#11
|
|||
|
|||
Jobst
On 9/3/2017 11:06 PM, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Sun, 03 Sep 2017 13:32:48 -0500, AMuzi wrote: Without an educated populace the gatekeepers are powerless and wishing for an educated population is a fool's dream. And here we are. Yep. And unfortunately there is a large percentage of the American population who have opted to be stupid and proud of it. I have said this before and will say it again. I have for decades thought that a class in logic ought to be required in every high school. In a participatory form of government- like, you know, democracy, a basic level of non-idiocy is required for success. Unfortunately someone decided that "education creates liberals," and thus far too many politicians have decided to oppose competent public education (at least here, don't know about other parts of the country). ISTM the "education creates liberals" effort is concentrating on denigrating university professors and college education. There's a gaggle of right-wing columnists who dig deep to find admittedly silly things occurring in some schools and leap to statements that academia is totally worthless. I think the tactic with K-12 has been entirely different. Corporations have focused on bad results from inner-city schools and gamed the system to promote, then run, for-profit charter schools. Then they've gotten rich by siphoning off the tax dollars. In Ohio, at least, these for-profit charter schools were promising to provide far better educations. But they've consistently delivered no better and often far worse results. After years of educational failure, many were closed down by the state, but later re-formed with most of the same administrators under a new name, as a "new" school that rakes in yet more taxpayer money. As a bonus, for years they were exempt from many of the standards that public schools must meet. Oh, and they pay teachers far less while paying administrators far more. Here I'll sound like a conservative: schools need to have standards and accountability for behavior and educational performance, parents (or someone in the home) need to be actively involved in their children's scholastic life. I'll agree, although bad family background makes it damned hard to get kids to behave and perform. Society seems to look at kids with absent fathers, layabout mothers, ramshackle homes and gang-banger role models, and blame the teachers for not turning those kids into hard-working geniuses. And we need to recognize that not everyone wants to or is able to attend college successfully, which seems to be the current goal of Americam education policy; there should be multiple educational tracks available to help students acquire the skills they need to be successful. I absolutely agree. -- - Frank Krygowski |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Is jobst gone? | Crescentius Vespasianus | Techniques | 7 | June 23rd 11 12:08 AM |
When Jobst ... | Steve Freides[_2_] | Techniques | 1 | January 20th 11 09:28 PM |
Jobst | Brad Anders | Racing | 20 | January 19th 11 05:31 PM |
Jobst | TriGuru55x11 | Rides | 1 | January 19th 11 01:13 PM |