Then and Now

[Excel1]

Originally posted by Red Tail 444
Seen and experienced the wrath of Catholic school nuns, first hand. They wailed on and at kindergartners and first graders at my school. That's why they always go out in pairs.

Not much need for wailing or shouting from the nuns at the school I went to. They didn't have too. Their impliments of dicipline and control on the 5 to 11 year olds were bamboo canes, rulers and leather straps... they were no ordinary straps either, they were proper engraved "strapping straps". Either the nuns had a leather fetish or the Catholic church had a factory somwhere that made the sodding things, coz I had one old biddy of a teacher when I was 8 that had a whole draw full of them in her desk. She would bring a new one to school about once a month and display it just to put the chits up the class.

The nuns were free and easy when it came to thumping kids but they wern't stupid either, they only did their hitting in the morning, that way the tell tale marks that parents would notice had most of the school day to disapate. That meant that if you did something to piss them off (surprisingly easy) in the afternoon you went home that day knowing you were going to cop it the next morning.

[Reynolds]

<------ Currently enrold in public highschool. Most of those are spot on, but in my school most people are in gangs or just plane insane, so the teachers are too afraid of the students to suspend them. We litterally have 4 police officer assigned to our school permanently. It makes schooling.... exciting. And yeah, public schools are crap. In 8th grade I could regularly stump my teachers in their own subjects.

[lazs2]

eskimo.. pretty much agree with you and at first there would be a lot of students expelled from private schools... that is as it should be.

The fact is that many of the kids in school should not be there.   Even if they stay (at everyones expense)  they will "graduate" as functional illiterates.   There is no point in making everyone suffer for them to gain nothing.  within a decade the system will turn around.

Public schools will get better private schools a little worse with some of the requirements that will come with vouchers.  Mostly tho...  the private schools will  not be hampered by the social engineering that is public schools.   Public schools will have to compete.

vouchers are socialism just as public school is but... at least it is functional socialism... socialism with a choice or two.   Public schools are pure socialism and indoctrinization by one state source.

Voucher schools would be required to show academic achievement and it would raise the bar for public schools.   Public schools would have to expel or die and they would either change or die a well deserved death.

No matter what tho... there would be layers of private school... some would charge little and others a lot.   Parents willing to pay extra will allways have a better deal.

eskimo... parents are not to blame for the schools failures but they are for their childs failures?    How exactly does that work?  where do you draw the line?   If my kid is not being taught how to read and write... if the class is full of kids who can't read or write and the school keeps pandering to their level and moving them up into my childs grade....  is that not the schools fault?   If an illiterate or non english speaker can pass the achievement test... is not my sons lack of learning the schools fault?

If the school charges twice as much as a private school and gets worse results... is it not the schools fault?   If the teachers are getting full time pay for a part time job... and fight every effort to make it fair... is it not the schools or teachers fault?

lazs

[lazs2]

Originally posted by lazs2
eskimo.. pretty much agree with you and at first there would be a lot of students expelled from private schools... that is as it should be.

The fact is that many of the kids in school should not be there.   Even if they stay (at everyones expense)  they will "graduate" as functional illiterates.   There is no point in making everyone suffer for them to gain nothing.  within a decade the system will turn around under a voucher system... it would simply roll back (for a while) the excess and silliness of public schools.

Public schools will get better private schools a little worse with some of the requirements that will come with vouchers.  Mostly tho...  the private schools will  not be hampered by the social engineering that is public schools.   Public schools will have to compete.

vouchers are socialism just as public school is but... at least it is functional socialism... socialism with a choice or two.   Public schools are pure socialism and indoctrinization by one state source.

Voucher schools would be required to show academic achievement and it would raise the bar for public schools.   Public schools would have to expel or die and they would either change or die a well deserved death.

No matter what tho... there would be layers of private school... some would charge little and others a lot.   Parents willing to pay extra will allways have a better deal.

eskimo... parents are not to blame for the schools failures but they are for their childs failures?    How exactly does that work?  where do you draw the line?   If my kid is not being taught how to read and write... if the class is full of kids who can't read or write and the school keeps pandering to their level and moving them up into my childs grade....  is that not the schools fault?   If an illiterate or non english speaker can pass the achievement test... is not my sons lack of learning the schools fault?

If the school charges twice as much as a private school and gets worse results... is it not the schools fault?   If the teachers are getting full time pay for a part time job... and fight every effort to make it fair... is it not the schools or teachers fault?

lazs

[lazs2]

oops...how did I quote myself?

lazs

[eskimo2]

Reynolds:

I lived in Hawaii for a year and attended U of H / HCC for two semesters.  Please don’t take this personally, but Hawaii is light years behind the mainland when it comes to education.  By the casual paragraph that you have written I can tell are brighter or have managed to learn much more than your Hawaiian peers.  I studied fire science at HCC with graduates of the Honolulu school system; I only knew one other student from the mainland.  Some of the students I knew said that kids graduated from high school without being able to read.  They said that most teachers worked a second full time job just to make ends meet.  (For any reader who have not lived in Hawaii; it is expensive beyond belief.)  Most everyone spoke pidgin and could not speak or write a proper sentence to save their life.  The director of the program insisted that all students write research papers and this just about killed most everyone.  The majority of students dropped out.  

The Hawaiian culture does not place value on education.  The newspapers and TV news broadcast were full of grammar and usage errors.  Many “Professionals” spoke pidgin and would fail dismally if they tried to work in most parts of the mainland.  Honolulu and other troubled pockets throughout the US have major problems with education.  We can blame the districts, schools, teachers, parents or even the culture; perhaps varying degrees of all of these.

Public school systems work very well in some areas and even in entire cities.

[eskimo2]

Lazs,

When I taught first grade in Colorado I recommended retention of some students.  That’s all that I could do: recommend retention.  I could show the parents evidence that their child was way behind but if the parents wanted Johnny bumped up to the second grade anyway, he was moving on.  Many laws are written so that parents have all the power.

I have seen teachers with high but reasonable expectations fail a good percentage of their students when they don’t do their work.  Parents flip out and complain to administrators; administrators figure that if so many kids are failing that teacher must not be doing their job well.  The teacher is either let go or threatened to be fired.  

I had a child who missed over half of the school year because his mom was too strung out to get him to school.  My principal, school psychologist and I followed all of the steps to get him back in school (wrote letters, made home visits, reports to children’s services, and so on).  The kid would show up for a week or two and then go truant.  Then we’d have to start the entire process again.  I’d see him one or two weeks and then nothing for a month, over and over.  This consumed much time and created a huge amount of paper work.  We did everything that we could legally do but laws are written to favor parent and children’s rights to strongly that educators can have a heck of a time enforcing what should be common sense rules.  That kid never showed up at the end of the year and missed the testing; had he showed up he most certainly would have failed.  Either way that child is listed as one who the school system failed.

[eskimo2]

Lazs,

Imagine that you and a competitor bake apple pies for a living.  Your competitor is allowed first pick of the best apples in the orchard.  You get the rest and are required by law to use the apples that have fallen off the trees, have worms and are now rotting on the ground.  I don’t care how good of a crust you make, your pies are not going to be a s good.

[lukster]

Originally posted by rpm
There are no "facts" that private will out perform public if every public student will be allowed to attend private. That is unless you have some type of crystal ball. Current private stats are on children from affluent parents and neighborhoods. Throw 70% of public students into the pool and those "facts" will change.

Let's not "throw" anyone anywhere. I certainly don't want our bloated beaureaucratic governement, especially it's incompetent educational arm, taking charge of private schools. If a student can't or won't conform to a private schools standards then it's out the door to another school willing to take them on.

It's not a crystal ball that tells me that lax discipline, low standards, and hidden agendas result in the mess we are in today but simply 20/20 hindsight.

[lukster]

I've heard how nuns are tough and mean yet all of the few people I know who complain about these strict disciplanarians are hard workers and successful. Rather than train our naturally rowdy boys through discipline it's much easier to dope 'em up which is what we do in our schools today. Makes me sick.

[Gunthr]

I agree with your point, lukster.  I attended parochial school all my young life. I was a troubled kid that got into a lot of trouble in school and I got a lot of discipline at the hands of the nuns.  I can confirm that the nuns had 2 pairs of boxing gloves in the school supply closet if you wanted to fight someone at lunch time in the gym.  The bleachers would fill up fast.  We had to take 3 years of latin and go to mass every morning.  

I didn't get good grades.  I barely graduated.  I think there were only 2 knuckledheads ranked lower than me in my class.  But something clicked for me a couple years later, I guess I matured a little.  I somehow got probationary acceptence into college.  I found out D's in my parochial school were equivilent to C's or C+'s in the public schools - at least I wasn't as bad off as I had thought.  I went on to get my degree with a magna cum laude for achieving a 4.85 grade point average.  Then I became a police officer and I was so proud that I called the Mother nun at the nun's retirement convent to tell her about it.  (She said she always knew I would eventually amount to something, but I'm not sure I believe her)

So anyway, I rate my education at that particular parochial school, taught by the Sisters of The Immaculate Heart of Mary at that particular time, to be far superior to the public education in the area.  Even though the public school guys called us "curtain crawlers" and "tie boys" most all of my classmates seem to have become productive people.  I do think Eskimo makes a good point about the socio-economic environment though.  We only had about 5 black kids in our school, for example, and they were not poor.

[Gunthr]

I believe that Rolex, to a degree.    So much has changed in the culture, especially in education.  Educators are now mostly liberal.  Educators are mostly unionized.  Educators are politizised because of the unions.  It didn't exist before. Educators allow groups like  
GLSEN to come into schools and teach fifth and sixth graders what it is to anally explore one another, or what "fisting" means, for example.  There are real differences.  The PC crap alone has crippled the US education system in my opinion.

[lazs2]

eskimo... this is silly... you are saying that if only a lot of students get a benifiet from vouchers that it is not worth it... you admit that public schools are out of control but seem to be saying "that's just the way it is... no solution possible"

That any solution and any competition will just make things worse.

Your analodgy is faulty... everyone gets to draw from the same orchard.   If one pie company roots out the bad apples and nurtures the good ones and cares for them... and... has more pies made and better ones than the pie company that simply keeps all the bad apples in the same barrel as the good ones until all are ruined.... and it has very few, and substandard pies made as a result... then

Everything is as it should be in my opinion... seems the second company might look at the successful companies methods and immulate them... seems that competition in this (as in everything else in the world) would improve the product.

Certainly there would be a period of adjustment while the social engineers wrung their hands and pointed fingers and played blame games but in the end... the improved results would be there for all to see and everyone would ignore the hand wringers...   People would have more than a few studies to look at and people would demand more of the failed and bloated public school monopoly.

lazs

[eskimo2]

First of all, I have not said that I don’t believe that vouchers are all bad; only that there are negatives and a voucher system would be risky, especially if it came with strings.  With the same strings that have hurt public schools, vouchers could wipe out all benefits of parochial and private schools.  

Second, I have not said that public schools are out of control.  I have said that laws make it nearly impossible for teachers to teach and students to learn in many situations and places.  Thousands of public schools throughout our nation have a better success rate than the majority of parochial and private schools.  In spite of hindering laws, many public schools do well, especially those that get the “good apples”.

My analogy is great.  Take a city with some parochial and private schools as well as public schools.  The parochial and private schools already have a better success rate mainly because they draw students from “better” families.  Hand out vouchers and the new voucher students will mainly be comprised of the “better” public school families.  What’s left for the public schools?  A lot of rotten apples mixed with apples of various qualities.  These rotten apples will drag the public schools down and then people who don’t understand the connection will assume that the public schools have failed.  The problem is that the public schools are stuck with the rotten apples but are being compared to the parochial and private schools.  

Go ahead and make all schools parochial and private and tie them up with the same laws that now hinder public schools.  What do you do with the students who don’t get accepted?  Turn away tens of thousands and you end up with a major crisis.  Require parochial and private schools to accept all students and then the parochial and private schools end up in the same situation that many public schools are now in.

Vouchers are fine if they don’t come with strings and as long as people don’t blame the public schools for producing rotten apple pies.  Public schools need the same opportunity to kick out the bad apples before they spoil the bunch.

[Reynolds]

Parents are responsible for their children. All my life, I have been in public schools. If it werent for my parents, I would be illiterate too, I wouldnt give a **** about history, and I would generally be the most annoying, and stupid little **** you have ever heard. Thankfully, my parents gave a crap, and taught me to read themselves before I entered kindergarten. They took my education into their own hands, and even though they had full time jobs, they took a few minutes every night to read a book with me (Pretending to fall asleep and forcing me to read the end if I wanted to see the outcome) and thus when I was in 6th grade I was reading at a 10th grade level. Because my parents gave a **** im smarter than even some of my teachers, and definately smarter than 98% of my class. Those parents I have seen who dont give a ****, have children who are/have:

a) failing most classes
b) getting arrested on a daily basis
c) been stabbed/shot
d) are drug addicts
e) are generally nothing but a failure, and a burden on society.

Parents make the difference. Trust me, I see it every single day.