i don't know if i sparked a good tangent or not, but this is certainly very interesting.

i had something slightly different in mind, though. teaching ethics of personal conduct and similar issues should indeed be up to the parent (i think about the "schools" in Brave New World and shudder).

but specifically i'm interested in schools. you're right Oz, that schools teach a lot more than basic skills. part of this is for "the public good." the idea behind sex ed is to help reduce STDs and teen pregnancy - schools in CA at least must get parent approval to for the students to be present.

but what about so-called creationism and evolution? evolution is taught in science classes, and it's a theory supported with almost complete consensus among the scientific community. creationism, with its newest incarnation being called "intelligent design theory," is not scientific. it doesn't meet the basic criteria of science (and it's incredibly Christo-centric). it more properly belongs in a theology class, which don't exist in public schools. should they? what about some education along the lines of comparative religion? my cursory schools at least never taught very much about the theology and cosmology of world religions, mostly just demographic and historical stuff. should all of this be thrown out of public schools? i certainly think the sciences have a proper place there. but are there, or could there be, other "charged" subjects in education?

this is one topic about which i have a lot less to assert. sometimes i think everyone should get an overview of child development. for example, study after study has shown that a child's mental capacity is stiffled by passive entertainment, and children that receive more interactive stimulation and social interaction invariably do better in school than children raised on TV. i'm not saying ban TV; i'm saying warn people early, long before becomming parents, that TV is usually pretty bad for their kids, explain why and how, and leave it up to them from there on out (TV as just one example). i mean, the idea here is to give people a few extra tools and understandings to be better parents down the line, but not direct them towards a particular or uniform set of parental behaviors.

See this is the problem, good parents feel outsiders have no right to interfere in their parenting. Thats all well and good if you happen to be good parents, so go ahead and cling to that way of thinking while society crumbles around you. Because your attitude is what protects bad parents.

Illinois funds its schools the same way, and it has resulted in the same problems. To change it, though, requires a rewrite of the tax code and would probably result in an increase in the state income tax with a reduction in the property tax, which is political suicide to support. Give the rich property owners a break while taxing the poor renters? That'll never fly...



I think there should be more "charged" subjects in school, myself. Much of what was taught to me and is being taught to my kids is so boring and sanitized that they are bored out of their minds. We should be teaching them to think for themselves and to develop and defend their opinions. What better way than to give them interesting things to argue about.

I don't think that the current educational system means to act as mind control. But by making the material so boring we drive the students into thinking that everything is dumb, and they become sheep.



You would think this would be reasonable, wouldn't you? And that all high school grads would have a common background? But



I'd agree. No Child Left Behind makes an effort to correct this, but it is failing. We are now driving the teachers to teach to the test, not teach the material. My kids have stories about teachers cramming for two weeks before the test and then never returning to the material. That wasn't the intent.

There should be a national standard of graduation requirements. The minute you link teacher performance to that, though, you set off a firestorm. And rightly so, sometimes. Are we going to hold an inner-city teacher to the same performance goals as a teacher in a wealthier suburban district? That's not fair.



The minute you try to "improve" or "educate" bad parents you usually are talking about a system that tells me how to parent. Who decides what is right and wrong? Or who is a bad parent? That's a little too "Big Brother" for me.



The only money I see making a difference is raising teacher salaries. I'd support that. Otherwise it seems to get spent on bells and whistles that don't help. We had a state legislator propose that all students 5th-8th grade get a laptop from the state. Duh. Good example of how not to spend money...unless I get one, too!

Unfortunately you are correct, but i'm not sure we can afford to put the issue in the to hard basket because of the big brother factor?

Well instead of interfering with good parents, why not just look at parents who's children show signs of antisicial behaviour? Right now all we are doing is looking at parents of abused children, but that is the bare minimum and we could be doing allot more.

The school issue is an area with allot of room for improvement. I remember the attitude of teachers when i was in school was pretty much set along the lines of 'if your having fun, you carn't be learning anything'. Which as we all know is the exact opposite to reality.

I would have thought that by now things would have changed but sounds like it hasn't.

Does anyone really think there are any important subjects in school that 'must' be taught in a booring way?

As a taxpayer, I have a problem with







I think these are all real issues. However,



this isn't right either.

I think the teachers' unions need to look closely at what is about to happen to Chrysler. Taxpayers will not and are not continuing to support taxes for programs that can't produce. My wife (who works for the school district) gets gobs of paid holidays, has 77 sick days saved up, and we get our health insurance for practically nothing. If I got it through my job it would be $400 per month for the exact same coverage.

It is almost impossible to get a school funding referendum passed in our area right now. So where will the money come from?

And how can we hold teachers accountable for teaching when the students vary so widely in ability? All the talk about school vouchers is great, but what do you do when all the smart kids go to the magnet schools? Who teaches the more difficult kids?

My kids are in public schools, and I think the schools are doing fine, but I don't expect them to teach my kids everything. That's what I'm here for - I actually do know everything!



The big question is who decides what is antisocial. When you start making those kinds of decisions for people you are engaging in thought control. Clearly, carrying a gun into school is antisocial. But golf clubs and baseball bats have been used as weapons, too. Should we ban those? Spray painting racial graffiti on the walls is wrong. Is wearing a "Jesus loves me but hates George Bush" T-shirt wrong? Careful what you wish for - you might get it!



That would be the single best thing we can do for them, and it's what I try to do at home.



If its boring, I know I'm not learning. I'm just enduring. The stuff I learn always seems like play.

I was going to write something long on teachers pay. But I'll do the short version instead.

Teachers work very few days a year compared to a normal job. They receive benefits that can only be obtained by government employee unions. They are not on call 24x7x365 as are many private employees (like me). Only the rare ones work long days. They are not working under "at will" employment. If they want to have the same pay as a private professionals, they need to work the same hours and have the same standard set of conditions that prevail in the private world. It would be a very bad trade for them....

Therefore, I don't think they are underpaid.

That deserves an echo. I would much rather see some money go into things like text books. With almost 14K per student per year, it should NOT be a problem to fork over $100 a year per student for books and cycle them every half a dozen years or so.

Also many traditionally boring subjects should not be boring. History is a prime example. Most find it boring the way it is presented, but it should really be anything but. A big part of the problem is that most high school students simply don't yet have the skills to dig into a subject like the Peloponnesian Wars...Something you could easily spend an entire semester on.

I strongly agree. You can't tell teachers this, though. They go nuts. They can't imagine getting fired for poor performance, which might result in some of the ways long-time teachers teach. If I can't get fired, why put forth extra effort?



That's kind of depressing. When my work gets boring I try to find something to do to make it a challenge again. I can't stand to be bored!



That's true - you get what you pay for. Why should the people that have the biggest impact on our children's lives outside of their parents have to work for peanuts?

your raise some good points, Purge, and in some respects i agree with you. but i think the problem is also very complicated. for example, one of my friend's moms is a special ed teacher. she has 3 bachelor's degrees, and two master's. it's hard for her to find a job here in CA. that's not because her skills aren't in high demand or because she's not qualified to be a special ed teacher. rather, it's because the schools would be required to pay her more than they can usually afford. she's over-qualified in that respect. i don't think every teacher deserves a better salary, but i do think schools should have more discretionary funds for cases like that.

let's take another case. my senior year in high school, our teachers picketed the front of the school over a pay issue. the district was holding onto their annual raise and announced it'd distribute them retroactively at the end of the year. it was a cost of living adjustment, not a merit increase.

it's also hard to advance. unless you switch over to full-time administration, the pay cap for teachers is fairly low. at the university level, you can still remain a teacher but transition into higher paid dual positions and have other means to make more money over time.

well, on this subject, i just found an interesting article you might care to read:
WWW Link

We may have some actual common ground here!

As I'm sure you have figured out, I believe in a meritocracy and someone like you describe deserves to be paid significantly more than the average teacher. She has more training, and is seeking to work in a significantly more challenging environment than the average teacher. It also requires a certain special something be present in her personality that most of us don't have. I would like a school system that is accommodative of that.

The article you linked to is hopeful and does offer the promise of school funds being spent more effectively by introducing a limited from of competition and more local control. This is the general kind of thing I favor and I would like to see a lot more of it.

I don't know if you have followed what is happening in the Washington DC school system experiment, but it makes for some very interesting reading. I haven't seen anything on it recently, but it is an excellent study in school choice. Both on the practical, educational level, and on the resistance that successful programs can face from entrenched hostile political forces. It was also specifically focused on the most troubled environments/students making it all the more challenging. May have to see if I can dig up some links on it again.

Do you think thought controll is not already apon us?

Big brother is always going to be a problem issue but at least we can make an effort to get it right instead of just saying well it's too hard, lets just ignore the issue.

Well thats easy, just teach them all the song 'bittersweet symphony', that should do the trick! (i love that song).