So, trying to distance the classroom from the very real problems that these kids have outside of it is nonsense. You just cannot learn math without food in your belly or a 'safe' home, like, this is Maslow 101 stuff. A neighboring school district has a free/reduced breakfast and lunch program and they are kicking ass in SAT scores relative to my SO's school. You can polish the inner workings of a school to a mirror shine, but if the kids got no sleep or their mom just got shot up and died, it is totally mute.
You are saying that by the time the kids reach HS, if they are this damaged, just triage them. Well, this is kinda being put into practice these days. It depends on school district, but yeah, it's kinda charter school or bust now. Those folks that are too damaged to learn about King George from ~250 years ago are kinda just left behind. How that triage method figures into the 2016 election should be obvious in the results we have.
Look, you are on HN, I get the mindset here, you can just 'process' and 'app' your way out of any problem. If you haven't yet done so, work harder, take more LSD micro-doses, Juicero it, like, I get this a lot on here. But if you really are interested in the schools of this country, then you gotta listen to the teachers and admins and the kids.
Shit. Is. Fucked. Yo.
Why? Literally millions of reasons from literally millions of districts and millions of students. Where we are the issue is simple: poverty. Where you are, who knows. Go to your next PTA meeting in August and try to find out.
No, I'm saying that the attitudes of kids currently in high school and their unsuitability for certsin changes in educational methods is not indicative of the utility of changes in educational methods introduced earlier.
You have essentially invented a line of argument entirely unrelated to anything I actually.wrotr to argue against. I don't disagree with any of what you write, it's just entirely irrelevant to the post you are responding to, as it seems to be a rebuttal of an argument that exists in your kind, fueled by expectations driven by a stereotype you explicitly describe yourself as holding of the HN community.
At the High School level, you've got prejudices built from years of engagement with the school system involved. If the schools in general are failing to engage appropriately, by that time large numbers of students are irrevocably alienated.
> Look, the super-crunchy idea of kids that are naturally curious is really just ... rich and white.
No, it's not, though privileged home environment (in rough order of importance, educated, rich, and white) all play a role both in preserving and enhancing that natural trait until hitting school (and through it, when the school experience is negative) and in making it less likely that outside social influences will interfere with realizing it, it's pretty clear that the basic inclination is universal.
> They get raped habitually by their mother's many 'boyfriends', they don't eat all weekend and if they do it's 2 bags of Cheetos, they have drugs forced on them by family members that really do think pot is medicine and can cure everything, their parents think school is nonsense and they should start working the fields to earn something for the family, etc.
Its certainly true (and I'm find of saying it) that the biggest problems in education are outside of the school system.
That does not mean, however, that the problems inside the school systems should be ignored (as difficult as they are, they are often far easier to address than the outside problems.)