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#122
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h (Rand Simberg) writes:
On 6 Jul 2004 06:25:53 -0700, in a place far, far away, (Mark) made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: (Rand Simberg) wrote in message . .. Yes, I've heard all that sociobabble before. Most homeschoolers have a great deal of interaction with other children, in sports teams and other activities. There are also private schools. Not to mention that kids who spend most of their time with adults grow up to be adults... kids who spend most of their time with kids grow up to be... kids. The tax-funded school system is a hugely expensive program which serves little purpose other than to deliberately extend childhood well beyond the point where it's useful for most people. That's an excellent point. Children tend to be raised more by their peers than by their parents, It depends on the relationship between the child and the parents. and herding them together for most of the day just makes things worse. If the relationship is a good one, it doesn't (i.e. the parents will be able to straighten eventual problems with little or no effort). If it is a bad one, you don't have a chance of raising your child in accordance to your wishes anyway. I can only presume that people who think that kids need to spend a lot of time with kids were either really lucky or don't remember how mean, stupid and vindictive so many other kids were when they were young. Why anyone would want their kids forced to spend several hours a day with people like that is beyond me. Yup. Nope. See my reply to Mark. Cheers, alex. |
#123
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On Tue, 06 Jul 2004 19:09:05 GMT, in a place far, far away, Alex
Pozgaj made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: That's an excellent point. Children tend to be raised more by their peers than by their parents, It depends on the relationship between the child and the parents. Not as much as one would like. Go read "The Blank Slate" http://www.mit.edu/~pinker/slate.html |
#124
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h (Rand Simberg) writes:
On Tue, 06 Jul 2004 19:09:05 GMT, in a place far, far away, Alex Pozgaj made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: That's an excellent point. Children tend to be raised more by their peers than by their parents, It depends on the relationship between the child and the parents. Not as much as one would like. Most probably, yes. However, isolation is most certainly *not* the solution. Go read "The Blank Slate" http://www.mit.edu/~pinker/slate.html It seems you like the imperative form pretty much. Cheers, alex. |
#125
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In article ,
Alex Pozgaj writes: Thank you for the details, I didn't realize how bad the situation is. The link contained some scary stuff! It's not all scary. A lot depends on the level of involvement by hte parents in their local School System, and their aggregate level of involvement in the local political structure that supports the schools and to which the School Administration answers. That's been found to make much more of a difference in the quality and relevance of education, rather than, say, simply pouring in money. (In fact, there's a distinct negative correlation between the amount spent per student and the quality of education - by and large, the most expensive School Systems do not educate better than the more frugal ones. One thing to remember is that in the United States, we don't have a single education system for the entire country. We're too large, both geographically and in terms of population, and too diverse across the country for that to work. (We've also got a number of rather unproductive high-density population sinks that would suck up everybody else's resources for little or no return) Each State has its own requirements and standards, and funds the education system in its own manner. (Students do get measured by Nationwide Standardized Testing as part of the College/University Admissions Process, so we're not without a basis for comparison.) For example, in my situation, I'm in a medium-sized town in Central New England (Approx 20-25,000 population). Our Political Structure has a professional Town Manager as single executive, backed up by an elected Board of Selectmen. The Annual Budget, including the School Budget, is voted upon each year by the general population of the town at the annual Town Meeting, after open debate. This, among other things, sets the rates for the Property Tax used to generate most revenues. The School District, which in this case, corresponds to the Town (Less populated and less affluent areas have Regional School Districts that encompass several town) has a professional Superintendent as Executive Administrator, who answers to an elected School Board for matters of policy. We happen to have some of the best Public Schools (In the U.S. sense, which is municipally provided no-fee (other than taxes) education, as opposed to the British sense, where a Public School is actually an exclusive Private School) in the country. A big reason for that is the involvement of the parents in the School System. In this town, education is an important priority. Parents are very involved in the quality and type of education that their children are receiving. A large proportion of them provide volunteer services both during the School Day and at extra-curricular functions. They are very involved in the political process, and as they are interested, and have control of the budget, they exercize a great deal of influence. (It does of course, take time and effort. Most of us think its worth that.) At one point, it appeared that our town was over-indulging its school system, and we had an apparently high tax rate. Now, all the surrounding towns are trying to catch up, and our rate of increase of taxes has been minimal in comparison. This system of course, works well for a municipality of this size. It's not practical in a large City. (City is a particular form of Givernment here - basically, a Town is a Democracy, with the voters directly debating and enacting laws and budgets. Cities are Republics, with elected representatives enacting laws and budgets. (Some Cities, like Chicago, are Banana Republics, but we won't get into that). In those cases, the elected representatives are resonsible for policy and budget. Anyway, to sum up - It's really hard to generalize about American Schools. Live everything else, we're more diverse than most Europeans have visualized. In many respects, we're one large country with 50 smaller countries contained within. We have some excellent Scools Systems, ones, and some poor ones. There are indeed some real horror stories out there. The level of quality however, isn't directly dependant on budget, (Although you do have to pay for it), but does depend directly on the involvement of the parents of the schoolchildren, and of the community at large. -- Pete Stickney A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures. -- Daniel Webster |
#126
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On Tue, 06 Jul 2004 20:12:29 GMT, in a place far, far away, Alex
Pozgaj made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: That's an excellent point. Children tend to be raised more by their peers than by their parents, It depends on the relationship between the child and the parents. Not as much as one would like. Most probably, yes. However, isolation is most certainly *not* the solution. No one has proposed isolation. Go read "The Blank Slate" http://www.mit.edu/~pinker/slate.html It seems you like the imperative form pretty much. It was a suggestion. I obviously have no power to force you to do it. |
#127
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"Alex Pozgaj" wrote in message ... So, by voting against education measures, you are actually trying to cut down on bureaucrats and help children get a decent education? Not quite. I nearly always vote against bond issues. Bonds almost always have a tax associated with them. It's not the tax I have a problem with. It's just that I can't figure out the value the taxpayers receive from the interest paid on the bonds. X money is raised by the bonds, and X-(small commission and overhead) actually goes to the purpose for which the bonds were sold. However, the taxpayers get to pay back X+I, where I = interest on the bonds. What does the taxpayer get for I? Now, if the tax alone were offered, I would have voted for nearly all of them. If a library is needed, for example, *plan for it* so that the money is available when the library is needed. That way, the taxpayers get value. Raise a tax *first*, and when you have enough money, spend it. I have a problem with the borrow and spend first plan. It *can* be done, it just isn't. |
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