Why Have School?

Go to a part of the world where there is no school, or where part of the population (women, usually) are forbidden from learning and you might get a different answer.

I know as well as anyone here that our schools are screwed up in a lot of ways, that they are to some degree indoctrination and babysitting  factories. My dad was a teacher too, so I am aware not just of the pressures kids are under, but also teachers. He had a student stand up in his class one day and say "you can't fail me because my parents will just go to the principal and make you pass me".

When our kids first went in I considered it an open question whether we would keep them in, or try to home school. From what I have seen so far, I am pleased with our school, and I feel pretty fortunate that they are in a relatively good one. For one thing the school seems to do as much to promote social skills as it does teaching subjects - things like pairing older kids as mentors for younger kids, teaching values of respect for one another, and looking out for kids who are displaying anger, frustration, and other danger signs.

It's not perfect, and I know all schools are not like that, but I think it is good start, and it is better than having some of those kids who are having problems isolated with just their family.

(edit)

just found this:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/09/07/statscan-.html 

 @ milo204

Agreed. I think a big part of the problem is that the situation can be radically different from division to division, school to school, and even class to class.

Believe me I am aware of the problem, because I went into this experience as a sceptic, and I am still prepared to pull my kids if they run into situations like some I have heard and seen. We have certainly run into some social and political differences, but frankly I think some of that is healthy.

So far as what goes on between the teachers, our children, and us though, I have no complaints. Quite the opposite, actually. I find the teachers we have had have made an effort to keep us involved in their education and let our children go in the directions they want.

If we want to talk about indoctrination, my grandmother had to go down to the school to stop them from forcing my father to write with his right hand. When I was in elementary school we had to line up and march into class, and they weren't shy about giving a stick across the knuckles, right in class.

School politics is local politics, and a lot of change means not just going to the Ministry of Education, but being prepared to let parents, teachers, principals, and the school board know how you feel (even though I know there are plenty of brick walls to run into there).

Education in modern society is like so many things - a potentially useful thing that the capitalists (NWO-neocons-wouldbe kings call em what you will) have taken over and twisted to their own ends, taking the good true education functions, such as reading and writing and some basic science knowledge, history etc, and woven it into a framework in which such useful education becomes secondary to the primary function - turning out passive citizen-consumer-workers who are used to taking orders from someone in authority and don't ask any hard questions, and do not have any knowledge of a small handful of very important things. Which is why the analogy of capitalism as a cancer on our society is so apt- that's exactly what it is, in so many ways - you could say the same about 'our' governments, which have been surreptitiously taken over and turned against us. If anyone talking here hasn't read a book by a guy called John Taylor Gatto called The Underground History of American Education -  they might find it interesting. It's free online - http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm .

siamdave wrote:

 Education in modern society is like so many things - a potentially useful thing that the capitalists (NWO-neocons-wouldbe kings call em what you will) have taken over and twisted to their own ends, taking the good true education functions, such as reading and writing and some basic science knowledge, history etc, and woven it into a framework in which such useful education becomes secondary to the primary function - turning out passive citizen-consumer-workers who are used to taking orders from someone in authority and don't ask any hard questions, and do not have any knowledge of a small handful of very important things.

Bold added. I disagree, siamdave. Nothing was taken over, nothing was twisted. Those values have always been the role of public education.

In the Ontario context, as in my links above, both the purpose and the meaning of schooling children and young people was clear from the outset. The ideal that we may have about the value of public education is that, an ideal. It's never been practiced.

And history? Really? What did all of us who went through the Canadian public school system learn about Canada's history? Pack of lies, that's what we learned.

Society needs to reproduce itself, and to teach the value of an inequitable society to the new generations. The education system plays that role just fine.

siamdave, I think we're agreeing. Sorry to have framed my response in a disagreeing tone.

Maysie wrote:

siamdave, I think we're agreeing. Sorry to have framed my response in a disagreeing tone.

- a random act of civility on babble! - very nice, and thank you, insofar as an apology was hardly necessary, but it was big of you to do it - that is one of the things that makes actual democratic discussion work. No problem, by the way, I have been known to be a bit chippy myself. sans later apology too.

The public school system is designed to seperate the cream, "the cream will rise to the top". The public school system has some benefits but yet it has the ability to stifle creativity in many individuals.  People are not all the same in the way that they learn, but the school system is designed to mass produce a certain outcome. If you don't fit the mold you will have problems and you will learn something about yourself that no one should,  "your not good enough". 

The public school system is all about preparing people for the work world and thats where it falls short. The education system should be modified to instruct things like problem solving skills, but  that would go against the grain of what the business world would require. Too many people thinking about fixing things would become a thorn in the side of those who wish to manage.

milo204 wrote:

  "but the kids still have to put up with peer pressure, as children surely do not much care for those among them who do not conform to the pack standards - not so unlike they will be when they are adults ...."

i think this is considered another very important function of schools right now.  Although there are strides being made against peer pressure, bullying and the like, school still serves to prep kids to the idea that you are rewarded for conforming and trying to fit in, doing whatever ridiculous tasks are asked of you by authority, and punished for doing anything else.

You cite two different problems there. One is peer pressure: the demand of kids that other kids be just like them - or else. The other is the demand by 'authority' - by which i assume you mean teachers and principals - to do what the kids is told - or else. I don't suppose those are similar demands, or similarly motivated. So the kid being subjected to those demands must be pulled in opposite directions. Unenviable.

Anti-bullying efforts by administration have not been notably successful, as far as i know. And bullying is only the most obvious, not the most effective or pervasive, form of peer pressure. What do you propose to do about it that would work better? That would allow the non-conformist student greater freedom and security?

As for authority, you might find that a lot of teachers don't feel they have enough. They can reward a compliant student with high marks and peraise, but how, exactly, can they punish a student for refusing to do the assigned task? Low marks and censure - but the kid who doesn't care about his work doesn't care about that, either. Teachers have no other recourse. They can neither disciple nor throw a disruptive student out of the classroom.

What would be your alternative to 'ridiculous' tasks? What would work better than reward and punishment to enhance student performance? Or is poor performance a good thing? In which case, how do you tell whether they've learned the subject? Should they learn the subject at all? If not, where should kids be all day instead of school?

It's a complicated problem, isn't it?

 - on Green Island, we have different ways of doing most things, including education - for those with a rainy day and looking for something better - Green Island Chap 22 The Hunter River School http://www.rudemacedon.ca/greenisland/ex/gw22a.html

ElizaQ,

Do you know the rules governing a teacher's use of authority? It's mostly paperwork. You can't touch them, can't yell at them, can't ridicule them, can't make them stand in the corner, can't even suspend them without a formal trial. Kids over 6 are not a bit intimidated by teachers. Kids over 13 often threaten teachers with physical violence. Depending on the school district - different threats apply in upscale schools ("My father will sue your ass...!") While the peer pressure is completely outside of the administration's - and adult society's - control, unregulated; can use all forms of intimidation, force and humiliation learned from popular entertainment.

Also, different outcomes are desired by the adult hierarchy (order, neatness, high SAT scores) and the peer community (gang and/or ethnic unity, or just some kind of fashion instituted by un-grown-up adults outside the education system: entertainers, usually). While adult society is certainly responsible for both the culture and the methods teenagers take on as their own, adults have little or no control over how these things manifest in the school setting.

And, of course, none of that begins to answer the question: What do you suggest as an alternative?

ElizaQ wrote:

..... My main point was that adults have these sorts of patterns and power dynamics in social groups as well.   Kids aren't doing anything a whole lot different then what happens in the adult world. ...

....I just think that it's important to recognize that what kids are doing in regards to things like peer pressure and other social power dynamics within the peer group are just the kid version of what happens in the broader 'adult' world. 

Yes, of course. Humans come into the world with nothing - no knowledge, no skills, no power, no physical capability, even to survive. So, of course they depend on adults, are house-trained and socialized by adults; eventually emulate adults. That's biology.  When societies are stable, it all works pretty well - a bit of rebellion here, some allowances there, some established mechanism for coping with intra- and inter-generational friction.

Right at this moment in our history, we have a problem of changing direction. The system we've been supporting the last half dozen generations is failing: no longer serving the needs of the population. One symptom of system failure is increased internal conflict; a struggle among various factions for supremacy. Unfortunately, another symptom of the system going bad (before its failure became evident) was an increasing acceptance - indeed, social approval for - adults who refused to grow up. Like pop stars and sport stars and tv stars: people who are unaccountably rewarded for playing. (There is a whole dynamic behind that, how cultures in decline invest more and more in mass entertainment, but never mind for the moment.) Those immature adults become very accessible, very attractive role models for the young.  Another symptom is decreasiong self-control and increasing emotionalism - which leads to violence - throughout society, and is especially seductive for young males. (Which is its purpose, and that's another factor in the breaking down of the social order.)

Anyway, you see what i'm driving at. Society is a complicated organism, in which parents, teachers and students are all parts, none with any real power to change the course of the society's history. Not by themselves. 

If we could figure out where we want society to go, instead of where it's going now, (which is to hell in a handcart.... imo)  then we could aim the various components of the educational process in that direction. And "we" could do that, because parents and teachers, schol trustees and administrators are all capable of cummunicating, and i think all - okay, most - do have the children's welfare at heart.

When?

I mean, before you can participate in a democratic process, don't you need to know what democracy is? So, at what age, and by what method, do we teach this?

We could mash this thread up with the "Asians/University" thread for a win:  pay the lazy, party-hearty Canadian students to study.

Rich Gibson,

John Taylor Gatto,

Bowles and Gintis,

Paulo Friere,

Howard Gardner,

the BCTF website,

there are plenty of resources for lefties to look at educational issues.

The political right NOWADAYS is mostly focused on cutting funding to education, privatizing it, testing students to the point that they're driven out of schools, attacking teachers and their unions, carrying out the Shock Doctrine - such as in New Orleans after the hurricane - with such terrible consequences, assisting corporations in their colonization of classrooms, decreasing public space in general, and so on.

When the Nazis established a puppet regime in France in World War II, almost the first thing this regime did was to attack French teachers. "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose". Hatred of educators has always been a hallmark of the political right. This applies particularly to hatred of educators that put the interests of children first.

And most do.

It was only really with the humiliation of watching Soviet spacecraft and cosmonauts blasting off into space ahead of them that the USA put so much attention into scientific education for the cold war purposes that that education was put to.

The grim reality of a pillaged educational system, as in the USA, is the awful future that awaits our own educational systems here in Canada if we don't fight back and defend this ... one of our most sacred of all democratic institutions.

absentia wrote:

What would be your alternative to 'ridiculous' tasks? What would work better than reward and punishment to enhance student performance? Or is poor performance a good thing? In which case, how do you tell whether they've learned the subject? Should they learn the subject at all? If not, where should kids be all day instead of school?

It's a complicated problem, isn't it?

Oh darn, another thread I missed earlier but I can't help but comment as I have mentioned before on Babble my opinion is the whole school system needs to be bombed and started over again.

First don't measure student performance.  Just teach or provide opportunity to learn.  If the child is not learning then it should be examined why.   You don't have to measure on a scale to see how much percentage a child has learned to know if there is a problem.  Look at it, is it the subject, is it the teacher, the home environment, the peers, the way it is being taught.  Are there behaviour issues that need to be addressed before a child is taught the skill or skills (trying to teach a child that says no is like trying to feed an anorexic person - they want that control you can't make me learn, you can't make me eat).  Then come up with a solution.

Second relax the damn standards.  Kids have to go into grade one reading or else they flunk term one (oh sorry, it is a progress report for term one now, likely because the standards are so high they didn't want to give grades for the first term).  My mother was a primary teacher.  I learned to read at 3, my brother was 7.  Some kids just aren't ready at a certain stage.  If they are ready then teach or expose, if they are not have realistic expectations of when they should be doing something before deciding it is a problem.

How do you know if kids have learned?  Because they can do, they can apply their knowledge.  You don't need to grade or measure or pick out specific tasks that a child does when they are 7 and can pick up a book and read it.  Look they can read.  Prior to the final act when kids struggle you know it, you can see it when they are trying to do something and just can't.  When they are ready to learn something and it just isn't coming to them.  They get frustrated, upset, they keep trying and it's not working.  Any subject can be brought forth in something of interest.  Someone really likes Italy.  So plan a trip.  Have them read about places to visit (reading, history), figure out a timetable to visit places (time, measurement, distance).  Figure out what they need that will be different (social studies).  The list can go on.  After they have learned about Italy sit and talk with them, ask them about the different aspects and how they came to their conclusions.  You will see relatively quickly what they understood and what they didn't.  Even better go on the trip with them.  If there are parts they don't want to do or parts that are not enjoyable either change it to make it enjoyable figure out why and you will see where they are stuck.

When someone is stuck it is not a bad thing, as the school system likes to point out with it's grades and pass fail system.  When someone is stuck it is an opportunity to problem solve, for the teacher, the parent and the child to figure out what to do next.

The last statement is about "enhanced" performance.  Why is what is good enough for the kid not good enough.  Why do we have to make them better?  Some years I learned absolutely nothing.  Other years I learned 2-3 years worth of stuff.  Such is the ebb and flow of life.  My child right now is 6 months old.  He is not crawling, he is not rolling over, he hates tummy time.  He sits okay but not as well as other babies and up until two weeks ago could have cared less about toys though other babies his age were playing with toys ages ago.  I do not care, I am not worried.  Even though these are the building blocks of all learning and everything he will learn is going to be based on what he picks up in the next 2-3 years I don't care.  He is walking like a 10-12 month old right now (ie hanging onto people), he is extremely social and can communicate better than a lot of 2 year olds.  I am not overjoyed at his enhanced learning in these areas just as I am not concerned about the areas he is behind in.  He is learning at his own level.  He is happy, he is smart and he is showing no signs of frustration, anger or upset in the learning process.  I am fairly well versed in development (as teachers should be) so if there is a serious problem I would spot it or if there were issues that he was experiencing I would spot it.  I work with kids with special needs and I hear time and time again, I just knew that something was wrong.  I just knew in my gut.  People have got to learn to trust not only their gut when they know something is wrong but their gut when they know something is right.  So many parents are so worried about if there kid is measuring up, if they are as good or better than other people's kids.  They lose focus on if their kid is okay because they are so focused on if their kid is another kids okay.  Why is there such an emphasis on getting better, being better.  Oh yeah because people have been indoctrinated into thinking that people are only valuable when they do better than what they have done before or others have done.  And they are only valuable when they do good on one scale that all kids are compared with when there should be a hundred scales or a thousand.  Or none at all.

People lose the forest through the trees.  These things that the kids are learning are not tasks in and of themselves, they are building blocks of much larger tasks.  Instead of teaching a task and being so focused on learning the task in one specific way the focus should be on the entire task.  How is this student going to get to the larger task.  I don't care if a child learns to read with phonics, with site words, with animated alphabet.  It is the reading that is the final task.  People get caught up with, well he can't sound out a word.  Well he can sight read 1,000 words maybe he doesn't need to sound them out anymore because he can take words he knows and just put them together.  Oh but we would like him to sound out words.  Focus on the goal and realize that the smaller tasks may help lead them to the larger goal or they may not.

Kids learn, just expose them to the information and they naturally learn but people think kids have to be tested to make sure they are learning the right things in the right way in the right order in a right amount of time.  All beliefs passed to us through the school system.

According to Mel Hurtig's 1990s book, Pay the Rent or Feed the Kids, there are reasons why kids from better off families have a head start on reading and writing and overall development by as early as kindergarten. Their parents are able to afford to surround them with stimulating environments and provide them with learning experiences most kids in poor families tend not to have. It could be the difference between having access to reading and writing materials, or visiting an outdoor gardens or a zoo. For some kids their first real learning experiences don't begin until kindergarten instead of pre-school or a family vacation or whatever. It's all about life chances as Marx described and as Malcolm Gladwell tells people today.

Snert wrote:

We could mash this thread up with the "Asians/University" thread for a win:  pay the lazy, party-hearty Canadian students to study.

Totally disgusting Snert.  What is with these snipes at the poor?  Chris Spence has a decent idea, why don't you critique that?

I'll go, but not before taking a quick moment to clarify:  my comment about "lazy" students had NOTHING to do with the poor, and everything to do with the overall tone of the thread I referenced, in which posters were suggesting that non-Asian students just needed to pull themselves by their bootstraps.  I'd clarify with regard to making fun of racism too, but I honestly have no idea where that's even coming from.

School...feh!

I suffered through K to 8 showing up most days to recieve an absolutely substandard education from a bunch of singularly unpleasant nuns and their badly underpaid and bitter minions.  That's where I learned to despise school.  In high school I was in 9 twice and 10 three times without ever actually passing grade 10.  By the end I was truely phobic and rarely showed up.

Got a high school equivelency in a one semester course at a community college, which qualified me for university, where I eventually graduated with reasonably respectable marks, thus demonstrating IMHO that high school was a complete waste of time.  For me education was always a pretty autodidactic process, totally unrelated to school.

I'm glad to see that you did not let school get in the way of your education oldgoat.

One of the greatest challenges of the school system is that students have very unequal educations during the first five years of their lives. The starting line is certainly staggered.

Absentia, who was speaking of abolishing public education and providing an alternative? I certainly wasn't.

Caissa wrote:

Absentia, who was speaking of abolishing public education and providing an alternative? I certainly wasn't.

I didn't mean to imply that you had.

Refuge said blow it up and start over - which has some merit, imo. And the thread title suggests something very like. But no practical alternative has been brought forward.

If we want to get into misnomers and paradoxes, I would say that a formula for free thinking is as good a contradiction in terms as there is. And it is doubly-contradictory because it assumes there is one way of learning.

There are alternative methods out there, and alternative-thinkers within the system, so I don't think it is a matter of re-inventing the whole thing . Neither do I expect though, that a person is going to learn to really think in school, and speaking personally, I probably learned more from school through its bad examples than from its good examples, which is itself a good form of education (it is certainly more memorable).

Frankly, I'd be satisfied if schools were successful in providing everyone with basic literacy and other subjects, and keeping an eye on people's social skills, and possibly having the resources on hand for those who want to do more (although we do have libraries and other places for that).

@ N. Beltov

My point was that there are progressive alternatives and ideas out there, so it is not as if we need to reinvent something new.

I understand what you are saying, and agree with part of it. But it has nothing to do with what I was talking about - except that I think there are limits to what can be provided in a school environment.

I am not sure why you implied that I might be referring to religious schools, but you are quite mistaken.

(edit)

To be clear, when I mentioned social skills I was talking about an initiative in our kids' school to promote respect and self-esteem, and deal with sexism, racism, homophobia, bullying, and other forms of violent and negative behaviour. When I was in grade school the main social skills we were taught was to line up and march into class, and that we would be struck if we didn't follow orders.

A generation before, my dad would have been forced to write with his right hand if my grandmother had not stepped in.

It is far from perfect, but I think some improvement has been made.