Well, I'm not sure what society you grew up in Will. Because the one I grew up in had no such social consensus, and while many views were present if anything Senjutsu has described the majority view I experienced more closely than you have.
I grew up in a town in which pretty much every adult had a PhD in some difficult and lengthy but not especially renumerative field like Physics, Abstract Math, Chemistry, Astronomy or (at the time) Computer Science, and pretty much every adult earned the same upper-middle class salary within about 10% to 20% of each other.
I admit that this might have colored my view of education.
Still, it's hard to imagine that I'm that far off when I see so many college kids still pursuing the same soft-science and liberal-arts degrees that more or less guarantee difficulty in finding good employment.
Statistically, any college degree translates into higher earnings potential than no college degree, from what I can remember.
I also think that's more the result of cultural pressure to go to College To Get A Degree And a Good Job, sending millions of kids with no real background of success in the hard sciences, nor any great love for Sociology or English, needing to pick something to go to college for, and the easier the better.
To be sure every major has its group of students who are there for love of the subject and money be damned, but they've never been the plurality, let alone the majority, as far as I've ever seen.
@Zsetrek - I think that view suffers from a deranged level of exageration.
1. Wow, parents putting pressure on kids to do well academically. Horror.
The fact that a kid doesn't see the money she's working her ass off to earn devalues your system. I think my main problem with your idea is that it's just the current idea, but cash-enhanced. You're coming at this from an angle that's saying "all education is good, no matter how it's obtained, or what the motivation is." I don't believe that. Education does have a duty to raise the average knowledge base of the community, but schools and teachers also have a personal obligation to each student that they aren't burnt-out by the system.
4. I'm not sure exactly why teachers would not be able to use discretionary marking. I'm sure you do have some reason why it is absolutely inevitable, but honestly your view is already so pitch black on the matter that I doubt your judgement.
I wouldn't call it pitch black. But as soon as you have money in the system, teachers need to be accountable down to the last penny. My father was a high-school teacher, and taught me Japanese. I was a good student. Under your system, that would raise immediate questions. Yes, you could have discretionary marking under your system, but government bureaucracies tend not to be down on the idea of discretionary spending - it conflicts with the idea of budgets that need to be publicly accountable and perfectly balanced.
For example, what happens if a teacher has a class of dumb kids who consistently fail to meet benchmarks?
A) What happens to the excess cash? Would the department be able to brook a budget surplus of millions of dollars? Wouldn't voters rightly ask "Why are we pumping our tax dollars into a system where the only individuals who know where the money will be going are the teachers - under-qualified, inexperienced in budgeting, and not accountable public servants in the traditional sense." You'd have to re-train the current pool of teachers, financially vet them, create bodies to investigate allegations of corruption. All of this would exponentially increase the cost of your system, and devalue it's key drawcard - cost.
Wouldn't that teacher come under pressure (or at least, perceived pressure) from either parents or the dept. of ed. to conform to a bell-curve?
Switching to a standardised test system is a neat way of side-stepping those issues. It would give the department of education direct control over the budget, and would be more publicly accountable.
But of course, then you get all of the problems that go with that. Sure, students may try harder, but then teachers have even less incentive to provide students with a broad curriculum, to help students learn organically, or to try new teaching methods. It takes the worst elements of the current system, and spreads them out over the entire spectrum of schools.
6. Your point about Ursula le Guin is bizzare. Her books were never assigned to me in school and though I read all of them in my late teenage years I didn't read any of them because I had been cultivated with some raging ideal of the educated life anyway. What is the argument here? That people will have an attitude of only reading when they are being paid to do it? Because I'm pretty sure that none of us on this forum were shaped in such a way by the current system of incentives and disincentives used in educational programs. No one here picks up a Terry Pratchett book because they are hoping to get affirmation from an authority figure, or praise from their parents upon the receipt of a letter grade or a scholarship to a college education program. Therefore I disagree with the idea that the regime of incentives used in school has such a pervasive effect.
No, but kids need foundational knowledge to approach reading for pleasure. In a teach-to-the-test scenario, that knowledge is hamstringed, because teachers do not teach general reading comprehension, they teach as much as the kids need to know to pass the test.
Arguments over your skepticism aside, I think that creating divisions within the student body in this way would create more opposition to such a program than support.
I mean, Jesus, you can't just give candy to some kids and not to others like that. It would be bedlam.
Why would the government giving a small amount of sweets to poor kids make rich kids jealous when their parents can buy sweet factories?
Plutocracy on
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
Arguments over your skepticism aside, I think that creating divisions within the student body in this way would create more opposition to such a program than support.
I mean, Jesus, you can't just give candy to some kids and not to others like that. It would be bedlam.
Why would the government giving a small amount of sweets to poor kids make rich kids jealous when their parents can buy sweet factories?
They have this thing called the millennium scholarship here. It provides 3 or 4 grand a year bursaries to university students who can demonstrate financial need, paid out of a fund set up by the Federal Government in 2000.
Conservative politicians here proposed ending the bursaries and instead dividing up the fund so that all students would get a one-time $1000 grant in their first year of studies, until the fund was completely emptied in 4 or 5 years. This would be, they claimed, more "fair".
The point being that many people have preposterous ideas of fairness. Shinto is correct. Regardless of whether or not kids who fail the means test need the small cash incentives, people would still feel they are fairly entitled to it.
And hey, maybe they'd be right in this case. Kids don't need stickers, but some will be motivated by them. Rich kids might like an extra $50 just enough to make a difference.
I think your investing too little faith in the goodness of humans (and I'm as misanthropic as they come at times). The EMA here has three levels, so that those in the lower-middle class and lower class in general both get something, even if its not the same.
If there is the financial freedom to offer incentives to students regardless of parental income, then giving such benefits to all isn't really that big a deal.
However if presented with having to choose between offering cash bonuses to those from a lower-economic bracket only immediately or waiting until it can be provided for all, I think it would be admissible for the first choice to prevail.
Plutocracy on
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
edited January 2008
FWIW, if I was convinced this would actually work, I would have no philosophical problem with it. As it stands, I think the smart kids who already do well would wind up getting some cash, the dumb/lazy kids who fuck around would keep fucking around because they would value their time more than the small amount of money they perceive as obtainable, and not much would change. I think kids would probably do about the same on average, only now we'd be giving them money to maintain the status quo.
People are only occasionally rational, and kids even less so.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
If I had to make a list of the top 20 things that could fix the education system, this would not be on it. It's not the worst idea in the world, but we have much larger fish to fry that could make a huge amount of difference in the quality of education (NCLB).
Plus I'm pretty sure the teachers would riot when they realize that their students are collectively making more than they are*. Also, when you reward kids to do something, like.. giving them money to play video games, and then you take away that reward, they cut back on playing video games to a shocking degree. This is why electrician's houses are always not wired quite right.
I'd like to see it happen, maybe even in a small setting, just to see the results. Low income children tend to do worse because the parents don't help them out at home, and if the child was bringing home a little paycheck, they may give them some more attention. Which sounds really fucked up and awful, but if it works, who cares.
*You would think that the primary concern for most teachers is the advancement of their students. You couldn't be more wrong.
Yeah, I'm sure teachers just work to get paid a large amount of money.
Are you fucking kidding me?
Teachers are one of the lowest paid state groups. It's amazing that they even do their job at all.
What the fuck are you talking about? Did you even read my post? I'm saying that teachers wouldn't be so hot about getting tons of money given to the students instead of themselves when they're already underpaid by many standards.
I teach. Kindergarten. I've worked with kids year round for the last six years. I adore my job and I lived in near poverty while I was going to night school an hour and a half away while volunteering at a school whenever I couldn't get substitute work (which was frequently). Most elementary education majors could give a straight fuck about the kids, I don't even know why most of them sign up for it. If you go into teaching thinking that your fellow teachers are their to advance lives and spread knowledge, you're going to be real fucking dissapointed. I know I was.
FWIW, if I was convinced this would actually work, I would have no philosophical problem with it.
Great.
What a really hate about our system is that we should be trying this. And lots of other things too. Let's just try everything and hash out what works. Lots of little pilot studies. Hey, Amador County, the federal/state government will pay for half your education costs for five years if you do school uniforms. Hey, Butte county, same deal if you try a full scale voucher program. Modoc county, you have student pay. Solano, you have smaller class sizes. Etc.
You potential pay off of actually finding something out with an organized experimentation program like that would be so much more than the money invested. Frankly, I'd rather just try stuff than sit back and argue and guess about whether this or that detail would make the thing sink or swim.
FWIW, if I was convinced this would actually work, I would have no philosophical problem with it.
Great.
What a really hate about our system is that we should be trying this. And lots of other things too. Let's just try everything and hash out what works. Lots of little pilot studies. Hey, Amador County, the federal/state government will pay for half your education costs for five years if you do school uniforms. Hey, Butte county, same deal if you try a full scale voucher program. Modoc county, you have student pay. Solano, you have smaller class sizes. Etc.
You potential pay off of actually finding something out with an organized experimentation program like that would be so much more than the money invested. Frankly, I'd rather just try stuff than sit back and argue and guess about whether this or that detail would make the thing sink or swim.
So, how do you pick which kids get to be the guinea pigs? And if your approach fucks them up, who cleans up the mess?
FWIW, if I was convinced this would actually work, I would have no philosophical problem with it.
Great.
What a really hate about our system is that we should be trying this. And lots of other things too. Let's just try everything and hash out what works. Lots of little pilot studies. Hey, Amador County, the federal/state government will pay for half your education costs for five years if you do school uniforms. Hey, Butte county, same deal if you try a full scale voucher program. Modoc county, you have student pay. Solano, you have smaller class sizes. Etc.
You potential pay off of actually finding something out with an organized experimentation program like that would be so much more than the money invested. Frankly, I'd rather just try stuff than sit back and argue and guess about whether this or that detail would make the thing sink or swim.
So, how do you pick which kids get to be the guinea pigs? And if your approach fucks them up, who cleans up the mess?
see. It's funny, cause it's true. Specifically and pretty much generally over american history. We use minorities and poor people as the guinea pigs, under the guise of it making a bigger diffrence, and if it fails and we fuck the kids up, no one cleans it up.
pffftttt... that's not hard at all. If we spin it right, their advocates will practically beg for it.
simple.
I think it would be great, if the money didn't fall into the parents hands. Something like a debit account tied to a student id, would be ideal. Let the parents set the amount that can be taken out, or something. That's cool. But i don't know how much I want it going to them.
Well, I'm not sure what society you grew up in Will. Because the one I grew up in had no such social consensus, and while many views were present if anything Senjutsu has described the majority view I experienced more closely than you have.
I grew up in a town in which pretty much every adult had a PhD in some difficult and lengthy but not especially renumerative field like Physics, Abstract Math, Chemistry, Astronomy or (at the time) Computer Science, and pretty much every adult earned the same upper-middle class salary within about 10% to 20% of each other.
I admit that this might have colored my view of education.
Still, it's hard to imagine that I'm that far off when I see so many college kids still pursuing the same soft-science and liberal-arts degrees that more or less guarantee difficulty in finding good employment.
FWIW, if I was convinced this would actually work, I would have no philosophical problem with it.
Great.
What a really hate about our system is that we should be trying this. And lots of other things too. Let's just try everything and hash out what works. Lots of little pilot studies. Hey, Amador County, the federal/state government will pay for half your education costs for five years if you do school uniforms. Hey, Butte county, same deal if you try a full scale voucher program. Modoc county, you have student pay. Solano, you have smaller class sizes. Etc.
You potential pay off of actually finding something out with an organized experimentation program like that would be so much more than the money invested. Frankly, I'd rather just try stuff than sit back and argue and guess about whether this or that detail would make the thing sink or swim.
So, how do you pick which kids get to be the guinea pigs? And if your approach fucks them up, who cleans up the mess?
Oh for the love of Christ.
Whatever state or local political bodies there are in the areas that control this kind of thing - it varies immensely as you go from place to place. I'm sure some of them will try some stuff if they can get their taxes cut in half.
And I can't think of many things that would leave a mess. Kids go through all kinds of shit growing up and they end up just fine. The idea that almost any of the ideas out there would really screw them up is laughable.
FWIW, if I was convinced this would actually work, I would have no philosophical problem with it.
Great.
What a really hate about our system is that we should be trying this. And lots of other things too. Let's just try everything and hash out what works. Lots of little pilot studies. Hey, Amador County, the federal/state government will pay for half your education costs for five years if you do school uniforms. Hey, Butte county, same deal if you try a full scale voucher program. Modoc county, you have student pay. Solano, you have smaller class sizes. Etc.
You potential pay off of actually finding something out with an organized experimentation program like that would be so much more than the money invested. Frankly, I'd rather just try stuff than sit back and argue and guess about whether this or that detail would make the thing sink or swim.
So, how do you pick which kids get to be the guinea pigs? And if your approach fucks them up, who cleans up the mess?
see. It's funny, cause it's true. Specifically and pretty much generally over american history. We use minorities and poor people as the guinea pigs, under the guise of it making a bigger diffrence, and if it fails and we fuck the kids up, no one cleans it up.
Of course you try out the new methods on the poor and minority kids - they're the ones who are getting lost in the current system, so they're the ones who need the most immediate help. Suburban rich kids aren't the ones who need these new programs. That's like saying "Hey, before we have affirmative action for poor minorities we need to test it out for rich white males."
Posts
Statistically, any college degree translates into higher earnings potential than no college degree, from what I can remember.
I also think that's more the result of cultural pressure to go to College To Get A Degree And a Good Job, sending millions of kids with no real background of success in the hard sciences, nor any great love for Sociology or English, needing to pick something to go to college for, and the easier the better.
To be sure every major has its group of students who are there for love of the subject and money be damned, but they've never been the plurality, let alone the majority, as far as I've ever seen.
The fact that a kid doesn't see the money she's working her ass off to earn devalues your system. I think my main problem with your idea is that it's just the current idea, but cash-enhanced. You're coming at this from an angle that's saying "all education is good, no matter how it's obtained, or what the motivation is." I don't believe that. Education does have a duty to raise the average knowledge base of the community, but schools and teachers also have a personal obligation to each student that they aren't burnt-out by the system.
I wouldn't call it pitch black. But as soon as you have money in the system, teachers need to be accountable down to the last penny. My father was a high-school teacher, and taught me Japanese. I was a good student. Under your system, that would raise immediate questions. Yes, you could have discretionary marking under your system, but government bureaucracies tend not to be down on the idea of discretionary spending - it conflicts with the idea of budgets that need to be publicly accountable and perfectly balanced.
For example, what happens if a teacher has a class of dumb kids who consistently fail to meet benchmarks?
A) What happens to the excess cash? Would the department be able to brook a budget surplus of millions of dollars? Wouldn't voters rightly ask "Why are we pumping our tax dollars into a system where the only individuals who know where the money will be going are the teachers - under-qualified, inexperienced in budgeting, and not accountable public servants in the traditional sense." You'd have to re-train the current pool of teachers, financially vet them, create bodies to investigate allegations of corruption. All of this would exponentially increase the cost of your system, and devalue it's key drawcard - cost.
Switching to a standardised test system is a neat way of side-stepping those issues. It would give the department of education direct control over the budget, and would be more publicly accountable.
But of course, then you get all of the problems that go with that. Sure, students may try harder, but then teachers have even less incentive to provide students with a broad curriculum, to help students learn organically, or to try new teaching methods. It takes the worst elements of the current system, and spreads them out over the entire spectrum of schools.
No, but kids need foundational knowledge to approach reading for pleasure. In a teach-to-the-test scenario, that knowledge is hamstringed, because teachers do not teach general reading comprehension, they teach as much as the kids need to know to pass the test.
Why would the government giving a small amount of sweets to poor kids make rich kids jealous when their parents can buy sweet factories?
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
They have this thing called the millennium scholarship here. It provides 3 or 4 grand a year bursaries to university students who can demonstrate financial need, paid out of a fund set up by the Federal Government in 2000.
Conservative politicians here proposed ending the bursaries and instead dividing up the fund so that all students would get a one-time $1000 grant in their first year of studies, until the fund was completely emptied in 4 or 5 years. This would be, they claimed, more "fair".
The point being that many people have preposterous ideas of fairness. Shinto is correct. Regardless of whether or not kids who fail the means test need the small cash incentives, people would still feel they are fairly entitled to it.
And hey, maybe they'd be right in this case. Kids don't need stickers, but some will be motivated by them. Rich kids might like an extra $50 just enough to make a difference.
If there is the financial freedom to offer incentives to students regardless of parental income, then giving such benefits to all isn't really that big a deal.
However if presented with having to choose between offering cash bonuses to those from a lower-economic bracket only immediately or waiting until it can be provided for all, I think it would be admissible for the first choice to prevail.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
People are only occasionally rational, and kids even less so.
What the fuck are you talking about? Did you even read my post? I'm saying that teachers wouldn't be so hot about getting tons of money given to the students instead of themselves when they're already underpaid by many standards.
I teach. Kindergarten. I've worked with kids year round for the last six years. I adore my job and I lived in near poverty while I was going to night school an hour and a half away while volunteering at a school whenever I couldn't get substitute work (which was frequently). Most elementary education majors could give a straight fuck about the kids, I don't even know why most of them sign up for it. If you go into teaching thinking that your fellow teachers are their to advance lives and spread knowledge, you're going to be real fucking dissapointed. I know I was.
Great.
What a really hate about our system is that we should be trying this. And lots of other things too. Let's just try everything and hash out what works. Lots of little pilot studies. Hey, Amador County, the federal/state government will pay for half your education costs for five years if you do school uniforms. Hey, Butte county, same deal if you try a full scale voucher program. Modoc county, you have student pay. Solano, you have smaller class sizes. Etc.
You potential pay off of actually finding something out with an organized experimentation program like that would be so much more than the money invested. Frankly, I'd rather just try stuff than sit back and argue and guess about whether this or that detail would make the thing sink or swim.
So, how do you pick which kids get to be the guinea pigs? And if your approach fucks them up, who cleans up the mess?
see. It's funny, cause it's true. Specifically and pretty much generally over american history. We use minorities and poor people as the guinea pigs, under the guise of it making a bigger diffrence, and if it fails and we fuck the kids up, no one cleans it up.
pffftttt... that's not hard at all. If we spin it right, their advocates will practically beg for it.
simple.
I think it would be great, if the money didn't fall into the parents hands. Something like a debit account tied to a student id, would be ideal. Let the parents set the amount that can be taken out, or something. That's cool. But i don't know how much I want it going to them.
Renumerative?
Dictionary.com failed to define.
Oh for the love of Christ.
Whatever state or local political bodies there are in the areas that control this kind of thing - it varies immensely as you go from place to place. I'm sure some of them will try some stuff if they can get their taxes cut in half.
And I can't think of many things that would leave a mess. Kids go through all kinds of shit growing up and they end up just fine. The idea that almost any of the ideas out there would really screw them up is laughable.
Of course you try out the new methods on the poor and minority kids - they're the ones who are getting lost in the current system, so they're the ones who need the most immediate help. Suburban rich kids aren't the ones who need these new programs. That's like saying "Hey, before we have affirmative action for poor minorities we need to test it out for rich white males."