Education
Now is the part where I talk (meaning type, keyboard,
or whatever you want to call it) about education, more specifically the
educational system. Is the status quo in education effective? Are teachers
actually overpaid? How should schools be funded (what is the most ethical way
to fund them)? What roles should the schools actually have (hint it is not
secondary parent)? In no particular order, I will get this section
started
Educational Funding
This is the
part where I alienate every potential liberal who might be reading (you know all
zero of them). How should education be funded? The current method of federal
government money, state money, and local money (most as a tax on property value)
is not quite efficient. I do not believe that the schools should be funded by
the federal government or state government directly at all (more on this in the
next little section). My view is that schools should be funded through
educational vouchers at the state level. That should be the only direct funding
given to schools (no levies or any other funding sources, unless you want a
baseline level of funding for every school regardless of affiliation). You may
ask yourself if every school deserves to get the same level of funding – my
answer would be a definitive no. Schools in more affluent areas that pay higher
property taxes/levies deserve better schools. They should not be used in a
redistributive way. Will this create have and have not schools and areas? Yes,
and that is the most fair way. This would essentially spell the end of the
public school system.
So now that I have stated that schools should not
operate in their current sense, how should they be operated? Every school
should be operated like an individual business entity. To be fair, maybe there
could be some form of association of individual schools (like the current public
school districts) to try and cut down or handle administrative overhead and
potentially lead to volume purchase discounts. Schools would get their funding
not directly through levies or state and local monies, but through tuition.
Vouchers would be for any school, regardless of affiliation (religious or
otherwise). This is kind of like a college model (public colleges currently
being a more subsidized form of it anyway). Schools should be allowed to be for
profit if they so chose. I am also advocating that different schools could
charge higher tuitions (including “books”) if they choose. A school will
succeed or fail based off of the success of the school at educating students and
student success. School is a service industry; it is about time they remembered
that (the customers in basic education being the parents/guardians). There will
not be a true level playing field, but going out of your way to force equality
could hurt the schools that would be the most effective and innovative.
Non-productive uses of resources such as things like bussing to increase
diversity are an unproductive usage of money.
Unions are the Enemy
Talking about free market competition is a nice segue
into my next subarea: unions. You can’t talk about school funding without
acknowledging that a significant portion of that funding will go directly into
the teachers’ pockets (in the form of salary and usually an excellent benefits
package). The US has one of the highest per capita expenditures on education,
but does not achieve great results. One of the major problems is the union
dynamic. Unions by their very nature restrict employment (through higher wages
and benefits). What you see in education is essentially a trade union scenario
where the teachers have to be licensed. This licensing does not necessarily
impact or reflect the skill level of the teacher, but is an added cost to
becoming a teacher. I am not saying teachers are totally non-skilled workers,
but they are not super-skilled workers either. The unions also prevent and
inhibit changes that need to be made for the betterment of the system as a
whole. Unions calling for smaller class sizes and demanding more money are
contradictory demands. That is essentially saying that the teacher wants more
pay for less work.
Schools as a Second Family and Moral Imparter
There are teachers out there who believe it is their
duty to instill a sense of morals (or a moral code) in the students. That is
the role of the parent and should not be a part of government indoctrination.
True, some parents are not living up to their duty of instilling a moral code in
their children, but that does not mean that the responsibility should be thrust
upon the state. Let’s face it, education essentially is a form of
indoctrination, imparting “knowledge” to the students that the government (or
whoever controls the school system) want the students to believe. A school and
its teachers are not the secondary family for the student. Morals should be
taught at home, not at school. Sometimes I find myself thinking that maybe that
is the end game for education – the state taking the children from the parents
and raising them in indoctrination camps (like schools) and setting their belief
systems so they become easier to control and manipulate. I don’t fully believe
it as it sounds too much like a conspiracy theory, but at times it appears that
the state (through the school system) does things that appear to move in that
direction. Curriculum and the way it are handled do help shape children’s
world views (unfortunately), too bad so much of it is slanted towards the
liberal view of history and philosophy.
So What Should the Role of Schools Be?
I keep hearing from my brother (who is not a fan of the
school system) that the school system in the United States is based off of the
Prussian system designed to promote obedience to the government. Basically you
are learning what the government wants to teach you, but there is some input
from parents (where PTAs and other mechanisms exist). Some people believe that
the purpose of schools in the US is to get the student ready to be a mindless
drone at a boring repetitive job (like manufacturing assembly lines). So the
role of schools really should be about providing a minimum level of knowledge
that is shared (at least across the region). Unfortunately, much of this
knowledge is subjective (especially history). In reality, the role of schools
should be to prepare the student for success in the real world (after school)
and employers should have input in the curriculum so that the graduate is better
prepared for what they will be doing.
Sex Ed?
So I said that the schools should not impart the
government’s moral values on the students. Here is a wrinkle (aren’t there
always at least a couple) – sex education. In some ways this is a moral issue
that should be handled by the parents. Unfortunately, for parents this is
difficult to discuss. Maybe this is due to the culture (and the culture’s sense
of repression) – nudity and sex are things veiled in secrecy. In many European
countries, the views and discussions of sexuality come easier (the cultures are
just that much more open and sex is less taboo to discuss). So the government,
seeing this as a public health and economic issue added the curriculum. It is
true that teen pregnancy can be a costly social and economic problem (mainly
what sex ed is about).
However, in this instance, the conservative moral
approach is not the best one. Showing basic anatomy and then preaching
abstinence is a flawed approach. The approach they tried to use when I was in
school was the scare approach – talking mostly about STDs and pregnancy. If
they did say anything positive about sex it involved it being part of a loving
committed relationship (especially marriage). Students in their teenage years
are trying to find themselves and being somewhat controlled by their hormones.
It is morals/control vs natural impulses. Even the best behaved teenager is
susceptible to temptation and experimentation. It is better for the student to
know about how to practically use birth control when the situation arises than
to be told “don’t do it”. The best way to do that is to make it part of their
routine (repetition). Putting a condom on a banana (or another analog) is not
the same as learning to put it on the real thing. This sounds creepy to me, but
the student should know how to use condoms (at least) the correct way (and there
should be some objective judgment of it to ensure the student did it
correctly). Assume the student will be having sex and adjust accordingly.
There should also be other acts (such as self gratification) covered. There is
a problem of thinking of sex as somehow dirty and immoral, rather than a natural
part of life (that can be enjoyable).
Are Schools Really Effective?
Of course, I give a question that does not have a
total Boolean answer. In some ways, schools are effective. The literacy rate
of the US is fairly high, and that would not have been the case without
compulsory education. I guess you learn some things at school that are useful –
like mathematics, reading, writing (to some extent – though who really cares
what a gerund is or diagramming sentences). Schools say that they teach
critical thinking skills. However, the way schools go over things repeatedly is
a little bit of a disincentive to actually learn. I know they believe you learn
by rote and repetition (and maybe you do), but that should not constitute most
of what schooling is. That is assuming that the student isn’t bored into apathy
by a non-interesting lecture. Schools also give student too little intellectual
credit – it seems they spend the majority of the time rehashing things the
student was already taught. It also appears that schools are designed for the
least capable students at the expense of the rest. There are many more
successful countries that do not assign homework. There is a debate whether or
not homework is an effective learning technique or just mindless busywork.
After a while, you just learn that you only need to focus on what you need to
pass the test they give you. Is that really how you want schools to educate the
population?
There is another wrinkle once you get into college.
College is supposed to prepare the student for a successful career. At least
when I went to college, most of the time was devoted to teaching theory. I
guess it is important to know, however once you graduate it seems to be less
important to know what they teach. There is not enough hands-on practical
teaching through simulated or real experience at the college level (I’ll admit I
was not the best student, though I was really good at multiple choice tests).
Once you get into the real world (and yes kids, it is in your best interest to
avoid that for as long as possible), things do not exactly work the way you
thought they would in school (or they led you to believe). Schools tell you
that if you work hard and study, somehow you will be successful. Most of the
entry-level jobs I have seen are about giving grunt work to the graduate. Then
after awhile it doesn’t seem like knowing the theories you learned in college
seem to amount for anything. In most cases you are just manipulating data with
a computer program and are trained on the job to do what you need to.
Education Reform Needed
The public school system is a colossal money pit.
There is no doubt that the educational system needs to be reformed, but it will
not be easy. The stakeholders being: the students, the parents, the teachers
and the employers. How the schools are reformed will likely be a compromise (if
the unions allow it to happen). Teachers are overpaid: they get good benefits,
do not work as many days as many professions and get paid for non-productive
work activity like lesson planning. On a per hour basis, teachers are very well
compensated. Unfortunately, teachers and their unions are taking money out of
the educational process and putting it in their own pockets. Programs like “No
Child Left Behind” are counterproductive (though well meaning), especially if a
significant amount of instruction time is reallocated to such worthless
endeavors as test taking skills. Furthermore, the quality of education can be
improved through competition if public funding is transferred into the form of
school vouchers – using the free market to improve the educational experience
and eliminate the schools that are not successful. Every school should be a
private school. The current school year is largely based off of an agrarian
society (and its associated needs). That no longer needs to be the case.
Personally, I would extend the school year to at least 220 days (reconfiguring
the breaks in the schedule, so the student is less likely to forget what they
learned in overly long breaks). This seems to be the one service area where the
success of the service doesn’t seem to matter. Why should the parents and
children accept the bare legal minimum from their schools?
Original Post Date: 03/17/11
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