Hi Karen, At 11:58 03/07/02 -0700, you wrote: >Keith, I've just been listening in and occasionally commenting on FW for >about a month now, so it helps me to read summaries of previous >conversations. So I apologize in advance if I cover ground that to me is new >but worn to the rest of you. I'm sure someone will let me know, kindly, if >that is the case. > >Besides the inherent struggle between teachers unions, government >requirements and parents and the tax-paying community at large, I think the >intrusion of religious groups into educational curriculums, text book >publishing and extra curricular activities has unnecessarily added to the >problems the institution of public education faces in maintaining and >evolving desirable and attainable quality education. > >Since public education in the US comes under the direction of which party is >in the White House, it has recently become susceptible to non-educational >priorities. Too many of the empowered parents are losing their direction in >what they want of public schools and what public education is supposed to >be. Can you believe there are parents who deliberately use their children >to spy on teachers for being too secular/anti-Christian? > >Religion has no more a privileged role in schools than does the school or >government in dictating what a church teaches. They are separate and highly >important functions in a sane and healthy republic. We risk brainwashing by >trying to combine the lessons of the schools with the lessons of the >churches. That isn't healthy for society or a republic. It detracts from the >goals of education and unnecessarily wastes energy that could be better >spent. I say, let them learn science in school and prayers in church.
I, too, have been worried by the ingress of religious groups, usually of a fundamentalist nature, into state-paid education. I wrote only the other day of a City Technology College (Government-funded) in England in which the head of the science department pronounced himself to be a creationist! (This type of entryism by creationists is increasing in England, rather in the same way that the Militant Tendency [ultra left-wing] entered constituency Labour Parties in the 1980s and proceeded to tyrannise local parties.) However, I've changed my views somewhat in recent months even though this problem has been worsening in England as parental choice becomes more widespread, because I think that the variability in quality between schools can become no worse than obtains now between state-schools. And I think this would still be my view even if we were to have some really weird religious schools in the next few years brought into existence by vouchers or parent-initiated schools as in Denmark. The problem with state-schools in England is manifold -- decreasing average quality of teachers, decreasing exam standards, increasing incidence of cheating (by both students and teachers in order to maintain grades for different reasons), increasing violence in schools by both children and parents (as in America, we are now installing policemen and security guards into state schools) -- but, most importantly, in my view, is a totally changed attitude to education by an increasing proportion of the population. Whereas (as is still the case in undeveloped countries) education used to be regarded as a privilege and an opportunity (for which, 120 years ago, most working parents paid), it is now considered as a 'right' by a significant proportion of parents and children and something that doesn't have to be worked for. All children should be 'given' an education, as though it is a birthday gift. It is something that can be poured effortlessly, as it were, from the teacher to the child. And for many parents today, if their little Johnny can't read or do maths, then it is the school's fault, not in any way to do with Johnny himself or the parents. It is this lack of basic responsibility by an increasing proportion of parents which is now bedevilling the state education system. Despite all sorts of attempted reforms and changes of policy, the deterioration has been occurring for so long that I can't see how the trend can be reversed. I really do think in England at least (but probably in America) that a voucher or similar system would gradually restore parental responsibility over a period of years. There's still the matter of the brainwashing that could go on in a school run by a fundamentalist sect or a weird cult. This could well be dangerous in a traditionalist society (as was the case with the Saudi Arabian Sept 11 terrorists) but nowhere near so in my view in a modern society where peer communication and influence is so much more powerful. Even in an apparently highly indoctrinated country such as Iran, most young people tell western interviewers that they don't pay much attention to their teachers' Islamic views and want to adopt American values. (In Iran, unlike Saudi Arabia, Palestine or Pakistan, young people are not in such a deep state of despair and they actually have good hopes of achieving a western standard of life.) Yes, there would be great variability in the quality of private voucher-paid schools but the inappropriate parts of the curriculum would simply be ignored by the young themselves. >Secondly, I am as skeptical about some parents as others are about teachers. >Perhaps I am being overly critical, always recognizing the Ugly American to >suit my own sense of identity; however, in my married life I enjoyed the >company of more than a few fine people who went out of their way to >criticize public schools so that they could justify the expense of private >schools, less for their interest in education than in racial segregation and >religious purity. They had no interest in improving the public schools, >just condemning them so they could be justified as being elitist in a >society that struggles with that concept. I view the generational affects >you described as genetic IQ factors in more sociologic terms: people are >responding to the times and conditions in very human terms, that is, often >selfish and provincially. > >So I have added two other villains to the drama being played out on >educational intents and purposes. Regards, Karen Watters Cole I'm somewhat rueful about my and my childrens' experience. I got into a grammar school (a private school) as a 9 year-old child on a scholarship. Yet in my free time I still knocked around with the gang of 'ordinary' children I belonged to who still went to state schools -- playing soccer in the street and so on. By the time my own children were about to make the change into secondary education twenty or so years later, England had instituted a full-blown state system of superbly equipped comprehensive schools with a new generation of enthusiastic teachers. My wife and I chose two such for our children rather than the private schools which they could have entered on scholarships. However, my children were unhappy in their schools (and these were two of the most reputable comprehensives in the country) and, totally different from my experience, tended to be ostracised by the 'ordinary' children because they were good at academic work. (I must add that my children weren't 'swots' and both were sociable and had many friends in the music and sports world outside school -- my daughter swam for Warwickshire, and my son was UK 12-hour cycling champion and only just missed getting into the English Olympic team.) So I wished that my children had gone to the grammar schools. I'm not bitter because neither was badly affected by their experience but I'm certainly rueful that I chose their schools for ideological reasons. The important point for present discussion, however, is not whether their schools were better or worse than the school I went to -- it is that, since then, my childrens' state schools have much deteriorated in performance whereas my old grammar school (much less well endowed than most private schools) has much the same standards as previously with a high proportion of its students still getting into the best universities. Keith ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________
