My Issue With Public Schools

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A lot of people - mostly creationists - have a problem with public schools. My problem with public schools is that I took a world issues course in high school and never learned about when the U.S. government helped to overthrow Salvador Allende or when it bombed a "weapons factory" in Sudan in 1998 that was actually an asprin factory.

My problem with public schools is that they make people ignorant of imperialism.

I suppose it depends on where you go to school. I had history teacher in school who gave an unvarnished view of US history.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I graduated from highschool in 1993 so the sudan incident would have been amazing to hear about.

Also, i went to a private school and never learned about stuff like the phillipine-american war. But we were focusing on getting high scores on the AP US History exam, and all signs pointed to that not being on the exam.

I should note that my US History textbook was written by a staunch conservative. The introduction even starts out remarking how great it was that our forefathers were able to so easily push the native americans off their land.

Also i have doubts about whether that was strictly a pharmaceutical factory. I'm sure it was almost entirely making innocuous drugs, but their facilities would have easily been used to make solid explosives and propellants.

Just like any dairy set up to make cheese can manufacture biological weapons, and any tire factory can be easily adapted to make mustard agent.

My problem with public schools is
1. they do a poor job of teaching the basic skills -- reading, writing and arithmetic
2. they do a worse job teaching critical thinking.

So they turn out 'bots who are literate enough to pay their taxes and not critical enough to think about what they have read.

ruveyn

My problems with public schools are that (1) teachers are paid far less than they are worth; (2) there is no consistent curriculum for all public schools; and (3) teaching religious principles wastes time that could be better spent teaching more and better maths, sciences, and communications skills.

You're looking at it all wrong.

For a government day care service they teach a lot.

When the man is right, he is right. I had to teach the output of the more or less modern public school.

You have to teach them the basics before you start teaching them to hate America. There are a lot of other problems to address in public schools first as well. That's what colleges are for nowadays. I once wrote a college paper defending the CIA's support of Augusto Pinochet (the CIA didn't take part in the actual coup itself). My professor was a devout anarchist and I still got a B+ on the paper.

1. I have no direct evidence on what they are worth nor what they get. If they are worth as much as they ought to be worth, then seriuous obstacles are being put in their way that prevent them from teaching effectively.

I do not at all rule that out.

2. I would say consistency of curriculum is one of the problems - the country needs less uniformity, not more.

3. I have never been in a school wherereligious principles were part of the curriculum. I understand the more modern trend is to tell people about the quaint religions of ethnically strange people, but even that dids not exist in my daay.

From my experiance:
1. they do not teach the truth they seem to always teach the softer version with a cherry on top, I guess if docile, naive sheep is what they are after it's great
2. sometimes even the teachers are in on the bullying, or at least defending it with ridiculous claims like 'oh that person is the one provoking it, so nothing I can do about it.'
3. The food sucks!
4. They seem more about just passing kids along than actually teaching them or helping them with things they struggle with. My math skills are pretty much at a 5th grade level and somehow I never got any help for that even when I stayed after school every other day to get a bit of one on one help and still did not improve.

As a parent of a six year old, my concern is over the idiot standardized testing, in which the emphasis seems to be on passing the test, rather than actually teaching the kids anything. And while no one wants kids to just be passed on without learning anything, there are plenty of kids who are held back - not because of poor academic achievement - but because they didn't pass that f*****g test!
There has to be a better way than standardized tests.

-Bill, otherwise known a Kraichgauer

out of curiosity, which countries public education systems in the top10 use a standardized testing approach to education? Prior to no child left behind, and Obama's continuation of it, we did not. Forget top10... try top20 or even top 30? We don't rank too highly in mathematics, science, or problem solving. It is an interesting issue and I think we'll have to wait another 5 years to see its effectiveness in the US as schools adjust to that format, but all I hear are political tirades against it, and perhaps you might be right(which is fine), but put it into a national and international context and provide examples from countries who do not use it but spank us(the most expensive public education system who spend more per student then any other developed nation) in rankings.

most academic achievement in high school is meaningless unless it is in AP or IB, and those advanced students are regularly tested. It just means you are mediocre to great at doing homework. Would a series of mini standardized tests work better so that they can track kids performance and allow for improvement over the school year work better for you? I too do not know the answer.

I would be satisfied if the kids were learning history, English, math, and what not, rather than just studying to pass the test. And the fact of the matter is, there have been kids who have been held back in school because they haven't passed these standardized tests. There is so much emphasis on passing the tests that kids in need of help to pass to the next grade aren't getting it. I just want to see a public education system without most of the emphasis on passing a test.
On top of that, plenty of schools that have had high test scores actually cheat - that is, teachers and even principles give answers to the kids to achieve high scores.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

the public schools of finland are probably better than many private schools elsewhere, to say their troubles come from being public in itself would be a fallacy.

If you want to learn a subject, get the textbooks and whatever other materials necessary and teach yourself. If you want to socialize, go to public school.

All too true, However, I am sick of a country that runs compulsort state daycare centers and sends its young to the university unprepared hoping the [often themselves woefully unprepared] faculty can turn a few of them into useful technicians. I do not have any evidence it matters [except perhaps as a disincentive] to the State if any become productive scientists or scholars.