political statement of the day

[quietann]

"School Days"

My brother is quitting his job teaching in an inner city middle school. He's sick of the politics, the disrespect shown to teachers (by administrators more than the kids; one *expects* that early teens will be goofy and annoying...) He and his fellow teachers started a highly structured, "house" system a couple of years ago, and it was actually doing some good. Most of the kids in this neighborhood have no structure in their lives other than what they get at school, and whatever they get from being whacked with a belt at home. A new principal came in and gutted the whole thing. Now it's All Chaos, All the Time, and it's pretty obvious that San Diego Unified has written off this school as unsalvageable. They've even manipulated things so that the kids who are doing the worst will drop out, thereby taking their bad test scores with them. The kids *know* this, but who ever listened to a bunch of poor, black and brown kids whose parents (if they are even around) don't vote? What you get from this is angry, delinquent kids who internalize the message that no one in the larger society gives a shit about them -- so why should they even try?

Now, I was a public school kid. In fact, I went to this very school for high school, back in the days when it was a Math-Science-Computers magnet school and widely considered one of the best in the city. The magnet program vanished about 10 years ago, after being systematically destroyed in the name of political correctness.

I watch my priveledged friends doing everything they can to keep their kids out of the public schools, and see the future all too clearly. If the parents who are the most devoted to their childrens' education aren't there for the public schools, those schools become warehouses for the kids no one cares about. But no one cares, as long as *their* precious baby darlings don't have to mingle with the rabble.** Can we say "Tragedy of the Commons", folks?

**(just as Dale pointed out a week or so ago, all those Somerville parents who drive their kids to school don't care about creating a traffic jam and hazards for pedestrian children, because driving their kids to school means that *their* precious children won't get hit by a car...)

Comments

[marmota.livejournal.com]

Sounds all too familiar. On #elbows fairly recently, Hagan was off on a rant about property taxes. It was of course pointed out to him that they pay for schools, and he gave the typical libertarian kneejerk response of "So? *I* don't have any kids, why should I pay?". I and several other people tried to point out that, as with any other tax, the idea is that it funds societal services to provide a baseline level of support, and that the next time he's annoyed at a retail clerk who can't count back his spare change, he should remember this conversation. The take on that was another libertarian party line, that if the competency of clerks is important to business, then business should pay for it. Missing the point of course that business has lots of other interests, none of them in the best intererests of the *student*, or for that matter, the consumer. *facepalm*

I think this is the sort of contempt that insularity breeds, and it's becoming or is now the norm. Does the city of San Diego think the kids who 'drop out' just vanish? "Somebody else's problem" is still a problem.

My take on fixing it would be to make public K-12 education compulsory, by passing laws making private education as allowable only in addition to public education. It's the perfect way to gut the private school industry, thereby eliminating the profit motive from somewhere it doesn't belong, freeing up a pool of the best teachers to be brought back into the public sector, forcing the students with more home resources to stick around and provide positive role models
for those who don't.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

Does the city of San Diego think the kids who 'drop out' just vanish? "Somebody else's problem" is still a problem.

The city of San Diego knows exactly what will happen. *but* in the process, the average test scores will go up, and everyone will pat each other on the back about it. These are not kids whose parents/guardians (a lot of them are cared for by relatives, foster care etc.) are going to homeschool them, or seek out private schools or press them to get a GED and go to junior college.

I don't necessarily agree with you about compulsory public education. There are any number of reasons for other alternatives, and I am not even as anti-homeschooling as I once was, though a lot of homeschooling parents exemplify the "as long as MY kid gets the best, what happens to other peoples' kids doesn't matter" mindset.

(Minor side point: most private school teachers get paid *less* than public school teachers, on account of not being unionized. They could choose to teach in public schools, but clearly something other than money is motivating them. A few ideas: private schools can kick out kids who cause trouble or kids with disabilities, they "cherry pick" by their very nature for involved parents, they don't have to follow statewide curriculum rules or teach to the test, class sizes are usually smaller, bureaucracy is less entrenched, for religious schools the teachers may see it as part of their religious duty to teach others of the same faith... So private schools can attract people for whom teaching is an avocation, rather than just a vocation.)

I think a publicly funded, bifurcated education system might be interesting. Say 3 hours a day in public school to learn the basics, required for everyone. Then another 3 hours, still mandatory, but with much more choice as to content, everything from religious instruction to art and music to interning in a science lab to homeschooling to extra work on the basics for kids who need it, with no cost barriers. I realize that there are a LOT of problems with this idea, but it's interesting to think about.

The issue right now, though, is that there needs to be some kind of turnaround in peoples' attitudes about public schools, and that won't happen unless the schools get better (and there are myriad definitions of better!). So it's a chicken-or-egg problem, and not one I see resolving soon.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

It was of course pointed out to him that they pay for schools, and he gave the typical libertarian kneejerk response of "So? *I* don't have any kids, why should I pay?".

Don't ask me where this attitude comes from, but it's not restricted to libertarians. Old people in suburbs often have the same attitude. IMHO, the refutation of the libertarian position is to note that there is no country that one would like to live in that does not have public education -- and there's probably a reason for that.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

It's not really a Tragedy of the Commons, I think, but sort of the reverse -- what used to be seen as a commons is being dissected into a private resource. But a different version of the same thing happened in larger cities long ago -- parents removed their children from the city's school system by moving to the suburbs.

From an economic point of view, the modern city is one in which the "public services" really are by subscription, and at different stages of your life, and at different income levels, people move to a suburb that provides the best price/service tradeoff for their situation. As a result, services are completely de-socialized, there is little payment for services to the poor by the prosperous.

In regard to the San Diego problem, I'm getting indigestion. In a way, what they seem to be doing is deliberately driving some of the least desirable kids from the school system. A result will be that the test scores and other metrics of the school system will improve, and San Diego will be seen as a more desirable place to live by middle-class people.

Leading me to consider one of the grottier aspects of public education -- there is never enough money to go around, and so there is a natural conflict between various types of education a school provides. You can't fully support raising poor kids to decent functionality in the modern world and also fully support middle-class kids to get into college.