Private school for your kids = you are a bad person...

[billc]

Suk, let me assure you tht most Americans don't have a problem with either public or private schools. They understand that both have strengths and weaknesses.

You obviously don't live in Chicago...where the graduation rate for high school last year was just 60%(?)...and they just closed a whole bunch of schools and now they have designated "safe routes," to the new schools because they go through gang infested areas...

here is the graduation rate...

http://www.cps.edu/News/Press_releases/Pages/06_11_2012_PR1.aspx

June 9, 2012 Chicago Public Schools (CPS) CEO Jean-Claude Brizard today announced that the current school year will mark the highest recorded graduation rate for the District, which is projected at 60.6 percent. The District has seen steady increases in graduation rates over the past five years.

60.6%...and they are happy with that...

Current rate...

http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20130528/chicago/cps-expects-highest-graduation-rate-ever

In a tumultuous school year that saw teachers strike and Chicago Public Schools come under fire for shuttering 50 schools, CPS says it has something positive to report: a record-high graduation rate.
The school system expects 63 percent of high school seniors to graduate this year, up from 61 percent in 2012 and 59 percent in the 2010-2011 school year.
A decade ago, the graduation rate was 44 percent, according to CPS.

Keep in mind...we aren't even talking about the quality of education the students who manage to graduate actually have...most end up needing remedial classes for basic material if they get accepted into a college...

And the vast amounts of money public education takes out of the pockets of taxpayers for a 63% graduation rate...think of the wasted lives and the diminished outcomes of these children...

Also keep in mind the gall of these educators who went on strike and demanded a pay increase...with only 63% of the children graduating from high school...tell me, if you are at a job and you only have a 63% success rate at what you do or are only 63% productive in your job...how long would you have that job...and would you expect a raise...?

 

[Steve]

I went to a private school where the teachers weren't even required to be licensed. That's the way it goes in most states.

There are good public schools and bad ones. But, contrary to the mistaken beliefs of some. There re good private schools and also bad ones, too.

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[billc]

I went to a private school where the teachers weren't even required to be licensed.

And all of the teachers in the chicago public schools have teaching degrees if not masters degrees...and again...a 63% graduation rate from high school...and that doesn't account for the quality of students that do graduate...and have to take remedial classes when they get into college...

I agree there are good and bad private and public schools...but you are not a bad person if you put your kids in the best school possible, and saying people are bad because they put their kids in private schools is dumb...don't you agree?

 

[Steve]

And all of the teachers in the chicago public schools have teaching degrees if not masters degrees...and again...a 63% graduation rate from high school...and that doesn't account for the quality of students that do graduate...and have to take remedial classes when they get into college...

I agree there are good and bad private and public schools...but you are not a bad person if you put your kids in the best school possible, and saying people are bad because they put their kids in private schools is dumb...don't you agree?

Sure. Don't you?


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[elder999]

But, but, bill-what about Matt Damon?

I mean, doesn't he send his kids to private schools?

And didn't you post about what a bad person he was for doing so?

Matt Damon promotes public school teacher unions, and the public school system,...and then sends his kids to private school....that is what makes Damon a jerk...

I'm confused.....

 

[Makalakumu]

There is literally so much misunderstanding packed into the original Slate article, it would take hours to unpack it and air it out. I wish more people would want to know about the history of how this institution developed in American and in other countries around the world. I've taken a fairly deep look at the American system and am currently looking into the British/Colonial system based on some professional interests of mine.

Anyway, what it all comes down to is that public education is a tool of State power. The basic system we use now arose in Prussia and spread throughout Europe and moved overseas to America and Asia. The assumptions behind public education are that all children need to be forced into schools six basic fundamental can be inflicted upon them. The six functions are:

1) The adaptive function (schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority the bells, the trivial rules, and rewards and punishments are nothing more than a Pavlovian training method designed to accustom students to a life of top down instruction).

2) The integrating function (this might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. Standardized testing is the epitome of this function. Every unit will be strictly controlled for quality like a McDonald’s cheeseburger).

3) The diagnostic and directive function (school is meant to determine each student's proper social role. The numbers and letters that we assign to bits of knowledge and acts of behavior are to be used to determine a student’s future despite the assumptions that went into their assignation).

4) The differentiating function (once their social role has been "diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits - and not one step further. Development of the mind beyond that which is required for basic instruction in social roles is not only waste of resources, it is dangerous for social order).

5) The selective function (schools are meant to tag students with poor grades, remedial placement, and other diagnoses in order to identify the “unfit” for further intervention. This is a eugenics program as defined by Sir Francis Galton, the father of eugenics and whose ideas spawned a program that was funded in the United States by John D. Rockefeller. We used to direct these “tagged” individuals into forced sterilization programs, now we cram them full of pharmaceuticals and deny them opportunities for social advancement.

6) The propaedeutic function (the societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. School trains students for managers. The etymology of the word pedagogy comes from the Greek word paidagogos, who were a class of slaves whose responsibility it was to guide students through the lessons of the masters. Students will learn fixed habits of reaction to authority, how to shift from one person giving instruction to another, and how to obey without question and without the weight of troubling ethics).

Even private schools will have a difficult time not structuring their environment so that these six functions are avoided. This is because of the accreditation process that most private schools need to pass so that they can get the fancy paper and prove to "educational policy wonks" that their school is an actual "school" (in other words, that it meets the above criteria).

There is a good chance that this author knows nothing about this. I would love to have a 30 minute discussion with her so see what she thinks.

Anyway, so she wants to have a moral change where more parents stop sending their kids to private school and put them into public school, but she doesn't understand that the basic structure of schooling itself is preserved in both public and (most) private schools. Still, I get the general idea of what she is saying, even if it completely lacks any historical context and is only repeating the untried assumption she was taught in her own admittedly mediocre schooling.

She would like to have parents invest more of their time and money into the public schools so that all children can be "lifted up" and the whole of society will be improved. A question I would like to ask is who exactly are improving the society for?

“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.”

Oh yes, my Liberal Slate writer, aren't you a tool.

 

[granfire]

The writer was likely a product of public schools...


(More clearly: If you can't string together two comprehensive intelligent sentences, you should not write about education...)