The problem with public Education is not just that teacher’s pay is too low. Sure, it’s a drama when teachers in one of the richest countries on Earth live in their cars and don’t get medical assistance because they can’t afford it. But such is the condition of many more workers throughout the world.
The problem is public schools were never designed either as places of Education nor, as you say, as daycare centers for older children. They are centers of indoctrination where precarious workers under a lot of pressure/control prepare the next generation of cannon fodder for the military and the big industries. There’s contrary pressure for the teachers: on the one hand they’re told and explicitly asked to form the next generation of citizens asking questions and learning new things, on the other hand they’re given the conditions to do the exact opposite, and if a teacher starts to teach a little critical thinking they’re going to be put on the side or otherwise reprimanded.
They don’t have resources: it’s ok, just give them time and space and you’ll have some teaching done. But no there’s no time and they’ve got to teach 40 kids at a time. It’s literally impossible to teach anything in those conditions and the best you can do is “teaching” to recite by heart, which is the opposite of Education.
I don’t know too much about the history of public schools in the US (although i did read Teaching to transgress by bell hooks which was really interesting) but in France there is a complex history of Education:
during the revolution (1789), different factions had different views about Education: of course those who advocated for actual education were hunted down during the terror and soon the first republic collapsed and let me tell you Napoléon cared little about popular education (he has other plans for using young people to try and colonize all of Europe) ; during that time “public instruction” is a branch of the ministry of interior
free, secular and mandatory school (1881) was setup by Jules Ferry, a racist and colonial warmonger who was on paper mayor of Paris during the Commune (1871) and went to great lengths to ensure the Commune would be crushed in blood; to this day he is revered by French imperialist propaganda as a progressive, but his schools have in fact been used as a tool in the colonial enterprises of France (kids who would speak their own language in schools would get beaten by the teachers)
And mandatory primary education in Prussia (which seems to be the more commonly referenced origin of public schools), was largely a reaction to the French revolution and subsequent changes in inter-state warfare.
But I think solely analyzing today’s schools under these historical terms falls short, and the description of day-care centers for older kids seems to ring true. I think especially the reaction about school closures during the current pandemic drives the point home that it has become a day-care center mostly (with negative psychological effects on the children being stuck at home being a distant second argument against school closures).
But the position the OP takes is incredibly privileged (probably a well educated significant other staying at home full time taking care and educating the children?) and also not a good way of how the important labor of education should be distributed in a society.
I am happy to be “privileged”. My children benefit from that, whatever it is. If you or others hope to shame me into feeling bad about it… the joke’s on you. I was the kid on welfare his entire childhood, mercilessly bullied and the public school didn’t give a shit about that.
Whatever connections to other people that most have, that they find so important that they’ll do anything (hell, in the Middle East they’ll murder their own daughters in “honor killings”), well, I don’t have those connections. You and I are a different species. I have no connection to you, and I only feel low-intensity satisfaction when you try to shame me.
and also not a good way of how the important labor of education should be distributed in a society.
Definitely! Your children should definitely be herded into a locked room with 25 other same-calendar-age children and a college-of-education flunky so that they can be force-fed indoctrination and the educational equivalent of junk food. Something like 70% of them will get a mediocre education, and the other 30 percent will be on one side of the curve or the other and ruined. Those are good odds.
If education was so important to you, you’d do like I do. Not try to figure out how to get out of personally and to foist it off on a minimum-wage government bureaucrat.
I am not into shaming others, that was simply a neutral observation that many, maybe most, can not afford to educate their children at home (or are even able to do so due to lacking education of their own).
About the second point… yes I agree with you (and I think others in this thead too)… the status quo of public education is atrocious. But there is a wide range of other options between the two extremes you offer here. And monopolizing the education labor on your own children is not a very efficient way to do education in a society.
Honest question: have you considered inviting some less fortunate children to your home to be educated together with your children? Up to a smaller number (5?) that should only marginally effect the educational outcome for your children, while probably massively improve that of the others.
Honest question: have you considered inviting some less fortunate children to your home to be educated together with your children?
No. While I would consider the children of family (I teach my children that their cousins might as well be brothers and sisters) and close family, none of them are significantly less fortunate. I give when it puts me at no disadvantage, and seeing even the children of strangers do well might make provide some minor satisfaction, the risk that their presence would interfere with my own children’s education far outweighs that.
If I have to choose between my children, and some strangers’ kid, I will choose my own and not give it a second thought. You’re all expendable compared to them.
I know of many systems. Systems are inhuman things, created by engineers to manipulate things.
Humans are not things, and belong in no systems. Saying “but this other system is better” just misses the point.
Most if not all the other developed countries have good quality public services
No, they have just succeeded in convincing their populations that these are good. That’s not the same thing. I don’t need my children in a “better public school” where better just means “they do the same things, but more successfully”. I need them far away from such things, distances measured in astronomical terms.
Europe is dead. It does not know it yet, it will keep limping along for another century at most. What’s the fertility rate again? Everything about its culture is killing it, and it can’t escape that fate.
The opinions of dying people don’t do much to sway me. My descendants will tell spooky stories about the place that whined itself to death.
mean… we’re a social species. We’ve evolved to live in systems called societies.
Sure, if you want to stretch the definition to meaningless. I named my house “society” therefor I live in one too!
Why do you consider you live better in the us then? And with such hate towards other people
I don’t. There are things I have to work around even in the US, if I moved, there would be different thins to work around. The US has fewer of these than some places, but not substantially more than other places.
I don’t hate anyone. Hatred is a peculiar emotion that I have felt in the past, directed towards specific individuals (low count). I hold no hatred towards any group of people, whatever the manner of grouping.
I mostly have indifference for humans in general. I make exceptions for people I like. As for public school teachers, even the ones who were cruel or didn’t give a shit to me personally… how can I blame them? My mother didn’t do anything about it, kept sending me back. If someone should have done something, surely it was her don’t you think? But public school teachers continue to behave stupidly, continue to make poor life choices (their career, in case that’s obvious), and will even scuttle around on the ground picking up dollar bills like an over-aged stripper at the nudie bar.
If they are humiliated, how is it anything other than they doing this to themselves?
About Europe, the fertility rate is not very different from the US.
Anything below replacement is eventual extinction. And it’s so far below that that it’s absurd. Children growing up seeing everyone around them have one child, or none at all… they internalize it, think it’s normal. Then they grow up to have one or none themselves. Which math says means it goes even lower since the ceiling was set but not the floor. Sure, you can pretend that some day 80 years from now one of those little girls will wake up and say “I want to grow up and have 2.1 children!”… but it really has to be all little girls who say that. If it’s just one in 10, then those girls have to say “I want to grow up and have 21 children!”. Neither of those is plausible.
Dead. The US might be too. Certainly heading that way. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?
you’re as dead as
I don’t identify as my country though, unlike yourself. You see yourself as a citizen of X, one of many, collectively acting like some gigantic robot made out of people. One that can die even if some of the individuals survive. Me? I’m just me. My existence in this country is an accident of geography.
Anything below replacement is eventual extinction. And it’s so far below that that it’s absurd. Children growing up seeing everyone around them have one child, or none at all… they internalize it, think it’s normal. Then they grow up to have one or none themselves. Which math says means it goes even lower since the ceiling was set but not the floor. Sure, you can pretend that some day 80 years from now one of those little girls will wake up and say “I want to grow up and have 2.1 children!”… but it really has to be all little girls who say that. If it’s just one in 10, then those girls have to say “I want to grow up and have 21 children!”. Neither of those is plausible.
Your argument has one glaring logical error: The overall population of Europe is growing and not shrinking. Yes, this is due to immigration, but with a well managed immigration that ensures the new-comers are integrated into society this is no problem at all and in fact a positive outcome for all involved. Now arguably immigration isn’t that well managed in Europe, but at least it is mostly managed better then in the US (lately… they used to be better at it).
Your argument has one glaring logical error: The overall population of Europe is growing
Yes. One of us has a glaring logical error. It is not me. Populations can (temporarily) grow, even as the fertility rate goes below replacement. Just as a car that runs out of gas can coast along for awhile on momentum. Sitting in the passenger seat, you taunt me with “I’ve invented perpetual motion”. I just smile and nod.
Yes, this is due to immigration
Those countries the people come from… what’s happening to their fertility rates? Aren’t those declining? Are the rates of decline decreasing or increasing? Do you see any evidence of it bottoming out at all? Will it bottom out at 2.1, or go lower?
They have the same problem you do. You just have a head start.
this is no problem at all
This is laughable. I am not a racist. Assume each immigrant magically integrates instantly and perfectly… you’ll just run out of them is the problem. Or, more accurately, the problem is that you’ll run out of them and that you’re somehow deluded enough to never notice that you’ll run out of them. The fertility rates are declining even in the countries where the immigrants come from, with no signs of slowing down at all. They’ll hit 2.1 and keep plummeting further. What will you do then?
Or, if we want to dig deeper, you don’t even know why it’s falling. You bandy around sophistry like “when women are educated they have fewer children” and just leave it at that. You can’t explore the ideas, for some instinctive fear that you might discover double secret misogyny or something.
Children internalize the norms they grow up with. Every immigrant child in Europe is internalizing your childlessness norms. You’re converting them to be like you in that regard, not just the other stuff, the positive “integration” stuff. And you’re converting them far faster than their great numbers can hope to overcome.
In your collective psychology, there is something that makes you all feel as if you’re bad. So bad that you shouldn’t exist. And your wish will eventually come true. Personally I’m not surprised, it is the continent that gave us a century of world wars, pogroms, holocausts, and other villainous acts of barbarism. Maybe you guys have the right idea.
Listen to the stuff being said to me in this thread. That I’m privileged and hateful. You want me to feel miserable with you. To be ashamed, embarrassed, and to change. Why would I want to become what you are?
You’re already all dead. You just haven’t noticed yet.
but at least it is mostly managed better then in the US
No argument there. We should let in anyone who wants to be here… whether they want to stay and be citizens, or just stay awhile and go back home. Anyone smart enough to want to come here is an asset, and it’s sort of crazy that their home countries would let them leave. No strings, no gotchas… if they haven’t been convicted of a felony or have untreated tuberculosis, let them in. Bricklayer or PhD.
I think the view expressed here is incredibly cynical and with such a cynical view the negative outcome for a society is a forgone conclusion, but I don’t think it is worth imposing my more optimistic view on other people (and it would not convince them anyways).
The problem with public Education is not just that teacher’s pay is too low. Sure, it’s a drama when teachers in one of the richest countries on Earth live in their cars and don’t get medical assistance because they can’t afford it. But such is the condition of many more workers throughout the world.
The problem is public schools were never designed either as places of Education nor, as you say, as daycare centers for older children. They are centers of indoctrination where precarious workers under a lot of pressure/control prepare the next generation of cannon fodder for the military and the big industries. There’s contrary pressure for the teachers: on the one hand they’re told and explicitly asked to form the next generation of citizens asking questions and learning new things, on the other hand they’re given the conditions to do the exact opposite, and if a teacher starts to teach a little critical thinking they’re going to be put on the side or otherwise reprimanded.
They don’t have resources: it’s ok, just give them time and space and you’ll have some teaching done. But no there’s no time and they’ve got to teach 40 kids at a time. It’s literally impossible to teach anything in those conditions and the best you can do is “teaching” to recite by heart, which is the opposite of Education.
I don’t know too much about the history of public schools in the US (although i did read Teaching to transgress by bell hooks which was really interesting) but in France there is a complex history of Education:
And mandatory primary education in Prussia (which seems to be the more commonly referenced origin of public schools), was largely a reaction to the French revolution and subsequent changes in inter-state warfare.
But I think solely analyzing today’s schools under these historical terms falls short, and the description of day-care centers for older kids seems to ring true. I think especially the reaction about school closures during the current pandemic drives the point home that it has become a day-care center mostly (with negative psychological effects on the children being stuck at home being a distant second argument against school closures).
But the position the OP takes is incredibly privileged (probably a well educated significant other staying at home full time taking care and educating the children?) and also not a good way of how the important labor of education should be distributed in a society.
I am happy to be “privileged”. My children benefit from that, whatever it is. If you or others hope to shame me into feeling bad about it… the joke’s on you. I was the kid on welfare his entire childhood, mercilessly bullied and the public school didn’t give a shit about that.
Whatever connections to other people that most have, that they find so important that they’ll do anything (hell, in the Middle East they’ll murder their own daughters in “honor killings”), well, I don’t have those connections. You and I are a different species. I have no connection to you, and I only feel low-intensity satisfaction when you try to shame me.
Definitely! Your children should definitely be herded into a locked room with 25 other same-calendar-age children and a college-of-education flunky so that they can be force-fed indoctrination and the educational equivalent of junk food. Something like 70% of them will get a mediocre education, and the other 30 percent will be on one side of the curve or the other and ruined. Those are good odds.
If education was so important to you, you’d do like I do. Not try to figure out how to get out of personally and to foist it off on a minimum-wage government bureaucrat.
I am not into shaming others, that was simply a neutral observation that many, maybe most, can not afford to educate their children at home (or are even able to do so due to lacking education of their own).
About the second point… yes I agree with you (and I think others in this thead too)… the status quo of public education is atrocious. But there is a wide range of other options between the two extremes you offer here. And monopolizing the education labor on your own children is not a very efficient way to do education in a society.
Honest question: have you considered inviting some less fortunate children to your home to be educated together with your children? Up to a smaller number (5?) that should only marginally effect the educational outcome for your children, while probably massively improve that of the others.
No. While I would consider the children of family (I teach my children that their cousins might as well be brothers and sisters) and close family, none of them are significantly less fortunate. I give when it puts me at no disadvantage, and seeing even the children of strangers do well might make provide some minor satisfaction, the risk that their presence would interfere with my own children’s education far outweighs that.
If I have to choose between my children, and some strangers’ kid, I will choose my own and not give it a second thought. You’re all expendable compared to them.
deleted by creator
I know of many systems. Systems are inhuman things, created by engineers to manipulate things.
Humans are not things, and belong in no systems. Saying “but this other system is better” just misses the point.
No, they have just succeeded in convincing their populations that these are good. That’s not the same thing. I don’t need my children in a “better public school” where better just means “they do the same things, but more successfully”. I need them far away from such things, distances measured in astronomical terms.
Europe is dead. It does not know it yet, it will keep limping along for another century at most. What’s the fertility rate again? Everything about its culture is killing it, and it can’t escape that fate.
The opinions of dying people don’t do much to sway me. My descendants will tell spooky stories about the place that whined itself to death.
deleted by creator
Sure, if you want to stretch the definition to meaningless. I named my house “society” therefor I live in one too!
I don’t. There are things I have to work around even in the US, if I moved, there would be different thins to work around. The US has fewer of these than some places, but not substantially more than other places.
I don’t hate anyone. Hatred is a peculiar emotion that I have felt in the past, directed towards specific individuals (low count). I hold no hatred towards any group of people, whatever the manner of grouping.
I mostly have indifference for humans in general. I make exceptions for people I like. As for public school teachers, even the ones who were cruel or didn’t give a shit to me personally… how can I blame them? My mother didn’t do anything about it, kept sending me back. If someone should have done something, surely it was her don’t you think? But public school teachers continue to behave stupidly, continue to make poor life choices (their career, in case that’s obvious), and will even scuttle around on the ground picking up dollar bills like an over-aged stripper at the nudie bar.
If they are humiliated, how is it anything other than they doing this to themselves?
Anything below replacement is eventual extinction. And it’s so far below that that it’s absurd. Children growing up seeing everyone around them have one child, or none at all… they internalize it, think it’s normal. Then they grow up to have one or none themselves. Which math says means it goes even lower since the ceiling was set but not the floor. Sure, you can pretend that some day 80 years from now one of those little girls will wake up and say “I want to grow up and have 2.1 children!”… but it really has to be all little girls who say that. If it’s just one in 10, then those girls have to say “I want to grow up and have 21 children!”. Neither of those is plausible.
Dead. The US might be too. Certainly heading that way. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?
I don’t identify as my country though, unlike yourself. You see yourself as a citizen of X, one of many, collectively acting like some gigantic robot made out of people. One that can die even if some of the individuals survive. Me? I’m just me. My existence in this country is an accident of geography.
Your argument has one glaring logical error: The overall population of Europe is growing and not shrinking. Yes, this is due to immigration, but with a well managed immigration that ensures the new-comers are integrated into society this is no problem at all and in fact a positive outcome for all involved. Now arguably immigration isn’t that well managed in Europe, but at least it is mostly managed better then in the US (lately… they used to be better at it).
Yes. One of us has a glaring logical error. It is not me. Populations can (temporarily) grow, even as the fertility rate goes below replacement. Just as a car that runs out of gas can coast along for awhile on momentum. Sitting in the passenger seat, you taunt me with “I’ve invented perpetual motion”. I just smile and nod.
Those countries the people come from… what’s happening to their fertility rates? Aren’t those declining? Are the rates of decline decreasing or increasing? Do you see any evidence of it bottoming out at all? Will it bottom out at 2.1, or go lower?
They have the same problem you do. You just have a head start.
This is laughable. I am not a racist. Assume each immigrant magically integrates instantly and perfectly… you’ll just run out of them is the problem. Or, more accurately, the problem is that you’ll run out of them and that you’re somehow deluded enough to never notice that you’ll run out of them. The fertility rates are declining even in the countries where the immigrants come from, with no signs of slowing down at all. They’ll hit 2.1 and keep plummeting further. What will you do then?
Or, if we want to dig deeper, you don’t even know why it’s falling. You bandy around sophistry like “when women are educated they have fewer children” and just leave it at that. You can’t explore the ideas, for some instinctive fear that you might discover double secret misogyny or something.
Children internalize the norms they grow up with. Every immigrant child in Europe is internalizing your childlessness norms. You’re converting them to be like you in that regard, not just the other stuff, the positive “integration” stuff. And you’re converting them far faster than their great numbers can hope to overcome.
In your collective psychology, there is something that makes you all feel as if you’re bad. So bad that you shouldn’t exist. And your wish will eventually come true. Personally I’m not surprised, it is the continent that gave us a century of world wars, pogroms, holocausts, and other villainous acts of barbarism. Maybe you guys have the right idea.
Listen to the stuff being said to me in this thread. That I’m privileged and hateful. You want me to feel miserable with you. To be ashamed, embarrassed, and to change. Why would I want to become what you are?
You’re already all dead. You just haven’t noticed yet.
No argument there. We should let in anyone who wants to be here… whether they want to stay and be citizens, or just stay awhile and go back home. Anyone smart enough to want to come here is an asset, and it’s sort of crazy that their home countries would let them leave. No strings, no gotchas… if they haven’t been convicted of a felony or have untreated tuberculosis, let them in. Bricklayer or PhD.
Lets not call each other insane, please.
I think the view expressed here is incredibly cynical and with such a cynical view the negative outcome for a society is a forgone conclusion, but I don’t think it is worth imposing my more optimistic view on other people (and it would not convince them anyways).