We Should Eliminate Mandatory High School
I did barely anything in high school. I didn't need to. It was super-easy, and I could get good grades (As, mostly, and the errant B) by doing the barest minimum of work.
I am grateful that I got less homework in my entire time in grades 10 through 12 than a first grader now gets in a week.
(By the way, I don't think that's a good thing in respect to kids now, but one that keeps them from the learning that takes place by being out in the world and experimenting through play -- which today's gated [caged!] children are no longer allowed to do.)
Back to high school, I'm also grateful that nobody made me take AP classes, which would have required me to do something other than show up with a pulse to take a test and collect my A. (Not quite sure why my mom either didn't know about AP classes or realize I wasn't taking them, but I'm glad she didn't.)
This isn't to say I wasn't learning. I've been a mad-curious mofo my entire life. Being graded and made to stay within certain topic areas was just an annoyance to put up with, same as showing up to high school, which I rarely did in my senior year.
That's because I wrangled myself a producing internship at the local NBC station. I was supposed to show up at school on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but I saw no reason to let that get in the way of trips to the mall or, typically, just going to the TV station instead.
When you're a good kid, you get away with crap like that -- while the kids who've been in trouble get punished for stuff they didn't even do.
What probably would have been best for me is to have been home-schooled, though my mother was said to be a terribly cruel taskmaster as a teacher -- by my cousin, Rolla, no less, who took one of my mom's classes at Mumford.
The thing is, my mother has no interest in busywork and is a real thinker. It's always fascinating to talk to her, and we often come up with some interesting ideas about things through our conversations.
The reality is, had she been shepherding me, I would have spent my time digging and learning like I do now instead of just showing up and grazing the bases over a largely wasted three years of high school.
As for what this was leading up to...novelist Nicholson Baker, who went through a substitute teaching stint, writes in The New York Times:
High school is wondrously efficient at making interesting things dull. So why are kids forced to go? Well, one reason has to do with child-labor laws. In the middle of the 19th century, kids in most states could stop going to school after eighth grade, once they had learned to read and do a little arithmetic, and they got jobs. They worked on farms or in dark satanic mills, and one by one the states made laws (or began to enforce existing laws) that said that young people had to stay in school so their morals wouldn't be corrupted and they wouldn't languish in ignorance and be roped into a life of labor from dawn to dusk and die of consumption before they reached 30. So the government built high schools, lots of them, and the number of kids in high school burgeoned, and blossomed, and ballooned. By 1940, there were five times as many high-school graduates as there were before the labor-law reforms. It was a huge change all over the country, and it required discipline. Squads of truant officers would go sniffing around finding kids who were evading high school, and they threatened parents with fines or even jail time and got them to comply.What happens if you suddenly have millions of kids in high school who would have been working under the old laws? You have to hire more teachers, and you have to figure out what they're going to teach. You then get endless debates about cultural literacy -- about what subjects should be required. Should everyone in high school learn Greek? What about Latin? What about sewing? Or needlepoint? Cursive? And the schools became bigger. The local schoolhouse went away, and the gigantic brick edifice on the edge of town took its place. James Conant, a president of Harvard, decided in the 1960s that the ideal high school should have at least 750 students. That's a lot of students -- it's a battalion of students, in fact -- and that's perhaps where it all began to go wrong. The regional schools became meatpacking plants, or Play-Doh fun factories, squeezing out supposedly educated human beings, marching them around from class to class -- bells bonging, punishments escalating, homework being loaded on. And yet the human beings who were marching from class to class weren't being paid. "Review the elements of transcendentalism listed on Page 369." Oh, and do it for free.
Every day something like 16 million high-school students get up at the crack of dawn, slurp some oat clusters while barely conscious, hop on a bus, bounce around the county, show up and sit in a chair, zoned out, waiting for the first bell. If they're late, they are written up. Even if they don't do much academic work, they are physically present. Their attendance is a valuable commodity, because if students don't attend, teachers and guidance counselors and principals and textbook makers and designers of educational software have no jobs. A huge lucrative industry is built around them, and the students get nothing out of it but a G.P.A. They deserve not to have their time wasted.
And it is wasted, as everyone knows. Teachers spend half their time shouting themselves hoarse, and young adults are infantilized. Their lives are absurdly regimented. Every minute is accounted for. They sit in one hot room after another and wait for each class to end. Time thickens. It becomes like saltwater taffy -- it becomes viscous and sticky, and it stretches out and it folds back on itself through endless repetition. Tuesday is just like Wednesday, except the schedule is shuffled. Day after day of work sheets. By the time they graduate, they've done 13 years of work sheets. When they need to go to the bathroom, they have to write their name on a piece of paper by the door. If they hide in the bathroom, they're in trouble. Whole hierarchies of punishment for scofflaws arise -- school-supplied iPads are restricted, parents are called on the phone, in-school suspensions are meted out.
What makes all this almost tolerable is the kids themselves. They find ways to make it entertaining. They discover friends and co-conspirators. They rebel. They interrupt one another constantly in search of some tiny juicy Jolly Rancher of surprise. They subvert the system. They learn to lie convincingly to avoid work.
He ends the piece with this -- referencing the "school without walls" he went to that he mentions in the opening:
To find their way in American life, high-schoolers need to be able to speak English, to read, to listen to and respect other people's opinions, to have a command of the basic elements of courtesy and, to a lesser extent, to write. (They do not need to know how to write a thesis sentence. More injury is done to high-school essays by the imposition of the thesis-sentence requirement than by any other means. The trick, kids are sometimes told, is to begin with a word like "although." No.) It's also useful to know how to add and subtract and do percentages, how to measure dimensions, and how to read graphs. Beyond these basics, there's a vast, beautiful, glittering midden of applied and miscellaneous knowledge -- of natural science, history, material science, design, music, tradecraft and artistic dexterity -- and because everything is potentially interesting, everything is potentially worthy of study, and arguing over the fine-grained specifics of the standard curriculum is a waste of time.Let's end homework forever -- just end it now -- and open up more daylight hours for life's inexhaustible succession of microlessons. Knowing how to paddle a canoe, or fix a faucet, or work a cash register, or bake a coffeecake, or comfort someone who is unhappy, is much more important than knowing the names of the six kingdoms of living organisms, or the layers of the atmosphere, even if you're going to become a naturalist or an atmospheric physicist -- and paddling and faucet-fixing and cash-registering and cake-baking and the offering of sympathy, like most memorable proficiencies, happen best when they're voluntary, after school is out.
Emerson would have liked the School Without Walls. Its motto, although it had no motto, could have been "Self-Reliance." Now that I've spent time teaching in a regular high school, I'm hugely grateful to Lew Marks -- who died in 2010 -- and the institution he created. (It's still going, by the way.) The school respected us and trusted us. It was a sort of nowhere Utopia -- a big, soft, stretchy packet of temporal freedom within which to be bored and idle and sleep late and watch reruns of "My Three Sons" and daytime talk shows and stare through the curtains out the window, and smell the curtains, which had a deep dusty smell, and learn one of the profound lessons of life, which is that all education is self-education. Nobody needs you to do anything, so that anything you do has to come from yourself.
Related -- former New York State Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto's view, from a Harper's piece:
Do we really need school? I don't mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. Is this deadly routine really necessary? And if so, for what? Don't hide behind reading, writing, and arithmetic as a rationale, because 2 million happy homeschoolers have surely put that banal justification to rest. Even if they hadn't, a considerable number of well-known Americans never went through the twelve-year wringer our kids currently go through, and they turned out all right. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln? Someone taught them, to be sure, but they were not products of a school system, and not one of them was ever "graduated" from a secondary school. Throughout most of American history, kids generally didn't go to high school, yet the unschooled rose to be admirals, like Farragut; inventors, like Edison; captains of industry, like Carnegie and Rockefeller; writers, like Melville and Twain and Conrad; and even scholars, like Margaret Mead. In fact, until pretty recently people who reached the age of thirteen weren't looked upon as children at all.We have been taught (that is, schooled) in this country to think of "success" as synonymous with, or at least dependent upon, "schooling," but historically that isn't true in either an intellectual or a financial sense. And plenty of people throughout the world today find a way to educate themselves without resorting to a system of compulsory secondary schools that all too often resemble prisons.
His prescription:
Now for the good news. Once you understand the logic behind modern schooling, its tricks and traps are fairly easy to avoid. School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and independently. Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that they'll never be bored. Urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history, literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology - all the stuff schoolteachers know well enough to avoid. Challenge your kids with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner dialogues. Well-schooled people are conditioned to dread being alone, and they seek constant companionship through the TV, the computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly acquired and quickly abandoned. Your children should have a more meaningful life, and they can.First, though, we must wake up to what our schools really are: laboratories of experimentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society demands. Mandatory education serves children only incidentally; its real purpose is to turn them into servants. Don't let your own have their childhoods extended, not even for a day. If David Farragut could take command of a captured British warship as a preteen, if Thomas Edison could publish a broadsheet at the age of twelve, if Ben Franklin could apprentice himself to a printer at the same age (then put himself through a course of study that would choke a Yale senior today), there's no telling what your own kids could do. After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I've concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.
How is it possible to hire teenagers for jobs when one can't even hire young adults without their parents breathing down your neck?
The school system exists as it is because parents are awful and frankly I would rather high schoolers stay in their repetitive bubble because college graduates are already awful enough.
The problem is the parents. Good luck convincing them of change.
Ppen at September 11, 2016 2:46 AM
Bollocks! (Binged on Inspector Lewis this weekend.)
Are these authors pro-choice for schools?
Are they Democrats voting in lock-step w/Teacher Union funded politics?
Have they tried to find out why shop/Home Ed. classes died or on life support?
Do they believe all kids should go to college?
Are they against the military providing a way for "kids" to grow up and finance their way in the world?
What do they know about the job skills to be required in the next 5 or 10 years?
Do they wail in horror or LOL when Christians complain about what their kids are exposed to and kept from knowing.
Doubt it.
They have an opinion that like the WWII vets they can easily discuss over coffee in the morning.
Bob in Texas at September 11, 2016 6:02 AM
To do what they suggest:
Government would do tests to determine what each child should "be" in their adult life.
Obvious since education time would be limited and the "experts" would have to "tailor" the knowledge that should be passed on to the children.
Of course these 12, 13, and on "kids" would have to accept what was being offered (no other course) by the Teacher Union specialists (the "experts").
Inner city youth (not those of the "well-off") would be handled how? Rural fly-over youth?
Hot air.
Bob in Texas at September 11, 2016 6:10 AM
This is one instance where taking a cue from our European cousins might be a good idea. A student of 14-15 who has no desire or has evince no ability to study at a college level should not be forced into a college-prep curriculum. What's wrong with a trade school curriculum or an apprenticeship for students who are not college-bound?
The trade track was eliminated because it was assumed that minority students were being unfairly routed away from college.
And everyone deserves the chance to go to college, don't they? As if a welder couldn't use his welding income to pay for classes and go to college later, when he's more mature and apt to do better; and actually has a desire to live, if even briefly, a life of the mind.
Of course, all those companies that demand a college degree for a receptionist position will have to find a new way to find employees who can read or add, since high school graduation is no longer de facto evidence of that.
A fellow Lewis fan. Cool.
Conan the Grammarian at September 11, 2016 6:58 AM
This argument has been used here before - that since something is done badly in a few cases, it should not be done at all.
There will be NO ONE rushing in to fill the void, to provide this "inexhaustible succession of microlessons". A depressing number of people at work now merely yearn to be paid large sums for merely doing what they are told.
And no one should miss the special pleading fallacy - the offer that since truly exceptional people succeeded without regimented learning, everyone would. Bah.
I'd be more impressed if these idiots would note that content is missing. It's not the school that's the bad idea - it's modern crap that doesn't have anything to do with learning, grade inflation and the rapid combustion of money funneled to barely-literate administrators and "teachers" unaccountable to the community.
Radwaste at September 11, 2016 7:15 AM
A student of 14-15 who has no desire or has evince no ability to study at a college level should not be forced into a college-prep curriculum. What's wrong with a trade school curriculum or an apprenticeship for students who are not college-bound?
As a European, let me assure you that this system works very well indeed. You get all kinds of benefits:
- Your college-track high schools don't have to cater to uninterested students, so they can focus on academics.
- Your tradespeople have a formal (practical) education and apprenticeship, meaning that they are skilled and very well qualified.
- Your industry gets 2-3 years of inexpensive labor out of their apprentices, in return for participating in their education.
- Your 15-16 year olds are earning real salaries. Maybe not enough to support a family, but pretty great for their age. Afterwards, they have real experience, which pretty much guarantees them a job.
In short: everybody wins.
Well, everybody but the well-meaning SJWs. Since they are the real racists, paying more attention to ethnic origins than to individual ability and achievement, they do get all offended.
bradley13 at September 11, 2016 7:33 AM
The trade school thing is very smart. All for it.
Amy Alkon at September 11, 2016 8:09 AM
Another interesting view: Segregating Students by Age Is a Terrible Practice
https://fee.org/articles/segregating-students-by-age-is-a-terrible-practice/?utm_source=zapier&utm_medium=facebook
Amy Alkon at September 11, 2016 8:25 AM
Ppen,
I don't think parents are the blame. Why? Perhaps because I know a lot of homeschoolers. Perhaps because I know many parents who spend half their free time trying to figure out what to do for their child(ren)'s education and will switch schools in a heartbeat if there's bad fit. Or, perhaps it is because I had a kid in a public school a few years ago.
They have SOOO much red tape - courtesy of Washington - that they are much bigger bureaucracies than they were when I was growing up - and I'm mid-30s. They have to be to comply with the laws. The administrators spends ONE WHOLE DAY every week on IEP meetings. That's the Principal or VP, one or two specialists (speech, OT, etc), and a teacher for the whole day.
And why must they do this? In part because it is mandated. In part because they have only so much money and they have to justify spending it (or not) on Little Jenny's speech problem (or whatever). Of course, all the pressure to have kids sit down and shut up causes behavioral diagnoses (and some real ones due to low tone - talk to an occupational therapist, because it's rampant and causes real problems with things like writing).
It's not JUST the parents. BUT, many parents are convinced already and walking away - and not just to private schools either. Check the homeschooling statistics.
Shannon at September 11, 2016 8:28 AM
Rad,
Public schools in the US aren't done poorly in a few cases. They are done poorly in most cases. Look for a correlation between school spending and the success of their pupils and you will find a weak one. But control for the parents and it goes strongly negative. The more schools spend the worse they do. This is pretty universal across the US. As for the cause, look at what Shannon wrote. Top down rules waste time and money while interfering with the education process.
I don't see us ending high school or going the trade school route any time soon. But charter schooling and eliminating the department of education looks more viable. The biggest thing is to break the centralized control. Top down planned economies never work. Not in the Soviet Union and not in US public education.
Ben at September 11, 2016 9:39 AM
Kids are natural learners; in a hundred thousand generations they couldn't have evolved any other way. They might not want to learn what some bureaucrat wants to teach them, but it's hard to stop them from learning what they want.
It takes a huge, complex, well funded bureaucracy run by well paid, highly educated professionals to keep a kid from learning.
Ken R at September 11, 2016 9:56 AM
High school is not *mandatory* except in the minds of the teachers unions and the educational bureaucracy.
If you read most state law, schooling in mandatory through the 8th grade or to the age of 16, which ever comes first.
The feds really got their hooks into public education with the advent of Title I in the 1960's.
When the federal education dollara dry up, so will most of the phony balony mandates.
Isab at September 11, 2016 11:52 AM
Also this is an old adage, but is unfortunately close to true.
The top fifteen percent of students will learn everything they need under just about any conditions., sans formal schooling.
The bottom fifteen percent wont become literate under the most optimum conditions. Regardless of the system of instruction.
School is designed for the middle 70 percent to provide a structured environment to allow these kids who need a structured enviroment to learn.
When schools started focusing on teaching the bottom 15 percent, (because that is where the federal dollars were) and fudging measurement systems to try and show results, it was the seventy percent in the middle who really got screwed.
Isab at September 11, 2016 12:07 PM
When schools started focusing on teaching the bottom 15 percent, (because that is where the federal dollars were) and fudging measurement systems to try and show results, it was the seventy percent in the middle who really got screwed.
I would add that the switchover from education to in loco parentis babysitting is a big part of the problem.
We now have children who show up before school because their families can't provide (or can't be arsed to provide) a morning meal. Same at lunch. Many districts pick up the children and drop them off again in the afternoon, often in staggered schedules to meet parents' needs.
In a better world, schools (private, public, charter, whatever) would be able to concentrate on education, and students would show up at school prepared to learn (proper sleep, materials, food and transportation needs considered). It shouldn't be a babysitting service for the convenience of the parents.
Kevin at September 11, 2016 1:06 PM
So all y'all are for highschoolers to go into a trade. My father owned a business that hired alot of trade ppl, and he taught them the ways of the trade. One of his employees has been there since he was a teen (the guy is autistic so he's really good at repetitive tasks). But all of the ones willing to learn are immigrants. His view and the view of all his peers is that Americans (of any race) just are not suited to learning a trade at that age due to the way they've been brought up with a sense of entitlement. Learning a trade is difficult and if you learn it from a master they tend to be really harsh and pretty fucking mean. (learning from a school is nicer but in my experience ppl that teach at schools aren't particularly talented in their field).
The effort it takes to learn finishing for example, I just simply don't believe it can done in a meaningful way by an American teen.
((One of my fathers friend was telling me how one of his employees would give him the excuse he wasn't coming in because his mom forgot to wake him up (23 year old guy). ))
Sorry I also work in a field where I manage alot of tradespeople and I do not want to deal with a large influx of highschool ppl who think they've learned the basics of the trade. Also you have to think about the fact that trades people are plagued with substance abuse problems, bullying you about your work is ok, strict schedules and a myriad of other things that I just do not think American teens to young adults can handle due to their parents coddling them too much. Their competition is going to be immigrants and ex-cons, who are more hungry.
On top of that I know that bringing in highschoool or post highschool ppl means there will be ADMINS and laws and things I don't want to deal with.
Don't dump the problem on the trades. There is a reason we like walk-ins willing to work for peanuts to learn--it shows initiative.
Ppen at September 11, 2016 1:18 PM
" It shouldn't be a babysitting service for the convenience of the parents."
Yees. That's why I'm against having higshcoolers in the trades.
Ppen at September 11, 2016 1:20 PM
By the way alot of my immigrant guys learned their trade from their fathers---who where fucking brutal teachers. How many Americans even have fathers?
Ppen at September 11, 2016 1:25 PM
His view and the view of all his peers is that Americans (of any race) just are not suited to learning a trade at that age due to the way they've been brought up with a sense of entitlement.
That's a goddamn shame. And a pretty strong indictment.
Kevin at September 11, 2016 1:32 PM
Here's the thing: If you're a supergenius, you get to skip the first eight years of education and go straight to high school. If you're a little under that, you have to do all 12 years. I would have like to have to attend school for only eight years, but they don't have programs like that. As it was, I was burned out on education by my first year of college. And when I got my degree, I said, "No more!"
Fayd at September 11, 2016 2:29 PM
Agree w/Ppen in that adult work environments are not the place for kids.
I would prefer the schools teach all kids all trades (esp. HVAC and music) as a way to learn math, math problems, chemistry, physics, and how to make cookies (fractions - 1/4 stick of butter).
I'm not sure why this is not done (blame it on the "experts") but making something to 1/32" tolerance or playing in a jazz band is pretty cool. (Damn, that's a fraction! Whoa! You'd thunk).
Bob in Texas at September 11, 2016 5:15 PM
That is kind of the point Ppen. What do you want to do with these people? They aren't fit for anything because the standard they've been held to is what the bottom 15% are capable of. I agree, most aren't fit for the trades. But they aren't fit for college or professional work. What are they fit for?
I still say the only solution is to cut ties with the federal government. Then schools will then have the desire to work on the middle 70% and will have the authority to kick out the troublemakers. Stop going to extraordinary steps to 'help' kids, have basic and clear standards and expectations, and kick out the 1-2% who just won't comply. The schools will do a far better job and be a better place for teachers to work as well.
But all of that comes back to what the purpose of the school is. To a large extent the schools are there to keep people out of the workforce so they aren't competition for older workers. Giving students an education is pure happenstance. Our schools are starting to look like prisons because that is what they do.
Ben at September 11, 2016 8:07 PM
Ben: "To a large extent the schools are there to keep people out of the workforce so they aren't competition for older workers. Giving students an education is pure happenstance. Our schools are starting to look like prisons because that is what they do."
Amen.
I suppose there are a lot of ways that schools could be made better at sometime in the future. In the meantime, parents, have mercy on your kids and get them the hell out of there - whatever it takes.
Ken R at September 12, 2016 1:46 AM
"But all of that comes back to what the purpose of the school is. To a large extent the schools are there to keep people out of the workforce so they aren't competition for older workers. Giving students an education is pure happenstance. Our schools are starting to look like prisons because that is what they do."
This is a recent phenomenon, as the high school diploma once meant something.
Your earlier comment about parents is well taken, but it is parents who have allowed an astonishing slide into suckage. Could you have imagined the idea of having a police officer in school as being normal 30 years ago? This person is even called a "resource officer" to hide his true reason for being.
Radwaste at September 12, 2016 5:46 AM
The Department of Education was founded in 1979. There has been a nice decline in the quality of US public schools ever since.
Ben at September 12, 2016 6:35 AM
"His view and the view of all his peers is that Americans (of any race) just are not suited to learning a trade at that age due to the way they've been brought up with a sense of entitlement. "
So one thing to note here is that the high schools and the trade schools are both running into the same problem that colleges are: the students being passed up to them from the lower grades are not prepared to do that level of work. To me, educational reform has to start with the primary grades. Unfortunately that's also the area where the most rot has set in. Leftist ed schools completely and totally own the grades 1-5. The only way out is (some) private schools or home schooling, and for a lot of people that's just not an option. Plus, we're seeing an increasing number of kids coming from homes where the parents (parent, in a lot of cases) is/are not competent to teach them. It doesn't look to me like there is any way to fix it short of ripping out the entire edifice by the roots and starting over from scratch.
"What do you want to do with these people? They aren't fit for anything because the standard they've been held to is what the bottom 15% are capable of. "
I am convinced that in the near future, a substantial portion of the American population (20-40 million) is going to have to be institutionalized, because they are just not capable of taking responsibility for their own well-being. How in the hell we're going to pay for that, I have no idea.
Cousin Dave at September 12, 2016 7:24 AM
Furthermore, I note that the author of that piece slipped in a sly reference to William Blake. He didn't learn that in a microlesson in a daisy field.
Cousin Dave at September 12, 2016 7:27 AM
Your earlier comment about parents is well taken, but it is parents who have allowed an astonishing slide into suckage.
Yup. Today's unprepared little fartlings aren't being let down by the system; they, and their parents, are letting down the system.
Kevin at September 12, 2016 9:33 AM
Exactly.
To add to the massive failure of parents...
If you dont have a father I dont think you are suited to learning a trade because you wont understand the dynamic that goes on between master and apprentice. Meaning too many teens consider themselves equal to their mothers, absentee fathers and teachers and in a trade equality isnt tolerated.
If you want to learn wood working chances are you are going to start sweeping the shop and made fun of for doing womans work. Good luck getting an American teen to tolerate it with their safe space indoctrination.
ppen at September 12, 2016 11:41 AM
The purpose of schools is to keep gangs of lower socio-economic youth off the streets during the day. They do their jobs to a certain extent.
NicoleK at September 12, 2016 2:23 PM
Kevin,
They didn't fail the system. This is what the system wants and was setup to do. At the worst they are in it together.
Cousin Dave,
There is no way to pay to institutionalize that many people. From Ppen I see mostly nimbyism. I.e. do what you want but just not here. I'm willing to take that a step further with complete ostracization. No institution, no welfare, no support. Kick them out on the streets and ignore them. We can't afford them and we can't change them. Only they and a harsh reality can do so.
Ben at September 12, 2016 2:25 PM
They didn't fail the system. This is what the system wants and was setup to do. At the worst they are in it together.
Sorry, I don't believe that; it comes too close to "society's fault" for my comfort. Plenty of people succeed on their own merits despite whatever the system throws at them.
Kevin at September 12, 2016 2:40 PM
As Isab said 15% will succeed no mater what. Our schools are not setup to create basketball stars, but there are plenty who make it into the NBA. You need to look at the median. The simple reality is that our schools are aimed at the bottom 10% of students and the rest are neglected. As I and others pointed out this is due to the department of education and federal mandates. Since its inception the quality of public school education has steadily decreased. On the bright side there is an easy solution that is simple to implement, shut down the department of education and return school control to local hands.
As for 'society's fault' I don't really care who's fault it is. I'm looking for forward going solutions. As I made clear I consider anyone who's graduated a lost cause. It is too little too late to reeducate those who've been miseducated. Fault is irrelevant. You can keep railing about crappy parents and you will keep getting crappy parenting. There have been crappy parents for thousands of years. It isn't a new phenomenon. Honestly I doubt it is any more prevalent than 100 years ago.
Ben at September 12, 2016 6:27 PM
"There is no way to pay to institutionalize that many people. "
I know; that's my point. How are we going to deal with these people? They aren't capable of earning a living, or contributing to society in any meaningful way. Yet they are firmly convinced of their own superiority. A whole nation of narcissists. They're going to cause a whole lot of trouble, e.g., having numbers sufficient to vote themselves large benefits.
Cousin Dave at September 13, 2016 6:23 AM
For what it's worth (I haven't read everything above just yet), here's what moderate conservative columnist Alex Beam wrote about Tom Sawyer and Mark Twain's time versus now - that is, the year 2000:
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1129&dat=20001106&id=2rNRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=iG8DAAAAIBAJ&pg=5845,5422930
You have to scroll a bit to the left, first.
Here's how I summarized it, elsewhere:
Columnist Alex Beam (who described reading TS with his son as "pure enchantment") wrote one of his satirical columns on how nowadays, Tom Sawyer would get pumped with Ritalin or sent to jail just for acting like a normal boy - that is, smoking, being mean to animals, playing hooky, etc. He quoted Twain as saying that one reason he didn't write about Tom as an adult is he couldn't see Tom as becoming anything but a normal, boring man, eventually. That prompted a letter from a mother of three ADD sons. She said she has every reason to use Ritalin, since her sons won't even sit still to listen to "Tom Sawyer" when she tried to read it to them. More importantly, as she said, "it was not a big deal to do just OK in school in 1840s riverbank Missouri. Not so today in our high-tech society." She might have added that today, there's more than one good reason the law takes seriously those who hurt animals - especially young people who do.
lenona at September 13, 2016 9:35 AM
If you like, here's part of what the mother wrote:
https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8628616.html
lenona at September 13, 2016 9:37 AM
Oh, forgot to ask: What do people here think of the 1991 book "The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education" by Grace Llewellyn? I haven't read it. It was reprinted in 1998.
lenona at September 13, 2016 9:42 AM
Ppen said: Learning a trade is difficult and if you learn it from a master they tend to be really harsh and pretty fucking mean. (learning from a school is nicer but in my experience ppl that teach at schools aren't particularly talented in their field).
Reminds me of what Margaret Davidson wrote in her biography of Louis Braille (who became a teacher in the late 1820s at the Paris school he'd been attending since boyhood):
"School teachers were not supposed to be kind and patient in Louis's day. Many of them were not. They shouted and yelled and made fun of slow boys. They thought learning was something that had to be pounded into children's heads.
"Louis knew this was wrong. 'He used a firm kindness instead,' a friend later wrote. Louis never made fun of his students - no matter how slow or silly they were being. And he was especially gentle with the youngest boys. Louis had been at the school for many years now. But he had never forgotten what it felt like to be new and shy and alone!"
lenona at September 13, 2016 10:04 AM
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