Where is balance? -- Re: Academic priorities
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From: Patrick Scheible on 2 May 2005 18:15 Steve Richfie1d <Steve(a)NOSPAM.smart-life.net> writes: > Morten, et al, > > >>Schools exist for two main reasons; the primary one is to provide an > >>"education" (which in reality only needs to be "how to learn stuff" > >>training) > > >>and to teach conformity to societal norms. > > There are two very different interpretations of this, and THIS is > where the schools and our family part company. The two interpretations > are: > > 1. Indoctrinate the kids to think "normally", accept commonly accepted > social values, etc., as the schools now attempt to do. > > 2. Teach the kids to ACT (i.e. fake being) completely normal as > needed, but without transforming or restricting their thought > processes. I did this by signing the kids up to Toastmasters when they > were ready. A local group accepted them despite their young age > because they could easily carry on adult-level conversations and > generally "fit in" with the group, give speeches, etc. Of course, > official membership had to wait until they reached 18. It is sure > interesting to hear the kids' impressions of things when they are out > of earshot of the other members! > > BTW, the original justification for schools was to have a sufficiently > educated electorate to vote intelligently on the issues. In this they > have failed miserably. I don't think there was ever just *one* justification for schools. Voting intelligently was certainly near the top of the list, though. And I don't think it's been a complete failure. Certainly, people vote far less intelligently than they should, but compared to the situation if there were no schools at all I don't think they're doing so badly. Call it a heavily qualified success. -- Patrick
From: Bill Leary on 2 May 2005 18:31 "Stan Barr" <stanb45(a)dial.pipex.com> wrote in message news:slrnd7adr1.6kv.stanb45(a)citadel.metropolis.local... > On Sun, 1 May 2005 11:12:03 -0400, Bill Leary <Bill_Leary(a)msn.com> wrote: > >> But then, I learned out to learn. > > > >"out" should be "how" > > Strangely enough the original makes a sort of sense in North of England > dialect! I learned owt (ie nothing) to learn... I see what you mean. I've used that word a few times, but nobody here (New England, U.S.A.) seems to understand what I mean when I use it. - Bill
From: Bill Leary on 2 May 2005 18:48 "Patrick Scheible" <kkt(a)drizzle.com> wrote in message news:tqmk6mhlnxj.fsf(a)drizzle.com... > "Del Cecchi" <dcecchi.nospam(a)att.net> writes: > > And one of the problems with "Government Monopoly Schools" is that the kids > > are limited to the biases and knowledge of the teachers and curriculum > > consultants. :-) > > Sure, but as the kids go through school they'll encounter many > different teachers and their biases will tend to balance out. I've actually NOT found that to be the case. Hiring practices tend to lean toward hiring a certain personality of teacher. So, though there will be the occasional exception, for the most part I've found that the teachers by and large and any given school my kids have been in have been much the same. The exceptions tend to be language teachers or art teachers. - Bill
From: rpl on 2 May 2005 18:49 Kevin G. Rhoads wrote: >>BTW, the original justification for schools was to have a sufficiently >>educated electorate to vote intelligently on the issues. In this they >>have failed miserably. > > > I think it is much worse than that. Public schools these days are not > just failing to help solve the problem, they are active contributing to > it. (One example: "zero tolerance") zero tolerance of what? bringing fully automatic weapons onto school grounds ? rpl
From: Herman Rubin on 2 May 2005 19:57
In article <877jihb84g.fsf(a)thalassa.informatimago.com>, Pascal Bourguignon <pjb(a)informatimago.com> wrote: >hrubin(a)odds.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes: >> In article <tqmk6mhlnxj.fsf(a)drizzle.com>, >> Patrick Scheible <kkt(a)drizzle.com> wrote: >>>"Del Cecchi" <dcecchi.nospam(a)att.net> writes: >>>> "Bill Leary" <Bill_Leary(a)msn.com> wrote in message >>>> news:58qdnff4doQ4c-nfRVn-gg(a)giganews.com... >>>> > <jmfbahciv(a)aol.com> wrote in message >>>> > news:nuadnbBSmeBeQ-nfRVn-qA(a)rcn.net... .................... >>>Sure, but as the kids go through school they'll encounter many >>>different teachers and their biases will tend to balance out. >> Much of the bias is that of the basic philosophical school >> of education, and this is carried across. It is basically >> social adjustment and hyperegalitarian; if some children are >> more capable, they were taught more at home or some similar >> reason holds, not that they have more mental ability. >That would be true if the teacher population was random. But it is not. >Who teaches the teachers? >In France, they must all go thru the same "Normal" schools that >filters out and normalize them quite efficiently, not counting the >system of inspection where "political" inspectors grade the teachers >and upon which their advancement determined. So teachers that are >possibly very good may stay at the lowest level all their career if >they don't adopt the "bias" imposed by the system, or they leave the >system. In the US, there are courses labeled as "education" courses and taught in departments or schools of education. Elementary school teachers take largely this. The administrators are almost entirely strong advocates of the "religion". -- This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University. Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University hrubin(a)stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558 |