Funding Education - Re: Why Socialism is Evil

[Makalakumu]

None what so ever. I would argue that the bulk of our national tax priority should be to educate our citizens to the highest degree that they wish. It is my belief that all education should be subsidized by taxation so that the average citizen is never required to pay any more, other then taxes, for education.

The government should stop bailing out parasite banks and start writing checks to kids and adults in order to build their futures. Education sets everyone free and that is why we see a state of permanant poverty and decline. The people who really run the show don't want this.

Here's the bottom line. Education is information. If you limit the amount of information to the amount of dollars one can spend, then you have just created a society of sheep. The people at the top will almost always control the information that leaks down to the public. This is what the Foundations do.

In an environment of constant poverty, private donors fill the gap when institutions do their bidding.

Its as simple as that.

 

[Cryozombie]

In Maxx Barry's novel "Jennifer Government" everything is privatized... But almost all the privatization is corporate sponsored. For the example of the schools... Jennifer Government's Daughter goes to Mattel Elementary... the school is run and Funded my the Mattel Toy Company. So of course everything is Barbie Pink and Hot Wheels, and all the school suppliles the kids purchase are branded: So little Sally doesn't get a Toy Story Lunchbox and Folders, mommy has to buy her Barbie. Kids are exposed to advertising for Mattels Products only. Could It work? Perhaps. Is it right?

*shrug*

 

[Tez3]

Education is the most valuble commodity in the world. It lifts people out of poverty, it enriches peoples lives, it benefits every member of a society. How a society treats it's children and their education measures what value is put on children in that society.
You don't have children so don't want to pay for others education? Well you won't want to have medics available when ill, you won't want a lawyer when you have a problem, or a plumber or a mechanic etc etc.
Should education be paid for by society as a whole, absolutely and it should be the best that society can manage. Educating children to the highest standards possible is an investment for the whole community who will all reap the rewards.
Literate well educated people make better workers, they tend to be more law abiding, more prosperous and better citizens. Free good standard education should be available for all children and everyone should pay for it, it brings far more benefits to a society as a whole than probably anything else does.

 

[Kacey]

Funny. In my business, I don't have a huge support staff, janitor, etc. I take out my wn trash, do my own paperwork and filing. Run schools like a business, eliminate bloat, and aim for efficiency.

But lets look at this.

Hallways - why?
Library - perfectly good one a 5 minute walk from me.
Gym - 5 perfectly good parks within 10 minutes of me.
Lunchroom - I have a nice desk.
Hall ways - Don't need em in a single room.
Admin Office - see desk.

Well, let's look at this, shall we?

I am a specialist (special education teacher). One of the key tenets of special education is that education needs to be more individualized so that these students can reach the level of ability as their peers - and most of them do. But that individualization requires smaller classes. Yes, it costs more per child to pay me than it does for regular education students - but as a taxpayer, I'd rather pay for education up front than for Welfare, group homes, or incarceration down the line; there's a strong correlation between
education attained and the ability to be legally self-supporting - and no matter how much education costs for a special needs child, it's still cheaper to teach the child from birth to 21 (special education services start as soon as problems are noted, and continue until the child meets graduation requirements or turns 21) than it is to support the child for the remaining 60+ years of the child's life. However, the farther away you put the special services from the general services, the more it will cost; I work with several different groups of students every day - and they are all in general education, with their peers (and predominately doing quite well) all but 1 or 2 periods a day; most, actually, receive their support in the general classroom - which is more cost-effective, but would be difficult if the classrooms were widely spread over multiple facilities.

Yes, there are students who are so high-needs that they are primarily self-contained - but even those students need to be with their peers, so they can learn age-appropriate social skills; a significant amount of research is what lead to the end of the specialty schools for each disability - and also the fact that it's cheaper to keep the vast majority of students in their home schools and provide general specialists such as myself in each school, while moving the specialists for the rarer disabilities around. For example, my school has 3 full-time mild/moderate special education teachers (we teach primarily students with learning disabilities), 1 full-time teacher for students with emotional disabilities, and 1 full-time teacher for severe needs students (students who will need support most of their lives). We also have a full-time speech/language therapist and a full-time psychologist. The cost to have each of us travel about different facilities - in both time and money - is much more than the cost of having us there for the students. In contrast, there is only one student in my school who is blind, and her vision services are provided by a vision therapist (who teaches her braille, mobility skills, etc.) who works in several different schools, because there's not a need for her full-time in my building, and the kids she works with are of all ages - elementary, middle, and high school - so having them all in one room would require considerably more staff to support their educational needs apart from the special training their visual disabilities require.

My rent figure was based on a single room, located in a local strip plaza, run by the highest priced local landlord, in a good area.

Lets raise the numbers.

Per Teacher $75,000
Per Room Per Month (holds 30 students) $2,500
Consumables per classroom $500
total gross $105,500
Number of students 30
cost per month $8,792
cost per month per student $293

1 administrator per 10 classes $75,000
1 maint. Per 10 classes $75,000
supportstaff $150,000
ss per month $1,250
ss per month per studet $42

So, $300-350 per month per student. $3,600 or so a year.

What am I missing?

Besides what I talked about above? As has been said, 30 kids in a classroom is a very high number - the middle school I work at averages 26, and that's too high. The younger the students are, the lower the teacher/student ratio needs to be, or all you're doing is babysitting, not teaching.

Then, too, I work in a low-income, high-needs area. We have students who miss school regularly because their parents need them to babysit their younger siblings - because if they don't, the parents can't work, thus can't pay the rent and buy food - how are these parents supposed to pay tuition?

What about facilities costs? You've mentioned rent - but one of the biggest problems we have is the steady increase in utility rates.

Books are increasingly expensive because of the availability of ways to evade copyright protection - with the exception of math, where students must have a book to do homework, no teacher in my school has more than a classroom set - that means 1 book for every 5 students. When the teacher teaches the same class 5 periods a day, that works - because only 1 in 5 students is there at a time. But if you have one isolated classroom where the teacher teaches all subjects, you have to quintuple the number of books you need.

Specials, electives, whatever you want to call them - classes like art, music, gym, computers, foreign language - all require specialist teachers. Again, it's cheaper to group the students together and rotate them through the specialist teachers than to move the teachers around. In addition, if you have an isolated classroom, where do the kids eat? What do the kids eat (over half my school is on free lunch, and most of the rest are on reduced-price lunch - they don't bring their own food, and their parents financially need the school to feed them - free lunch continues through the summer for those kids). When does the teacher eat? Go to the bathroom? It's illegal to leave the kids unattended, even momentarily. When students are at specials is when the teacher gets to do all these things - not to mention the need to get a break from the students occasionally.

There's a joke that I keep getting sent; the amounts are a little off, but it'll give you the idea:

I'm fed up with teachers and their hefty salary guides! What we need is a little perspective.

If I had my way, I'd pay these teachers myself -- I'd pay them babysitting wages. That's right -- instead of paying these outrageous taxes, I'd give them $3.00 an hour out of my own pocket. And I'm only going to pay them for 5 hours, not coffee breaks. That would be $15.00 a day -- each parent should pay $15.00 a day for these teachers to babysit a child. (Even if you have more than one child, it's still a lot cheaper than private day care.)

Now, how many children do they teach every day -- maybe twenty? That's $15.00 X 20 = $300 a day. But remember they only work 180 days a year! I'm not going to pay them for all those vacations! That's $300 X 180 =$54,000. (Just a minute -- that can't be right; let me check my calculator.)

I know what you teachers will say -- What about those who have ten years experience and a Master's degree? Well, maybe (to be fair) they could get the minimum wage -- instead of just babysitting, they could read the kids a story.

We can round that off to about $5.00 an hour, times five hours, times twenty children. That's $500 a day times 180 days. That's $90,000 ..... HUH??

Wait a minute; let's get a little perspective here! Babysitting wages are too good for these teachers. Does anyone see a salary guide around here?

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Heres the "info" on the Niagara Falls school
http://www.nfschools.net/10572032814738420/site/default.asp

Achieved via a unique public-private partnership made possible via special legislation at the state government level, the new NFHS grew from an overgrown lot in the center of the city. Whereas the two previous schools had been located at opposite ends of town, the new NFHS was dropped down dead-center with one primary thought: Uniting the community. Virtually EVERYONE is bused in ... a big help in keeping any one from group claiming "ownership."

Not only did the students walk into a fancy new building, but they latched onto some of the latest-and-greatest bells and whistles, including school-issued laptop computers. Not to be left out, taxpayers benefited from a unique and creative funding process that allows the district to rent the building over a 30-year period, without having the multitudinous headaches of ownership. At the end of the lease the district can walk away, debt-free. Not a bad option to have.

Everything I've read/heard about the school has been positive.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Of course, my outline only covers "normal" kids. Special needs would cost more, go somewhere else, etc. Same with Genius kids who are currently often ignored and bored. Text books, etc were included in my costs, as were utilities. Class room size was based on what I recall from when I was in school years back and teachers then did complain it was too high. Personally funding a smaller class increases the individual cost. A larger class makes it less expensive, at the cost of quality of training.

 

[Kacey]

Heres the "info" on the Niagara Falls school
http://www.nfschools.net/10572032814738420/site/default.asp



Everything I've read/heard about the school has been positive.

And yet, I notice that on the front page of their website not one, but two references to fundraising - Fundraising Request Form (click link) and NFHS Fundraising Calendar.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

WNY schools do a lot of fundraising to fund the various clubs, events, and activites. When I was in 5th grade for example, the class spent 6 months raising cash for a Washington DC trip.

 

[Tez3]

"I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform. All reforms which rest simply upon the law, or the threatening of certain penalties, or upon changes in mechanical or outward arrangements, are transitory and futile.... But through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move.... Education thus conceived marks the most perfect and intimate union of science and art conceivable in human experience.

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself

The aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education ... (and) the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth. Now this idea cannot be applied to all the members of a society except where intercourse of man with man is mutual, and except where there is adequate provision for the reconstruction of social habits and institutions by means of wide stimulation arising from equitably distributed interests. And this means a democratic society"

John Dewey

Teachers as babysitters? No, teachers as a foundation of society.
​

 

[FearlessFreep]

Gordan Nore, Big Don, et al...may I recommend a book to all of you.

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm

This book will change everything you ever thought about education.

My wife is a big 'fan' of his, if you will. One of the reasons we homeschool.

But you are right that the goel of the DOE and the public schools is far more along the lines of indoctrination of obedience rather than education for excellence.

 

[Kacey]

My wife is a big 'fan' of his, if you will. One of the reasons we homeschool.

But you are right that the goel of the DOE and the public schools is far more along the lines of indoctrination of obedience rather than education for excellence.

As a public school teacher, I beg to differ - at least as far as teachers go; my goal is to teach my students to think; unfortunately, especially under Bush, the goal of the DOE appears to be to create cookie-cutter children who perform well on badly-written standardized assessments.

Of course, my outline only covers "normal" kids. Special needs would cost more, go somewhere else, etc. Same with Genius kids who are currently often ignored and bored. Text books, etc were included in my costs, as were utilities. Class room size was based on what I recall from when I was in school years back and teachers then did complain it was too high. Personally funding a smaller class increases the individual cost. A larger class makes it less expensive, at the cost of quality of training.

And yet, the so-called "special" populations perform better when in heterogeneous groupings with their peers, for at least part of the day. What do you do with a student who is gifted in math, but dyslexic, and needs special instruction and support for reading? Which "special" program do you send that child to? What about a child who is normal intellectually, but has a physical disability? How far do you subdivide disabilities? Having a special school for each disability was tried in the 70s and 80s - and it was determined to be costly and less effective than inclusion - and yes, inclusion has it's own problems.

WNY schools do a lot of fundraising to fund the various clubs, events, and activites. When I was in 5th grade for example, the class spent 6 months raising cash for a Washington DC trip.

Fundraising for special events - certainly! But the school up the street from me (not the one I teach at) is constantly fundraising to support its general operating costs - because funding cuts are affecting things like their ability to pay the utilities, and buy materials for the students.

 

[Makalakumu]

As a public school teacher, I beg to differ - at least as far as teachers go; my goal is to teach my students to think; unfortunately, especially under Bush, the goal of the DOE appears to be to create cookie-cutter children who perform well on badly-written standardized assessments.

I am not a fan of our President George W. Bush. He ****ed up a lot of stuff. A lot. Schools and the economy are two things in which he didn't solely **** up. Those are two very important things in which the government merely took something bad and made it worse.

We need to have a frank discussion about the origin of modern schooling. This isn't a partisan discussion. There is no democrat or republican pulling the strings and creating this entire edifice. There IS a particular ideology, though. This ideology is what the people who really run the country beleive.

So, here are some tidbits from a time when the system of public education as we know it, was formulated.

President Woodrow Wilson, "We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."

Benjamin Kidd, a member of the "Education Trust, " a group of foundation representatives from Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago, and the National Education Association, in 1918, said, "school was to impose on the young the ideal of subordination."

Arthur Calhoun’s 1919 Social History of the Family notified the nation’s academics what was happening. Calhoun declared that the fondest wish of utopian writers was coming true, the child was passing from its family "into the custody of community experts."

Here is John D. Rockefeller himself stating the mission of his Foundation, "In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.

Not according to the men who dreamed up this system. She doesn't have plans that matter, these men beleived and the people who run our system believe that there is a place in society for this child. They have created it because they know better. You will learn to crush your own dreams and accept one that has been crafted for you.

Here are some quotes from the educational gods teacher's worship. What we (I am a teacher) have failed to understand is that these men are nothing but the mouthpeices for the foundations that back them. See Rockefellar's quote above and proceed.

Dewey’s Pedagogic Creed statement of 1897 gives you a clue to the zeitgeist: "Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth. In this way the teacher is always the prophet of the true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of heaven."

Here is the emminent Jaques Ellul on the place of government propaganda in schools, "Critical judgment disappears altogether, for in no way can there ever be collective critical judgment....The individual can no longer judge for himself because he inescapably relates his thoughts to the entire complex of values and prejudices established by propaganda. With regard to political situations, he is given ready-made value judgments invested with the power of the truth by...the word of experts.

The individual has no chance to exercise his judgment either on principal questions or on their implication; this leads to the atrophy of a faculty not comfortably exercised under [the best of] conditions...Once personal judgment and critical faculties have disappeared or have atrophied, they will not simply reappear when propaganda is suppressed...years of intellectual and spiritual education would be needed to restore such faculties. The propagandee, if deprived of one propaganda, will immediately adopt another, this will spare him the agony of finding himself vis a vis some event without a ready-made opinion."​

All of this should make the hair rise on the back of your neck. Things suddenly start to make sense. The boredom, the constant shifting of subjects, the lack of application, the rote memorization, the humiliation...

School was designed by these men and many others who shared this ideology and that ideology is alive and well today. Everything that is wrong with NCLB legislation is summed up in John D. Rockefellar's mission statement for his foundation in 1911.

The problem isn't funding. Schools are working just EXACTLY as they were designed. The "problem" is that people desperately yearn for more and are looking for scapegoats because they are not getting it in regards to learning. That is what we were taught to do.

 

[Tez3]

Are there any sites that give the curriculum American schools follow and what exams they do? I have no idea what is taught in american schools and thought it would be interesting to compare them with ours and other European schools.

 

[Makalakumu]

Here is one list of National Education Standards. There are several in the US. All of them merge in the messy bureaucracy that is the DOE. Different people take control and pick their flavor of the month. With that being said, it needs to be understood that these are just words on the internet and on paper somewhere. There are no laws that mandate that every school teach this. The only law that mandates that anything be taught at the national level is No Child Left Behind. This law mines the national standards and sets a minimum bar when it comes to performance in Math, Science, Reading, Writing and Social Studies. Each state is responsible for designing tests in all of these subjects and attempting to hold schools accountable.

 

[Tez3]

I see! We have National Curriculums, and national exams taken at 16 and 18.
England,Wales and N Ireland's Curriculum http://curriculum.qca.org.uk/
Scotlands http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Education/Schools/curriculum/presentcurriculum

I don't know what you think about these, whether they are in line with yours, better or worse or something you'd like to see in your schools?

Do bear in mind of course we have socialist governments lol!

 

[Makalakumu]

Thanks for the posting Tez3! After a quick glance, I can see that the standards that you posted and the ones that I posted follow pretty closely the standards set out by the United Nations. I've looked at a lot of other English speaking country standards and they are all sharing the same characteristics. My guess is that multi-national foundations are pushing a globalized educational agenda, but that's something I'll have to research in order to confirm.

 

[Tez3]

Here is one list of National Education Standards. There are several in the US. All of them merge in the messy bureaucracy that is the DOE. Different people take control and pick their flavor of the month. With that being said, it needs to be understood that these are just words on the internet and on paper somewhere. There are no laws that mandate that every school teach this. The only law that mandates that anything be taught at the national level is No Child Left Behind. This law mines the national standards and sets a minimum bar when it comes to performance in Math, Science, Reading, Writing and Social Studies. Each state is responsible for designing tests in all of these subjects and attempting to hold schools accountable.

I had a look at the 'no child left behind' link and was left rather insulted for my Cypriot friends! That's ridiculous comparing Cyprus to a third world country! It has an advanced thriving economy, is a member of the Commonwealth and the European Community. It's per capita GDP is $46,865, 7% of that is spent on education. It has the highest percentage of citizens of working age who have higher-level education in the EU at 30% which is ahead of Finland's 29.5%. There are 11 universities on the whole island which is three fifths the size of Connecticut.

It's a small place but certainly one of the most and oldest civilised places in the world. Where does the White House think it is?

 

[Makalakumu]

I had a look at the 'no child left behind' link and was left rather insulted for my Cypriot friends! That's ridiculous comparing Cyprus to a third world country! It has an advanced thriving economy, is a member of the Commonwealth and the European Community. It's per capita GDP is $46,865, 7% of that is spent on education. It has the highest percentage of citizens of working age who have higher-level education in the EU at 30% which is ahead of Finland's 29.5%. There are 11 universities on the whole island which is three fifths the size of Connecticut.

It's a small place but certainly one of the most and oldest civilised places in the world. Where does the White House think it is?

Most Americans couldn't find Cyprus on a map. It sounds exotic, so it must be whatever the White House says. The words of Jacque Ellul (posted above) come back and haunt us.

BTW - Cyprus sounds like a pretty nice place to live.

 

[Tez3]

Most Americans couldn't find Cyprus on a map. It sounds exotic, so it must be whatever the White House says. The words of Jacque Ellul (posted above) come back and haunt us.

BTW - Cyprus sounds like a pretty nice place to live.

It is, I lived there for a little while when in the RAF. It's not exotic it's in the Mediterranean, they speak Greek in the southern part, Turkish in the north, English just about everywhere. It's a very big tourist island, http://www.cyprus.com/.
It's where Aphrodite was born out of the sea and where Richard the Lionhearts wife Berengaria came from. It's been around and civilised for a couple of thousand years longer than America lol!

 

[Gordon Nore]

...Fundraising for special events - certainly! But the school up the street from me (not the one I teach at) is constantly fundraising to support its general operating costs - because funding cuts are affecting things like their ability to pay the utilities, and buy materials for the students.

This prompted the formation of an Ontario-based group, People for Education: http://www.peopleforeducation.com/As I recall the story in the papers in the 1990s, a beleaguered principal went to the PTA and asked for funds to augment textbooks. They said he could have the funds, but people were going to have to hear about it.

If you have one school that uses its fundraising surplus to send kids on trips, and another to maintain its day-to-day operation, you essentially have different classes of schools within the same system. Kacey, you're right, it's not Rep / Dem issue (or whatever terminology one chooses); it speaks volumes, however, of how children are valued in a public system.