Obama vs. No Child Left Behind

Look, I'm sure stupid parents and school boards can always kill their schools with something. That was not my issue with Aidan. My issue is that I consider it improper for school boards to regulate the details of how schools are run. That's especially true when the Federal government then holds the individual schools, as opposed to the school boards, accountable for the results. Aidan objected that such regulation is proper, because school boards are only exercising legitimate democratic control. To that, I remarked that school boards can exercise this control through their choice of principals. Having made their choice, they can leave it to the principals to actually run the schools. Are you suggesting that your examples tell us otherwise? That students would have been better off if the school boards and their advisors had micromanaged the schools instead?

teachers should be experts in training people how to process information, how to get information, it is not their job to decide what the results of this process should be for each individual. a person who believes something that the majority disapproves of is not a problem, there is thus no fixing of a problem. What goes on in our schools today under the heading of "education" is actually often coercive manipulation of the kids to get them to believe the "right" things.

Not only is this not the job of the educators, it is actually very damaging to our society. These kids grow up to be adults, and when they do they often don't trust the establishment. They have seen the ugly truth up front and personal at too young an age. They have been damaged forever. A lot of who we are is the dark side, a lot of what we do as a collective is manipulative/hurtful/harmful.....but we used to believe in childhood, we used to believe that kids need to be shielded from this dark side for awhile for their own good. No more, now we aggressively manipulate and coerce children at a very young age.

Perhaps this is why we go nuts about protecting them from sexual experience and trying to keep them "safe" from all of the child predators supposedly running around. Maybe it is overcompensation for ******* them over in school.

Well, that was quite a tirade.

You wrote: What goes on in our schools today under the heading of "education" is actually often coercive manipulation of the kids to get them to believe the "right" things.

Today? What about in the 19th C., when the Bible was a text and students learned to write longhand by copying maxims?

I also find a great many contradictions in your answer here to your statement that we too often trust in attorneys and teachers.

If we too often trust in attorneys and teachers, why is it that you (seem to) find it regrettable that kids grow up not trusting the establishment.

So, as far as you are concerned, attorneys and teachers are not part of the establishment?

Furthermore, there is a fine line between allowing too much power and responsibility . . . with emphasis on the latter . . . to teachers and not enough power and responsibility to teachers.

Ask a teacher just how unprepared all too many children are for school.

I would ask you where that line is but you present no evidence of knowing where it is.

You sound angry. Why? Aren't my examples transparent? In the first case, the school board probably knew about the affair. The parents did not. In the second case, both the community (parents) and their elected officials abrogated their responsibility to find an appropriate person to run the school, relying instead on a consultant who is not from the community.

That ought to have been instantly recognizable from my accounts.

I have three kids 15-21, I have been an aid in the classroom, I know. All the more reason for teachers to have refused to become involved in the work of social engineering, to concentrate instead on their jobs.

I fund it regrettable that kids are poorly educated,but what they come away believing is up to them. I have no problem with schools teaching the societal majority values, I do have a problem with insisting that those who choose not to adopt those values are defective, that teachers who fail to indoctrinate the prescribed values are failures. I grew up in schools where we had all kinds of teachers, who were honest about what they believed but did not insist that the students should believe as well. I had teachers who were openly marxist as well as one government teacher who was a proud member of the John Birch Society, they worked together and in the end gave their students a well rounded understanding of the different beliefs that people have. What we have now are MUCH more conformist and non tolerant of minority views. We as a society are weaker for it.

How about you stick to arguing your opinions and point of view? Gratuitous put downs are unbecoming.

Attorneys yes, for teachers the allegiance to truth and to the budding selves of their charges must trump their allegiance to the adults who wish to decide who the kids grow up to become.

Thomas, I was specifically referring to how sped and non sped kids socialize in school. I thought I'd already responded about in a previous post. If it came off as snippy, it wasn't meant to be.

No worries, you didn't come across as snippy. I just wanted to make sure I didn't miss something you said. And in the earlier post, I had merely answered your question about what I was saying. And I had asked about recess because, first, I didn't know you don't have it in junior high school (we had it throughout all 13 school years), and, second, it seemed to be an out-of-the-classroom environment you could observe as a teacher. I think we're on the same wavelength now.

Plainoldme, I'm not angry, and I agree your examples were transparent. I just don't see how they bear on my disagreement with Aidan. And since you were responding to a post of mine about it, I kind of expected them to. If you didn't intend to weigh in on our disagreement, that's fine. You don't have to. But if you did -- then how do your examples support or contradict my opinion that principals, not schoolboards, should run the schools?

They were just illustrations of a couple of things that happened that I knew about. I had always strongly suspected that the administration knew about the affair and had taken the decorous way out by not publicly airing the woman's linens but that her very popularity with the community brought about the airing.

I substitute taught for a long time, beginning my sophomore year of college. I could always tell how effective the principal was the minute I walked into a school. A good principal met the substitute and escorted the same to the classroom. A bad principal never appeared.

In the first case, the schools were cleaner, the hallways decorated with examples of the children's work. The second case was quite different.

However, in the case of the woman having an affair with the man widely held not to be qualified for his job, it was the right of the school board and the superintendent to not extend her contract.

I am clearly not in favor of consultants being hired to do the work that ought to be done either by the community itself or by the superintendent of schools, that is, hire principals.

Sounds reasonable to me, plainoldme.

Yes pom but you are assuming those things are a good thing for the kid's education without saying why?

The hallways in my school were decorated by portraits of past headmasters and they looked a fearsome bunch. The place was passably clean. And everybody pretended the headmaster didn't exist as much as they could.

And look how I turned out.

now there's the kind of spendius post I've been missing




(yes, I prefer to be entertained rather than enlightened. Enlightenment along with entertainment is also acceptable)

What do y'all think about the part of Obama's initiative where the US government uses its standards to judge academic excellence?

My own impression is that this is even more dubious than using them to judge if a school is failing. I'm not enthusiastic about that, either. But at least I can imagine cookie-cutter tests to sniff out schools where students can't read, write, or do basic math. I can also see that the solutions to such failure could be fairly standardized.

But cookie-cutter tests for excellence? I thought excellence was all about diversity, with being creative, with each student finding their own calling and individually fulfilling their own potential in it. I though the truly excellent students are the ones trying new stuff, which other people hadn't thought of before. So how are authorities supposed to test for this kind of excellence using some rigorous standard? I don't see it.

America, just like other countries, already has too many streamlined, darling-of-the-admission-offices, droid-like "elite" types. It would be a pity if the US government perpetuated this trend.

I'm in agreement with you Thomas regarding this point.

Today - Schools that perform better don't get penalized resulting in more funding. Schools that perform worse get penalized and have less funding than schools who are not penalized. To your point, this is based on standardized tests or measured results.

Obama's plan - Schools that perform better get rewarded resulting in more funding. Schools that perform worse do not get rewarded and have less funding than schools that do. This is based on some sort of strange 'excellence' metric that is as of yet undefined.

I don't see much of a functional improvement.

While I am not a good housekeeper (bad genes in that dept), when a school is dirty, the kids act up more and there is more vandalism . . . based on observations.

The other thing is that when student work is displayed, pride is generated and the kids work harder and learn more.

I am not in favor of national standards. For one thing, whose standards will the nation meet: those of Massachusetts or those of MS or AL or GA?

SEcond, in a sense, we have a national standard in terms of the national tests: the SAT, the National Merit Scholarship Test (which, sadly, merged with the PSAT).

Third, and this will rankle some but suck it up and deal, is in my experience, the left always wanted higher standards while the right wants to lower standards. During college and grad school, the left wanted teachers to major in the subject they wished to teach and the left wanted a return to the seven liberal arts and fought (a losing fight) against the softening of standards is re: the teaching of languages, science and math. It is the moderate to left wing parents who generally wish to keep music, art and drama in schools.

I am all for them under two conditions...that the schools dont spend much time giving the tests or teaching the test, and so long as no decisions are made by the government as a result of those tests. School boards and parents should make use of the results as they see fit, but government should stay the **** out of the way.

And keep in mind that I consider myself a socialist. Education is special, government must not control education.

For those that think the federal government should back out, fine, but they should take their (our) federal tax dollars with them.

the feds should never had been part of the funding and rule making, they until recently did stay out of education. Schools must be supported with taxes, but that does not mean that the government should have much of a say in what goes on in schools. Because government has and will continue to fund schools governments have decided that they have the right to dictate how schools operate, and that this control is a good idea.

I dont agree, I dont think that the model of having school boards controlling the schools was broken.

Then we agree.

Feds leave; take their money with them; give control back to the states to tax and manage (or not manage) education as they see fit.

Too bad none of our politicians agree.