Are we at the end of our tether with public schooling as private schools, religious schools and school vouchers try to replace our traditional education system?
A couple of months ago, I wondered aloud about our American public education problem in a comments stream:
It is the middle class in America that prevents a shearing of interest between the upper class and the poor. With a solid middle, democracy itself implodes as the temptations of survival rival any sense of lawfulness and disinterested investment.
Sharing our private morals creates our cultural values and our public wants -- and when a wide range of people examine those tenets of a community -- we begin to create context and understanding and tolerance is the result of that ongoing negotiation between conflicted belief systems.
If we narrow our educational teaching to the Madrassa, the military academy or the private prep school -- are we creating a better education for our kids, or are we really making worse citizens through isolation and non-heuristic social interaction?
People used to become teachers because they were born to do it. You'd see entire families of teachers because it was in their blood.If we continue to underpay public school teachers while increasing their workload and teaching obligations and parents baby sitting -- what hope can we hold for a mature and ripening middle class?
People do have to live, though, and very few public school teachers are paid handsomely... let alone a living wage... and so those teaching now suck the idealism and altruism out of the next generation of teachers.
Who would want to be paid nothing for a thankless job -- especially now when parents have 24/7 access to a teacher's email and a reserved spot "for observation" in your classroom?
It becomes a constant harassment from which you cannot escape and if you try to discipline a child then you have the other children on you as well as the parents and so you find the easiest way is to end up doing nothing and pushing the children along from grade to grade just so you, and the public school system, can survive in a hostile and thankless world.
It is the middle class in America that prevents a shearing of interest between the upper class and the poor. With a solid middle, democracy itself implodes as the temptations of survival rival any sense of lawfulness and disinterested investment.
Sharing our private morals creates our cultural values and our public wants -- and when a wide range of people examine those tenets of a community -- we begin to create context and understanding and tolerance is the result of that ongoing negotiation between conflicted belief systems.
If we narrow our educational teaching to the Madrassa, the military academy or the private prep school -- are we creating a better education for our kids, or are we really making worse citizens through isolation and non-heuristic social interaction?
I think I'm a little biased in this in that I see religious schools as a good thing - they give parents the option to give their children a solid education that also has them learn the fundamentals of their religious beliefs. I'd certainly want to send my children to a proper yeshiva.
When I moved from public school to Peddie I went from classrooms of 30-40 people to classes of about 12 people and the difference was incredible. What really needs to happen is that we need to steer money away from wars upon wars and get it into educating our children.
Gordon --
So you don't see yeshiva or madrassa educations and separating and niche-enforcing?
If we do away with the public schools -- should parents be required to pay for the private education of their children; or should education no longer be mandatory?
I feel that public schools must live on. I think it should be as I was told it is in England - if you want to go to the public school, that is fine - but if you want to go to the private school, you get the money to pay for it.
Yeshivas and Madrassas might be separating and niche enforcing but the separation (at least for Yeshivas) is what focuses the child on the religious education without it being diluted by peers that might ridicule what the child is learning. It certainly happened in my school.
That's an interesting take, Gordon. Is ridicule an expected consequence of a separated society?
I meant that if a child goes to a religious school at the same time as a public school (which I did) the peers in the public school are more likely to mock the religious education and undermine it than if the child went to a religious school alone. That was pretty much my experience with it. :/
I take your point, Gordon -- so is that teasing the fault of the public schools or the religious training?
I would say neither, actually - kids tend to make fun of that which is different. Look at that kid, he wears pink shoes but he is a boy, what is wrong with him? Etc.
It is unfortunate, Gordon, that if you're in any sort of minority -- the risk that the majority will come and get you is very real and sometimes a bit scary.
As a parent who has a child in public school, it is both appalling & sad the state that some of our schools are in. Teachers are indeed underpaid, schools understaffed, parents (some whom are relieved to drop their child off at school to let the teachers "deal with it") & others of us, in the minority, who want to help, be involved even with our busy lives, work, etc. I would LOVE to enroll my son in either a religious or private school, but funding is tough, even tougher now in these economic times. You have single parent families who are struggling just to make ends meet. I would love to see uniforms in public schools to eliminate the possibility of kids making fun of what is different & unique. However none of that is always a reality. I think ridicule of what is different & unusual might also be a by-product of human nature? And a sad commentary on our evolution as a society when we make fun of what is different & expect teachers to raise our children. What happened to parents raising their kids & teachers being able to mentor & inspire academia?
I like the idea of universal school uniforms, too. It takes a lot of the sting out of "look at me and what I have and what you do not."
We also need a much better system to protect all students from bullying and not fitting in and being an outcast. No child should ever be purposefully made to feel outside the majority mind -- unless, of course, that is their active choice.