knowing what I'm talking about on this particular question than most people, just as you might feel about questions in your own professional area. Personal experience is really important (although even that's not enough, by itself - conceded that a person could have had really bad luck, statistically speaking).

[rusmeister]

Personal experience is not everything, and for me it wasn’t enough to understand what was going on. In fact, I was in the middle of it for almost 4 years and was unable to understand it. Why were not only my district, but county and even state rules, directives and guidelines hampering teachers and bogging them down with work, rather than enabling and helping? Why are the elementary schools churning out such a uniformly low level of quality, with only a tiny minority, an elite if you will, making it through not only with good grades, but with real results? I didn’t understand, and was just as confused and bewildered as the other teachers. 6 years ago, I wouldn’t have believed me (the ‘me’ I am now). After all, it seems there are good teachers, good pupils and good schools in America. How does that fit into the picture of the overall general mess?

I’ve already told a little (and just a very little) of what one can experience as a teacher in a school, and as a parent. Fine and dandy. Lots of people have experiences. My experience is a part of the picture but it wasn't enough to enable me to see a bigger picture. When I left the states I was simply bewildered. What I'm trying to show here is that it is NOT a case of good luck/bad luck, but that the public education as we know it today was deliberately designed to shape people in an ungodly way, that its ultimate goal is not to teach reading, writing and arithmetic, except circumstantially, but rather social engineering.

What we think of as political correctness seemed to spring up everywhere gradually over the past 25 years or so, rather than being some idea foisted on us by some particular political lobby or tiny, but very vocal group. It very quickly insinuated itself into all levels of government and business very quickly. How could that have happened? The answer lies in our schools.

How do I know all this? I have been in more places (schools and education establishments than most people can boast of (east coast, west coast, overseas, public, private, elementary, secondary, school, district and county ed operation) and seen most aspects of the system, most importantly much of the behind-the-curtains stuff.

In the words of Saruman from PJ's film version of LOTR, "I have seen it."
I could take that one step further and paraphrase Gandalf (again, from the film) and say, "This system has been designed with one purpose in mind. To create Lewis's 'men without chests'*."
*C. S. Lewis: "The Abolition of Man"

I didn't understand until I read Gatto's history. But Gatto, like Lewis, only means something if you know from your own experience that they are speaking the truth. Many people don't understand Gatto because they have not seen it for themselves, so of course it sounds crackpot. I'm trying to figure out if there is any way to tell people whose natural reaction is to write this off as crazy. We question everything, it seems. Why not question: why is school the way it is, with large populations of 1,000 kids or more, where classes are segregated by age, having kids spend their most productive hours with peers by age + 1 strange adult, with kids moving from room to room at the sound of a bell (Pavlov’s dogs, anyone?)?

…to be continued…

Coming up: what goes on in teacher certification programs

[rusmeister]

Teacher certification programs: Pt 1 – Getting In

I’m just posting, for those interested, what I actually saw in pursuing my state teaching certificate. I’m not seeking any debate; I just want to lay out facts, and I’ll try to avoid conclusions until the end. (Warning – this part is longer and will likely take a few posts.)

I hope to eventually turn this into a book, and am trying to figure out how to lay all this stuff out. (This is where a ghost writer would come in handy, I suppose.) It actually was helpful that some said they would not read my work, or Gatto’s work, because I gave away my conclusions in the beginning. (Note – withhold conclusions; stick to the facts.)

When I was hired by my school on an ‘emergency’ certificate, I had to agree to make regular progress in pursuing my regular full-time certificate. This I eagerly did, with no idea what was in store for me. I inquired at different universities, and because of the cost, I wound up enrolling in the state university. Later, when I had begun my program, a less-experienced colleague enrolled in a more intensive one-year course in a National University, and we compared notes.

It took me the better part of a year to meet the requirements to get into the program. There is an entire legion of them. It is not enough to hold a degree. The application form (http://www.sfsu.edu/~cstpc/downloads/SSP_packet.pdf) is only the beginning. The number of fees that had to be paid, documents obtained, etc. is mind-boggling. I had to pay over $125 in fees just to have myself fingerprinted by the state – and to think – criminals are fingerprinted for free! The money-making apparatus of the bureaucracy at every stage of the process is mind-boggling. My Master’s degree and enormous classroom experience meant nothing as far as getting a certificate was concerned.
Here is a short list (remember, this is not for the certificate (credential in western lingo, but simply to be accepted. There are fees for many of the requirements on this list (and it is not a complete list, either), adding up to hundreds of dollars before even beginning to pay
B. Single Subject Credential Program Application
1. Program application pages 1 and 2
2. Processing fee $25.00
3. Official transcripts from all colleges or universities attended
4. Bachelor’s Degree must be posted before starting the
5. GPA (2.67 overall or 2.75 in last 60 semester units)
6. Statement of Purpose
7. Early Field Experience in classroom setting
8. Letters of recommendation (minimum of three)
9. Completion of a Subject Matter Competency program
10. Pass CBEST (California Basic Educational Skills Test)
11. Second Language Requirement
12. LiveScan or proof of prior clearance (fingerprinting)
13. Negative TB test completed within last 12 months

This list won’t be terribly surprising to any college grad, but the point is, that all of this is above and beyond what you had to do to get your degree, and duplicates many of the same requirements unnecessarily, and in addition, more requirements kept coming up. I had to write a couple of essays, and pass the English “Praxis” exam as well as the CBEST. These were only the requirements to be accepted INTO the program, and I darn near felt that that should have BEEN the program. It might also help to know that in my field (ESL) in much of the world, the standard requirement is a certificate that requires a 1 or 2 month course (such as the CELTA). Between signing up and waiting for the tests and other required events, and simply waiting for the next available session, my first year went simply on this application process. Despite this, I was still excited to be a part of it – I had a job, I was putting my family back together, and was on a path toward, as I saw it, professional success.

[Llauralin]

To the last post - wow! Arizona doesn't make things nearly as painful for those who wish to get a post-bachlor teaching certificate. My dad has a degree in English, and decided to come back and teach it after aprox. 20 years.He got hired at a private school for two years with no certificate or experience other than some substitute teaching the year before, and mostly just had to take the proficiency exam, take a semester's worth of classes during summer break, get finger prints, and find a job. That was most of it. Fingerprints cost $60 here - I guess it depends on the state.

Getting certified is rather a pain though. I'm getting a (aptly named) BS degree in art education right now, and it seems engineered with the intention of filtering out anyone who doesn't have a high tolerance for having philisophical drivel crammed down our throats.

Have you ever read anything by Jaques Barzun on education, like Begin Here: the Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning? I find him to be rather better than Gatto.

I'd like to come back to the issue of educational philosophy later, as I've spent much of the past several years discussing it with y parents, but my brain is just too fuzzy for now.

[choirfiend]

Yea, I had all those things. Fundamental subjects, Math, Reading, Writing, and Subject specifice PRAXII, TB test, forms, transcripts from my university, etc. Thankfully, it was amassed over time., built into the program, and it's complicated, but not overwhelming.

In my university, you have to have a 3.0 GPA in your subject specific classes to continue in the program. I like high standards.

[rusmeister]

To the last post - wow! Arizona doesn't make things nearly as painful for those who wish to get a post-bachlor teaching certificate. My dad has a degree in English, and decided to come back and teach it after aprox. 20 years.He got hired at a private school for two years with no certificate or experience other than some substitute teaching the year before, and mostly just had to take the proficiency exam, take a semester's worth of classes during summer break, get finger prints, and find a job. That was most of it. Fingerprints cost $60 here - I guess it depends on the state.

Getting certified is rather a pain though. I'm getting a (aptly named) BS degree in art education right now, and it seems engineered with the intention of filtering out anyone who doesn't have a high tolerance for having philisophical drivel crammed down our throats.

Have you ever read anything by Jaques Barzun on education, like Begin Here: the Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning? I find him to be rather better than Gatto.

I'd like to come back to the issue of educational philosophy later, as I've spent much of the past several years discussing it with y parents, but my brain is just too fuzzy for now.

I'd be interested in reading Barzun, if I could get ahold of him.

Again, the entrance requirements are perhaps the least surprising part of the whole system - they are an inevitable result of enormous systems where nobody knows anybody in societies where most are anonymous; we throw our children in among huge numbers of strangers - a typical elementary school has at least a few hundred, middle schools at least 600-700, high schools well over a thousand, some well over 2, 000. This is the first thing wrong with the picture - that schools are not purely local is one of the major causes of the problems we face. As a result, we take this huge number of largely indefensible requirements for granted.

Anyway, I wish to stress that anyone who is dependent on the existing system, either as a babysitter for their children or for employment, has an automatic incentive to discount what I'm saying, as it is a threat to their manner of livelihood. But there it is.

The problems of a having a huge consumer society preclude a simple solution. I think that in most cases, small schools of not more than 100 or so children and 8-10 teachers, receiving a small but livable wage funded locally, is the best solution.

But my point in posting here is to get people here to start thinking about alternative solutions for there own kids and to stop assuming the public school is doing what they think it's doing. But I haven't yet laid out enough evidence to begin to convince skeptics. That'll take a book, of evidence and facts. (I'm working on it!)

The indoctrination, Llauralin, is precisely that philosophy that you are expected to toe the line to. This is most evident in the courses most geared toward indoctrination. They have various names, like "Social Foundations of Education, The Psychological Basis of Education", "Education and Social Theory", etc. They mention people like John Dewey over and over again, and you wonder, what on earth are they dragging us through all this stuff for? It wasn't until reading Gatto a year after I left the states that I saw it all in hindsight - the shift from teaching as imparting of knowledge to social engineering of children on a massive scale, and the first step is to indoctrinate the teachers, who in turn change the attitudes of a nation in little over a generation.

[rusmeister]

Yea, I had all those things. Fundamental subjects, Math, Reading, Writing, and Subject specifice PRAXII, TB test, forms, transcripts from my university, etc. Thankfully, it was amassed over time., built into the program, and it's complicated, but not overwhelming.

In my university, you have to have a 3.0 GPA in your subject specific classes to continue in the program. I like high standards.

Hi, CF!
I'm wondering if you've completed a state cert program (in music?), and if you could share what courses you were required to take, and if you found that all, most, some or little of the material in the program was relevant and adequately prepared you for the classroom. I'm talking about education philosophy as well - what was the heart of that in your program?

As to GPA - grades are ultimately highly subjective, and a person in 10th grade pulling a 'B' in calculus would be considered a 'worse student' than one pulling an A in algebra. For a more objective standard, I'd compare performance standards with 18th and 19th century writers - can they write on the level of Frederick Douglass or Abraham Lincoln? Thomas Jefferson? Helen Keller? That is our goal, n'est-ce-pas? To produce such well-educated young men and women. Grades can have some value, but are horribly overrated. Comparative performance based on absolute standards is much more effective, and precisely what is missing (despite all the hoopla about 'standards-based education").

My point is that the requirements to become a teacher are increasing all the time. Compare what Laura Ingalls had to do to get her K-3 certificate at the age of 16 (See her account of it in "Little Town on the Prairie") to what we accept as requirements today. Performance (objective) vs grades (subjective).

I am aware, too, that other teachers have gone through the same experience and have different views. It took me a while to figure that one out. But the requirements was just one of the many little crazy things. I was mostly angered by the fact that all of my education (BA, MA) and experience (6,000+ classroom hrs) meant nothing. Requirements are just one of the many little symptoms of what is wrong.

That said, I am all for high standards.

[rusmeister]

Someone here asked me back then what Dewey had to say (for those not in the know, John Dewey was one of the prime driving forces behind the development of our modern educational system, and he is lionized in the teaching cert. programs)

In a word, he is one of the prime figures leading us to the mess we are in today.

This excerpt is his summary on Theories of Morality in Schools.


Summary. The most important problem of moral education in the school concerns the relationship of knowledge and conduct. For unless the learning which accrues
in the regular course of study affects character, it is futile to conceive the moral end as the unifying and culminating end of education. When there is no intimate organic
connection between the methods and materials of knowledge and moral growth, particular lessons and modes of discipline have to be resorted to: knowledge is not integrated into the usual springs of action and the outlook
on life, while morals become moralistic—a scheme of separate virtues.
The two theories chiefly associated with the separation of learning from activity, and hence from morals, are those which cut off inner disposition and motive—the conscious
personal factor—and deeds as purely physical and outer; and which set action from interest in opposition to that from principle. Both of these separations are overcome in an educational scheme where learning is the accompaniment
of continuous activities or occupations
which have a social aim and utilize the materials of typical social situations. For under such conditions, the school becomes itself a form of social life, a miniature community
and one in close interaction with other modes of associated experience beyond school walls. All education which develops power to share effectively in social life is moral. It forms a character which not only does the particular
deed socially necessary but one which is interested in that continuous readjustment which is essential to growth. Interest in learning from all the contacts of life is the essential moral interest.


Pay close attention to his closing sentence in what is the final chapter in the book (generally considered an important one).

Sorry this took so long to dig up.

[Shubunkin]

My sister home schooled her 4 children, and this was supported by her church. They ordered and supplied materials, which she paid for her own kids' books and study supplies, and the church provided a place for the meetings and gatherings for special projects. They also provided for tours and educational trips.

Our boys were sent to Lutheran school, which had its bad moments too, but it was far better there than in the public schools system. They started public school in junior high, which had more problems, but once they went to high school (we had no high school that was private here other than Catholic), and so we sent them back to public school. HUGE mistake. Our kids just weren't ready for it, and it broke them. It ended up one son got expelled over NOTHING. He did poorly with his grades, so therefore the principal had him on his list to find something to expell him for, and don't tell me this doesn't happen, because it definitely does. If they don't like your kid's personality, or whatever, they will find something to expell them for. It was fabricated, and all that!! I would homeschool instead of public school if a private school cannot be afforded. I don't doubt there are some good teachers out there in the public system, but the school boards and the adminstrative levels are completely rotten.

[Grand_Duchess-Elizaveta]

Well, here's what my public school experience was like. Just as a side note, this was not a large, inner city school. This was a tiny public school in middle America. Here are my memories:

Grade 1: I had a teacher who was really mean and loved to yell at kids until they peed their pants in fear. I remember being yelled at by her and being terrified because I had no idea why I was in trouble. I was a very quiet, shy, sensitive kid. I can't imagine what I could have done to justify it.

Grade 2: I had a speech problem (nothing more than a lisp), and my teacher decided that whenever she caught me daydreaming, she would publicly make fun of my speech. She would regularly ridicule me until I cried, and then tell me I may as well go home if I was going to cry. I went home early a lot that year.

Grade 5: I had a pervert for a teacher who was known to stare at the girls breasts, among other weird things.

Grade 6: I had a teacher who would become so upset if you answered a question wrong that he would throw chalk at you, or worse yet, throw both you and your desk across the room (while sitting in your desk, I mean....he was a very large man).

Grade 7: I had a biology teacher who one day decided to go off on the class (having a bad day, I guess). I remember very vividly her telling us that she could not care less if any of us learned anything from her classes. She was paid to teach, whether we learned anything or not. Nice attitude.

High school:
I had a lesbian music/band teacher who had an affair with at least one female student. After this went on for several years, she was finally fired for it. However, she fought it due to "discrimination" because of her sexuality. She won and was given her job back. I also had a couple other lesbian teachers who dated each other off and on. That was pretty weird.

I had an English teacher lecture us in class one day about how immoral it was that more poor women weren't having abortions. She felt it was far more immoral to bring more children into the world if one could not pay for them. I'm pretty sure that lecture had nothing to do with anything we were doing in class that day.

And finally, I remember how my high school volleyball coach threw a party for us team members, complete with lots of free booze at her house. We were all about 16 or 17 years old at the time. It was a pretty wild party.

Now, fast forward to me as an adult working as a rehabilitation counselor. As part of my internship, I was asked to observe a group therapy program (just a support group, really) at a local high school (this was not the same school I had went to, but another school which was not inner city, in a town of about 15,000). Let me tell you, the things I heard the kids talk about in there were truly shocking, even given my own bad experience with a public school. The level of sexual promiscuity and drug use (both of which are common to occur even on school grounds) was REALLY alarming.

I don't know what sort of schooling my husband and I will be able to afford in the future, but I couldn't live with myself if I put my children in public school. To me it would be like dropping my kids into a lion's den.

[kamikat]

I don't know what sort of schooling my husband and I will be able to afford in the future, but I couldn't live with myself if I put my children in public school. To me it would be like dropping my kids into a lion's den.

Here lies the problem. In my county, the Catholics schools cost between $6,000-$10,000 per year per student. The Christian or non-religious schools are even higher. Not only that, but in the Catholic school system, the demand for spots is so high that even parish members get let in on a lottery basis. On a single income, we could not afford $12,000-20,000 to send both our children to private school. And, while home schooling seems to work for some families, it doesn't work for all. I know it would not be a good fit for our family. We have no choice but to send our kids to public school.

[Grand_Duchess-Elizaveta]

Here lies the problem. In my county, the Catholics schools cost between $6,000-$10,000 per year per student. The Christian or non-religious schools are even higher. Not only that, but in the Catholic school system, the demand for spots is so high that even parish members get let in on a lottery basis. On a single income, we could not afford $12,000-20,000 to send both our children to private school. And, while home schooling seems to work for some families, it doesn't work for all. I know it would not be a good fit for our family. We have no choice but to send our kids to public school.
I definitely understand, Kamikat. I don't know how we'll afford a private school, either, but I do know of some other families (friends of ours) who have a pretty limited income with several children, and somehow they are managing it. I think we'll have to start asking some questions about how to do it. And I also understand about homeschooling. I really don't think I could do it. I've also known some kids who were homeschooled and turned out very well educated, but also quite socially retarded. I know that people say that can be avoided, but I think it's difficult. But anyway....I don't want to get off topic and derail anything. Just wanted to say that I totally understand where you are coming from.

[ufonium2]

My hometown school system found excuses to suspend all of the slow kids right before the state aptitude tests. I'm not sure how long this went on, but it didn't stop until social services noticed a huge spike in their clients being suspended at the same time every year. These were good kids who never got into trouble, and then got suspended every March 14th or whatever. Social services and the juvenile courts pretty much exploded on the school board when they figured this out, and rightly so.

If that school system spent half as much time figuring out how to help kids as they do trying to cheat the system, they'd have great schools.

[MariaRegina]

The concept of vouchers is not without merit, but it is approaching the problem from the wrong end. Knowing the cause of a disease is the true key to stopping it, not simply treating the symptoms.

The history of education has a lot to do with it. Have you read the reading I recommended and does your own knowledge of the history of US education corraborate Gatto's research?

Anyway, on with my story. I don't know a better way to get all this across.

I escaped from the military as soon as my term of service allowed. Armed with my GED, SAT and CLEP test scores, as well as some Navy-supported overseas academic credit, I was immediately accepted into college and earned my B.A. and M.A. Met a cute Russian girl, got married, had a child, and after long and painful searching, fell by accident into teaching in Moscow. I loved it! The children were great, the adults enthusiastic, and in general I realized that I had found my calling. I spent 4 years there, teaching about 40 hrs in class a week (how about that, teachers, huh?) and accumulated upwards of 6,000 hrs. of classroom experience. I then left that to return to the States (and my family life fell apart), and began trying to obtain a teacher’s certificate. I immediately ran against the wall of requirements that has been created to control entrance into the teaching field. My education and experience was close to worthless. I was flabbergasted. I had hoped to be able to take a few courses and be accepted at least as a ‘beginning’ teacher. What I found was a minimum of 2 more years of full-time study after fulfilling a veritable maze of requirements just to get into the program. (A lot of people go through this and take it for granted, without ever questioning the need for so many requirements.)

I passed their tests (and got a perfect 300 out of 300 on the Russian exam to boot) but severe underemployment forced me to leave, so I went to California, where a childhood friend had assured me that CA was ‘desperate’ for teachers, so I threw my worldly goods into a small trailer and moved west. But there I met the same walls I had encountered in NY. Unemployed, I soon found myself homeless. I was the one that was desperate, and ending it all frequently crossed my mind.

A secular men’s group helped me start to turn myself around, and eventually, to patch my marriage. I found a school that was willing to hire me on an emergency certificate (called credentials out there) as long as I got into a program and made progress toward my credential, which I did. It took me the better part of a year to fulfill the requirements just to get IN to the state program (and I felt like the acceptance requirements themselves would be sufficient for the certificate). So I was working full-time developing an ESL (English as a Second Language program) at my school, a high school, working towards getting a real apartment to bring my family to live with me and pursuing my teaching credential.

What unfolded at the school and district was that they were both in a big mess. I was in a Title 1 school (that was simultaneously a magnet school[!]), where immigrants were deliberately bussed from downtown in the name of desegregation. Large school, nobody knew anybody except for some of the regular teachers (and we had a 15-20% teacher and admin turnover each year). I gradually realized that anonymity in large schools is a prime enabler of all the outrageous behavior that goes on there. Clueless immigrants, many of whom didn’t want to have been ripped away from family and friends in Mexico, initially respectful, by their 5th month at the school they began to behave like all the other kids they saw around them. The teacher’s lounge, where most of the teachers helplessly complain. Some very good people, bewildered as to why all their efforts were constantly frustrated, either by rebellious kids or by the indifferent district. An attendance office with huge prison-like bars, and the school design itself like a prison. (No wonder kids were rebellious – I should add that attendance is mandatory and the kids are not allowed to leave school grounds until 2:30.) Staff meetings where teachers of the same discipline were rarely, if ever allowed to get together to work on improving their craft, where the entire agenda was what was to be passed down from district, county and state offices. Ironic that the very institutions that were ostensibly meant to aid the teachers in teaching are now prime instruments in obstructing the teachers. Having to sit for 2 to 2 and a half hours after school listening to “standards-based education”, blah blah. Everyone knew it was baloney – the career teachers learned to talk the lingo (we all had to, to one degree or another), many without really believing in it. Sure, kids got ‘A’s, honor roll and all that – but when I saw some of that honor work in the teacher’s lounge, it was quite sad to think that what would have passed for mediocre 6th-grade work in my day was ‘honor’ in 10th. And the teachers were relatively pleased, because so much of student work was significantly worse.

...to be continued...

Yes, there is much wrong with the public school system in America.


DELANO

Has anyone here read Delano by John Orozco? It is a satirical and humorous account of a person who tries to become a California high school teacher.

Be aware that Delano is definitely not Lenten reading and probably should not be read by catechumens, but it does explain the vices and corruption that abound in many California public schools.

Since I studied English 102 under Dr. John Orozco, we were able to ask many questions about the book, and how he was able to get it published. Like many teachers, he had to turn to a private publishing company because his book is definitely not politically correct as it dings just about everybody. ;)

Delano is not an autobiography but it does reflect some of the author's personal memories and events he witnessed as a high school teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). For those interested, not one of his fingers and toes is missing. For details read the book which is available at http://www.amazon.com/Delano-John-Orozco/dp/0966481615/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-2442325-6640939?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173472736&sr=1-1

MANDATED EDUCATIONAL COURSES

Here in California the mandated educational courses are largely psychological with the master teacher serving as a draconian dictator who seems to delight in ridiculing the beliefs and presuppositions of the future teachers.

I am taking a mandatory educational course and I dread each and every class. This particular teacher failed to earn her Ph.D. but she reminds everyone in the class at each and every class that she just missed it by a hair. (I will leave that to your discretion.)

Ego trip #1. Okay, so she wants to be treated and respected as a doctor.

Ego trip #2. She puts down all our religious beliefs but tells us that we must be good models for our students as she herself is an excellent model.

Ego trip #3. She attacks anyone who has homeschooled their children and who dares to think that public schools are inferior to private schools and homeschools. Of course she does not need to provide any research to back her statements, but the poor students are requested to document every utterance that comes forth from their lips. Hypocrisy. You bet.

Ego trip #4. She mentions that she has not been treated fairly in her life, and elaborates on how much she fears people and does not trust them. Yet she expects us to trust our students and not judge them.

Ego trip #5. She expects us to be student oriented, yet she wants to hold us overtime in her class so that we can absorb her words of wisdom even if that means we are late to our own teaching and tutoring assignments which immediately follow her class. In other words, she is more important than our students.

[choirfiend]

My public school experience in OK, MO, TX, and PA:

I had quality teachers who put in long hours and were wonderfully supportive. None were perverts, none were mean. There was a 4th grade teacher who had the reputation of being mean and yelling, but she was also at least 60, and that lended to her crankiness, though she wasn't my teacher.

I had a 6th grade teacher who made school fun. We even raided the "competition:" the other 6th grade teacher and "stole" their Campbells's labels. It was a hoot.

I had a high school choir teacher who works at least 60 hours a week and is a father figure to a lot of kids. When he worked in inner-city Chicago, he invited kids who had no Christmas to his family's celebration and dinner. He puts in whatever work necessary to help you achieve your full potential. An average of 2-5 choir students enter college as music ed majors every year.

I'm sure people have had bad experiences: especially in areas where teachers are hard to attract and keep, bad teaching may be more prevalent. The vast majority of teachers are normal people who put in long hours, are under appreciated by society, and often attacked by parents.

Sorry I didnt see your post til right now, rusmeister. I'll tell you a little more about my program in a bit, but the overall focus is to adequately prepare educators for all arenas of education from classroom management to dealing with administration to writing curriculum, and to work as music educators to inspire thinking, discerning, feeling, life-long appreciators of music.

[MariaRegina]

All my schooling happened in California except the four years I spent in Reno, Nevada for my junior high years. Most of it was spend in public school.
I had to relearn everything by myself in order to pass the math and English comprehension placement tests in college.

My civics professor in California was an active Communist. He was busted by the FBI just after he finished teaching us.

The public schools were also dismal in Nevada, so my parents sent me to Dominican Catholic Schools which were wonderful.

[kamikat]

I definitely understand, Kamikat. I don't know how we'll afford a private school, either, but I do know of some other families (friends of ours) who have a pretty limited income with several children, and somehow they are managing it.

Most private schools offer tuition help for lower income families. The problem is that most middle class, working families don't qualify for the help.

[skoi]

I'm wondering what people mean when they say the homeschooled children they know are socially retarded?

Thanks.

[MariaRegina]

Look into private home schools.

There are some families who do a coop home school where the kids are shuffled from one family to another during the week. Every mom who teaches gets reimbursed tuition.

Generally how it works:
The parents try to find a church who will let them use their grounds during the week.
Back in 2000, we paid $200 per child for the year to join a private ISP (non-state funded).
Then if we taught, we were reinbursed a portion of the tuition we paid.
Some parents didn't have to pay anything because they taught classes and supervised the children.

So the parents were encouraged to teach in the areas where they could. They taught cooking, organizational skills, study skills, photography, art, music, history, English, math, physical education, dance, ceramics, science, chemistry, health education and safety. Did I miss anything? Older parents would help the younger parents learn teaching skills in special workshops, but these parenting skills somehow came naturally to most parents (big surprise to educators with their huge egos and Ph.D.s).

[MariaRegina]

I homeschooled my only son, and he was granted scholarships and earned many honors when he went to college.

All the people I know who homeschooled excelled in their studies. They had confidence and were self motivated, something that many students lack today who go through the public school system.

[Orthosdoxa]

Ooh, ooh, can I complain about teachers too??

5th grade, I had a teacher threaten to slap my face, because I just couldn't get fractions and she was positive I was faking my stupidity. I wasn't.

8th grade, I had a pervert teacher (who later served in the State Legislature) who was always staring at girls' private areas, and who would put his hand on your desk to point at something on what you were working on and get his hand/wrist REALLY close to your boobs.

9th grade, our yearbook advisor started having sex with a very troubled 15 year old student who was in foster care.

I had a history teacher in 10th grade that was a football coach and only taught a few classes because he "had" to. Very stereotypical, no-necked foul mouthed jerk who yelled at all the students the exact same way he yelled at his football players during practice. He once asked my best friend (in a different class), "Why the hell are you so quiet? Were you abused as a kid or something?" As a matter of fact, she WAS, and began to weep. She was utterly humiliated in front of her whole class. He repeated the story with delight to my class (and I can only assume other classes), cackling that he'd been able to upset someone so much.

In 12th grade, I moved 1500 miles away. (Parents, if you can avoid that in ANY way, please do. It's the worst time to move a kid.) We had a Gov't/Civics teacher who was a complete liberal and saw it as his job to make sure a bunch of hick Iowa kids didn't hold on to hick conservative ideas. He was constantly saying Roe v Wade was a great day in American history, blah blah blah. He used the classroom as nothing more than a podium for his stupid beliefs. I had the unmitigated gall to challenge him once, and he decided to make my life miserable the rest of the year. He would say something controversial, then say, "What do YOU think, LK?", saying my name in a Marge Simpson voice. Then he would pit the whole class against me, urging them to mock me. I began to refuse to answer him, and he'd say, "Fine, you get an F for the day" and the whole class would laugh. (Keep in mind I had no friends - I had JUST moved there.) It was awful. I had always gotten A's in everything except math, but I got C's and D's and F's in his class. He would assign papers like "Should gays be allowed to serve openly in the military?" "What do you think about Sagan's masturbation/mass murder theory?" and if I answered honestly, and wrote a well-thought out paper with lots of sources, I would simply get it back with a big red D or F and a comment like "Learn to think for yourself" scrawled across the top. Whereas classmates who simply parroted back his liberal agenda got A's. There was no rubric to go by - simply whether or not he liked your opinion, and I was too darn stubborn to lie about what my opinions were.

Graduation Day, we were in the line and he was going down the line shaking hands and saying congratulations. He got to me, paused, and said in a snotty voice, "Even YOU, LK."

All because I had challenged him ONCE.

I later wished I had spit on him at that moment.

Oh, and he also told dirty jokes in class.

Perhaps I need to go to confession and forgive him. He was one of the biggest jerks I ever met in my life.

And here's a story from my own teaching days: I had a class of Juniors once (I was teaching Spanish) and it was my theory that it was okay to get off track once in a while as long as learning was still happening. I don't remember what started it, but someone said something ignorant about Russians that set me off, and I started talking about Communism and the Bolshevik revolution and the Czar and how the Russian Orthodox Church factored in and all that stuff. I ranted for about 10 minutes and when I was done, they all just stared at me, dumbfounded. They'd never heard of ANY of this. The VP later told me one of the kids told her he'd learned more from me in that 10 minutes than he had from his history teacher so far that entire year. Now THAT'S sad.

MM and I talked about it before the kids were ever born, and we're going to homeschool, at least until they're junior high age, then hopefully be able to afford a Catholic school.

LK, who is in a mood to rant today for some reason

[OnTheWay]

I definitely understand, Kamikat. I don't know how we'll afford a private school, either, but I do know of some other families (friends of ours) who have a pretty limited income with several children, and somehow they are managing it. I think we'll have to start asking some questions about how to do it. And I also understand about homeschooling. I really don't think I could do it. I've also known some kids who were homeschooled and turned out very well educated, but also quite socially retarded. I know that people say that can be avoided, but I think it's difficult. But anyway....I don't want to get off topic and derail anything. Just wanted to say that I totally understand where you are coming from.

I really suggest anyone looking at private schools actually go sit down and talk with the admin before you decide you cannot afford it. The mass exodus from public schools has left private schools, especially religious schools that are interested in it as a charity work, in a position to offer finanical assistence to a varity of people. So you don't have to be dirt poor to get some help, and there are usually significant discounts for sending a second or more children to the school. Getting kids in as early as possible is the best way to ensure they'll enjoy a quality education, otherwise you might end up on a wait-list till judgement day.
As far as our kids go, or our future kids anyway, I'd let someone yank out my teeth with pilars before they ever set foot in a public school in this country. Though I'm not a home schooling fan, I think kids need the peer to peer social contact to develop normal social skills. I also think it's important for kids to have experiences like school sports and clubs, which they technically have a right to use whether they attend or not but are probably less likely to make use if they don't go to the school.

[MariaRegina]

Homeschooling has really changed.

Most homeschoolers are products of coop education where their parents join with other homeschoolers at least once a week if not everyday.

Many homeschooling ISPs rent a church building where they offer various classes.

It is a MYTH that homeschoolers are not taught socialization skills.

It is a MYTH that homeschoolers are stupid and underachievers.

It is a MYTH that homeschoolers do not win Spelling Bees and Geography Bees. In fact, many of the prizes go to homeschoolers to the shame of the public schools.

[MariaRegina]

I'm hearing your experience, Rus, and I'm waiting to hear more, but thus far your experience is directly contradicted by everything I have seen in my experience in two elementary systems in two different states and three high school systems in three different states. I think you experienced some unfortunate things.
Years of experience at 24 years of age?

Come to California, my dear, and you will be rudely awakened.

[ufonium2]

Ooh, I just remembered a good one!

In highschool, two of our teachers got into a fistfight. Like, an all-out something-you-would-see-at-a-really-scary-bar fistfight.

Both of these guys taught typing, and both were in their late forties or early fifties at the time. They were kind of the dynamic duo of bad teachers (except unlike the dynamic duo, they obviously hated eachother). One of them got in a screaming match with my cousin once (I'll admit, she has a big mouth) and he literally lunged across the desk and grabbed her by the neck, trying to choke her, until students pulled him off. This did not get him fired, and was 12 years before the teacher fight, which also did not get him fired.

The other typing teacher was an amazing alcoholic. He would come into class every day (I had him first period), turn on a tape player with a typing lesson on it, put his head on the desk, and go to sleep. My dad had him for typing 20 years before, and said he did the same thing then.

The alcoholic teacher died not too long after the infamous fistfight, and I think the student-choker retired maybe two years later.

[MariaRegina]

Could he have been a narcoleptic?

Seriously, you guys should read Delano by John Orozco. He mentions a narcoleptic who teaches. I've known students who were also narcoleptics and who would fall asleep as soon as the teacher started lecturing then they would start to snore ... oh the snoring. Then they would wake up with a start and promptly drop off asleep only to snore again.

It took all my concentration to listen to the drone of the teacher over the snore of that one student. Somehow I managed to ace that class. Somehow, I don't remember how.

[ufonium2]

No, he was drunk and/or hungover. He didn't randomly fall asleep. He turned on the tape player at the beginning of class, so it would "teach" for him, and then he just went to sleep.

[GenkiGirl]

I don't want to step on anyone's toes, and I have had my own fair share of poor teachers that ridiculed me (mostly in high school and even in college)....but now that I am a teacher myself I have a completely different appreciation for the cost of becoming a teacher. I work in a public school where I teach 17 first graders. My colleages and myself teach because we love kids. It certainly isn't for the money, nearly a quarter of which goes back to the classroom anyways because there isn't enough in our budget to buy appropriate teaching materials. We certainly don't teach for the recognition, in fact I get questioned and interogated by irate parents who think they can do my job better than I (though they don't usually show up at 7am and leave at 6pm like I do). Like I said, for most teachers, we teach because we love kids, and we want to do the best we can for them. I know that in my classroom I am the closest thing many of my kids get to Jesus on a daily basis. And I may be the only *Jesus* those kids will ever know. If public schools were around 2000 years ago, I like to think that Jesus would have said, *Blessed are you that in the public school system and taught my little lambs.* Right in there with the thirsty, needy and those in prison are the students of the public school system. But that's just my opinion.

[Orthosdoxa]

in fact I get questioned and interogated by irate parents who think they can do my job better than I

BTDT

I for one certainly don't deny that there are wonderful teachers in the public school system. I personally would like to think that I was one of them - I taught high school for 5 years, and it was a hard, thankless job. And I'm glad that there ARE ones like you out there, to be beacons for the kids in those schools.

I just feel the system overall is broken, and don't want to put my own kids into it. That's not a reflection on you as a person or as a teacher. :)

LK

[MariaRegina]

Generally, it is not the teachers who are at fault ... many are excellent ... but the system.

The reasoning behind public education is flawed.

The philosophy of education stinks.

We as parents are gifted by God through our Baptism and Holy Crowning to bring Christians into the world and to educate them in the faith. That is paramount. However, the public education system wants to change all of that and place men at the service of the state rather than at the service of God.

According to Father Alexander Schmemann, may his memory be eternal, we are born to praise, worship and glorify God.

[rusmeister]

Hmmmm. 20-odd posts to respond to. Here’s a long one, please be patient!

I do think it important to address the concerns, ideas, recommendations of others when they respond to my posting. I would hope for a similar courtesy from all. If you haven’t read this thread from the beginning, please, please don’t post your opinions!! Many ideas have already been addressed, and some things you may never have thought of or be aware of are in the recommended readings (Stormer, Gatto, and yes, Barzun and even Ivan Ilyich (thanks, CaDan!))

(I did indeed track down Barzun, and was disappointed to find that he wasn’t really addressing the same things as Gatto at all.)

I started this thread, and don’t intend it to be a teacher-bashing thread. Yes, there are a lot of jerks and petty tyrants, and there are also dedicated people really struggling to accomplish what they can in spite of a system designed to thwart them despite rhetoric to the contrary (CF and LK – your posting about great teachers proves my point). Anecdotal evidence does not raise awareness of what is wrong with the system in general and distracts from the focus I’d like to hold here. A food allergy can’t be cured by applying an external cream, and neither can the school system be given a quick fix. You really need to do a little bit of research, at least a little, if you want to contribute intelligently to the thread. If you still don’t know who John Dewey is or how the Ford Foundation was ever connected with the development of our school system, please read the above posts, the recommended readings and do wikipedia searching before continuing.

I see some valid concerns about the cost of private schooling. I agree, it is a problem. In my case, I believe I already mentioned (see post #10) that I attended a small school established by a Baptist church on a shoe string that used a self-study program (A.C.E., Accelerated Christian Education) which is closer to a home school design while offering social interaction and adult support. There were no teachers as such, just parents and a principal. That REALLY brings your costs down. If your church owns a parish building outside of the church, such an option would suddenly be realistic. Aria’s proposals are also reasonable.

Aria, I’m very interested in Delano. What’s available online? :help:

CF, I recognize that you’ve had some positive experiences in school. What it seems you may be assuming is that I just had some bad luck personally and wish to vent my spleen. That, as the saying goes, happens to not be the case. I have been free of that system for several years, have a satisfying life being my own boss and am both old enough and intelligent enough to recognize the difference between a teacher having personal bad luck and the recognizance of a nationwide, indeed world-wide problem. I posed some questions to you over the course of the thread and Aria added a good one just now. Did you read what I posted in the first post?


One of the biggest problems with that is that a majority of us have not seen what goes on behind the curtains - when they're not putting on shows for parents and the media. Children in schools see what happens in the classrooms and hallways, but have a child's perspective - they don't know why things are the way they are or how they could be different. Only a fraction - maybe 2% of all adults at best actually work as public school teachers or administrators.

My point - administrators know more about what goes on in state and countyed politics than others. Teachers know more than anyone regarding the classroom situation and what is delivered in the behind-the-scenes staff meetings. A few others have direct, regular professional contact and experience in one capacity or another and see...what they see. Most others know relatively little, what they remember of their own school experience and see in the results that their own children bring home.

Also, please read post number 27 again and especially 28. The child’s experience does not help to understand most of what I am saying here, so while the child’s experience does result in their being indoctrinated, it does not enlighten them as to what goes on behind the curtains of staff meetings, district actions and decisions, etc. It takes years of working as an adult teacher or administrator to have a better picture of that. A beginning teacher just doesn’t have that experience yet. Please forgive me, I have no wish to even seem offensive. :bow:

I think you are quite right about the media being bigger teachers than the teachers. But that’s just the world working hand-in-hand. One of the jobs of school from the Screwtape perspective is to teach kids that history, literature, and learning in general is boring, and then the kids go out and see entertaining idiocy in the media.

If that school system spent half as much time figuring out how to help kids as they do trying to cheat the system, they'd have great schools.

There’s an assumption here that the school system wants to turn out great young adults. The actual results suggest that the system actually serves quite a different purpose that it is wildly successful at. :(

Skoi – I could equally say that the public school children I know are socially retarded. It’s an assertion that needs an awful lot of back-up, and can’t really be proved to be generally true in the end, anyway. But maybe that was your point…?

Again, (to everyone) if you’re not reading all of the posts from the beginning and responding to the issues brought up, this will be a fruitless thread that goes around in circles.

BTW, Dewey’s philosophy is what all of the teacher trainers are pushing – any Orthodox comments on the moral aims? Sorry about the snooty academic language – if you need a translation please ask. This is how your children are being taught to think.

[skoi]

Skoi – I could equally say that the public school children I know are socially retarded. It’s an assertion that needs an awful lot of back-up, and can’t really be proved to be generally true in the end, anyway. But maybe that was your point…?.

I was asking what the posters meant when they said homeschooled kids are socially retarded. My kids are homeschooled, and I don't think they're socially retarded. They relate well with other children their own ages, and younger. They're polite and respectful of their elders. They can converse with people of all ages. They're protective of those younger, weaker, and smaller. They don't buckle easily to peer pressure (though our son has some problems with this on little things).

They do suffer a bit from "know-it-allism" as we call it, but this is a family-wide problem. Our public and private schooled family members have this issue as well. Our big family sin is intellectual pride which is why I haven't been posting anywhere lately- it just feeds my pride.

Hope that clears things up.

Julie
(who has taught grade 6 through undergraduate education, adult education, and now homeschools our little hordette (daughter 12, son 8, daughter 2,and with God's mercy- someday son in between the last two.)

[MariaRegina]

Delano is available through www.amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com)

Again Delano is intended for an adult audience and is not appropriate reading during Lent, but it does explose the problems with the modern educational system especially in California ... and now apparently worldwide.

http://www.amazon.com/Delano-John-Orozco/dp/0966481615/ref=sr_1_2/102-2442325-6640939?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173550285&sr=1-2

http://www.lamission.edu/english/orozco/ -- this is John Orozco's website at Mission College. There you can search for other venues to obtain his book, Delano.

[OnTheWay]

Homeschooling has really changed.

As a product of a population that largely rejects the value of government schools in the US homeschooling certainly has more bells and whistles than it used it, and it's probably not just for hyper-fundies anymore.


It is a MYTH that homeschoolers are not taught socialization skills.

Does every homeschooled child come out socially underdeveloped? I don't think so, however over the course of my jr and sr high school days I ran into a lot of kids making the jump from homeschooling to private schools. Some of them were fine, the majority did lack basic social skills in that they really struggled with group dynamics.

It is a MYTH that homeschoolers are stupid and underachievers.

It is a MYTH that homeschoolers do not win Spelling Bees and Geography Bees. In fact, many of the prizes go to homeschoolers to the shame of the public schools.

I think the stereotype is rather the opposite with most thinking of homeschooling as either for the super overachiever, or the somewhat scary fundies out there.

[OnTheWay]

I don't want to step on anyone's toes, and I have had my own fair share of poor teachers that ridiculed me (mostly in high school and even in college)....but now that I am a teacher myself I have a completely different appreciation for the cost of becoming a teacher. I work in a public school where I teach 17 first graders. My colleages and myself teach because we love kids. It certainly isn't for the money, nearly a quarter of which goes back to the classroom anyways because there isn't enough in our budget to buy appropriate teaching materials. We certainly don't teach for the recognition, in fact I get questioned and interogated by irate parents who think they can do my job better than I (though they don't usually show up at 7am and leave at 6pm like I do). Like I said, for most teachers, we teach because we love kids, and we want to do the best we can for them. I know that in my classroom I am the closest thing many of my kids get to Jesus on a daily basis. And I may be the only *Jesus* those kids will ever know. If public schools were around 2000 years ago, I like to think that Jesus would have said, *Blessed are you that in the public school system and taught my little lambs.* Right in there with the thirsty, needy and those in prison are the students of the public school system. But that's just my opinion.

I think it's important to address several of these commonly repeated myths. Teacher's starting salaries are equal to starting wages in the private sector, and in many districts are actually higher. Teacher's salaries also have to be looked at in terms of a perks package attached to them. Three months of vacation, to start, is something that many other jobs will never offer. When you factor in the Christmas and spring breaks (many districts are now offering a "mid-winter break"), every federal holiday and weekend off, and never having to work nights that's quite a perks package. It's value would certainly be well over $20,000 dollars a year. Not to mention teachers get great state medical and other insurance benefits.
Look at my uncle for a moment, last year he taught in Jefferson County public schools he had a whole four classes per day. A history course and three period of PE. With two planning periods and a lunch break in there while making a little over $60,000 a year. Now a lot of people his age made quite a bit more money, but my mom for example also had to work more than four hours a day. When he retired he was one of several vice-principals and made over $90,000 a year. Now I'm well aware many jobs that require no college can expect higher salaries, but a tradesman also has to do jobs that involve real work. Not sitting on your rear at a desk, or worst case standing in front of a class. When the perks are factored in teachers make plenty, more than most of them deserve probably.
I'm sure there are fine teachers in public schools, for the most part American public schools are a joke and teachers are certainly a large part of why American public schools are the worst in the industrialized world.

[Orthosdoxa]

never having to work nights

:doh:

You've obviously never been a teacher.

Being a teacher means NEVER being done, EVER. There are always more papers to grade, more parents to call, more curriculum to write, more grades to average, posting updates on a website (required by many districts now), more basketball games to sell tickets at, more after-school tutoring, more lesson plans to make, etc.

Don't paint them all w/ the same brush. NEVER being done is one of the main reasons I quit. The stress was too much. There may be typing teachers who come in drunk and let a recording teach, but MANY work very hard. I had some lousy, lousy teachers myself. But it's not fair to make it sound like they're all like that. I wasn't.

LK

[OnTheWay]

:doh:

You've obviously never been a teacher.

Being a teacher means NEVER being done, EVER. There are always more papers to grade, more parents to call, more curriculum to write, more grades to average