On the [Real] Purpose of U.S. Education

Aidoneus · #1

Sometimes I think that I must have some compulsion: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/17/ ... tion/print

EdLee · #2

Hi Aidoneus,

Just ran across this article; leaving it here

Learning by Doing

tchan001 · #3

http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/index.html

Bill Spight · #4

I find it amusing that the writers linked to in the previous two notes are directly at odds about education and what to do.

But they both accept the dubious premise that US schools have gotten worse in the past generation or two. Edwards, as a Harvard scientist, should know better than to commit the following bogus argument:

"Our math skills are falling. Our reading skills are weakening. Our children have become less literate than children in many developed countries."

No, when I was in school we were already less literate than Europeans, less educated than they. America was, and still is, an anti-intellectual country. Nothing new here. If you follow the links in the first two of Edwards's sentences, they go to international comparisons. Even if our rankings have fallen in math and reading, that does not mean that our skills in those areas are getting worse. Edwards's argument is a non-sequitur. For shame, Harvard, for shame.

Iserbyt seems to be upset that schools are no longer indoctrinating children like she would like them to, but are indoctrinating them differently. Apparently she lumps Dewey with Skinner, unaware that they take radically different approaches to education. (I say "seems" and "apparently" based upon the responses and reviews. I have not read the book.)

Let me offer a link, myself: http://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/2014/10 ... rican.html

It comments on a recent article that says that American schools are better than ever. OC, what makes a school good is not something that everybody agrees upon.

However, what has happened in the past few decades is that we have made great strides in educating minority kids, as measured by NAEP scores. NAEP = National Assessment of Educational Progress. The linked article does not mention it, but White kids are also scoring better. This progress in education is obscured by demographic changes, in particular by the increase in the percentage of students of Hispanic heritage, from 2% in 1971 to 25% in 2012, and the reduction of White students from 84% to 53%. The problem area in US education has been and still is the education of lower class and minority students. The fact that we have greatly improved in that area is something that should be trumpeted, instead of claiming that our schools are failing.

tchan001 · #5

Bill Spight wrote:

It comments on a recent article that says that American schools are better than ever. OC, what makes a school good is not something that everybody agrees upon.

However, what has happened in the past few decades is that we have made great strides in educating minority kids, as measured by NAEP scores. NAEP = National Assessment of Educational Progress. The linked article does not mention it, but White kids are also scoring better. This progress in education is obscured by demographic changes, in particular by the increase in the percentage of students of Hispanic heritage, from 2% in 1971 to 25% in 2012, and the reduction of White students from 85% to 53%. The problem area in US education has been and still is the education of lower class and minority students. The fact that we have greatly improved in that area is something that should be trumpeted, instead of claiming that our schools are failing.

Bill, you are talking about the increase in availability of education rather than any apparent increase in the quality of education. The recent article sited by your link is below.
http://www.vox.com/2014/10/13/6967743/p ... -schneider

Quote:

So you argue that this isn't the case; that schools are better than they've ever been in the past. Why?

JS: First, they serve far more kids than they ever did before. Kids living in poverty – they're really expensive to educate, and they now get, not an equal education, I would never claim that, but we at least pay lip service to it. We're at least trying. Average per-pupil expenditures aren't where they need to be, but they at least are higher in large urban districts than in other places.

Special education kids, they're really expensive to educate, and prior to 1975, it was like, your kid has special needs? Too bad, keep him or her at home. And those kids have a right to a public school education now. That's amazing. That's a major step forward. English language learners, super expensive to educate and we're getting closer to that. I'm not saying the system is perfect, but we're doing better.

Even though standardized test scores don't measure even a fraction of what we want good schools to do, look at scores over time. Forty years ago, 9- and 13-year-olds were scoring much lower, and let's include the fact that there may have been less diversity in that initial group than there is now. We know that special education students or low-income students or English language learners are going to score lower on tests, so their scores are all going up, on state tests across time, at least on average.

All the evidence points in the direction that we have a fairer and more effective system that is probably more focused on student achievement than it once was.

Obviously if education becomes available to special education students or low-income students when previously they were not as available (such as prior to 1975 for SE kids) then the test scores for these groups would have to go up.

When talking about the quality of education, it's probably a good idea to look at some international findings such as the results of the 2012 OECD PISA findings.
http://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/PISA-2 ... lts-US.pdf

Quote:

While the U.S. spends more per student than most countries, this does not translate into better performance. For example, the Slovak Republic, which spends around USD 53 000 per student, performs at the same level as the United States, which spends over USD 115 000 per student.

To be fair, the US has not become worse over time as per the PISA document.

Quote:

The trend data show no significant changes in the average performance of U.S. 15-year-old students in the mathematics, reading and science over time.

So this does support Bill's statement

Bill Spight wrote:

America was, and still is, an anti-intellectual country.

Anyways, after high school these anti-intellectual students who want an interesting college experience can certainly look forward to subjects such as those pointed out by the link below.
http://list25.com/25-extremely-strange- ... e-courses/

The sad fact is what faces an average college student after their education comes to an end.
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archiv ... aking-scam

Darsey · #6

Hi.

I was reading the writers that you put. I want say that this "history" isn't new, some topics was discussed for some pedagogues and philosophers. As spanish student of philosophy, I can say a few of hispanic authors that they presaged this. For example: Blas Zambrano, Jovellanos, Vasconcelos, Justo Sierra, Unamuno...

And this problem isnt property of U.S. now, in Europe we are living design of study so close.

hyperpape · #7

Bill: I recall reading that prior to World War 2, the United States had the most well educated workforce in the world, though I can't find a citation this morning.

tchan001 wrote:

Bill, you are talking about the increase in availability of education rather than any apparent increase in the quality of education.

This doesn't make much sense to me. We are talking about the ability of a nation to provide education to the whole populace. You can improve that ability by improving the education of either the strongest students, the median, or the lowest levels, and any of those are improvements. In fact, the latter two are the most important improvements.

Bill Spight · #8

tchan001 wrote:

Bill, you are talking about the increase in availability of education rather than any apparent increase in the quality of education. The recent article sited by your link is below.
http://www.vox.com/2014/10/13/6967743/p ... -schneider

Quote:

So you argue that this isn't the case; that schools are better than they've ever been in the past. Why?

JS: First, they serve far more kids than they ever did before. Kids living in poverty – they're really expensive to educate, and they now get, not an equal education, I would never claim that, but we at least pay lip service to it. We're at least trying. Average per-pupil expenditures aren't where they need to be, but they at least are higher in large urban districts than in other places.

Special education kids, they're really expensive to educate, and prior to 1975, it was like, your kid has special needs? Too bad, keep him or her at home. And those kids have a right to a public school education now. That's amazing. That's a major step forward. English language learners, super expensive to educate and we're getting closer to that. I'm not saying the system is perfect, but we're doing better.

Obviously if education becomes available to special education students or low-income students when previously they were not as available (such as prior to 1975 for SE kids) then the test scores for these groups would have to go up.

Schneider gives a misleading impression with the phrase, "far more kids". He makes the point that special ed kids are no longer discouraged from going to school. But from age 6 to age 13 (the age for the second NAEP test), other kids were required by law to attend school in the 1970s, before states passed laws permitting home schooling. Because of those laws, school is, if anything, less available to children now than before. I am not sure where that "far more kids" comes from, perhaps from having fewer high school dropouts (which would not affect the NAEP scores), perhaps just from an increase in population. {shrug}

Quote:

The sad fact is what faces an average college student after their education comes to an end.
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archiv ... aking-scam

As my sociology prof liked to say, college graduates are the most dissatisfied people in the world. If recent college grads are being screwed by the system, I would not be surprised if they become social, economic, and political activists and change the system. They have the skills to do it.

tchan001 · #9

hyperpape wrote:

We are talking about the ability of a nation to provide education to the whole populace. You can improve that ability by improving the education of either the strongest students, the median, or the lowest levels, and any of those are improvements. In fact, the latter two are the most important improvements.

Wouldn't you expect a significant improvement in any of those three categories to provide better results than "no significant changes in the average performance of U.S. 15-year-old students in the mathematics, reading and science over time."?

Bill Spight · **#10**

tchan001 wrote:

hyperpape wrote:

We are talking about the ability of a nation to provide education to the whole populace. You can improve that ability by improving the education of either the strongest students, the median, or the lowest levels, and any of those are improvements. In fact, the latter two are the most important improvements.

Wouldn't you expect a significant improvement in any of those three categories to provide better results than "no significant changes in the average performance of U.S. 15-year-old students in the mathematics, reading and science over time."?

But the averages are not comparable, because the student populations are not comparable in composition. Simple example. Suppose that we have type A students, who have an average score of 10, and type B students who have an average score of 4, and there are twice as many type A students as type B students. Then the overall average is 8. Now suppose that later on we still have type A students with an average score of 10 and an overall average of 8, but now half of all students are type Bs. The average score of type B students is therefore 6, which is a 50% improvement for them. That is progress.

Phoenix · **#11**

This is related to the subject, if not the current turn of discussion.

The real purpose of education in North America (speaking as a Canadian) is to offer mass childcare at a reduced rate. There's really not much else to it. Scientific studies have hammered on and on for over a century about the inefficiency of it all, and changes which could better education as a whole. No one heeds this, and cutting-edge educators have to find capital to start their own schools if they want to give children (and teenagers) a better chance.

There was a teachers' strike in BC this year which ended up being resolved after the official start of the school year. The provincial government was at fault for that, in my opinion, but I will not discuss the specifics here. What was most interesting was that the local media thrived on this, so I got to hear opinions from all sorts of different angles, from regular citizens.

And I have to say that for months I have not once heard a single person being upset for the specifics of their children's education. "They're going to fall behind" is the closest, most specific concern which was voiced. Not "I fear for my child's reading comprehension", not "He/she is supposed to be learning polynomials at this moment", not "He/she is missing out on the early history of the first Canadian settlers". None of that.

The reason for this, as far as I can tell, is that these parents do not know or care to know what their children are learning in school. They did not care to roll up their sleeves and teach the children themselves. In fact the overwhelming complaint by far and long was about finding child care.

Now, I understand how important this is. If both parents, or the single parent, is at work you can't well leave young children to care for themselves. It's not even legal. The terrifying part is that there was not a single voice of concern, among hundreds, for the actual education of children. It angers me to think that I was practically imprisoned for twelve years and fed scientifically proven sub-par (not to mention horrifyingly outdated) education for the sole purpose of cheap childcare. And the whole system is anchored in testing your short-term memory for material you have to read multiple times, regurgitate, and forget. I find it completely unacceptable.

On the other hand, the jaded and practical nature of the system makes an educational paradigm shift virtually impossible. Cheap childcare being the primary concern, the education system needs to match the needs of the populace. Teachers are hired on this expectation, and skill is a secondary concern (and in most cases is not even measured). They are simply expected to keep guard over tens of children at a time. Material has to be handed out at a slower pace than could be taught to prolong the service. It must be taught by rote in order to need reviewing later, again consuming time. No one expects great things of 95%+ of the population. From an economic standpoint, this means you would be like betting on every roulette slot and reaping the rewards of one. I understand how improving the system is not really an option at this juncture.

Most of this is personal opinion, but I find that it is shared by many (which in retrospect does not make it more valid). I haven't met another human being who has gone through this kind of education who is nearly as pissed off about it as I am, and this baffles me. This is a large chunk of our lives, and most of our formative years. Most of us have been given a garbage education and had our individual potential stifled. It's not something you can't get past, but it's a terrible start.

Why do we let this kind of injustice go by? Are we only trying to save money and effort? Is it worth harming the children?

Bill Spight · **#12**

Note: Just because we are educating minority students better does not necessarily mean that the schools can take credit. Outside of school factors are also important.

tchan001 · **#13**

Canadian education as described by Phoenix is certainly a different experience from that of Hong Kong as described in one of my previous posts on another thread.

Bill Spight · **#14**

Another link, this one about Socratic Seminars. http://gadflyonthewallblog.wordpress.co ... c-seminar/ Singer opposes the corporate takeover of education.

BTW, Socratic Seminars are based upon open ended questions. As an undergraduate I attempted a bit of research on teacher questions. (I got permission to observe classes in a local school, but after a violent incident a few days after I started that had nothing to do with me, that permission was revoked.) I had come up with a classification of six kinds of questions, including open ended questions and what I called loaded questions. Here is an example of a loaded question from Tolstoy's observation of a one room schoolhouse on or near his estate. The teacher held up a book with a picture of a fish in it and asked, "Dear children, what is this?" Tolstoy pointed out that there are a number of answers to that question, but the one that the teacher wanted was a fish. As I recall, one student answered, a book, to which the teacher replied, no. A loaded question was one that appeared to be open ended, but the students had to guess which answer the teach deemed correct. Anyway, in the few days that I observed classes, I noted that there were fewer teacher questions that I had anticipated, and almost all of them were loaded questions. :shock:

Aidoneus · **#15**

Bill Spight wrote:

Anyway, in the few days that I observed classes, I noted that there were fewer teacher questions that I had anticipated, and almost all of them were loaded questions. :shock:

You haven't mentioned the worst of all loaded questions: "Do you want to pass?" The equivalent of parent to child discussions that end with "Because I say so!"

On the [Real] Purpose of U.S. Education

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