That’s exactly the kind of thing which gets taught in evidence-based systems, yes, rather than memorization for tests…but politicians want TESTS, dammit. (Both the left and right).

the far right of course blame teachers, who have fought for this for years, because you’re ignoring what’s actually said in favor of demonizing people who DARE try and help others.

We tried doing without tests for a long time, and what we got was a system where people could literally graduate from high school unable to read.

Tests are an attempt at accountability – they get in the way of a good teacher, yes, but they are at least some kind of mechanism for getting rid of the bad ones.

And bad ones there are. “the right” blames teachers because a significant chunk of the people holding teaching positions are bad teachers – some of them really aren’t even teachers at all, but that’s the title and job that they hold. If every single person who held a teaching position was a self-motivated good teacher, our public education system would immediately lose over 75% of the serious problems it currently has.

And while we’re casting blame, most of the blame for our current system falls on “the left” – that is the system that enables the unions and the other such bureaucratic institutions that strange the good teachers and enable the clock-punching, useless, space-filling types.

#57: “Vouchers break that deadlock. I think that they will be a short term solution, and that within a generation the voucher system will have become so spectacularly corrupt that a return to public schools will be necessary.”

Actually, there is a far more likely, and far worse, possible outcome. Once vouchers become so common as to make up a significant fraction of private school income, the government will start imposing conditions on who may accept vouchers.

Actually, that’s pretty much the same outcome – the voucher system then exists in name only, as opposed to being abolished, but the practical result is the same.

And wow, Other Sean, I’m generally more jaded and cynical than the people I interact with, but you’ve got me beat hands down.

Seriously, I can see your points about getting a job, etc, but a lot of that goes back to “pick your battles” – I see that a lot of that stuff is “empty-headed bullshit”, and indeed, I usually pretend not to notice, because that’s a battle not worth fighting.

But I’m still really glad I can SEE that it’s BS, even if I don’t fight it.

I think you may have skipped a day at that critical thinking school, the one where they teach you that personal experience makes for strong feelings and weak evidence.

Your highly unusual and not in the least bit repeatable case aside, almost no one has any incentive to teach kids critical thinking, and few kids have any incentive to learn.

Want to be popular in high school? Logic won’t help you. Want to have sex before you’re 25? Rationality is a nothing but a hindrance. Want to excel in college and grad school? Better learn the art of doublethink, because you’ll need to agree with whichever professor is standing in front of you at the moment. Want to get a job? Better pretend not to notice that phrases like “leveraging vertical synergies moving forward” are empty-headed bullshit. Wanna get promoted? Better learn to pretend that correlation is causation, whenever it suits you.

Be honest: If Radley installed a logic-bot on this site, such that any fallacy in the comments was immediately answered with a corrective reply, how many people would still post here after a week?

People hate logic, they hate critical thinking, and in fact they hate anything that gets in the way of the complex mental cheating which defines so much of their lives. The last thing they’re going to do is start arming small children with the tools to expose them as a bunch of lying fools and hypocrites.

I agree that that is a strong possibility, although some of that has been fought out over College scholarships, and it hasn’t gone all the government’s way.

This is one reason why I would love to see widespread private charities dedicated to providing a way out for poor children. As the descendent of three men who dies wearing Union Blue during the Civil War, I despise the “Reparations for Slavery” movement, but we do owe the African Americans something for allowing the Progressives, the Social Engineers, and the Bureau-rats turn their public schools into a disaster area.

Anybody know of any good charities of this sort?

Actually, there is a far more likely, and far worse, possible outcome. Once vouchers become so common as to make up a significant fraction of private school income, the government will start imposing conditions on who may accept vouchers. These conditions might be “must hire union teachers” or “must teach X”…. and most schools will have little choice but to comply. For precedent, see the declining health care “system”.

I may be totally off base, but I think the root of what’s wrong with the public schools is that the old unspoken contract between teachers and parents has been not simply broken but shattered.

Mass education has always been at least somewhat about indoctrination, and any half-smart parents have known this. The unspoken contract was “You get to try to teach our kids to be ‘better citizens’ (whatever that means to you) and in exchange you will teach them to read, write, and do basic math. That will make them able to self-educate if they need to. It will make them independent of the smart asses who patronize the illiterate. It’s worth a little brainwashing.”

For whatever reason, the public school teachers stopped managing to teach the basics. I have my opinions about why, but they don’t matter here. The contract is broken, and this matters because unless the parents are willing to back the schools, education will only happen for the self-motivated kids.

Reinstating the contract with the present public school structure might not be impossible, but it won’t be easy. So long as the public schools are the only place that the money earmarked for public education can go, they schools have scant motive for reform. The Teachers’ Unions like the schools being all about full employment for their membership, and have successfully resisted reform of all kinds for decades.

Vouchers break that deadlock. I think that they will be a short term solution, and that within a generation the voucher system will have become so spectacularly corrupt that a return to public schools will be necessary. But the blob, the education establishment, needs to be reminded that its members are hirelings, not the natural masters of all creation.

This simply misses the point. Compulsory education is, at root, by nature, and in implementation, coercive. “I order you to be independent” does not work and, once one digs past all the nonsense, that is what teaching independence in (compulsory) schools amounts to.

“What we’ve to do is free the good ones and sack the duds, and where I disagree with you is in your belief that it will never happen. It must happen, and PDQ, or there’ll be nothing more to worry about, nor anyone to do the worrying.”

The fact that something must happen or disaster will strike does not imply that it will happen or even that it can happen. So, why do you think this will happen, given the overwhelming evidence that almost none of the people who are in position to make a change want it to happen?

Heck, I have had two blogs on Blogspot for some years and still don’t know how that operates. I’m serious. So, I am not the right person to ask as to why your friend has not had her posts uploaded here. I wish I could help, but I am clueless.

I agree in part. Adults are goal-oriented and want a payoff for the time they spend. Kids aren’t. As long as it’s interesting, kids will go for it, and the younger the more readily.

Obviously this gradually changes as they grow toward adulthood, and by the time they reach adolescence they too want a payoff. But early on, all teachers have to do is make it interesting.

And that’s the trick: make gaining the basics interesting enough so that they’re eager each morning.

But as Leon (48) suggests, many -even most- teachers want nothing more than the freedom to do exactly that: make school interesting and meaningful for the kids under their tutelage.

What we’ve to do is free the good ones and sack the duds, and where I disagree with you is in your belief that it will never happen. It must happen, and PDQ, or there’ll be nothing more to worry about, nor anyone to do the worrying.

So, how does Rawls propose to actualize his concepts of equality and justice? By private action or by government action or by some other means?

The problem is even though our overall economy would be richer, all the folks who currently benefit from an uneducated populace would have to work harder to earn their living. Trying to force those in power to give up the opportunity to shoot fish in a barrel is a daunting task, but it’s absolutely a battle worth having.

Perhaps a comprehensive resource center? If I want details of all known prosecutorial abuses in my state, it must take me 5 minutes to be provided with the information in a convenient manner. Not because I am lazy, but because it needs to be easy to make a convincing case to people who do not believe such a problem exists.

Well, I won’t agree with that 100% but, no matter, it will never happen. You cannot teach independence in a system that coerces children into attendance.

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Or did you have some other notion of equality in mind?

I’m thinking of the late John Rawls’s notion of equality and justice. He was of course aware that people differ in their abilities. But there’s no reason to posterise those differences by “making the rich richer and the poor poorer”.

Rawls proposed a wonderful little thought experiement, namely that we imagine there is a magical lottery by means of which those who choose to participate can irrevocably change their personal and socioeconomic situation.

So if you decide to enter, you have (let’s say) a 1-in-100 chance of becoming a member of the world’s wealthy elite, and a 1-in-7 chance of becoming a Chinese peasant, a 1-in-50 chance of being disabled in some way, etc.

Most people wouldn’t enter. No matter what their situation, they’re more likely to be worse off after than better off.

We’re where we are because of where we started, and where we started was the effect of randomness, not anything we deserved (as Buffett has noted, had his parents been farmers in Afghanistan, he’d be a farmer in Afghanistan – or dead)

So Rawls’s idea of justice is that changes should benefit those who got stuck with the dirty end of the stick, with a goal of bringing everyone’s situation up to equality insofar as that’s possible by human choice. That’s a truly libertarian goal: it liberates everyone.

I mean by “equality” and “justice” the same things Rawls meant.

I agree in part and disagree in part. Vouchers are inherently elitist, and violate Rawls’s conditions for a fair, libertarian society.

But we for sure need to reform public schools in a number of ways! They need to be re-directed toward teaching kids cooperation and responsibility, resistance to the illegitimate demands of Authority, and preparation for autonomous, authentic life as multi-skilled adults living in peer communities in a single-system (Lovelock & Margulis) world.

I agree with you – this is a top-down problem, which only a few countries like Finland have overcome.