Followup on Ravings of a Lunatic

I came across an interesting discussion on Slashdot today about the public education system in the US of A. Its quite a lively debate but some good points have come out of it. Considering my view of Home Schooling, its interesting to read what other people think about public education and their ideas for making it better.

Ask Slashdot question: What, in your opinion, would make primary and secondary education as good as possible? I have no experience of education outside the US, but I can say confidently that public education in my country sucks. And it may always suck. However, what can we do to make it suck less?"

For the purpose of this question, the following are givens:

1. I know that there is a strong libertarian faction in this community, who might like to see public education disappear. Let's assume, though, that that isn't going to happen any time soon, and that there will be a public school system for the foreseeable future.

2. Similarly, many Slashdot readers are brilliant people who have educated themselves to a large extent. Let's further accept that most people are not capable of doing this, or at any rate need help reaching that sort of educational self-sufficiency.

One of the first responses suggested the following improvements:

• stop inflating grades (a recent article reflected on how many schools now have so many valedictorians (one in Seattle actually had 47 valedictorians!) that many have had to dispense with the tradition of having valedictorian address the graduating classes). (The New Yorker article is here [newyorker.com] and is a long, but worthwhile read.)
• more emphasis on (mathematics) basics. Get rid of the calculators, at least until after the fundamentals are assuredly learned. Make students learn how to use slide rules, for the sake and feel of what is really happening during calculations (addition of log tables... illustrates nice short cuts for coming up with fast and accurate estimates for seemingly complex "problems")
• more emphasis on (language skills) basics. It would be nice to go an entire day without something totally illiterate on the CNN Headline News crawler. (We once had a "discussion" with our daughter's teacher because he said he wasn't so much interested in her spelling correctly and applying grammatical principles correctly as he was in what she was saying. While we agreed what she was trying to say was important, we felt it equally important (for a fifth grader) to be grounded in grammatical and spelling fundamentals)
• stop moving kids onto the next grade if they really didn't perform at the level necessary. It's become an "everybody gets a trophy" society, and that's not consistent with the real world. Kids more than ever need to understand rewards and accountability.
• standards of competency for teachers (rather than tenure by unions). We once accused our daughter of "doctoring" a bad grade when she brought it back with an updated "note" from her teacher. We were convinced she had not met with the teacher because the "note" on her paper from the teacher was illiterate. We were all embarrassed when we confronted the teacher and found he indeed had written the note (maybe that's why he was not so interested in our daughter's grammar).
• stop relying on technology as the next silver bullet in transcendental teaching philosophies and techniques
• get rid of MTV

As a huge proponent of "there's always a better way" I like what's coming out of this discussion. The next step is for parents and businesses to step up and effect the required changes.


http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/10/1719223