Random thought about schools
Jul. 20th, 2006 08:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nancylebovI just read Michael Burstein's Telepresence, and it's adequately written but seriously annoying. The security problem could be solved with a simple hardware solution that I'll put in comments.
Possibly as a result of being annoyed with that, and possibly because I don't like public school worship, I started thinking about everything else I didn't like about the story, and ended up with a question.
One of the rants is about how awful rich people who pay for private schools are, but the telepresence system (protrayed as a very good thing) was first developed and tested in them.
I've never heard of any work done to figure out what's the most valuable about private schools. A lot of money and effort goes into them, and it might make sense to ask graduates what, in retrospect, was most useful for them, or to ask students who've been to public and private schools about the good and bad points.
It's not that I think private schools are necessarily better, but they are frequently in a position to try new things.
Possibly as a result of being annoyed with that, and possibly because I don't like public school worship, I started thinking about everything else I didn't like about the story, and ended up with a question.
One of the rants is about how awful rich people who pay for private schools are, but the telepresence system (protrayed as a very good thing) was first developed and tested in them.
I've never heard of any work done to figure out what's the most valuable about private schools. A lot of money and effort goes into them, and it might make sense to ask graduates what, in retrospect, was most useful for them, or to ask students who've been to public and private schools about the good and bad points.
It's not that I think private schools are necessarily better, but they are frequently in a position to try new things.
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Date: 2006-07-20 12:39 pm (UTC)The solution is to have hardware that can't be affected by anything online to dump people out of VR if they're too stressed.
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Date: 2006-07-20 12:56 pm (UTC)Why private schools tend to do better academically:
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Date: 2006-07-20 01:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-20 01:39 pm (UTC)That said, most private schools outside of religious institutions (and these days there are many, many Catholic schools, at least out here, that will also fit this venue) who want to offer enriched academics in a safe environment. And a lot of them will be flexible as they can to include a diversity of children. Not the posh ones dealing only with the rich, of course. But the ones focused on academics. And yes, one can try new methods of teaching if others don't work, and there's less chance of the stone stupid administration (most of whom have never been in a classroom except to inpsect) handing down godawful teaching methods because of some political decision, as has been troubling the public schools--again, at least out here--for the past thirty years.
The horror now? "teaching to the test."
There's no more room for journalism, analytical thinking, writing essays--just worksheets designed to teach to the SAT tests.
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Date: 2006-07-20 02:09 pm (UTC)private schools in the abstract maybe, but
Date: 2006-07-20 02:27 pm (UTC)And that story - talk about your crippled, hide-bound imagination! The only thing girls would do to enhance themselves in VR would be to give themselves bigger boobs, while only boys would want to make themselves seem stronger? Please. Like Karen Healy at Girls Read Comics says: "I am a geek. I have rehearsed world domination monologues while shaving my legs. I have finely tuned plans for what I will do if I fall into a vat of radioactive waste and emerge with superstrength. And I am just as entitled to my self-indulgent adolescent power fantasies as any male comic book nerd. [...] For lo: I am trying to save the world. See you guys later; I've got a massively powerful cultural paradigm to crush beneath my booted heel."
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Date: 2006-07-20 03:16 pm (UTC)Re: private schools in the abstract maybe, but
Date: 2006-07-20 03:17 pm (UTC)There's a lot I didn't like about that story, and the bit you refer to is only one piece of it. Aside from being offensive, it's stupid. If students have to look the way they do in real life (presumably including clothes), then girls who want padding will use real life padding. More generally, I saw the tone of that passage as "Isn't it cute to see the adults controllng teenagers' foolishness?".
I'll be writing up my opinions of all the Hugo nominees after the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society meeting this Friday. I'll only be getting about 7 minutes on the Hugo nominees panel, and I have quite a bit more to say than that.
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Date: 2006-07-20 03:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-20 04:13 pm (UTC)Except for the very top schools which do not pretend to teach anybody but the upper classes, private schools don't do a better job. Again and again, when the schools are actually studied for performance, they don't do better.
And as for innovation -- they don't do that, either. They teach the way they've always taught, on the whole.
The main "advantage" to private schools is that they don't have to follow labor law, anti=discrimination laws, health and safety codes, or provide an education, if they don't want to. This leaves them free to decide whether to hire teachers who have anysort of education or credentials and payt them subnormal wages, house their classes in any sort of building, refuse to admit children they don't want for any reason, and not teach subjects that they don't like. They're also free to impose religious and political ideology if they want to.
There are some very good private schools. But there are also many, many terrible private schools, and nobody likes to look at them. People point to the elite schools and say that's what private schools are and they ignore the authoritarian anti-evolution schools, the tough-love discipline schools, and the utter fake schools, all of which do exist.
If you walk into the private schools in my town -- and I have -- they look exactly like the public schools, except they are missing mandated facilities like playgrounds and laboratory rooms. Including class size, which can be worse than the public schools, because there are legal caps on the size of public school classes.
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Date: 2006-07-20 04:42 pm (UTC)This is more than a lot of people can afford, but it's also within reach for a lot of people who aren't extremely rich.
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Date: 2006-07-20 05:05 pm (UTC)Not relevant here, but I'm also unimpressed by the school's philosophy. It's a decent preschool approach, but there comes a point when children need to learn more than they can discover on their own.
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Date: 2006-07-20 05:06 pm (UTC)The big exception to this would be Catholic parochial schools. No, they aren't all better than all public schools, but they average better.
(Yes, I'm a Catholic. No, I didn't go to parochial school.)
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Date: 2006-07-20 05:11 pm (UTC)as far as my experience w/private schools, they were just mills
Date: 2006-07-20 07:46 pm (UTC)my rule of thumb is never to trust *anyone's* pr about themselves
Date: 2006-07-20 07:48 pm (UTC)I'm also reminded of all the thousands of student council candidates I've seen get up and say "I'm going to be totally different from everyone else!"
I went to Catholic schools thru 8th grade
Date: 2006-07-20 07:53 pm (UTC)Re: I went to Catholic schools thru 8th grade
Date: 2006-07-20 07:58 pm (UTC)I went to a private school, briefly, in the South
Date: 2006-07-20 08:42 pm (UTC)Milwaukee has one of the nation's biggest voucher school programs, and they are a gold mine for every scamster and snake-oil salesman in town. They are also a great source of funds for those seeking to indoctrinate children in Catholicism, Islam, or fundamentalist Lutheranism with my tax dollars.
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Date: 2006-07-21 12:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-21 01:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-21 01:50 pm (UTC)The idea isn't that students have to discover everything on their own, it's that they initiate all their own learning.
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Date: 2006-07-21 02:32 pm (UTC)The question was whether the school was an example of innovation. It turns out it's not an example of innovation, it's an example of clinging to a discredited philosophy of education.
The idea isn't that students have to discover everything on their own, it's that they initiate all their own learning.
And how do they initiate what they haven't heard of? How on earth are they going to learn the vast amount of stuff they need, if they have to start everything? The modern world requires that people know things that instinct and child's play will never lead them to.
Either the website lies, and the teachers actually do introduce a curriculum, or the students come out of there with big holes in their knowledge and skills. Or both.
Re: I went to a private school, briefly, in the South
Date: 2006-07-21 02:36 pm (UTC)Re: I went to a private school, briefly, in the South
Date: 2006-07-21 03:22 pm (UTC)Some of these schools are run by good conmen and swindlers, the kind who have their victims convinced that the snake oil is curing their lumbago and the mean old FDA is keeping them from the medicine they need. (Let us now praise Dr. Frances O. Kelsey: blessed is she among bureaucrats!) Anybody who has studied white-collar crime knows that the classic cons leave the mark convinced that the swindler is the hero, and the cops are the bad guys: Ponzi had his suckers convinced that the government conspired to close his beneficial operation down on the bankers' orders.
Many parents want their children indoctrinated in the teachings of a particular sect or ideology, and are delighted to have it paid for by taxpayer dollars. (For those not aware of this, voucher schools in Milwaukee are protected from regulation and inspection by the state's Department of Public Instruction; and do not have to administer the mandatory statewide testing to which public schools are subjected.)
Full disclosure: I'm proud to say, my daughter is a Milwaukee Public School student; and I once worked for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
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Date: 2006-07-21 03:27 pm (UTC)In the (public) Hazelwood School District, education was something you had to grudgingly sit through. The only really important thing was inter-school athletics, either playing or showing up to root for them. As a result, anybody who put more effort into studying than was necessary to get a high C or low B average was seen as vaguely weird, at best, and a threat to the school's athletes (by raising the grading curve to the point where the athletes were risking academic probation). I'm not talking about the kids' opinions, here, although more than half of them shared those opinions. I'm talking about the pretty nearly 100% consistent attitude of the parents, and of maybe 10% of the teachers and staff.
The private high school I attended, Faith Christian Academy, was priced on a sliding scale; I think my parents were spending about $1,000 per child per year to send Beth and I there, well within the price range of a union electrician with a stay-at-home wife. Even back in the 1970s before anybody had heard of vouchers, Faith had a certain number of tuition-waived slots available per year, funded by two or three local churches. But the difference in attitude was like night and day. By the end of my first week there, other kids were asking me why I didn't put in enough effort to get the grades I obviously could, if I was getting Cs with no effort. Even the biggest slacker on the basketball team was studying hard enough that he went on to get a summa-cum-laude college degree on the habits he had when he was at Faith.
And without exception that I saw in four years there, they had virtually all gotten those attitudes by growing up in families where putting effort into your grades and into learning things was expected, and the few who didn't went along with that culture due to massive peer pressure.
No government program can, or ever will, change the parents' attitudes towards education. If I were running for office and was asked what I was going to do to "improve the schools," I would look the questioner right in the eye and say, "Nothing. The schools are fine. We'll stop graduating morons when you stop sending them to us."
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Date: 2006-07-21 03:52 pm (UTC)The kids are in a lively-minded community, which helps. If the descripton is accurate, they aren't afraid of learning and can pick up academic subjects quickly if they see a reason to.
Conventional schooling is apt to produce people who believe that learning is difficult or impossible for them.
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Date: 2006-07-21 04:25 pm (UTC)Conventional schooling is apt to produce people who believe that learning is difficult or impossible for them.
You know that obnoxious usenet response, "Cite?" It's tailor-made for statements like this. What does "apt" mean in this context anyway? Do you know the beliefs of a representative section of the school-educated population with respect to their own learning? How do you know this? Can you show me any evidence one way or another about this?
There are problems with public education, but I hate to see people say unhelpful things about things which are not even related to the problems.
Useful learning frequently is difficult, and frequently takes a concerted, diligent effort on the part of the learner. I don't see why this is a problem. People will do it when it's worth it to them. That doesn't mean that the only way it can be worth it to them is if they think of it all on their own.
By the way, I read the FAQ. It had nothing concrete in it.
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Date: 2006-07-21 04:39 pm (UTC)2. Those students you're calling morons are not morons. They learn a lot of things quite easily -- often things we wish they hadn't -- they expend a lot of effort learning those things. They practice, they study, they excel -- at things we're not teaching them. They're choosing their own curriculum. They're initiating their own learning.
They're choosing a street curriculum over a school curriculum bevcause they can see that it leads to short-haul satisfaction, mastery of the material, and respect of their peers. When they look around their own families and neighborhoods, they don't see short or long-term benefits to school learning. Their parents ordinarily push them to study the best they know how, but not having the skills or literate tradition themselves, they don't push in effective ways.
Evden with all this, the poorest classes in the US at least are much better educated now than in the past. Unfortunately for them, the standards for education keep rising with advances in technology, the minimum level of education needed to make it keeps getting higher, the cost to attain it grows disproportionately to inflation while the real wages of the working class get worse, and the reward for a moderate amount of education keeps getting smaller.
I do have solutions in mind, but they can't be expressed in sound bites.