Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How My School and District Failed its Students

anurbanteacherseducation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 130 posts

Re: How My School and District Failed its Students

#81

Post by ducktype »

michaelchisari wrote: post #77
mannicken wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how is this different from jail? You're forced to be somewhere you hate, unable to go outside, for a part of your life just because you were born?

You can't drop out of jail. You can't be home-jailed. At the end of it, you get a degree.

Probation/parole/bail jumpers

House arrest

Prison education is pretty common

Granted, not everyone can leave jail. But take a boarding school and a minimum security prison and you're getting pretty close to the same thing.

Re: How My School and District Failed its Students

#82

Post by mycroftiv »

frossie wrote: post #6
maxharris wrote: post #2

My solution? Make attendance voluntary by abolishing truancy laws. Disruptive students don't want to be there, and forcing them to go doesn't teach them anything. Human beings can't be forced to think. This runs absolutely counter to all kinds of notions and traditions, but it's how nature is. Wishing, legislating and expecting that facts be otherwise won't work any better here than it would in the physical sciences…

Make attendance voluntary by abolishing truancy laws I didn't downvote you, but I strongly disagree. I personally don't want to live in a society full of kids (did you see his percentages - up to 25%!!) that are considered unmanageable at age 12. If they are unmanageable at age 12, what do you think they are going to be at age 25? Angry, illiterate, jobless oh and yeah, still unmanageable. Or, in jail and unmanageabl…

The purpose of universal education is to educate, not to provide free day care, much less to serve as a corrective institution for young people with behavior problems. Our education system is a failure because it is overburdened with non-educational mandates. In my very biased opinion, it is the most motivated students who are harmed the most by this. The difficult challenge of improving the behavior and attitude of angry and undisciplined individuals is not a goal the public schools should be given.

Re: How My School and District Failed its Students

#83

Post by michaelchisari »

ducktype wrote: post #81
michaelchisari wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't drop out of jail. You can't be home-jailed. At the end of it, you get a degree.

Probation/parole/bail jumpers House arrest Prison education is pretty common Granted, not everyone can leave jail. But take a boarding school and a minimum security prison and you're getting pretty close to the same thing.

If you drop out of school, you simply don't get a degree. If you jump bail, you get more jail time. And you're reaching to consider house arrest the same as home schooling. As for prison education, that's commonly available, but far from the purpose of prison. And boarding schools are private, there is only one public boarding school in the US, and it only has 80 students.

So your analogies don't exactly work. I would suggest reading the work of John Taylor Gatto, A.S. Neil, Francisco Ferrer, and Paulo Freire, though, if you're interested in critiques of education systems and their alternatives.

Re: How My School and District Failed its Students

#84

Post by tptacek »

mycroftiv wrote: post #82
frossie wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make attendance voluntary by abolishing truancy laws I didn't downvote you, but I strongly disagree. I personally don't want to live in a society full of kids (did you see his percentages - up to 25%!!) that are considered unmanageable at age 12. If they are unmanageable at age 12, what do you think they are going to be at age 25? Angry, illiterate, jobless oh and yeah, still unmanageable. Or, in jail and unmanageabl…

The purpose of universal education is to educate, not to provide free day care, much less to serve as a corrective institution for young people with behavior problems. Our education system is a failure because it is overburdened with non-educational mandates. In my very biased opinion, it is the most motivated students who are harmed the most by this. The difficult challenge of improving the behavior and attitude of…

It very much is part of the purpose of our public education system to "serve as a corrective institution" for the behavioral problems of young people. A key reason we provide education is to ensure that children grow up to be contributors to society. It's folly to think that students that can't contribute despite public education would contribute without it.

Re: How My School and District Failed its Students

#85

Post by anamax »

jmm wrote: post #8
maxharris wrote: post #2

My solution? Make attendance voluntary by abolishing truancy laws. Disruptive students don't want to be there, and forcing them to go doesn't teach them anything. Human beings can't be forced to think. This runs absolutely counter to all kinds of notions and traditions, but it's how nature is. Wishing, legislating and expecting that facts be otherwise won't work any better here than it would in the physical sciences…

Ha. The pickle here is that we (the government, the bleeding hearts, those capable of compassion) have to acknowledge that these kids were dealt a pretty bad hand, and that they are, after all, still kids. So we owe them a fair shot and some patience -- it's not acceptable to give up on them as products of the system. Because in one way or another we're part of the system. And they're kids. My sister participated in…

> The pickle here is that we (the government, the bleeding hearts, those capable of compassion)

Cute - anyone who disagrees with you is incapable of compassion....

It doesn't matter what your intent is or how good a person you are. The system, which is largely driven by folks like you, is largely a disaster, and an expensive one at that.

That's on you.

Re: How My School and District Failed its Students

#86

Post by earl »

dfghjkfgh wrote: post #59

The solution is simple - increase teacher salaries and have more computers in schools. It's worked for the last 30years

Sadly, no.

See, eg, [1] for a chart of teacher salaries vs inflation over time. Quoting the article: "[...] we also find dramatic erosion in relative teacher earnings since 1960." See also figure C, "Real weekly wage trends for teachers and others, 1979 - 2006". In short, teacher's have been taking a hit in the wallet for the privilege of teaching for 30-40 years. In fact, if you're familiar with employment in America, you'll know the quality of teachers has fallen as women have been able to find alternate careers; we used to have a surplus of talented, skilled women who entered teaching because they were unable to pursue alternate careers.

A big part of this is no doubt due to Baumol's cost disease [2], but the trend in wages is real nonetheless.

I'm not sure why people on HN in particular, with an IMO more entrepreneurial mindset than most, are surprised that quality tends to follow wages. In this case, away from education.

[1] http://www.procon.org/sourcefiles/epi-teacher-pay.pdf

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumols_cost_disease

Re: How My School and District Failed its Students

#87

Post by cheald »

jellicle wrote: post #9
maxharris wrote: post #2

My solution? Make attendance voluntary by abolishing truancy laws. Disruptive students don't want to be there, and forcing them to go doesn't teach them anything. Human beings can't be forced to think. This runs absolutely counter to all kinds of notions and traditions, but it's how nature is. Wishing, legislating and expecting that facts be otherwise won't work any better here than it would in the physical sciences…

In what way would it help society to have more uneducated young people hanging around?

While I don't agree with the OP's original premise entirely, removing disruptions in school would almost certainly improve the quality of education for the students that want to be there, and would potentially result in more complete education of a segment of the population in question.

Re: How My School and District Failed its Students

#88

Post by narrator »

dfghjkfgh wrote: post #69
timwiseman wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a lawyer, but I do no think having the policy would in any way protect against a lawsuit. If anything, I would suspect it could make it easier for one to succeed because you could show that no due process was provided when a state actor delivered a non-judicial punishment to a minor.

You throw kid A out of the class for behaviour, but you don't throw kid B out because he is usually OK. But then kid A's parents get mad - or think they can make some money - and it turns out that kid A is belgian/green skinned/three eyed/an FSM worshipper and you have a lawsuit. Or at least the threat of a lawsuit which can go away with a large enough payment. Throw out all kids that break any rule and you have been…

So the poorest parents in the whole school have a huge incentive to get their kid kicked out of the school for disciplinary problems, especially if they are a minority and can sue for a big settlement. Some people perceive that their most valuable commodity is to be damaged, such that they can sue for it.

In a poorer minority neighborhood near where I used to live I remember reading a report about a super market closing down a few years back -- when times were relatively good. They cited shoplifting and numerous slip and fall lawsuits against them as reasons for shutting.

Re: How My School and District Failed its Students

#89

Post by Debugreality »

michaelchisari wrote: post #23
maxharris wrote: post #2

My solution? Make attendance voluntary by abolishing truancy laws. Disruptive students don't want to be there, and forcing them to go doesn't teach them anything. Human beings can't be forced to think. This runs absolutely counter to all kinds of notions and traditions, but it's how nature is. Wishing, legislating and expecting that facts be otherwise won't work any better here than it would in the physical sciences…

From my knowledge of radical education approaches like Summerhill or Ferrer's Modern School, I would agree with that, with one caveat: Students don't have to attend class. They just have to go to school. They can choose, on a daily basis, what class they want to be in. If they disrupt, they're kicked out of class for the day, since attendance at that class is a voluntary association. To get credit and a grade for a c…

To add to your post I attended a school based on the summer hill philosophy and one of the reasons all the students went to class was because the whole school set up the timetable democratically at the start of each semester.

This led to some interesting subjects like yoga and womans rights but it also provided subjects of interest to nearly all the students so there was more desire to attend and learn.

An additional bonus of this kind of system is that often subjects like computer games development require some grounding in maths which makes these kinds of abstract subjects more desirable.

It was also clear that these core subjects are requirements for further education so there was always enough desire from people wishing to attend university to keep the core subjects going.

Re: How My School and District Failed its Students

#90

Post by jseliger »

maxharris wrote: post #2

My solution? Make attendance voluntary by abolishing truancy laws. Disruptive students don't want to be there, and forcing them to go doesn't teach them anything. Human beings can't be forced to think. This runs absolutely counter to all kinds of notions and traditions, but it's how nature is. Wishing, legislating and expecting that facts be otherwise won't work any better here than it would in the physical sciences…

"My solution? Make attendance voluntary by abolishing truancy laws."

I agree with you in theory, but in practice this doesn't seem to work out so well. Look, for example, at the chapter in Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational: about prebinding commitments and universities. In one experiment, he (and his co-authors) took a group of similar classes and divided them in threes: one group was told that it could turn in three papers whenever each member wanted; another group was told it could pick due dates; and the third group was given conventional due dates spaced over the course of the semester. The last group did the best, gradwise; the second did reasonably well too, since most students picked conventional due dates; and the first did by far the worst.

The lesson: people are often bad at committing to things.

I've observed the same effect teaching freshman composition at the University of Arizona. I used to conduct many more experiments by ranging the number of mandatory drafts: sometimes I'd require as few as one, and sometimes as many as five. The more drafts, the better papers tended to be. Even when I only required one, I would tell students they should do at least four to five on their own, with editing from other students, the writing center, etc. Few did. They (mostly) got bad grades and then resented me for it. Solution: require more drafts.

EDITED TO ADD: I would also say that it's relatively easy to advocate no truancy laws on Hacker News (and don't such laws only apply up to 16?); if you were actually a school principal or district superintendent who did, you would probably be fired or voted out of office if such a policy were implemented and you or your community had to face the consequences of it.

Post reply on HN