Daisy: …..Ok, so now we see the problems...well, why do we care about education, anyway? Education itself is of high importance; without it we wouldn't be the strong country that we are. Without it, some of us wouldn't be the "strong" individuals that we are. DDN: Without it, we wouldn’t be suffering from mass neurosis. Without it, a lot more people would be able to think for themselves. Without it, we wouldn’t be so politically unaware and quick to allow our country to become one giant police state. Without it, we’d be raised by people that loved us instead of people that simply want to CONTROL us. Without it, we’d have better chances of learning how to read and we would have a 40% functional illiteracy rate. Without it, we wouldn’t be spending billions of dollars just to keep our kids locked up indoors all day so that both parents can be coporate wage slaves.
Daisy: …….How do you get through life without knowing?
DDN: Knowing WHAT? How to be a complacent, uninformed little consumer? Public education is only about 150 years old, but humans have been thriving on this planet for millions of years (or at least 10,000 if you’re a christian).
How do explain our longevity as a race prior to the advent of public education?
Daisy: …… How do you get through life without knowing? Well...you're controlled.
DDN: You think you are not controlled by public education? You are an assembly line product of the public education system. You are exactly what the System WANTS you to be: a docile consumer and producer of junk, a completely uninformed voter who will always be happy choosing between the puppet on the left and the puppet on the right, an empty shell wearing a smile unable to access and/or sustain her own thoughts, her own emotions, her own empowering essence.
Daisy: …….Lack of a sufficient education in any area will result in many downfalls - trading, business, economy...
DDN: Too MUCH education results in the same downfalls for large institutions: Big Business and Big Government. That’s why you only get a certain KIND of education in a certain AMOUNT.
Daisy: …….How can anyone function properly if they simply do not know?
Over the years, many presidents have proposed numerous plans to improve
America's public education systems. Recently, a spending bill by Clinton was just passed (that is threatened to be veteoed because of cuts in his program to hire 100,000 new teachers in a span of 7 years); is that truly the answer? So far, I've not found specifics on hiring these new teachers; is anyone just going to be hired? What about their qualifications in the subjects they are to teach? Did you know that only approxiametely 30% of the teachers hired to teach mathematics minored or majored in that subject? Is hiring new teachers the best answer that is thrown at us? The bill was also said to somehow help low-income students to enroll in college; that I do agree with. Everyone should have the right to further their education if they wanted to; it could only help, not hurt.
So what are more answers? Well, reform is needed, but how do you go about reform? Good question. We don't want the federal government totally controlling us, but how do we make sure that local and state governments "meet the grade?" And also, how do they make they grade if each community is different from another? What one set of standards is flexible enough for all?
DDN: None. None worth HAVING anyway.
Daisy: …….Elizabeth Dole and Andrew J. Coulson, author of Market Education: The Unknown History, both had similar suggestions on schools competing with each other for students. The idea is to allow parents to choose where their children should go, whether they live in that area or not, based on the "quality" of that school; this could be done by posting school results on the internet so that the parents can see for themselves.
Dole commented that teachers shouldn't necessarily have to go by mandated procedures; make the class come alive, and you've more interested students. She also had suggestions on school safety, such as searching lockers and backpacks more often as well as keeping records that follow each student so that principals and teachers know whom they're dealing with; that does not mean unnecessary harassment.
DDN: Of course not. It just means teaching kids that they have no civil rights where the government is concerned.
Daisy:…..I, as a senior student at a small public high school, also have my own suggestions. Smaller class sizes equals more attention per student.
DDN: Doesn’t that mean more teachers? You’ve already pointed out the problems with this YOURSELF. Where are the new teachers going to come from? The Magic Education Fairy?
Daisy: ……Tracking, the idea of placing students in classes based on their achievment (those who need more help to basic to advanced), would decrease feelings of inferiority of students who aren't so quick and would also eliminate those quicker students from being "slowed down" and vice versa. Curriculum should be more diverse; it gives the students more of a choice of what they want to take and could help them to more easily identify what their interests are while building on to their knowledge of it at the same time. The schools have more resources than it is known for they are not made as available. The internet is branching out more now and there is a wealth of information on it; how available is it to those students who can't afford it or simply do not have it at home? Perhaps it is not stressed enough as to how to use these resources that do exist wisely. For those schools who are seriously lacking in resources, that's where federal money comes in. There are also many grants from business, especially those who are big on technology (AT&T, IBM, GTE, Intel...etc) who are willing to give out money.
You just have to know how to approach them. (I suggest grabbing yourself a copy of the Converge: Rich with Life magazine; it's the Sept. '99 issue and the article is on pp 32-35 "Funding Curriculum and Technology in Higher Ed".)
And these, for those of you who lasted the length of this message, are my thoughts on education reform. :)
DDN: Tracking? I feel weak. If a child’s worth is going to be judged by how well he understands algeabra, it doesn’t matter if you “track” him or not; He’s still going to suffer from an “inferiority complex” if he’s no good at algeabra. And if algeabra is really important enough to base this child’s selfesteem on then shouldn’t his lack of performance in this area engender a healthy sense of guilt?
“Tracking”, in case you didn’t know, is notorious for being used as a means to repress minorities. I’ve met people that would smack you across the face just for using the term in a positive sounding manner.
