Isn't the whole school system messed up and outdated?

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awesomely,

First, tax revenues and income are not corrollated. The government will alway get the money it needs either through deficit spending or increased taxes. Believe it or not, you and I probably pay about 50% or more of our income to various governments in the USA (Federal and State income taxes, FICA, propert taxes, sales taxes). In no way does the tax you pay relate to income (in fact, the rich pay less taxes because even though they may pay more moneywise, it is a smaller percentage of their income).

Second, the fact that businesses cannot get the workers that they need speaks volumes of the problems of the educational system. The current education system we have is designed for the Indutrial revolution era. It was designed to replace the apprintace/scholar programs that were in place before the industrial revolution. The industries needed hundreds of workers who did not think (thinkers creates unions or new businesses that competed with the industrial giants), who would follow orders, who would not know anything better than the maundane assembly line job, and who would think that purchasing comsumer goods is what would make you happy. That is the current system we got. If you are not a cog that will fit in the machine, the schools either need to mold you so that you are a good cog, or need to trash you. The office worker of yesterday is simply a cog in the industrial machine (the term pencil pusher comes to mind).

Our economy though is in the post-industrial age. This is where companies need people who can think on their feet, come up with new ideas, and be able to try things that no one has tried before, in other words, a dynamic person who may not be easily controlled. Our educational system does not produce that kind of person. Just the idea that someone on high decides, of all of the things in the world there is to learn, what you will learn speaks of the fact that our educational system cannot produce they type of person this economy needs. Even the employees of the school system are informed that their job is to do as they are told and to not think. You say that standarized tests are important? Standardized tests show nothing except that you are at the level that some power to be thinks you should be at. They ignore the fact that at age 18, you would not be able to tell the difference between 2 persons, one who learned to read at the age of 6 and the other at 12.

Business is trying to pour money into the system because in some way, they know that a dynamic person is harder to control and may become their competitor. They want the best of both worlds but unfortunately, there is not a system that can produce a thinker that another person can control. Do you think that the government would get away with 50% of what it is doing today if a majority of the people were actually thinkers instead of sheep?

Simply put, no amount of reform will change a system that is working as intended. John Holt found that out in the 1970s when he tried to change the system based on his research. If our educational system was about creating thinkers than change would have occured already. In fact, NCLB may be working as intended. Make sure to create as many sheep as possible that will follow the governments/corporations orders without questioning them. How many people lost money with Enron because no one thought to question the fact that their retirement was in company stock? Why is there not outrage from the population in general about the NSA phone records?

That is why I feel that reform will not work and the only way to fix the educational system is to dismantle it. OK, maybe not the whole system, but at least the compulsory attendance laws (and as such, the government monopoly on education) and make schools places where all people can go to learn what they want.

Bad programs do not mean intent. You are right though, there are funding problems, however, a lot of the problems stem from bad leadership and things like that rather than a desire to have bad schools. Our school district has wasted a lot of money on stupid crap like computer learning programs that are ineffective and stuff like that but I do not think that there is any intent to make the schools bad, I think there might be a lack of care but not caring does not mean sabotage. Personally, I tend to think that the failures are due to the tendencies of individuals and their parenting and such, in my school district we used to have one of the best pre-engineering programs in one of the worst schools and what ended up happening was that there was one school full of indians and another full of african-americans and both were in the same building, there was no desire for teachers to hold back any students or anything like that, the teachers for that program were excellent and dedicated to getting talented students to succeed. What ended up happening is that eventually those teachers left that because things had gone downhill too much, they wanted to teach willing students but weren't getting enough. Of course I see flaws within the system but I hardly see incentive for problems I just think that the people at the top are incompetent idiots who would screw over their jobs for a dime, that is not intent to destroy the system, that is idiocy, incompetence, and selfishness.

[quote="ljbouchard'] First, tax revenues and income are not corrollated. The government will alway get the money it needs either through deficit spending or increased taxes. Believe it or not, you and I probably pay about 50% or more of our income to various governments in the USA (Federal and State income taxes, FICA, propert taxes, sales taxes). In no way does the tax you pay relate to income (in fact, the rich pay less taxes because even though they may pay more moneywise, it is a smaller percentage of their income).[/quote]A portion of income goes into taxes, the government can get money through deficit spending or increased taxes but both of those methods are only temporary, economic growth is the only way to deal with monetary needs and economic growth is one of the things that politicians are judged upon anyway. Rich people in absolute terms pay more taxes, money is money, it doesn't matter if it is from milking the poor, taking from the rich or international ransom the government needs absolute amounts of dollars to pay for its absolute wastes(AKA politicians), and if they screw things up then we screw them up, we just need to get more people to get the word out how things are screwed up.
You are right that the current school system has some flaws however, programs such as AP programs and school organizations(clubs) and such seem to be rays of hope. I do think that some reform is necessary for the school system, reforms to make people more financially independent and more employable, or better scholars, the people who aren't going to college need jobs after graduation and those that are need prepared minds.
I know that the modern economy needs more thinkers and doers and such and I know that the education system is not good at getting these people, the reason is that we have incompetent higher ups and often times incompetent teachers. It is hard to create a system designed to process millions of people and still have it flexible enough to get good attention to individual needs and this flexibility must come from the classrooms, I don't think that focusing entirely on a remedial standardized test is a good thing, tests should have purpose to them and be sort of tailored for the student(maybe have tests based on classes taken or something). We need to make sure that they know this knowledge and we need to make sure that they can apply it and we cannot know about a student's capabilities without a test with some standardization and we need to make sure that these kids are at an acceptable level at certain ages.
Wait, I did not get why business was pouring money into the system. I mean, if they know that dynamic people are harder to control then why would they act to encourage academic success in any form or fashion, I can get maybe how it is a public relations stunt but not how it discourages dynamic thought. If anything more dynamic thought is likely to happen due to their intervention, a business in the area of our school district hires motivational speakers every year to talk to top students and offered up robot parts last year for a nation-wide robot competition, those things both encourage dynamic thought. Really, it is hard to say what would happen in the system if people weren't sheep, I do think it would be a better system, the only problem for politicians is that populistic appeals would be less effective.
Reform if applied properly could stand institutions on their head, the only problem is that nobody wants to reform. If we had decent people running our schools then this change would have occured, the problem is that we have incompetent, greedy scumbags running these schools. The system is not running as WE intend, it only benefits a few greedy school board people. If it was running how we intended then there would be no talk of school reform. The problem is that it is always difficult to change the status quo, especially when the kleptocrats like it the way it is. We don't need schools to create sheep anyway, a person is a fine sheep because they don't get any schooling to begin with, people become sheeps due to their own complacent nature, no intervention is necessary.
We do need freer education, but we also need ways to appeal to students as much as possible, I can understand a desire to end a government monopoly as competition will lead to a better product. We need an education system that teaches people, I have had good teachers and have done great things in public schooling, however, the system could do better and students could probably go much further.

I did well in school according to tests. I was an excellent student, in the gifted classes; obedient and compliant. Then I dropped out in the 11th grade. I don't regret it a bit. It is foolish to cram every different shaped peg into round holes. The idea that all students can and should attain the exact same knowlege and skills results in a "dumbed-down" curriculum.
I even question the idea of aiding the special ed. kids so that they can pass the same drivel that the average kids do. Why not let kids develop as individuals as God intended?
I know that there has to be some kind of standard and accountability in the public school systems but outside of that system there should be complete freedom from the idiocy. I don't think that the government should have any educational authority over private schools or home schools. There are options today but they are difficult to implement and afford.

Having said that, I'm not sure that I like the idea of Germany's system. It seems like it's setting up a caste system. I wonder how much freedom is in that?

I can tell I'm going to have a hard time working in the public school system when I graduate from college with a degree in special ed! (God help me!)

You are right to some extent, schools do not do very well when it comes to testing and what skills need to be stressed. Obviously some flexibility is needed for kids with different strengths and goals. Current standardized tests are not very good and some method needs to be determined to make sure that kids learn something and yet not dumb down the curriculum by clogging it with test prep. There need to be goal posts and incentives for excellence.

Special ed kids need special education for their special needs. Even they can have some use for a society, at the very least if they go to school they need to be receiving some benefit from it. The only problem is that most systems are not marked by flexibility unless they are constantly under some form of stress and under most systems deviation is hardest to deal with because one must attempt to do the most good for the most people.

I think that the government should have some authority over those schools but only so much as to make sure that the diploma's received are valid. Which just means that kids in those schools need to perform on some form of test or something of that nature be it GED or whatever.

Yeah, you might really hate the school system. I know most of the teacher I have had have hated the our school system.