On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 8:10 PM, Alex Belits <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Eben Eliason wrote:
>> For what it's worth, I would be careful to portray "the low-achievers" >> and "the brightest" as opposites. As I note below, I frequently find >> that some of the brightest are also some of the low-achievers, due to >> certain aspects of the educational system. This doesn't change your >> point, of course, which is noted. It simply means that the way we go >> about raising the overall educational level might not be as >> straightforward as many think. I know. I was being overly polite, to the point of being wrong. I hate it when others do that, and ought not do that myself. Here we go, the rude version: "the dumb kids (future muggers)" > What is important, higher overall education level ALWAYS benefits society > given other equal conditions, and lower overall educational level ALWAYS > hurts it. > > Ex #1: The above mentioned Republicans (or to be more precise, > Social Conservatives that in US are represented by Republican Party) > who are mostly supported by either rich or ignorant. I hadn't thought of myself as being rich, but OK. Thanks. Do remember that No Child Left Behind is actually working. Prior to that, it was very easy for a school to simply ignore the education of uncooperative and dumb kids. The kids got nothing more than bad babysitting. I hope you don't find it wrong or unbelivable that the Republican Party actually helps those who are doing badly. > Why there ARE tests that are not a part of the teaching process > in the first place? US turns everything into some kind of > adversarial system where government acts as both public schools' > owner and adversary that challenges schools with tests instead > of co-operating with them, thus basically not trusting its own > employees to do their job, and doing it through students for whom > both government and teachers are supposed to be figures of authority. It's a mess, mainly because of the teacher's union. You can't fire or lay off the worst teachers; you can only fire or lay off the ones with the least seniority. You can't offer more money to specialist teachers that are in high demand; an English or gym teacher gets the same as a chemistry or physics teacher. This is much of the reason why dumping money on the problem is rarely effective; it just goes to the same people. _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel