I do not want most children to have the best education possible.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

(A rant inspired partly by some of the nonsense a schoolteacher friend of mine has to put up with, partly by the furore about the Obamas sending their children to a private school, and partly just some stuff I've been thinking about).


I often hear expressed variations on the theme of a) "I want every child to have the best education possible" and b) "if this education isn't good enough for X's child, why should it be good enough for ours".

Parents also often berate teachers for not doing as much as they could for their child.

It is perfectly true, teachers don't do as much as they could for any of the children in their care. This is because they are responsible for 20 or 30 or even 40 children, and doing as much as they could for any one would involve neglecting the others.

Right-wingers always want to reform education rather than spending more money on it; left-wingers often do to. This is nonsense. There is nothing that would improve education nearly as much as smaller class sizes - ideally about one adult per 5 or 6 children, at a guess, or quite possibly more. More classroom resources would do a great deal of good too.

However, if you spend that much of your GDP on education for the young, the rates of tax you will need to pay for it will screw your economy seven ways to Sunday (if 1/5 of your populace is in school and you provide 1 adult per 5 children, that's probably more than 5% of your working population working as schoolteachers, and that's not even thinking about the cost of resources and so on that an ideal education would entail)

So providing the best education possible for all children simply isn't feasible. All the government can or should do is provide a good enough education for all children.

What "good enough" is defined as is, of course, highly controversial; I think that many - possibly even most - schools in the UK and the US fall far short of it. But it's far less than "the best possible".

If you can afford to take your child out of school and home-educate them yourself (if you're good at it) or pay someone else to do it for you (if you aren't) you can get a lot closer to "the best education possible", although unless you're a multi-millionaire you still won't achieve it.

And there's nothing immoral about spending your own money to get your child an education that is better than "good enough".

Would I be willing to settle for a "good enough" education for my children (if I had any)? If I had a choice, I'd want better still, obviously, but if you think the answer should be "no, not under any circumstances" then you haven't really thought about what the words "good enough" mean.

[vadawg]

1. wow totally agree with you, great post

personally i think its the parents job to supplement if possible their kids education, that means both the kids and parents are learning and instills life long learning.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

4. I don't think we can rely on that.

That's why the state has to ensure that all children receive a "good enough" education, regardless of whether their parents help out.

Parents may have a moral duty to help educate their child, but it should be a luxury rather than a necessity.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

2. Something can be learned from other countries

The countries who are top of the league in education only achieve this through certain methods. The US education system is awful.

Problems of classes in the US is that they are far too big. Children are not disciplined to respect their classmates. They are not competitive enough and lack incentive. The teachers try but are not given the support and pay that they need. The have to teach to standardized tests only. The salary of a teacher is abyssmal.

Until we look at what works we are not going proceed.

[GreenPartyVoter]

I had a professor way back when I was getting my B.S. in Education who did an exchange to

another country. He was shocked by how the kids would respectfully stand by their desks when he entered the room, remain quiet and well-behaved at all times, and in general crave learning rather than resent being in school.

[KoKo]

9. The "Well Behaved Kids" go to Harvard....and that's what it's all about, isn't it?

:shrug: You know...it's really painful to go "at the system," when one is young and starting out. Why would anyone bother? :shrug:

[Rosa Luxemburg]

10. I'm glad you said that!

I went to school abroad and we weren't allowed to talk in class or in the hallway, lockers etc. We had many breaks, physical education to let off steam. At breaks we could go and get juice, milk and snacks from the cafeteria or play basketball, hang around outside. We had wednesday afternoons free for study/games. We never had a teacher watch over us during the break times. The only times we saw a teacher was in class. No teachers patrolling the cafeteria, halls and outside. When the bell rang we went back into class or went to a differnt activity and went home.

The classes I get now have to be 'trained' to respect their classmates and teacher. They arrive like wild animals from home.

[Deja Q]

5. Yes and no

* Classes ARE too big

* Children are not disciplined to respect their classmates
* "boys will be boys"
* "cliques"
* Anyone who is different: gifted, retarded, an extra finger, lacking a finger, WHATEVER. They are sub-human.
* Parents of children, usually the bully brats, will say it's not up the school or teachers (so where the flying fuck are the parents?)
* Standardized tests treat kids like a row of cabbages. All the same. Some will abuse the system; others will be lost because their brains work a little differently. But it's the "standard". Ironically, the same people otherwise pawn off anarchistic attitudes rather than normalize. Like I said: "boys will be boys".

And then teachers are often given the blame for students' poor results. Seems a tad convenient. 25 years ago, it was a bad excuse. Today it is far worse. Because convenience is cheap. Real effort, real care, real quality, real (anything) is not.

Competitiveness is a good thing until one of those "boys will be boys" bulldozes everyone else, by any means necessary, to get what he wants. Then he expects entitlement and that everyone worship him too. This goes back to the lack of discipline and lack of social structure. And that has been going on for possibly far longer. 4 or 5 decades, if not longer.

Our system is in a REAL mess indeed. :(

[Rosa Luxemburg]

11. now is the time to reverse it - 5 decades worth

[eilen]

6. Teachers' salaries vary quite a bit in our country

in my school district, the salary is very very good as well as the benefits. Where in Tennessee (at least the Nashville district) it is not that great.

Might have something to do with the property/school taxes. My brother pays $800 a year in Nashville. I pay $3500 a year in NY.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

16. One argument in favour of low (possibly not this low) teacher salary is class sizes.

Class size makes an *incredible* amount of difference; I suspect that children will may well do better being taught in classes of 20 by the kind of teachers one cat attract by paying £20,000 a year than being taught in classes of 30 by the kind of teachers one can attract by paying £30,000 a year.

I don't know about the situation in the US, but in the UK teachers aren't paid an awful lot, and there are still a very large number of people, and a large number of moderately well-qualified and competent people, applying for each job place.

Spending more money on paying teachers will clearly improve the quality of education; I suspect that it might pay higher dividends to spend a fair amount of that money on paying more teachers rather than on paying teachers more.

Incidentally, the model used in the UK in primary schools is to give each class of 30ish one better-paid, more highly-qualified teacher and several (ideally several; in practice not infrequently one or none...) less-well paid, less trained teaching assistants under their direction. I suspect that this may be quite a good way of balancing the amount of man-hours and the amount of expertise you can get from spending a certain amount on paying people to teach.

[eilen]

3. I settle for "good enough" parenting.

I don't know why I wouldn't for schooling.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. Just one little thing to add here about the Obama kids

the last Presnit's kid to to go public school was Amy Carter

It wasn't fun for her, and the security issues were ... ahem... tought to put it mildly

So in this case is not just about sending them to private school but keeping them safe.

And yes, I know they could be kept safe in a public school, it is just that much harder for the secret service and it does get in the way of what you do.

VIP safety... not fun.

Been there, got the T-Shirt and all that

[KoKo]

8. OMG! I 'm sure you will take succor in the replies you receive, here...

:eyes:

[seabeyond]

12. the parent CANNOT delegate all responsibility of child education to school.

there is not enough time in the day, resources or staff. a parent that truly wants their child to have the best educations sends kid to school for basis and then implements the rest of the education thru out the child's life at home.

at what point did parents decide that they birthed children and that was it.

this is MY job. not the schools, or govt, or police, or church.... mine to give to my children. what my job is. i took it on and i am not giving up the rein

[Donald Ian Rankin]

21. The state has a duty to even those children with useless parents, though.

When deciding how much to spend on an education system, I think one consideration should be that it ought to be capable of giving a decent education even to children whose parents take no interest in or even actively hinder it.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. The change I've seen in my lifetime:

When my brothers and I went to school, my parents made it clear that we were NOT to make trouble and that if we were punished in school, we would get a second helping of punishment at home. (Both my parents had put in time as schoolteachers.)

All three of us went from K through 12 without even one hour of detention.

Now the parents try to protect the child from being rightfully disciplined, occasionally even on the college level.

I don't know what's wrong with parents who raise little savages up to age 5 and then berate the teacher for not thinking their kids are the most wonderful, adorable, angelic children there ever were.

[MichiganVote]

15. Agree...too many kids lack appropriate boundaries.

[BlooInBloo]

14. No way, no day am I sending my kids to anyone with an "education degree"....

I'll happily sacrifice to ensure that the 9th circle of intellectual hell never comes to pass.

But I'll support anything that tends to make the schools better - even if it's still not enough for me to send my own to them.

[vanderBeth]

17. I agree with you there.

By the middle or high school level, I expect the teacher to have studied what they teach.

[Berry Cool]

18. There are some schools that have only graduate education degrees.

They don't offer undergrad education majors at all. You can apply to one of their graduate degree programs in education after earning an undergrad degree in what you plan to teach. Makes sense to me.

[BlooInBloo]

19. I've long been of the opinion that precisely that should be the case...

for philosophy grad degrees as well.

[kwassa]

20. Public schools vary incredibly in quality.

The District of Columbia has some of the worst public schools in the country. The suburban counties immediately around DC have some of the best schools in the country, as they are some of the wealthiest in the US. Harvard admits about 65% of it's students from public schools.

Education is a holistic process. It involves the teachers, the parents, and the students. If any part of that chain is broken, it gets much harder to create a successful school environment.

Values about education are instilled at home, and reinforced at home. Without that, it is hard, but not impossible, for kids to overcome that and develop strong independent educational values. Higher income people tend to work more at seeing their children get educated, and there are huge disparities in knowledge when kids first walk into kindergarten. Socioeconomic status is, unfortunately, the greatest predictor of student knowledge.

Small class sizes are wonderful, but there is no single answer to solving the educational problem. The support must be there from everyone involved in the process to make it truly work.