OMG. I'm starting to believe hawkeye

@boomerang,

Quote:

Notice what is going on here. It isn't just that these parents are ignoring everyone else's children, focusing their efforts solely on giving their own children the most desirable education. Rather, they are in effect sacrificing other children to their own. It's not about success but victory

You will recall that this is precisely what I told you awhile back when you were thinking of trying to get the district to pay to send Mo out of district. You are in competition for funding for your kid with every other parent in the system. There is no where near enough money to pay for everyone's wish list, so every dollar is fought over.

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@hawkeye10,

You did say that! I remember.

My only point here is trying to get people whose kids are at the top to the totem pole to think about the kids at the bottom of the totem pole.

To us it sounds like a pony.

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@boomerang,

Quote:

My only point here is trying to get people whose kids are at the top to the totem pole to think about the kids at the bottom of the totem pole

good luck with that...when times are hard the inclination is to hoard and to make sure that those closest to us are taken care of. Most people I think have a deep gut feeling that America is circling the bowl, appeals to the common good and singing "We are the world" are not likely to get much traction.

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While I haven't read the entirety of either link, one thing stands out: both are about parents who are using every tool at their disposal to support and maintain segregation. In my school system, you see it in small, private schools where parents put their children to keep them away from "disruptive elements" (code for black children). There are lots of ways parents here in the South try to do that. They can gerrymander the school districts with "neighborhood schools" or create charter schools or use tracking as you suggested, but just because these tools are being abused by those who have an alternative agenda doesn't mean they are evil of themselves. In places where racial bias is not the driving force in education gifted programs and AP courses can provide excellent opportunities at very little cost. If every education program that has ever been distorted to protect a racist society were eliminated, we wouldn't have an education system at all.

A student aggressively working AP classes can skip a year of college, saving his parents real money. If AP classes are poorly taught, students get the word and stop attending them, especially if the goal it passing the AP test. Plus these courses as taught here are open to all students who want to take them provided they have the prerequisites. If you want to take AP US History, you have to take Civics for example. (There are some courses where the prerequisites are advanced like AP Calculus so only the top students can get there.) From those I've seen, I would say these courses are better taught than freshmen college courses where you have two hundred people in a room.

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@engineer,

It's worth reading.

It made me squirm and feel sick to my stomach and like a tool who had been tricked. But school has that effect on my anyway.

But I still don't know enough about TAG/AP to form a cogent opinion.

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@engineer,

Quote:

If AP classes are poorly taught, students get the word and stop attending them, especially if the goal it passing the AP test.

Obviously the class is worthless without a good grade on the test, but my kids never took AP to actually use the credit at the university. Their goal was to get universities to seriously consider them. If a student does not show in HS that they are willing to apply themselves, willing to work and take risks, they will look much less worthy to an admissions officer.

My first two have come away with a bad impression of what was learned in AP, however they did very well on the tests and got into good schools in part because of them. It worked for our purposes.

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@hawkeye10,

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Obviously the class is worthless without a good grade on the test

Ding!

I think we have a winner.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

Quote:
I was curious about that too, in a quick survey it looks like gifted programs are more vulnerable when only one of the two can be funded. NCLB has not been kind to gifted programs, for example.
Gifted programs are not only an expense that does not promote what the schools are being graded on, but they are also a pain in the rear, as nearly every parent of a mediocre student feels that their baby deserves to be in the program, and they get peeved when the experts disagree.

The problem in this country is not access by the gifted, but access by the average and less than average... The intelligent can take care of themselves, self educate if necessary, but they are educated because they are the support the rich cannot live without... Let the average, and even the above average struggle in vain against a system and economy that always fates them to lose... As long as the rich own the high intelligent, and the super intelligent their success is certain... If I were them, I would not behave in any other fashion, but it is essential if we all are to survive that resources be applied where needed rather than allocated as they are where they will maximize profits and minimize justice... It is not for want of rich and powerful that we will die, but lack of justice for all, equality of opportunity... When the people get the feeling, which is fact, that the cannot win, revolution is certain.

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@Fido,

Quote:

The problem in this country is not access by the gifted, but access by the average and less than average... The intelligent can take care of themselves, self educate if necessary, but they are educated because they are the support the rich cannot live without...

I was not aware that academic excellence is correlated to class....what do you have for evidence?

Quote:

It is not for want of rich and powerful that we will die, but lack of justice for all, equality of opportunity... When the people get the feeling, which is fact, that the cannot win, revolution is certain.

the lack of justice in this society is now so great that I don't see any way for reforms to succeed, not that we are even seriously considering reforms anyways......yes, revolution is now inevitable.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

Quote:
The problem in this country is not access by the gifted, but access by the average and less than average... The intelligent can take care of themselves, self educate if necessary, but they are educated because they are the support the rich cannot live without...
I was not aware that academic excellence is correlated to class....what do you have for evidence?

Quote:
It is not for want of rich and powerful that we will die, but lack of justice for all, equality of opportunity... When the people get the feeling, which is fact, that the cannot win, revolution is certain.
the lack of justice in this society is now so great that I don't see any way for reforms to succeed, not that we are even seriously considering reforms anyways......yes, revolution is now inevitable.

I know it is dated, and my reading of it was a long time ago, but The Bell Curve has a lot of interesting conclusions and interesting statistics... It concluded and I concure, that virtually all highly intelligent people have access to higher education... So; who benefits??? What portion of those highly educated people go into the service of humanity and which portion go into finance or law living off the common wealth without giving the people one damned thing??? Whether it is physics, or finance, or law, the rich get the benefit of the best minds who receive the best educations, often for free for loyal future service... They get a formal education, and they become captives of the form... It works for them, and if society works for them why should they buck??? It is all the rest, who must subjit to mountains of debt which makes them economic slaves of those who hold the note on their debt for education who are the worst enemy of justice and equality... We could afford to educate all... When we force people into servitude as the price of an education we teach those educated that they owe their educations to no one but themselves, that they owe society nothing which is exactly the wrong message to send... Culture, which is knowledge, belongs to the whole society, but forcing people into slavery for access to that knowledge makes wealth power and education everything that king, lords, and church once were...

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@Fido,

Quote:

Culture, which is knowledge, belongs to the whole society, but forcing people into slavery for access to that knowledge makes wealth power and education everything that king, lords, and church once were...

I am a socialist, I believe that the wealth belongs to the whole society as well, we allow individuals to hold it with the understanding that they will do something with it that will help the collective as well as themselves.

Education has not worked since the late 1960's some say the late 1950's. I think that this long of a record of refusing to fix a problem must have to do with at least some people refusing to help fix it because the broken education system works for them. I can't figure out how though, because we blow a huge wad of dough on a pretty crappy system, I dont see who comes out ahead on that.

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@hawkeye10,

Quote:

I was not aware that academic excellence is correlated to class....what do you have for evidence?

It didn't used to be so much, but I think it is more and moreso these days, as education becomes more and more test and result driven and less and less about the process.
Think about it - students have to pay everytime they take the SAT. It costs around $50 a pop. How many times do you think a student whose parent is a doctor can afford to pay to take it to try to maximize his/her score as compared to a student whose parent is a janitor?
And then tutoring, either for the test or in general, for day to day school subjects - which can cost $20 or $30 an hour. How many poor families can afford that?
And if you're a highschool student from a poor family - you're much more likely to have to work after school and on weekends than someone who comes from a family where that isn't necessary.

When I lived and taught in Chapel Hill, NC - there was a large population of Mexican migrant workers. A lot of their teenage highschoolers worked in the grocery stores after school and up to nine o'clock at night while the children of the doctors and professors were playing sports and enjoying the extra-curricular activities and/or tutoring sessions that would help them make the grades they needed to get into the college they wanted to go to.

And those are just the advantages the rich kids in the public schools have - it doesn't even begin to address the advantages a private education can bestow upon children whose parents can afford it.

You know Hawkeye - back when you and I were in highschool, how many kids do you know who had a tutor? I can't think of anyone. There were no SAT prep courses that cost thousands of dollars. You were expected to have learned what you were supposed to have learned through your years of schooling. It was much more a measure of what you had spent your school years doing than it was a measure of how much you could cram in your brain in the two or three months leading up to the test when you were sitting there being tutored to the test.
And at most - someone might take the test twice. Now they strategize the timing of the PSAT and SAT so they can take it as many times as they need to take it to get the score.

This all costs money.

The days of everyone going to the same school from 9-3 and getting the same information and instruction and then going home to do their homework on their own on equal footing with everyone else in the class (except for the parents you were lucky enough or unlucky enough to have who either could or couldn't help you) are over.

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@hawkeye10,

Quote:

I am a socialist, I believe that the wealth belongs to the whole society as well, we allow individuals to hold it with the understanding that they will do something with it that will help the collective as well as themselves.

Especially as it concerns something as important and vital to a person/citizen's life as education (and healthcare).
I am with you all the way.

But I can't tell you how many times I've spoken to parents who are absolutely BLIND to the needs/rights/well-being of any child except their own.

It would blow me away - the way these parents could single-mindedly and with no embarrassement or sense of guilt or empathy or caring for the greater good of ALL the children- loudly and vocally insist on what was due their child - and they would even say, 'I don't care about anyone else - I care about MY child...'

I used to just laugh in incredulity to keep from crying.

That's a big reason right there that you see the system broken and not being fixed- because it's working pretty well for those who have the money and the power.

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@boomerang,

One thing I erased from an earlier post because it was getting too long is that one of my reasons for supporting gifted programs is because NOT all of the kids in it have parents who can provide the kind of additional support that I could if it was needed. (With an English major/ M.Ed mom and a Ph.D in science dad, we can cover most things. Plus as a stay-at-home mom I'd have time to do it.)

Both when I was a kid and now, several of the gifted kids came from families who could not provide that kind of home-based education.

The assumption that gifted = top of the totem pole is too broad. It depends on how you define the totem pole of course, but in terms of money, status, future prospects (money for college for example), some of these kids are right near the bottom.

I definitely had friends in the gifted programs who went on to college, who only could afford it 'cause of the scholarships they got.

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By the way, I've said this a few times but just to be absolutely clear:

I have no doubt but that there are douchebaggy, entitled parents who are extremely obnoxious about getting junior into gifted programs. There are douchebaggy, entitled parents who are extremely obnoxious about any number of things. (A friend of mine just had quite a story about a dad at a football game who charged her team's coach -- tearing off his t-shirt on the way -- because they were winning and he thought they were running up the score.)

And I'm sure that gifted programs can be done badly. A whole lot of things in education can be done badly (including charter schools, just to take one example) that can also be done well.

With any of those things that are done badly, I'd like to see them improved. I don't think gifted programs are one of those things that are just inherently, structurally a bad thing. I just think they can be done well or done badly.

In my experience, which is limited, but which is the basis of the opinions I gave on gifted programs in response to boomers request for opinions, they've been done well. Which makes me say, "they can be done well." Which is different from "they are always perfect."

Just to be clear.

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@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

That's what it sounds like people are saying: because your kid got something (bad), my kid should get something (good).

Er.... how is anyone saying this?

Edit: I see you've answered this elsewhere. People are saying it, perhaps, but nobody here is saying it.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

Quote:
Culture, which is knowledge, belongs to the whole society, but forcing people into slavery for access to that knowledge makes wealth power and education everything that king, lords, and church once were...
I am a socialist, I believe that the wealth belongs to the whole society as well, we allow individuals to hold it with the understanding that they will do something with it that will help the collective as well as themselves.

Education has not worked since the late 1960's some say the late 1950's. I think that this long of a record of refusing to fix a problem must have to do with at least some people refusing to help fix it because the broken education system works for them. I can't figure out how though, because we blow a huge wad of dough on a pretty crappy system, I dont see who comes out ahead on that.

Education, knowledge is the property of the whole society... For the average person a college education is prohibitively expensive, and such students are the prey of loan sharks... But that expense so unreachable by many is far less than it would be except for the monies the whole society invests in universities... Every one who is qualified for a college education should have it available for free because every educated person is an asset to society... Business only cares for that number they need educated enough to exploit... As long as the children of the rich can afford education they prefer the children of the poor uneducated because that is their advantage... Education is the key to social mobility and as long as only the well off can afford a decent education they will be the only mobile element in the population... What would it really take to make available the books and lectures on the internet??? How many times must the people pay with their support for education that reaches only a handful at a time in the most ineffective manor imaginable??? We have bought the universities... We have paid for that research... For most subjects people do not need a class because the information can be reached, but those who need a grade need a class... Why not make it easier to take classes and waive out??? I've done it... But most would have to be going to university for even the opportunity to waive a class...

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@Fido,

Actually, knowledge is the common possession of humanity, and the benefits of knowledge like the knowledge itself ought to be shared out to all... We think of knowledge as a personal property, but humanity has struggled together for everything we can say we know... It is not property meant to make a select group masters over all the rest, not for power, not for wealth... Knowledge is for our common peace and wellbeing.

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@aidan,

aidan wrote:

Most people who are gifted learners do - they tend to be self-directed and driven. And they tend to have parents who can direct and support them toward their goals.

As someone who attended a gifted program I can tell you this ^^^ is a big old load of b.s.

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@Fido,

Quote:

For most subjects people do not need a class because the information can be reached, but those who need a grade need a class... Why not make it easier to take classes and waive out??? I've done it... But most would have to be going to university for even the opportunity to waive a class...

"CLEPing out" was very popular when I was in college. Kids can still do it and it doesn't cost much at all: http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/clep/exams.html

Not all schools will accept CLEP scores but I think they should.

1 Reply

OMG. I'm starting to believe hawkeye

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