another look at America's education system

[evergreenheart]

A very interesting video about America's education system. Quite depressing.

Video

Comparing Belgian and U.S. schools

Wasting money

Lack of choice in public schools

Public school Teacher Union is too powerful (it is "almost impossible" to fire a teacher who is sexually offensive to students?!!!)--instead, they are sent to "rubber rooms" in

Comments

[ladyjillian]

I realized that the point of the show was, 'public schools are bad, the government is incompetent to educate children adequately, the government wastes tax money (it was downright embarrassing to listen to the documentary making fun of paying for special needs teachers), the only solution is privatizing the school system.' There are a lot of people set to make a great deal of money out of getting people to believe this.

Here are some reasons why I say this:

The show started out by comparing the performance of American students to the performance of European students, but then completely dropped the issue. I'd have thought that if the producer were actually concerned with this issue, rather than using it for effect, we'd have gotten a bit more followup--wouldn't it have been worth investigating how these European schools manage to educate their children so much better? The answer is no--because these schools are public, and the agenda of the program was to demonstrate that public schools don't work.

As you pointed out, public schools DO desperately need money, to renovate abysmal infrastructure (as you could see in the documentary--the classroom interiors and furniture were disgraceful) and to pay teachers salaries commensurate with their responsibilities. Many teachers are poorly motivated and lack training; given how low teacher salaries are, and how little teaching is respected, the profession is often a last resort. In our (American) culture money=status, and everyone knows how poorly paid teachers are; why should we be surprised that students don't respect them? Clearly parents and the producers of the documentary don't respect them either.

The example of Dorian learning to read was a pretty blatant set piece--'the public school system couldn't teach Dorian to read, but a private school could.' I took away a different moral from that story--what I read was 'low-status children are not inherently stupider or less capable of learning than high-status children; treating a low-status child like a high-status child produces high-status results.' But if we treated all children like high-status children, what would be our society's excuse for paying Dorian minimum wage, or putting him in prison?

The documentary seemed to set up an unfair set of premises and conclusions. It started by claiming that the public school system was failing underprivileged students, and then went on to propose solutions--charter schools, vouchers, privatization, etc.--which would leave these students in the same position that they already are. Any system designed to work for a subset of the population should immediately be ruled out.

[evergreenheart]

how these European schools manage to educate their children so much better?

I think the video mentioned that in Europe, children and parents get to choose which schools they go to--public and private. The school system is mainly based on competition, so if your school and teachers suck, no one will come to your school. In the U.S. though, you go to the public school that is closest to where you live geographically, or you pay and go to a private school, which isn't necessarily great either.

And moreover, i would think that most European countries are smaller than the U.S., so their system might be more centralized? Whereas in the U.S., different states have their own state laws and regulations, etc...

[ladyjillian]

Yes, all this is true--but what I wanted to point out here was that the structure of the show was designed to make a particular point--that the government cannot educate children--so the information presented was trimmed and slanted to fit. Even mentioning in more than a passing reference that European public schools educate children well wouldn't fit into that agenda. As far as I'm aware, here in the UK the schools don't operate on a 'choice' or 'competition' basis; children go to the schools that are near them, unless they attend religious or private schools. And there is a national curriculum--if I were to give an opinion on how American schools could approach European standards I'd certainly mention that.