Reader's Favorites
Media Casualties Mount

Administration Split On Europe Invasion

Administration In Crisis Over Burgeoning Quagmire

Congress Concerned About Diversion From War On Japan

Pot, Kettle On Line Two...

Allies Seize Paris

The Natural

Gore Book Sales Tank, Supporters Claim Unfair Tactics

Satan Files Lack Of Defamation Suit

Why This Blog Bores People With Space Stuff

A New Beginning

My Hit Parade
Instapundit (Glenn Reynolds)
Tim Blair
James Lileks Bleats
Virginia Postrel
Kausfiles
Winds Of Change (Joe Katzman)
Little Green Footballs (Charles Johnson)
Samizdata
Eject Eject Eject (Bill Whittle)

Space
Alan Boyle (MSNBC)
Space Politics (Jeff Foust)
Space Transport News (Clark Lindsey)
NASA Watch
NASA Space Flight
Hobby Space
A Voyage To Arcturus (Jay Manifold)
Dispatches From The Final Frontier (Michael Belfiore)
Personal Spaceflight (Jeff Foust)
Mars Blog
The Flame Trench (Florida Today)
Space Cynic
Rocket Forge (Michael Mealing)
COTS Watch (Michael Mealing)
Curmudgeon's Corner (Mark Whittington)
Selenian Boondocks
Tales of the Heliosphere
Out Of The Cradle
Space For Commerce (Brian Dunbar)
True Anomaly
Kevin Parkin
The Speculist (Phil Bowermaster)
Spacecraft (Chris Hall)
Space Pragmatism (Dan Schrimpsher)
Eternal Golden Braid (Fred Kiesche)
Carried Away (Dan Schmelzer)
Laughing Wolf (C. Blake Powers)
Chair Force Engineer (Air Force Procurement)
Spacearium
Saturn Follies
JesusPhreaks (Scott Bell)

Biting Commentary about Infinity, and Beyond!

« Why This Plan? | Main | More Idiocy From The Hollywood Studios »

Making A Real Difference

One of my biggest concerns about our nation is the educational system, but I rarely blog about it, because I find the problem so intractable and depressing that I don't know what to do about it. But Joanne Jacobs has devoted much of her (at least recent) life to the subject, and she has a new book out. Go ye forth and buy it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at November 09, 2005 03:59 PM

Comments

Well...

comments like these,

Unlike the formulaic, for-profit charter schools of businessmen like Chris Whittle (see the review of Crash Course in PW, Aug. 29), DCP is enthusiastically experimental.

are hardly what one would call reassuring.

The solution your are looking for, of course, is to get government out of education all together.

One also wonders just how many of these critics of "for-profit" education went to the Ivys?

There is scarcely a bigger business than education in this country, the tax status of the institutions involved notwithstanding, and the Ivys reap the lion share of the money in the markets that they serve. The Ivys also push the silly notion that educaction is anything other than a good that some purchases. Hypocrites all.

I will grant you that there is all to much of "euthsiactic experimentation," that is just the the problem.

Parents would be better served to be given the ability to opt out of the public system altogether.

Competition is the only way to sort this mess out.

Posted by at November 9, 2005 04:29 PM

The only thing we've proven about the public education system in America is that throwing more money into it doesn't work. Competition is a good thing for growth within the system, but too much and you have the same thing you have now, schools teaching the tests. I am on constsnt guard as well, for the messages that my kids get in school, for instance, my step-son had an assignment to proof read (for sentence structure) an article about how Clinton was one of our best presidents ever. The principle of the school doesn't like me very much, because I complained, loudly. I told him I didn't care if the article was about Bush, Clinton, Taft, or Jefferson...I don't want the school to teach opinion. He said, "It's just a proof-reading excercise." Uh-huh. I told him, "Remember how you always say that children are like sponges to information around them. You have to be careful what you present." He finally agreed. Now my other kids are starting school....I will be on my guard.

Posted by Mac at November 10, 2005 05:35 AM

Hey Rand, the cure is simple...get the parents involved. Now keep in mind, that's definitaly NOT easy, but it is the cure. Be active in your child's education and slowly the problem will be fixed as your children will be active in THEIR children's educations. Oh, and have the government take some of the mounds of money they've thrown at schools to pay stay-at-home moms and dads for their services in educating children. My wife stays at home because we feel the children need one of us there. Its worth at least 20 bucks an hour IMHO.

Posted by Mac at November 10, 2005 08:58 AM

When I worked as a reporter for the local news, I attended a lot of school board meetings. The single most important thing anyone can do to improve the schools is Get Involved. The school superintendent said it, the principals said it, the teachers said it. They were all tired of being parents and teachers.
Granted the system in California is a disaster, but at the local level the teachers are crying for help from the parents. What it's like in the big cities I don't know, but in Mojave (pop ~3,500) if the parents get involved, the student improves to the point where we send them on full scholarships to places like MIT and Cal Tech.

Posted by Aleta at November 10, 2005 01:34 PM

Didn't Hyman Rickover write some books on improving the school system, in the 1950s!?!?!?!

I'd like to read them.

Posted by at November 10, 2005 09:01 PM

See here is something about Rickover's educational stuff:

http://www.selu.edu/Academics/Faculty/nadams/educ692/Rickover.html

Wasn't he a real expert at putting together training programs?

Posted by at November 10, 2005 09:29 PM

Mac,
to quote " I didn't care if the article was about Bush, Clinton, Taft, or Jefferson...I don't want the school to teach opinion"

well, in one aspect, this is a perfect example of how YOU are part of the problem, causing the decreasing quality of textbooks.

When authors and teachers have to cut out all "opinions" then the text becomes boring pap.
You may want to check out Diane Ravitch's book "The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn"

and btw, as far as Clinton goes, I agree with this doggy

Posted by jayrtfm at November 10, 2005 09:49 PM

The forward to Rickover's "Education and Freedom" is by journalist Edward R. Murrow who states on the back book flap in part: "Admiral Rickover is no theoretical pedagogue...He found the inadequacy of our schools when he recruited his staff. With the opening of the atomic era he himself went in for an intensive education in nuclear physics and engineering and inspired his closest associates to join him. Then, when he was assigned to build the first nuclear power plant for naval use, he had to create a working force of highly educated specielists...He discovered that such men were hard to come by. American education was not supplying them tailor-made for the exacting new duties...Here is a remarkable book, packed with salient facts, dictated from experience and inspired by wisdom. He says that we must train better scientists and technicians, but also more responsible men. He has no specielist's contempt for the humanities. Basically what he wants is to see intelligence and the disciplined mind become respectable. He knows that only if they do will we have a chance to hold our own in the demanding years before us."

Posted by at November 10, 2005 10:11 PM

What kinds of retards wrote this "Movable Type" thing? I could not use the word "S P E C I A L I S T" in the past post because a substring of this word contains the name of a male enhancement drug. Don't the authors of "Movable Type" know how to anchor regular expressions?

Posted by at November 10, 2005 10:13 PM

well, in one aspect, this is a perfect example of how YOU are part of the problem, causing the decreasing quality of textbooks.

I can see how that can be seen that way, but I respectfully disagree. Textbook quality can be spot-on perfect without opinion creeping in. Unfortunately, just like the discussion over space, education is drowning in politics. Give my children textbooks that are filled with FACTS. Don't wash the facts. Don't analyze the facts. Just print them. As for proofreading excercises like my step-son had, use excerpts from literary works with permission to alter slightly for those types of excercises. One big challenge for our children these days is teaching them to draw their own conclusions instead of automatically repeating the opinions of their parents or schools. Call me an alarmist, but political indoctrination starts in grade school. My 5 yr old came home the other day and asked me what Global Warming was. I just can't wait for the day I have to march into the school for the Intelligent Design fight.

Posted by Mac at November 11, 2005 06:00 AM

Also, don't confuse opinions with propaganda.

Posted by Karl Hallowell at November 11, 2005 10:06 AM

Sometimes I think they might be one and the same at some schools. I'm just keeping an eye out and my nose in their business...kids...and school :)

Posted by Mac at November 11, 2005 11:23 AM


Post a comment

Name:


Email Address:


URL:


Comments:


Remember info?