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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Who, me? who wrote (14179)	11/10/1998 11:49:00 AM
From: jbe	Respond to of 67261

On Education. Where education is concerned, Who,me?, I am probably as "conservative" as they come, "reactionary" even, in some respects. In others, you might say I am "liberal" to the point of "utopian." My biggest beef with the educational system has always been that, yes, it "dumbs down" -- especially in districts that serve the poor, or that serve segments of the population that are not expected to go on to college. Alas, that is nothing new, so it may not be that easy to reverse. My family moved around a lot when I was a youngster, so I had plenty of opportunity to sample different schools, public as well as private. For a brief period, we lived in upstate New York, where my stepfather had bought a string of local newspapers, which circulated in various farming communities of the area. The year I was there, only three students from the local high schools were planning to go on to college. I attended the school in Morris, N.Y., and was shocked to discover that the only things students were given to read in English class were articles from the Reader's Digest and the Saturday Evening Post!! Forget Shakespeare! Forget Dickens! Forget etc.! As a matter of fact, "children" under 17 were not allowed to check out ANY adult books (by which I do not mean X-rated books) from the Morris Public Library (let alone from the school library, which did not even contain any adult books). After all, these children were "only" going to grow up to be farmers, so why did they need to know anything about literature? Well, I thought they were being gypped, and it made me mad enough to spit...(I do not know who exactly was gypping them -- the local school board, the New York State school system, the feds. But they were being gypped.) Now, I believe that EVERYBODY deserves a quality education, and that the same thing can and should be demanded of an inner city ghetto child, for example, as of a comfortable upper-middle-class kid with all the advantages. In fact, it is the ONLY way, in my opinion, to reduce crime in the inner cities. How to do it, is another question. I have a few ideas on that score (as others do, too), but will have to save them for later. jbe

To: Who, me? who wrote (14179)	11/10/1998 2:08:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

RE: Outcome-Based Education WhoMe, you inspired me to run a web search on "outcome-based education". And after a cursory look at the materials I turned up, I am inclined to agree with you on this point. (Can you imagine that!) Furthermore, OBE seems to me to be only a new term for an old concept, "progressive education." It's very strange: don't educators remember anything? We keep on fighting the same battles over and over again. At least once in a decade, somebody comes up with a variant on "progressive education", and touts it as something completely new.. I guess the difference this time is that "progressive education" is moving from private schools into public schools. Years ago, I attended an ultra-progressive private boarding school (appopriately named "Manumit") for one school year. We had to call the teachers "uncle" or "aunt". The headmaster was "Uncle Billy." Kids climbed out of the classroom windows when they were bored with class. The only thing that was compulsory was square-dancing (ugh!). I was ostracized on practically my first day because I refused to "share" the answers on an American History test. (I don't know why the teachers bothered to give tests at all, since they didn't count for anything.) To be fair, students were good at things like writing fiery social-conscious essays. But they knew no science or math at all. I remember taking a test on fractions (this was the eighth grade), finishing it, and hearing a friend of mine (two years older!) exclaim that I must be a "genius." A "genius"? Because I could do fractions? Manumit was a very interesting experience, but anyone who spent more than a year there was doomed educationally. jbe