What happened to education?

[imsevimse]

A reflection on a post in another thread!

For some bands, it's about neither. It's about collecting trophies to keep the parents and the school administration happy.

Overall, a fairly accurate comment on much of public education in this country at this point in time. The "keep the parents and the school administration happy" is independent of the subject being taught. My daughter taught middle school math (grades 6-8) for eight years in a variety of schools ranging from impoverished inner city to wealthy national golf community. All the same in fundamental respects. She finally left and got a real life. Her comment was "All I wanted to do was teach math to kids who had problems with it. I wasn't allowed to."

Guess that's a deviation from the thread. So I'll quit.

"keep the parents and the school administration happy"

I can't believe how universal education is. The same thing happened here. One of the reasons I quit as a teacher was the turn on how to look at education.

When I started in the early 80'ies the goal was "to teach children how to play an instrument". To measure this you just listened. Could they play? Highly motivated students got longer lessons. Public music schools started in the 1960-ies that was free of charge. They still were free in the 80-ies. Music were for all children not just those with parents who had good economy. The children with an interest to learn continued until they were 21 years of age. They who did not want to continue quit early.

When I quit in 1999 the goal was "the children should know what instruments exists, their names and how they sound and function. Goal was to have fun in musical activities until they quit. To measure this you count how many students there are in the school every year. You need a certain number on each teacher. The school do not care if they learn, that's secondary. Students got lessons of 16 minutes/week each. In practice 20 minutes if you had one or you had two students for 40 minutes. Highly motivated students were not given extra lessons. High fees had 1999 made it a school for the rich, but still partly financed by taxes which I think is insane because it gives only the children of wealthy parents the opportunity to study music on all tax-payers behalf."

How did I do?

I did better in the beginning when my goal was to teach students an instument. The children who learned to play were the children I started when I was new at work. I still remember them.

I did worse - in that aspect - when the goal was changed to "keep the parents and the school administration happy" since the definition of a good teacher then became the one who has many students. Students were needed because they pay the fee the school needs. If students quit and no que on the instrument you teach, then you will loose your job. This leads to lots of campaigns to get new students and teaching methods to make them study for as long as possible.

To me this in NOT the same type of teaching you need if you want to learn to play an instrument for life. Do you think the management wants to hear your thoughts? Of course they don't want to discuss this. They just want you to fix it. "Be a good teacher" solves everything, aye.

I saw this in the mid 90'ies and started to make a plan how to find an exit as a teacher. I quit in 1999.

Best thing I did was to realise where education was going early and to do the switch before I got to old. Now education of all kinds has similar problems. Private schools have started and every student has a sum (from tax) that follows the student to the school he/she choose. Same thing happens. The owner of the school wants students to their school. No students no money. How to attract students? With fun activities and high degrees. Student do not learn but get higher degrees anyway. School does not care if students learn they are mostly interested in having a school in the first place and this means they have to attract new students. Teachers are no longer authorities and students do not learn!!!
Do you think the management wants to discuss this? Of course not. They just want you to fix it. "Be a good teacher" solves everything, aye.

Politics noticed there was a crisis in the school system. They have tried to fix things for years but they fail. The thing to fix this is either to have all schools be tax financed public schools and no taxes involved to finance the private owned schools. No need to forbid if you have the money, or you lower taxes and only allow private schools and every parent has to choose school and pay all fees for all education.

/Tom

[Bach5G]

Sweden?

[imsevimse]

Yes, but the educational sytem seams to be a problem in all the western contries. Seams India, Japan and other Eastern countries are doing a lot better. Sweden is just one of the countries who fails. Happens to be worse than the other Nordic countries unfortunately. Still not the worst in Europe but alarming. Unfortunately politicians here have no clue about to solve this. To me it is simple. Go back to how things were when education was better. Politicians are to busy to get votes. They change to meet the opinion rather than have a strategy. In this case the problem is to have taxes pay for private schools. It leads to tax-money goes down a hole. Taxes should only finance public schools.

It is easy. We have to decide if we want tax financed public schools or private financed private schools. To mix private schools and public schools and finance both with taxes is a dead end. If we decide we want all schools to be privat we need to lower taxes and have every parent pay for their children.

/Tom

[BGuttman]

We have a similar problem. Many people who don't like their children mixing with "others" send them to private schools where the admission does not have to be "equal opportunity". Then they turn around and say since their kids aren't in public school they shouldn't have to pay for it.

This is back door bigotry at work. Want to send your kid to a private school? Fine. But pay for it yourself. And pay the taxes that support the Public School. If you want to get your money out of the taxes, work to get the Public School better.

[imsevimse]

My belief is we should return to have all schools financed by tax and make sure every child has a place in the school. I'm prepared to pay more tax to make this happen. School is a concern for the country too important to leave to the individual. We must see to all children has the same right to a good education. It's not up to the parents. A child with unresponsible parents has the same rights as other children to good education. It is in the interest of the whole country to have educated citizens who can work and take care of themselves.
I'm sure it decrease crime in a society to have people educated as well as it increases wealth for everyone. After all we have tried private schools and it didn't work. I too think you could pay for private school if you want but to finance Public Schools with taxes is in the interest of all people, even in the interest of the people who choose a private school since the society needs educated people. We need the children of other parents to be educated enough to take care of themselves or else we will have a problem that is dangerous.

/Tom

[ghmerrill]

I'm sorry, but I can't not say this ... All this talk of taxes and how to support schools has practically nothing to do with the quality of education. It just doesn't. Really.

Huge amounts of money are being spent in both private and public school systems. The schools have a lot more money than you suspect. Unfortunately, almost all of it in almost all public school systems I'm familiar with is wasted, and relatively little spent on genuine education. I don't have the time or space to even start to tell just the stories I know personally over about 40 years of experience. Just too many stories of incompetence, corruption, stupidity, goofy educational ideology, and lack of care. Twenty-five years ago we were in court with the public schools here for "failure to deliver services". Representing ourselves against the County and the State Department of Education (and their high-priced attorneys), we won that case, had a decision that required them to change some of their practices, and the judge suggested (in court) that we proceed further against the state for monetary damages that he couldn't award. We just yanked the kids out and sent them to private school.

So I ended up (25 years ago) sending my children to a very expensive private school because they simply weren't being educated in the public school system. It's something I thought I'd never do (being educated very well in a public school system through high school myself). But it HAD to be done and it was worth every penny of it compared to what they were getting in the public schools. It basically took all of my wife's (non-trivial, full-time) salary for about four years for our three kids. We felt it was more important for them to get the basics at that level then to keep them in the public schools (where they were actually being damaged in terms of learning) and then pay for their college. We're glad we did it. If we'd paid all that money, and our fellow citizens where we live had paid similarly for their children, to the public schools, they would not have improved. It's NOT the money. The public school system has become like that old joke about a boat being a hole in the water into which you throw money. It's a hole in our society into which the government throws money.

And, oh, yeah ... We paid all our school taxes during that time so the public schools could go on as they were. Ironically, my daughter's last teaching job (that she finally fled) was in that very same county public school system. Things had changed -- they got a lot worse.

So ... sorry ... but don't tell me about comparative school quality or how I feel about paying taxes, or that I'm a bigot. I've been way too close to it for way too long. I'd LOVE to provide more money for the public schools and see it used to provide a good education. For Pete's sake, I'M AN EXPERIENCED TEACHER, and so are my wife and daughter! But that hasn't happened, and there's no sign that's going to change soon, if at all.

We DO have a problem that's dangerous, and if you haven't been in some of the schools like my daughter tried to teach in, you don't know what "danger" means in that context. It's not education. It's a combination of day care and a poorly administered reform school (where no reform happens). The kids that manage to get through and learn something do so IN SPITE OF the school. Their parents are heroes, and they're very lucky.

Most of my family has been close to education and in those trenches for significant parts of their lives. My wife and I are both Ph.D.'s and we've taught from middle school through graduate school.

You're welcome to your opinions. Everyone is. But beliefs not based on experience and facts, or based on just what the national news decides to put in front of you, won't cut it -- and they haven't for decades.

That's all I'm going to rant on this. But whatever you believe, realize that I speak from a huge degree of personal experience with different types and levels of education in this country. If you don't have a similar degree of experience, maybe rethink some of your beliefs. I still care very much about education. It's just a crying shame.

[Matt K]

Just a heads up, this is really close to straddling the line of unproductive; its still under the purview of discussion because we do have a number of educators here and we do discuss pedagogical, but we really do need to keep this on track. There isn't much to be gained by attempting to mind-read those who disagree with you; only the other person can know their own motives and even then... they may not really know their own motivations for doing something.

The bottom line is that this is a really, really hard question and there's no single answer even for a small, homogeneous culture like Sweden (which when I was in education school about a decade ago was hailed as being among, if not the, best systems in the world by US educators) much less for the hugely diverse portions of the US. What works for a rural school in WV is just about guaranteed to not work for an urban inner school in NYC and likewise for a suburban school in TX.

People have exceedingly low levels of participation in their local school board, at least in the US. If one really wanted to improve outcomes, there are avenues. Just because you don't have kids doesn't mean you can't participate. I don't know if that is true in Sweden but I suspect that might be the case as well.

[imsevimse]

I'm an experienced teacher myself. I worked 13 years in the Public Music School. The Public Music School was often hosted in the same locale as the mandatory Public School were ordinary teachers work. I have crossed many school yards, been in many classrooms. I have two children we put in a tax-financed private school. Nor the private schools or the public schools did a good job, but the private schools seems to have put a lot of the tax-payers money in profits, making the owners rich. If students were learning it could be ok but they are not learning and private schools has to close down because they do not get enough students. They then promise good grades to attract students. Kids get the good grades to save the schools reputation. All leads to tax-payers money goes to owners and less of the needs for education. I don't see the problem is the existence of private schools. To me the problem is tax-financed private schools. There should only be tax-financed public schools. I am fully aware US has its own problems in schools. As Matt says Sweden was in the top as having one of the best school systems in the world once and at that time it was tax-financed public schools. We still have a pretty friendly society. Crime is low if you compare to other countries. People are equal if you compare to other countries. There are a few recent problems with people who come here from other countries with low education who does not get integrated. We do our best to take care of them.

Our school system has not totally given up on this. There is still time to stop the segregation in school that we now see. In a couple of decades we may have lost the battle and then it is "one on his own"

/Tom

[Slideorama]

Interesting opinions here. I currently teach in public schools, this will be my 20th year.

The biggest change I have seen is not admin, teachers, tax dollars, or even students. It is parenting.

Have a good day.

[imsevimse]

Parents here in Sweden usually think the school system should take care of everything for them and afterwords blames the school for not doing it right.

Teachers have the responsability that every child is taken care of. Every child is important. Discipline can be difficult because parents question general rules if the rules do not resonate with them. If parents do not think rules are to follow then their children do the same. A parent can question a homework, or can say their kid should be allowed to eat chips instead of food. Another parent can have the opinion that this is bad because it will go against their opinion and affect negatively on their own child. They can also have the opinion their kids should get higher grades (just because they think so). I know headmasters who have secret telephone numbers because parents call them and have opinions about everything. They might put pressure on a teacher or a headmaster if they think they are right and the school is wrong.

Parents can be arrogant and answer telephone calls and speak loud even though it is a perental meeting. The teacher has to beg the parent to step out of the room.

I'm sure this is not everyday problems but parents can be a problem. Are all criticism wrong? I don't think so but the teacher has his hands bound and represents the school when he discuss problems with parents. This is annoying to meet a teacher who denies there is a particular problem or when a parent feels the teacher just defends the system.

Generally I think parents who put their children in a private school they pay for get better education. I believe this is mostly because their school friends also have parents who decide to pay for a private school. I think these students and parents are highly motivated. Children with diagnoses and other problems might attend another private school to serve their particular need. This is probably good and possible if they are lucky to have parents who can afford that type of private school.

The problem we have with the private schools is Sweden is the sum that comes witch each student as a "bag of money" from tax. This bag follows the student whatever school he attend. This does not separate students. It is not the general idea it should. All children still can choose any school they want. This result in no big differences between public and private schools because the same problems are in both schools. The problem is how to solve the problem with a none working school. Some private schools try to avoid students who are week. It is not allowed to do this of course, but the school can say they are full or in other ways separate easy students from difficult students. There are religious private schools financed by tax as an example of this way of deliberate segregation.

/Tom

[Matt K]

That's exactly right: problems exist with private institutions, public institutions, homeschooling, and other alternative types of schooling. I don't know what can be done about parents though. Some people are bad parents and there's not a whole lot you can do about that.

Would it be possible for some parents to make poor decisions? Sure. But it's also possible for administrators to be bad too. And we often give them a monopoly. Where I went to school, even though it was a public system, we had several poorly performing teachers who sucked up a lot of resources (with salaries near six figures in a low cost of living area). They were not promoted based on merit, but based on seniority. Some were even discriminatory (particularly towards complying with the ADA 1992 of students with disabilities). I was one of the students that was discriminated against, but because we weren't wealthy we had no option to attend the private school or even other public school in the area.

Of course, it's now 2018. We have all sorts of amazing, connective technology now. I wonder if it isn't time to revisit if we even need to have classrooms in the way they were conceived of when they were intended to be manufacturer worker training. Maybe we should also include parenting in the curriculum...

[ghmerrill]

The biggest change I have seen is not admin, teachers, tax dollars, or even students. It is parenting.

It's without a doubt one of the biggest changes, and one that teachers in ALL schools (well, hopefully not college and beyond, but even there to some degree in my experience) need to deal with. And it has both broad and intense influence. My daughter mentioned it constantly (and still does, since she keeps in touch with her school-teacher and administration friends). It's the result of at least a couple of different societal changes affecting families at different income levels. When you couple it with changes in educational ideology and administration, and political pressure (often exerted at the local level by those parents), you get ... well, it's pretty clear that you know what you get.

[ghmerrill]

We have all sorts of amazing, connective technology now. I wonder if it isn't time to revisit if we even need to have classrooms in the way they were conceived of when they were intended to be manufacturer worker training.

Beware of this.

I'm a (cautious) proponent of "distance learning", and in fact taught a semester distance learning course in 2009 in a local university. It offers significant advantages and I think is unquestionably the way of the future (and to some degree the way of today in certain circumstances). But the technology and pedagogy isn't quite there yet for it to work well and "seamlessly" overall. That will take some additional time (the technology will lead the pedagogy and the teacher abilities). However, there are already some truly wonderful examples of university courses on YouTube in a few different disciplines. With regard to elementary through middle school or high school -- I'm not so sure about the benefits vs. the risks.

What I think you need to beware of most is the result of "desocializing" the classroom and the school/educational experience. Sure, I can imagine a kid having one group of "social" friends that he/she plays sports with, goes on various "field trips" with, attends "event's" with; and then another group of "educational" friends with whom he's/she's in class and shares a learning experience. But I'm really skittish about separating those experiences. Maybe I'm just being rigid in my thinking there. We'll see.

[Matt K]

Socialization is the easily the least compelling reason, for me, to keep kids in classrooms. I had some really, really awful peers. I learned nothing beneficial from the experience about socialization. On the contrary, I learned that authority figures would place you with students who had no business being in the same room as you. I learned that when you were treated violently by those people, that authority figures would turn a blind eye or punish you for retaliation.

Sure, same applies as before, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. I'm sure there are school systems where students do get some level of socialization. But that is absolutely, unequivocally not universal.

To the contrary, I've yet to meet a homeschooled person that wasn't at least as good at socializing as someone who went to public school. Purely anecdotal but my personal experience just doesn't bear out that the type of schooling has much of a correlation at all with how socialized you are.

[ghmerrill]

On the contrary, I learned that authority figures would place you with students who had no business being in the same room as you. I learned that when you were treated violently by those people, that authority figures would turn a blind eye or punish you for retaliation.

Bet I could pin your age down to within a few years from this alone. Maybe not, since in some places this has been going on longer than in others. But I see this as a problem that needs systemic fixing rather than abandoning -- whatever one's own preference for public/private/parochial/charter schools is (and we've had up close and personal experiences with each of these in my family -- either from the student/parent perspective or the teaching perspective, and often both). Yeah, I know what you're saying. But I can't even give the examples here that I'm personally aware of. Not appropriate. Systemic collapse of protecting children in your care.

What you describe is EXACTLY the administrative support my daughter typically got from her schools in general. There was a SINGLE exception to this in her 8 years of teaching -- an absolutely GREAT (minority) vice principal. Great math teacher too -- through the calc courses. But he went elsewhere after a couple of years.

By the way ... One phenomenon you may already be aware of is that this situation has crept rather steadily into the charter schools -- or a least for a certain "layer" of them. Rather than competing for the "better" students whose parents want them out of public schools, a number of these schools have been formed specifically to compete for the "problem" students whose parents either want them out of the public schools, or to handle those few students that actually get expelled from the public schools. I leave the rest to your imagination.

To the contrary, I've yet to meet a homeschooled person that wasn't at least as good at socializing as someone who went to public school.

Oh, boy, I have!! But of course this is VERY dependent on the home involved and who is doing the schooling and whether they have some wonky perspective they're trying to instill. One problem I've seen in home-schooled students (not universal, but noticeable) is that they often lack any sense of "where they are" relative to other students (in terms of breadth and depth of what they know, in terms of expectations in larger educational communities, and in terms of being "competitive"), and often look at things only from a single perspective (since they're often taught by only one or two teachers. This isn't insoluble. But it can be a challenge.

[timothy42b]

Socialization is the easily the least compelling reason, for me, to keep kids in classrooms.

There may be some effect on learning, though, especially where group interaction is part of the process. (I guess there's some debate about the value of these approaches.) It sounds like that group effect was more negative in your case than positive.

Most of the studies on class size show very little effect. But they are done on a very truncated (on both ends) distribution). Between 12 and 24 students, class size seems to make no difference. Drop to 5, and the interaction is insufficient; go above 30, and kids get lost. I've read quite a bit on education in the past couple of years, as my daughter graduated and became a teacher, and then decided it wasn't for her and moved on.

Home schooling. It can be done very very well, or not. I've run into examples both ways. I think much depends on the reasons for doing it. The proponents are very passionate. One thing that concerns me a bit is that a sizable segment doesn't value further education. Home schoolers who take college boards tend to do as well or slightly better than the average of public school kids. But if you crank the numbers, it appears only about 2% of home schoolers actually take those tests. Since you don't have a gradepoint or class rank, if you don't take boards it would appear college is not in general a priority. And perhaps it shouldn't be, but then the US technical education system is greatly lacking. I think every parent should read Shop Class as Soulcraft, an Inquiry into the Value of Work. But if you go that direction you're mostly on your own.

[ghmerrill]

...

Some VERY good points.