Here is one of the worst examples in the United States.
http://theweek.com/article/index/215055/detroits-shocking-47-percent-illiteracy-rate
http://theweek.com/article/index/215055/detroits-shocking-47-percent-illiteracy-rate
We don't need no education....
- Thread starter Steve
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Maka, it's a pity you don't research before posting figures that support your arguement but just seem too good to be true. Whenever I see claims that fly in the face of common sense I check a little deeper.
The author of your quoted article wrote this the following day.
He concludes by saying:
As I have previously said, Just because something is written does not make it a fact. :asian:
Teachers in Detroit public schools have confirmed this. At a national conference I attended last summer. 47% is correct.
Crap. The data is totally flawed.
http://detroit.jalopnik.com/national-pundit-parachutes-into-detroit-to-regurgitate-453855983
:asian:
The only crap here is the political mess you accidentally stepped in. Detroit is a black eye for America. The city is an economic apocalypse with murder and crime rates higher than third world countries. Entire neighborhoods are being bulldozed. There are what I can only call refugees fleeing from the city. I've had some of them as students, the poor children. This stat is an estimate, but it is also correct. Even if the estimate is high, as critics suggest, it's not off by much.
Still, i think the main thesis doesn't depend on this. I've suggested that we need a new way of schooling children, one that keeps up with modern conditions and is more successful than the one we have now. When the nationwide stat is 1 out of 7, that's really bad. Think about the economic potential that is lost here.
Do you think we need a new way of schooling? Or more acceptance for diverse ways of schooling?
I had the good fortune to meet Kelly Haldorson and her family last week, complete with their Unschool Bus. I think Unschooling is working well for their family. I'm not sure if it would work well for every family....and not sure if has to. Granted, I have some personal bias here. In my own family I have 2 young relatives who were home schooled through grade 8.
I'd be concerned that a new way of schooling in and of itself would be a new way of cutting a one-size-fits-all garment and expecting it to fit -- but I suspect your ideas are deeper and more complex than that. :asian:
I had the good fortune to meet Kelly Haldorson and her family last week, complete with their Unschool Bus. I think Unschooling is working well for their family. I'm not sure if it would work well for every family....and not sure if has to. Granted, I have some personal bias here. In my own family I have 2 young relatives who were home schooled through grade 8.
I'd be concerned that a new way of schooling in and of itself would be a new way of cutting a one-size-fits-all garment and expecting it to fit -- but I suspect your ideas are deeper and more complex than that. :asian:
Fascinating idea but my fear has always been you'll never get someone with standard H.S. level competence in math. and science out of this system. Are there unschooling "graduates" who are now physicians?
Tgace
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I think that there is a problem with the mentality that being a doctor or an engineer is the ultimate end goal....this goes hand in hand with the trend towards "needing" a college degree to get almost any entry level job these days. I have a Masters and I cannot think of a single job I started out in that really required it beyond a check box on some personnel form.
There are. And there also ways that a student can learn higher levels of math quicker than regular education teaches them. I don't neccesarily think it's due to a revolution in pedegogy though. More likely it's due to the fact that one can pursue an interest and not be held back by the rest of the class.
Everyone talks about improving the education system, but that's not what's broken in my opinion. What's broken are the parents. Nobody teaches how to properly raise and motivate children. Schools are not supposed to be solely, or even primarily in my opinion, responsible for a child's education. This is the responsibilty of the child's parents. They are the ones that are supposed to be working with and educating their children. Fobbing that responsibility off on a bunch of strangers, and then getting upset when it doesn't work so well, is just wrong.
I've known many parents who just want to be their children's friend, and make their little lives happy. I've known many other parents that are busy with their own lives and just don't want their kids to bother them. I've also known many parents that were intimately involved in their kid's education, working with their children and their children's school and teachers to insure that their kids are actually learning everything they need to. The difference in how the children grew up to handle life is nothing short of amazing. This is something that's simple to research and read about. However, the people that are doing this research into how to properly raise their kids are definitely in the minority, and it is becoming more so all the time. People need to learn how to raise children before they have them, or no amount of educational reform is going to do more than the most superficial amount of good.
Sorry about the soap box. I'll get down now ...
I've known many parents who just want to be their children's friend, and make their little lives happy. I've known many other parents that are busy with their own lives and just don't want their kids to bother them. I've also known many parents that were intimately involved in their kid's education, working with their children and their children's school and teachers to insure that their kids are actually learning everything they need to. The difference in how the children grew up to handle life is nothing short of amazing. This is something that's simple to research and read about. However, the people that are doing this research into how to properly raise their kids are definitely in the minority, and it is becoming more so all the time. People need to learn how to raise children before they have them, or no amount of educational reform is going to do more than the most superficial amount of good.
Sorry about the soap box. I'll get down now ...
Everyone talks about improving the education system, but that's not what's broken in my opinion. What's broken are the parents. Nobody teaches how to properly raise and motivate children. Schools are not supposed to be solely, or even primarily in my opinion, responsible for a child's education. This is the responsibilty of the child's parents. They are the ones that are supposed to be working with and educating their children. Fobbing that responsibility off on a bunch of strangers, and then getting upset when it doesn't work so well, is just wrong.
I've known many parents who just want to be their children's friend, and make their little lives happy. I've known many other parents that are busy with their own lives and just don't want their kids to bother them. I've also known many parents that were intimately involved in their kid's education, working with their children and their children's school and teachers to insure that their kids are actually learning everything they need to. The difference in how the children grew up to handle life is nothing short of amazing. This is something that's simple to research and read about. However, the people that are doing this research into how to properly raise their kids are definitely in the minority, and it is becoming more so all the time. People need to learn how to raise children before they have them, or no amount of educational reform is going to do more than the most superficial amount of good.
Sorry about the soap box. I'll get down now ...
This is the elephant in the room, IMO. It's so easy to have children, but raising them is another matter entirely. My wife and I actually took some parenting classes when we had our first child. This helped us immensely. Imagine if raising children and managing a family was something that we could elevate to the level of learning math and science. I think it could be argued that it is more important than both.
That's not what I think. I think that what I have seen here of unschooling and homeschooling while we homeschooled our kids for 10 years all too often has parents stopping after elementary-level material because the rest is beyond their knowledge, and the kids don't like it and complain. I think it's unfair to the kids to effectively deny them the possibility of becoming a physician/scientist/engineer/etc. because of this.
Getting a M.S. is usually a large pay boost--it is better bang-for-the-buck than a Ph.D. Surely you'd grant that there are jobs where the extra knowledge is truly useful? I've taught M.S.-level engineering students in Silicon Valley and M.S.-level engineering students in very specialized curricula (e.g., weapons systems engineering) for the Navy. They appreciated and used that material. I don't doubt that the difference between a B.A. and M.A. in English (say) is not as appreciated. Try getting an M.P.H. and see if people want that.
There's a lot of truth here but from a public policy point-of-view that's a lot harder to address, sadly. Poverty is the enemy.
I'm sorry, but poverty is an excuse, plain and simple. It makes a lot of things harder, it's true. However, it also makes some things easier. My experience (from growing up in poverty) is that most of the poor, not all but most, have never been taught either how to learn, nor how to properly raise children. Those two factors perpetuate the cycle of poverty, and make for an almost impossible task teaching the poor.
Any one person can rise above any given problem, but poverty explains much of what we're seeing here.
This is a bit simplistic. Might I suggest that schools in impoverished neighborhoods focus on different goals and values? Perhaps this would help poor families learn the skills they need to get out of poverty.
This is the problem with one size fits all standards, btw. Because of them, the schools cannot tailor their teaching to the communities needs.
As I said--we talk so much about schools because the root causes are very hard to address.
Not exactly. People in poor communities who almost never interact with degreed professionals outside their run-down schools may not internalize the "stay in school" message if it doesn't seem borne out by their day to day lives.
I agree, the root causes are hard to address, especially from thousands of miles away. The notion of centrally planning an education system in a country as large and diverse as the United States is what makes this so difficult. Education professionals, if left to tailor their teaching to the communities needs...aka their customers, could begin to craft solutions to gnarly social problems.
