WTF is wrong with people

[Recording Engineer]

So says every generation about the next generation, since the beginning of time…

While of course I understand some of these sentiments (and can get a good laugh going), overall, I still chalk it all up to two people sitting on their porch bitching about the kids these days, what and how they’re taught, and who’s teaching them… They’re “experts” on everything! Luckily, they’re not the only experts.

 

[JohnRoberts]

So says every generation about the next generation, since the beginning of time…

No this is not criticizing young people, it is criticizing education for pushing partisan ideology

While of course I understand some of these sentiments (and can get a good laugh going), overall, I still chalk it all up to two people sitting on their porch bitching about the kids these days, what and how they’re taught, and who’s teaching them… They’re “experts” on everything! Luckily, they’re not the only experts.

That is a little too simple of an excuse to dismiss a very real problem, sadly the education system has already coopted a new generation of educators so as they say that horse has already left the barn. I know several people who have homeschooled their children successfully. School vouchers that allow parents to send their children to the school of their choice will introduce some free market economics and competition to improve education.

JR

 

[hodad]

it is criticizing education for pushing partisan ideology

And how is that any different from when you were a kid or when I was a kid? As someone whose kid is not that far removed from public school, I tend to think that you don't really know a lot about what school is actually like these days. There's a very corporate quality to public education these days, and that is a far graver problem than any supposed "liberal ideology" being taught. There is a very corporate attitude that any idiot can teach if they're given an appropriate script and they follow it to the letter. They devalue the actual skills of teaching, and underestimate the uniqueness of different groups of students, and ignore the reality that not all of the things we learn in school come from a book or a script.
Someone out there wants you and your fellow Rs to think horrible things about "those liberal public schools." You all buy it hook, line, and sinker but have zero or near-zero first hand experience of the contemporary public school.

already coopted a new generation of educators

Again, the problem here is not "those pesky liberals;" it's the corporate interests who are reshaping education in their business-y mold. Teachers are being coopted by the script-writing textbook companies, not by "liberals."

 

[Matador]

That is a little too simple of an excuse to dismiss a very real problem, sadly the education system has already coopted a new generation of educators so as they say that horse has already left the barn.

I find it interesting that a collection of anecdotal events, spread across a region, is enough to generalize an entire "coopted education system", affecting "a generation of educators", therefore "a very real problem".

Yet the same reasoning can never be applied to climate change.

 

[soliloqueen]

corporate politics is central to both "liberal ideology" and "media conservatism" IMO. It's all corporate engineering all the way down. Everyday people should be more involved in their local community and its governance.

 

[AnalogPackrat]

So says every generation about the next generation, since the beginning of time…

That's not what I said at all. It is my generation that is at fault for a lot of this which started with safety culture, helicopter parenting, and everybody gets a trophy to now celebrating "victimhood."

While of course I understand some of these sentiments (and can get a good laugh going), overall, I still chalk it all up to two people sitting on their porch bitching about the kids these days, what and how they’re taught, and who’s teaching them… They’re “experts” on everything! Luckily, they’re not the only experts.

My mother was a teacher and administrator in public schools for 30+ years. Many of my family's friends were also teachers. Your attempt to minimize others' knowledge by projecting your own ignorance on them is duly noted.

 

[Recording Engineer]

I’ve mentioned here already that a large portion of my family are public teachers here in extremely-liberal CA; some of them in Rio Linda; you know, the town Limbaugh talked so highly of.

The things you guys like to talk about, as across-the-board massive problems of the public education system, is certainly only for political rhetoric. Period. It absolutely is not the real problems! I leave it to those truly in the public education system to list those and for them to try and give some solutions.

My very-conservative friend who owns a music electronics repair business here (whom I’ve mentioned here before) also has really great things to say about our public education system here in CA; because it’s vast-options nowadays. His autistic son is now of age and taking courses at one of our number of community colleges. Before that, he was homeschooled by his parents; all through our CA public education system.

My only real across-the-board problem is this whole exploded charter-school thing… You know, public-funded private schools. How about that oxymoron? I don’t get it at all!

 

[JohnRoberts]

And how is that any different from when you were a kid or when I was a kid? As someone whose kid is not that far removed from public school, I tend to think that you don't really know a lot about what school is actually like these days.

admittedly most of what I see is inflammatory with partisan bias, but that does not make it untrue.

There's a very corporate quality to public education these days, and that is a far graver problem than any supposed "liberal ideology" being taught.

How about the teacher's union? Working hand and glove with government health regulators for personal benefit (recall Covid?). How many times has Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers toured schools in Ukraine? What exactly is that about?

There is a very corporate attitude that any idiot can teach if they're given an appropriate script and they follow it to the letter. They devalue the actual skills of teaching, and underestimate the uniqueness of different groups of students, and ignore the reality that not all of the things we learn in school come from a book or a script.
Someone out there wants you and your fellow Rs to think horrible things about "those liberal public schools." You all buy it hook, line, and sinker but have zero or near-zero first hand experience of the contemporary public school.

Multiple reports confirm how much charter schools out perform public schools (in math and reading) in several states (including NYC).

Again, the problem here is not "those pesky liberals;" it's the corporate interests who are reshaping education in their business-y mold. Teachers are being coopted by the script-writing textbook companies, not by "liberals."

The hammer in your toolbox only appears to see corporate nails to strike.

Big business is guilty of plenty, but in my judgement they are not corrupting education, that is big politics trying to influence the children (this has been seen before in history).

JR

 

[soliloqueen]

the more people we see, the more people we form in and outgroups with, and the bigger those groups, the more psychological force they exert. whether in business or politics, people like to feel like they belong. all of the best, most effective and most insidious population manipulation targets the natural human desire to belong somewhere. i don't think massive political corruption of populations and their systems is an easily solvable problem, especially at large scales since that adds an interaction between an innate element of humans and large visible population sizes (that is to say, the amount of people you can see, thanks to media and the internet), both of which are not changing any time soon. i'm not sure if there's an effective way to work around this problem either. we just live in this world and we have to do the best we can, and everyone has different opinions on what that is.

 

[JohnRoberts]

My only real across-the-board problem is this whole exploded charter-school thing… You know, public-funded private schools. How about that oxymoron? I don’t get it at all!

All schools are funded by taxpayers. Ex-president Jimmy Carter created the DOE to get the largest national union's vote. The rest is history.

Charter schools and school vouchers allow parents to personally steer those tax dollars and escape mandated public education decisions. Providing a free market that generates competition between schools will only improve education performance (as I already shared, charter schools routinely out perform public schools). Parents should be free to choose their children's school when options are available.

JR

 

[soliloqueen]

I also personally prefer charter schools if the use of public funds is very transparent and worker relations with the staff are fair and well-negotiated, but that's not often the case (and not for traditional public schools either). That's not a knock to the idea, though. I feel like a lot of good ideas that are popular all over the spectrum get executed poorly in America. Cynically, maybe it's sabotage.

 

[Recording Engineer]

All schools are funded by taxpayers.

Not true with private schools (though apparently that may unbelievably start to change)... What’s the difference between a public school and a charter school since they’re both publicly funded?

Charter schools and school vouchers allow parents to personally steer those tax dollars and escape mandated public education decisions. Providing a free market that generates competition between schools will only improve education performance (as I already shared, charter schools routinely out perform public schools). Parents should be free to choose their children's school when options are available.

Competition? Outperform? Education is NOT business when it’s publicly-funded. You’re making my case that it’s a publicly-funded private school!

 

[soliloqueen]

Education is NOT business

It's not business, but it is economics. It's not a true public service like a hospital, where you have absolutely no choice of where to go so there are no selection forces at work at all. Any school is a mixed market/non market entity. The method of funding controls that balance. Competition does matter here IMO. It's complicated. There are lots of questions to evaluating this kind of comparison, like how you define "performance" in a useful way. Does it mean performance on standardized tests? If so, who designs those tests, and by what method, and with what understanding of education and the goals of education, and so on and so forth.

 

[Recording Engineer]

It's not business, but it is economics. It's not a true public service like a hospital, where you have absolutely no choice of where to go so there are no selection forces at work at all. A school is a mixed market/non market entity. Competition does matter here IMO.

My local publicly-funded K-12 school district has 40k students and 68 schools; plus many other options. I’m not worried about not having choices. Maybe there’s some benefit being in big bad CA.

 

[soliloqueen]

My local publicly-funded K-12 school district has 40k students and 68 schools; plus many other options. I’m not worried about not having choices. Maybe there’s some benefit being in big bad CA.

The real issue with a lot of schools IMO is lack of transparency and accountability in spending, and lack of knowledge/engagement to demand better. Charter schools have problems with this in unique ways. Competition-driven organizations are liable to cut corners on important things in order to hyper-optimize for things like test scores or even marketing/optics. Public schools maybe less-so in theory, but when it's the methods for evaluating which schools are "doing well" themselves that are limited and flawed, this problem is going to appear no matter what funding method you use as long as that evaluation plays a part. Public, charter, even private. The issue is, once you start designing more comprehensive ways to evaluate the performance of a school, people start arguing over the design, because everyone has different values in terms of what they find important, and progress is halted. We end up stuck with a system that cannot properly evaluate the performance of schools in order to hold them accountable for the funds they use, independently of how the funds are delivered. The benefit of charter schools is that it defers that choice to individual parents. With charter schools, people can choose schools that evaluate "performance" based on their preferred metric. But depending on your opinion, that's also the downside.

 

[AnalogPackrat]

the more people we see, the more people we form in and outgroups with, and the bigger those groups, the more psychological force they exert. whether in business or politics, people like to feel like they belong.

Well, that assumes a lot. I'm one of the 30-50% of the population who are introverted. I don't care about belonging to any cool group. These types of fads have little to no influence on me.

all of the best, most effective and most insidious population manipulation targets the natural human desire to belong somewhere.

That stuff might work better on the "joiner" types. I'm not one of them and I have many friends who feel the same way. The manipulation attempts are apparent a mile away.

i don't think massive political corruption of populations and their systems is an easily solvable problem, especially at large scales since that adds an interaction between an innate element of humans and large visible population sizes (that is to say, the amount of people you can see, thanks to media and the internet), both of which are not changing any time soon. i'm not sure if there's an effective way to work around this problem either. we just live in this world and we have to do the best we can, and everyone has different opinions on what that is.

Maybe we need more introverts. Or we can teach skepticism as a necessary skill (instead of victimology).

 

[Recording Engineer]

The real issue with a lot of schools IMO is lack of transparency and accountability in spending, and lack of knowledge/engagement to demand better. Charter schools have problems with this in unique ways. Competition-driven organizations are liable to cut corners on important things in order to hyper-optimize for things like test scores or even marketing/optics. Public schools maybe less-so in theory, but when it's the methods for evaluating which schools are "doing well" themselves that are limited and flawed, this problem is going to appear no matter what funding method you use as long as that evaluation plays a part. Public, charter, even private. The issue is, once you start designing more comprehensive ways to evaluate the performance of a school, people start arguing over the design, because everyone has different values in terms of what they find important, and progress is halted. We end up stuck with a system that cannot properly evaluate the performance of schools in order to hold them accountable for the funds they use, independently of how the funds are delivered.

Right. Truly change the system and competition of economics is a non-factor.

 

[soliloqueen]

Well, that assumes a lot. I'm one of the 30-50% of the population who are introverted. I don't care about belonging to any cool group. These types of fads have little to no influence on me.

I think we're going to disagree fundamentally here and further discussion may not be fruitful. I firmly believe that there are two types of people: people who are easily manipulated by others and accept that they are, and people who are easily manipulated by others and think they aren't. Nobody is beyond falling victim to cult power. Being socially and psychologically malleable is a fundamental human trait, and a responsible person is on guard about it all the time knowing that it could happen to them. Introversion and extroversion has nothing to do with it.

 

[AnalogPackrat]

The real issue with a lot of schools IMO is lack of transparency and accountability in spending, and lack of knowledge/engagement to demand better. Charter schools have problems with this in unique ways. Competition-driven organizations are liable to cut corners on important things in order to hyper-optimize for things like test scores or even marketing/optics. Public schools maybe less-so in theory, but when it's the methods for evaluating which schools are "doing well" themselves that are limited and flawed, this problem is going to appear no matter what funding method you use as long as that evaluation plays a part.

The problem with "teaching to the test" exploded in public schools in the 90s as these Federally mandated and oversimplified evaluation mechanisms came into play. I remember well several conversations with my mother about this.

Public, charter, even private. The issue is, once you start designing more comprehensive ways to evaluate the performance of a school, people start arguing over the design, because everyone has different values in terms of what they find important, and progress is halted. We end up stuck with a system that cannot properly evaluate the performance of schools in order to hold them accountable for the funds they use, independently of how the funds are delivered. The benefit of charter schools is that it defers that choice to individual parents. With charter schools, people can choose schools that evaluate "performance" based on their preferred metric.

The benefit is more about localized decision-making, regardless of the type of school. When the Feds came in with heavy-handed one-size-fits-all approaches that took away local control, charter schools and similar workarounds were inevitable.

But depending on your opinion, that's also the downside.

It's all tradeoff management. For most things, the further up the hierarchy decisions are moved, the worse the result for most people. Centralized planning mostly sucks rocks.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Not true with private schools (though apparently that may unbelievably start to change)..

Are you suggesting that parents who pay to send their children to private schools do not also pay taxes? Every year on my real estate tax bill I see how much money I am personally paying towards local schools. I don't have any children but I do not mind supporting education because a well educated populace is good for all of us.

. What’s the difference between a public school and a charter school since they’re both publicly funded?

The management... Public schools are saddled with teachers unions. Charter schools can fire bad teachers if they don't do a good job. That is only one difference but an important one.

Competition? Outperform? Education is NOT business when it’s publicly-funded. You’re making my case that it’s a publicly-funded private school!

Education is not strictly business, but performance can be measured (with testing) to gauge success or failure of the educators.

I recall a huge stink back when President Bush promoted his "no child left behind" program to use standardized tests to manage schools. The teacher's unions of course resisted because they were being measured too. The first lady Laura Bush was a teacher and librarian.

JR