<p>Yup, we need a workforce focused on creating strife and going on strike on a whim. That would be ahh, Italy. Nice food and shoes but nobody sees them as an economic technological leader.</p>
<p>Mini, I find it very hard to segregate your serious posts from the … sarcastic ones. </p>
<p>Do you really mean that our K-12 system works as intended? Aren’t our high dropout rates in high school and first years of college defeating the notion of “not entering the workforce?” </p>
<p>FWIW, I really look forward to your articles, especially if they incorporate comparative data between our schools and the Western European ones. I have been working on a comparison between the successes of high schools in the US and schools in Belgium. The results are not as entertaining as John Stosse’s but worth the effort.</p>
<p>I think the rejection of vo-tech schools is due to the politically correct culture of many teachers today. They think everyone should study Chaucer when some kids want to fix cars. Let’s let them.</p>
<p>"Do you really mean that our K-12 system works as intended? Aren’t our high dropout rates in high school and first years of college defeating the notion of “not entering the workforce?” </p>
<p>I really do mean that K-12 works as intended. And that the high dropout rates (or whatever the new tests cause the system to do) are very necessary to provide a smallish low-wage workforce that accepts that they are getting what they deserve. Now the job is to convince college grads that they aren’t really worth that much more.</p>
<p>“Nice food and shoes but nobody sees them as an economic technological leader.”</p>
<p>For that, you need Indian and Chinese immigrants, in large numbers.</p>
<p>I became interested in the history of public education (an oxymoron if ever there was one…) in the US about five or six years ago. After going to the library and reading – you know – actual books on the subject I learned a variety of interesting historical tidbits that are actually in amazingly close alignment with what Mini wrote in that last post. </p>
<p>In rural America in the mid- to late-19th century, farmers or people in small towns would chip in to hire a teacher to educate their children in the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. The goal was provide basic literacy skills for future farmers and shopkeepers. The teachers were either young, unmarried women or male farm workers between seasons. </p>
<p>Education as we know it began in the cities due to the need for an educated work force to run the machines of the industrial revolution. This required a regimented work force with certain skills usable in the local textile mills or coal mines or oil fields. This pattern of schooling – age-based, regimented, and highly rules-based – hasn’t, in my experience, changed significantly since its widespread adoption in the cities of the late 19th century.</p>
<p>Public schooling lost its way a long time ago. That public schools continue to dominate the elementary and secondary education field is a true monument to the power of nostalgia, intertia, the forced removal of money from consumers (taxes), teachers and their unions, and the overwhelming belief of government employees everywhere that they know what is better for citizens than citizens do themselves. A voucher system of funding education is so clearly superior to the current one-size-fits-hardly-anyone public educational system, that it could only be defeated by an unholy alliance of public employees, frightened leftists, and sheer institutional inertia.</p>
<p>My absolute favorite discussion on education in America:</p>
<p>Me: Vouchers would be great! Parents could pick the school that best meets the needs of their kids.</p>
<p>Teacher friend: What about disabled kids or kids with learning disabilities?</p>
<p>Me: Give them vouchers with higher values attached. Schools will spring up to take advantage of this.</p>
<p>TF: But we’ll have to close public schools.</p>
<p>Me: Great! You can lease an empty public school building and start your own school. Think of how great it would be not to have to answer to the state school board in Sacramento?</p>
<p>TF: <blank stare=“”></blank></p>
<p>Ironic, isn’t it, that the majority of CCers are convinced that private colleges are better than public ones, but there is no real competition in elementary or secondary education?</p>
<p>I don’t think Chaucer would be the politically correct tome, too Euro, although my daughters middle school teacher did have them read Faust.</p>
<p><a href=“http://villagevoice.com/nyclife/0647,altman,75100,15.html[/url]”>http://villagevoice.com/nyclife/0647,altman,75100,15.html</a>
Some schools are apparently still * teaching<a href=“I%20don’t%20know%20if%20it%20is%20teaching,%20if%20they%20don’t%20have%20to%20get%20their%20hands%20dirty”>/i</a>
students to fix cars</p>
<p>Washdad
What do you think about some members of the Seattle community trying to recall board members becasue they wanted to save money by consolidating school programs in areas where the buildings were less than half full?
( posted by a woman who was on the recent committee to evaluate potential closures)
*There is a great irony here for me. When I was on the CAC I noticed that AAA was chronically underenrolled and had erratic WASL scores and thought they might be better off in a smaller building and a more viable program like New School could move in there. You would have thought I had grown 6 inches from the shocked looks I got. (FYI, for those who don’t know me, I’m 4’9".)</p>
<p>I was warned by both committee members and staff members to drop it. It was untouchable. We had been told no sacred cows but apparently there are some.*
AAA is of course the African American Academy, which is underenrolled, resulting in fewer resources available for students because building/maintenance & administration costs remain the same, whether the school has 100 or 300 students</p>
<p>We have always been a nation of immigrants and opportunity. Jews fleeing Europe and Russia started thousands of industries back in the early 1900’s from clothing to films. Germans started many of our breweries and later our early rocket and high tech areas. Nothing new here. Still many our our largest most succesful high tech frms were started by US citizens like Gates, Jobs, Bezos, H&P, etc.</p>
<p>How did this thread start with nasty Texas cheerleaders and wind up with Chaucer???</p>
<p>Have you read Chaucer?
Some of the lines are pretty racy ;)</p>
<p>Apparently it started with a few hormone-crazed teenagers and just multiplied from there.</p>