Some teachers are fantastic despite the lack of incentive, many are not, and the situation seems to be getting worse.
>they should come to their own conclusions
And if the problem with schooling is a decreasing ability to generate exactly this, what then?
Children, people in general should be presented with a diverse set of views and morals (and not just the loudest A vs. B near, but at a small distance from extremists).
I took a philosophy class with undergraduates and a few of them were vocally rather upset when confronted with the fact that there wasn't just a "truth" that could be learned and for each topic there were several opposing views. Those students had experienced so little of that in their 20-odd years of life that being presented with it really bothered them.
It was starting to change even when I was in public schools 30 years ago, and from what see it has only gotten worse.
Lets Critical thinking, and less open questioning, more authority, follow the rules, do not question "The Experts", do as your told (but only what those in Authority tell you not your parents) etc.
That is with out getting into any of the "culture war" topics
People have been saying this about schools since forever.
FWIW your anecdotes don't match mine. My public school stories are all about learning critical thinking, being allowed to think way outside the box, and being rewarded for questioning authority.
One time we got new math books in that were horrible. Obvious errors everywhere. The teacher gave us extra credit for spending the day finding math errors in the book.
9th grade European History started off with Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
In 10th grade sex ed students got to vote on a movie. Nerds and Goths teamed up, we watched Rocky Horror Picture Show.
In 3rd grade, a group of students opted stayed inside during recess and construct hot wheels courses (tracks and ramps) out of whatever classroom supplies we could find laying around.
10th grade parents day, my genetics teacher tricked parents into extracting frog sperm from a solution and playing with it. The students were nonplussed, we'd been working with DNA for quite a while by that time.
12th grade final report, I wrote a paper on the future of LED lighting, where I rewrired some incandescent flashlights into LED flashlights (obviously back before LED flashlights where a big thing).
8th grade final report, 30 page history of video games starting in 1970 and up until the mid 90s.
7th grade debate class, Rome VS Greece, on the side of Rome we argued that "Greece doesn't get to take credit for philosophers it had put to death."
8th grade math class, we just went and full on learned college level stats.
6th grade, I read the book Druids. For those not aware, it has sex in it. Quite as bit of sex in fact. Good bit of historical fiction though, I learned about the Romans invading England!
It's been true since forever.
> FWIW your anecdotes don't match mine. My public school stories are all about learning critical thinking, being allowed to think way outside the box, and being rewarded for questioning authority.
Those are the values that schoolteachers publicly espouse, but even if they want to live up to it, they can't. It's impossible in an environment where they have to train kids to perform standardized tests, and have to keep an overcrowded classroom from turning into a madhouse.
> [the rest of the anecdotes]
Yeah, I had cool teachers, too. It really doesn't take away from the extremely rigid structure of the environment. It helps make things bearable, but the best-learned lessons are the ones you experience, not the ones you read, and what you learn in school is sitting in a desk, doing what you're told, giving your input only when prompted, and that the authority figure standing in front of you has to do things they don't want to do just like you do.
IMHO we need to ditch the standardized tests. The more testing we add the worse education seems to get.
Or rather, to rephrase that, the more tests we add the more homogenized education gets, which may very well be the point.
Without teaching to the test, you have some teachers who don't do much teaching at all, and other teachings who do an amazing job teaching students 3x what the students would otherwise learn in a "normal" classroom.
Teaching to a standardized tests ensures that everyone gets at least a basic education, but it also means some kids get a worse education.
So that kind of sucks, but it may very well be a net positive measured in "number of gets who get at least a decent education."
For society at large, we have to judge if it is worth giving some kids a 3x education and other kids a .5 education, or if we want everyone to get 1x education.
Crappy choice honestly.
> and what you learn in school is sitting in a desk, doing what you're told, giving your input only when prompted, and that the authority figure standing in front of you has to do things they don't want to do just like you do.
I never was much for "do what you're told".
I do however support the idea that learning some things is just painful. The only way to get better at writing is to do a lot of it. The only way to get better at presenting is to present. The only way to get better at math is to solve equations.
Practice does indeed make perfect.
I would not be as good as presenting today if I hadn't been forced to do countless presentations in school, which I hated! Each and every one, I complained that they were a useless exercise and that we'd be better off studying from a book than listening to the poorly done presentation of our peers!
But the presentations weren't so we could efficiently learn about the trials and tribulations of the Oregon trail, it was to make us learn how to prepare talking points, go through a topic in a reasonable manner, and speak clearly in front of a group.
So, thanks teach. Thank you for making me do the thing that I really didn't want to do.
If so, consider how that itself is a "belief" that has at times been explicitly rejected by local political parties.
In other words, there's no such thing as value-neutral education.
The idea that its possible to get hundreds or thousands of people together and only teach facts is absolutely impossible.
- unfair power structures disproportionately harm those without power
- including everyone in decisions about the allocation resources is an effective way to solve disparity
- communities that form rules to govern themselves are more just and fair than communities where rules are formed by a minority
If history and fables lend themselves to revealing these lessons through metaphor and tales of human struggle, the seeds for learning from them will be much more successful at growing than if the seeds are planted with a bludgeon.
It would be nice if my school didn't treat my child like a mindless robot to be programmed and instead provided context with content.
The problem here isn’t challenging your beliefs, it’s blatant stupidity.
My guess is the reality here is the legos were a source of conflict and so they got taken away. Just like many has occurred for probably since toys and children existed. Justifying it with an equity argument is just rage bait attention seeking.
Public education, like many government pet projects, attract warm bodies, inefficiency, because there is no incentive to be efficient. It's free money to them.
Teachers are now largely unnecessary, COVID made everything done online. It turns out in person teachers are largely ineffective and replaced with a YouTube video. Schooling simply has not kept up, and the unions want it that way.
This is not that dissimilar from someone thinking that businessmen don't need programmers because they could just cut out the middlemen and copy and paste from stackoverflow. It's not real analysis its a powerpoint presentation and its not well connected to reality.
Compsci is a popular one where the concepts are far easier understood by a YouTube video than a smart board.
The ideas of what teachers do and what they actually do are entirely different. Teachers overwhelmingly are there to hand out assignments bought from a company. If you don't understand it, teachers don't care, it's keep up or drop out.
It should be an easy matter of local politics, not media hysteria and state-level laws...
Or in the case of my own upbringing, my first ten years of school was at a school was run by a church and my parents had every opportunity to be aware of the church's beliefs. A decade or so later, they apologized for me, they told me they hadn't realized how extreme some of the religious aspects of the curriculum were, but had found out more slowly over the years...
I don't understand how/why parents let themselves be suddenly surprised by things, seems like you should pay attention from day 1!
Or vice-versa?
That is not to say the parents should direct what the schools teach on a individual level that is however to say I believe in 2 main principles for schools. First and foremost schools should be completely transparent, all parents should have access to copy's of every lesson plan, workbook, assignment, paper, etc. Second I believe in "Backpack" school funding, meaning funding for schools is not done on a geographic area, it is done by enrollment, and parent can choose to enroll their child in the public schools, or a private school or yes even a religious school at which point that school would get the funding for that student.
The question then becomes who's value system should "win", IMO it should be the parents, the parents should have the final say in their child's upbringing not the schools or "community".