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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Little Joe who wrote (150279)	11/15/2010 5:14:41 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 543140

I can tell you how. Boarding schools. Dysfunction is bred in to some families. I don't "blame" them- because blame won't help. But to break the cycle you either need to educate the entire family (too expensive, I think) or make sure the kids are raised by functional adults. I think that is the only way. On top of that, schools probably need to become more than they are. They probably need to become safe, nurturing places for school after care, in cities where there are large problems with family "culture". Because not everyone may choose to agree with boarding school, and we cannot really stand the waste of generations of children raised in poverty just because their parent or parents won't agree to a certain solution. I think the federal government will have to step in (and have the balls to step in with authority) and overturn generations of corruption in some schools. And that means tenure will need to be attacked- despite what the unions might want. I don't want the unions destroyed, as a teacher they have been very helpful to me when I ran in to a bad health problem in my classroom (twice) and the administration would do nothing. The union got my classroom air tested (in one case) and my room cleaned up within a day- before my students arrived to be subjected to noxious fumes. It's good to have an organization like that out there- but we do need to do something about the bad teachers in impoverished areas. However, once you get rid of those people, you need to find others to take their place- combat pay for the inner cities is the way, I think. And we need outside oversight in the inner cities- so that the poor infrastructure that is there doesn't overwhelm the new blood we want to send there. Public schools can do a lot- and I think they could change America for the better. There are many wonderful dedicated teachers in America- most of them, though, choose to teach in suburban schools, and why not? It's where most of the best teachers live. To get people who are talented to risk their lives, and to endure the frustration teaching in our inner cities would entail, we will need to bribe most people- not all- but most. And that's ok with me. But it would help if a big part of our society didn't keep trying to kill the public schools. Public schools are important because in our fractured and polarized world they give us a common base. If we allow people to segregate their children, at federal expense, from the time they are in kindergarten, we are defeating one of the great purposes of public education. To force people of very different backgrounds to come together for a common purpose. I can't see how allowing more segregation in our society is a Good Thing. IMO the ends do not justify the means in this case. The real solution to America's public school problems is to tackle the problems state by state and school by school, and make all the schools in America schools we could be proud of. We can do it. We are still a country that can do just about anything- but we have to have a plan, and a desire to make all the schools better. We'd also need to be willing to spend more money in certain places- because solutions to large, systemic problems often cost money. That's just the way it is. Bitching about the money that has been wasted does no good. That money is gone, but the problems remain. And we need to put in place a plan that might take a generation to bring to fruition. Our problems weren't created in a day, or a year, and then won't be fixed overnight. On top of that, we have a culture of hating education even (ironically) from some of the educated (but of course many of the media personalities who hate education are, in fact, poorly educated- can you say the Fox and the Grapes?). This whole "elitism" thing in America is ridiculous. Elitism is a great thing. It's true, it sucks to be a little uneducated peon when people on wall street who are "educated" are making big bucks, and sure, that rankles, but taking it out on the educated, and despising education, or claiming all education is some sort of liberal conspiracy, is unhelpful. I'm not a fan of basketweaving classes, or ethnic studies- but most college classes have quite a bit of value, and to encourage the uneducated to think there's something wrong with being educated is doing a disservice to our society. Believe me, they aren't talking this way about education in China and India. Everyone there WANTS to be elite. They know it's a good thing to be elite. That's quite a positive for their cultures, imo. Will Americans be able to step up and do what's necessary to fix the culture of education for the poor and uneducated? I don't know. But I do know we could do it if we tried, and if it was a priority. I do not know if we have the will for that, though.