Galt's Gulch

Fairness is for people, not institutions

Posted by $ blarman 8 years, 6 months ago to Education
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Thomas Sowell nails one of the main reasons public education is a disaster. My mother-in-law was a kindergarten teacher and would tell us all about the one or two bad apples she would have every year and how they would affect the rest of the class. What was even more shocking was that most of the behavioral problems were the result of the parents expecting the teachers to be babysitters and therapists rather than educators as they excused their children's behavior.

It's also another reason why I don't believe in public school. You can bet that if those parents were paying the full costs of sending those children to school they would be a lot less tolerant about bad behavior and bad grades.
SOURCE URL: http://www.ammoland.com/2015/11/fairness-is-for-human-beings-not-for-institutions/

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  • Posted by term2 8 years, 6 months ago
    government indoctrination centers are just that- they look at the "need" for children to learn, and refuse to let them learn things they want to learn when they want to learn them, but force them to pay attention to what the government wants them to learn. It just cant work, and it has been expensive.

    I have learned more from youtube lately in terms of technology than I ever did in public schools.
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    • Posted by $ jdg 8 years, 6 months ago
      This has always been true. Government schools were started to produce a crop of "domesticated" adults who would show up to work on time, and follow orders.

      The changes in police ROEs in the last couple of decades are mostly a reaction to the fact that certain minorities are resisting allowing that "education" to "take".
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  • Posted by Zenphamy 8 years, 6 months ago
    Educating some is like trying to put a bell on a pig. You soon realize that you're getting very muddy, the bell's full of mud as is your ears, and the pig likes wrestling in the mud.

    But in reality, if parents have failed to prepare their children to behave in public or the school, it should be the parents costs if they want that child educated. This idea that it's the state's responsibility (It takes a Village) to correct for the parents failures is pure socialism.
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  • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 6 months ago
    I found the article slightly confusing because of its change in 'voice' and it's possibly deliberate misuse of the word "fair'. I agree with the obvious correctness of a school's ability to expel an unruly student; the other side of that coin, however, is that the school must be providing some service that is valuable. (If the school is not providing a valuable service - literacy or tech training - then it does not matter if you are expelled because the students who graduate will not have any advantage over you.

    I do object to the mis-definition of the word "fair'. It is completely fair to expel a misbehaving student. "Fair" does not mean "without let or hindrance" it means "evenhandedly appropriate". So the PC 'voice' that talks about it being 'fair' for institutions/individuals to so such-and-so is misusing the word: It is FAIR - in both cases.

    Jan, protecting the word "fair"
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    • Posted by $ blarman 8 years, 6 months ago
      I agree that fair should mean equal treatment and being held to expectations. I believe that is part of the problem with public schooling, however: no expectations. And without expectations, there is also a lack of punishment because there are no rules to abrogate.
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      • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 6 months ago
        There was a thread recently on CA schools having "C" as the lowest grade - one that would be given to students who 'did nothing'. Already there is a decreased expectation that formal education means anything...

        Jan
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        • Posted by $ blarman 8 years, 6 months ago
          Yep. And what happens when those kids graduate and head off to college? They fail. Miserably.
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          • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 6 months ago
            What else happens is that businesses know that if they hire a HS graduate, they are not necessarily hiring someone who is even literate. This dilutes the worth of graduating from HS. If this moves up the educational spectrum, college graduation may be considered to require literacy, of some sort.

            This is not totally speculative: In China, "literacy" is the ability to read and write a couple thousand ideograms. In India, "literacy" is defined as the ability to sign your name. (Statistics on literacy ignore this difference in definition.) It is plausible that HS 'literacy' may become the ability to sign your name.

            Jan
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  • Posted by khalling 8 years, 6 months ago
    this was a good article. I have been having trouble articulating what I think about police as fixtures in school-maybe even classrooms and I think Dr. Sowell expressed my concerns well. check out this video: http://www.allenbwest.com/2015/11/rem...
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    • Posted by ycandrea 8 years, 6 months ago
      WOW! I would have just walked out of the classroom. Those kids were beyond teaching at that point. That teacher commanded no respect and there was no way she would ever get control of her classroom back.
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      • Posted by $ jdg 8 years, 6 months ago
        That kid needs to be ejected from the room, and maybe from the school. But even in my day, when there were no police in the school, there was always at least one "vice principal" (guy built like a linebacker) around to handle such problems.

        Perhaps the school lacks such a person because of discrimination law? Or because men are so afraid of being falsely charged with molestation that they won't work in schools anymore?
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    • Posted by $ blarman 8 years, 6 months ago
      Thank you for sharing this. I had seen the report on that incident as well but it provides support for the notion that our schools would be better off if behavior like this simply wasn't tolerated.
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      • Posted by khalling 8 years, 6 months ago
        what could that small teacher have done to prevent it? and the seemingly out of control male-did you hear him soberly tell the maniacal phone video-er to stop filming? He was completely lucid and in control the entire time-his abusive behavior was criminal. He wasn't just some out of control teen. I'm even having trouble imaging that teacher with a firearm. He would either be dead or she would have been. gah!
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        • Posted by $ blarman 8 years, 6 months ago
          I completely agree. The mentality of the teen should be of serious concern to everyone in that school. He is bent on getting his way and isn't afraid of using force to get it. He is a petty thug and I would bet that he has gang ties and grew up without a father.

          What I fear is that this young man is going to descend even deeper into criminal behavior and is going to be another statistic of systemic failure.
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          • Posted by $ allosaur 8 years, 6 months ago
            That punk would be taught to behave in the state prison I used to work at.
            One way or the other.
            I can guarantee it.
            I'm quite certain he will end up in such a place.
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  • Posted by LibertyBelle 8 years, 6 months ago
    By the time I finished fifth grade, I simply hated
    school, and didn't want to be there anymore. If I
    had been able to, I would have destroyed the whole
    thing.--But at least in those days, they didn't have all that chaos and disruption. Such behavior would
    have resulted in application of the "board of edu-
    cation" to someone's gluteous maximus. I think
    that the idea that children can be raised or edu-
    cated without corporal punishment is total nonsense.
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