Threatening Homeschoolers

[Cartesiantheater]

That's your second mistake and it's bigger than the first I fear because it tis an institution whereas The Presidency is just an institutionally approbated entity.

Please, do describe your "goodness and badness" for us madame.




Wont you please... hurruhrurururuh?



http://www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi2509348377/

Public education is handled more by the states than the federal government. Also, public education netted me an ACT score in the top 1% of the country, so I can't say it failed me. If public education fails, it is the failure of the PARENTS, and the idiot student, not the system, not the schools. In this public education system, students are allotted every opportunity to succeed, IF THEY WORK and IF THEIR PARENTS do their freakin jobs (go over homework with the student, make the student DO their homework, attend conferences, generally give a flying fuck, etc).

[Anarch]

If public education fails, it is the failure of the PARENTS, and the idiot student, not the system, not the schools.

How very commie.

Blame the parents, blame the student but the system is flawless. The old outdated industrialized assembly line style of public education that treats pupils as units of production is a breeding ground for success according to you comrade ,yes?

[Cartesiantheater]

How very commie.

Blame the parents, blame the student but the system is flawless. The old outdated industrialized assembly line style of public education that treats pupils as units of production is a breeding ground for success according to you comrade ,yes?

If only that was actually how it worked. Look, states and even counties have a great deal of leeway in how they operate. I have gone to public schools in 4 different states, and only in one of them, Tennessee, did I not have access to student driven, creative, and "outside the lines" education (how ironic, no? The West Coast "commie" states had the inventive education, and the Red State had the "commie" education ...).


LOCAL GOVERNMENT decides for the most part how public schools are run. That is pretty far from "Communism."

[Anarch]

I was just going off your assertions that the state can do no wrong and that the public education system was flawless.

I do not share in your point of view there.


Meh.... At least you can be proud of your ACT scores. :)

[Cartesiantheater]

I was just going off your assertions that the state can do no wrong and that the public education system was flawless.

I do not share in your point of view there.


Meh.... At least you can be proud of your ACT scores. :)

No, my point is that "The State" is an inappropriate word to use, since there are 50 of them, each with their own particular ways of running public education.

Moreover, "The State," particularly in reference to the 50 states, is composed of people who live there, not some abstract "Big Brother."

[Anarch]

Your moving the goal posts. The subject matter is not about the use of the term "THE STATE" as an identifier but rather UN policies regarding homeschooling and the possibility of the US adopting those UN policies under the Obama administration.

To wit in one post you replied (To paraphrase) that public schools are great and that kids have every opportunity to succeed (At what exactly?) and that if they do not then it is their fault or the fault of the parents.

I maintain that :

The public education system is out dated. Nation wide. Shoving kids into a desk and expecting them to behave like proto adults and drugging them when they do not to produce an automaton that can potentially sit at a station on an assembly line doing repeatable tasks for 16 hours a day. Creativity and independent thought are not encouraged in the public schools. The state preaches it's morality at your kids there regardless of your own morality. Learning how to learn is something you are expected to do in college while in the lower public grades you are expected to learn how to memorize and repeat and discouraged from doing anything more then that.

If the public education system fails a student, that it not a surprise, that is the norm these days.

[Cartesiantheater]

Your moving the goal posts. The subject matter is not about the use of the term "THE STATE" as an identifier but rather UN policies regarding homeschooling and the possibility of the US adopting those UN policies under the Obama administration.

Lol, no I'm not, as at no point at all in this thread have I shared any opinion on that specific subject. None of my posts in this forum are directly related to the topic of UN policies (of which I am largely ignorant about). I am referring to Public Schools as they stand today and when I attended them in the last 20 years.

To wit in one post you replied (To paraphrase) that public schools are great and that kids have every opportunity to succeed (At what exactly?) and that if they do not then it is their fault or the fault of the parents.

As it currently stands NOW, I still believe what I posted. I went through that system and did excellent, and I most certainly DID NOT experience sitting at a desk and memorizing for the most part. I remember ONE history class where I did that, and a couple of English classes, but that's about it.

I maintain that :

The public education system is out dated. Nation wide. Shoving kids into a desk and expecting them to behave like proto adults and drugging them when they do not to produce an automaton that can potentially sit at a station on an assembly line doing repeatable tasks for 16 hours a day.

And I maintain that YOUR experience described above IS NOT universal. It was not MINE until I moved to Tennessee. Prior to that, in public schools I had a vastly different experience, from classrooms that didn't even HAVE desks, where everyone sat in a circle and discussed the topic as a class, devoid of lectures as the learning experience was a hands-on group experience, to classes done outdoors, to student directed learning... IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

Creativity and independent thought are not encouraged in the public schools.

And my experience is that the above claim is patently FALSE. In SOME public schools the above is true. In some it is not. The ones where it is not true are the ones in which there is a large faction of parents who give a fuck about their kids enough to make political noise at the various meetings regarding policy for education.

The communities where parents are NOT involved to that degree are most likely the ones that you speak of. Blaming "The State" is lazy. If the community refuses to get involved outside of bitching on the internet, hoping for "The State" that they hate so much to fix the system, what else could you possibly expect?

"The State" has as much power as "The People" give it.

The state preaches it's morality at your kids there regardless of your own morality.

Morality, religion, etc was largely off limits in EVERY public school I attended, even in Tennessee, except in a Government class where these issues were encouraged to be DEBATED ABOUT by students (not lectured).

Learning how to learn is something you are expected to do in college while in the lower public grades you are expected to learn how to memorize and repeat and discouraged from doing anything more then that.

Again, I saw both in my time in the public education system.

If the public education system fails a student, that it not a surprise, that is the norm these days.

The public education system usually only fails when there aren't enough citizens who give a fuck enough to get involved as both individuals and as a political group.

[Beatnik Bob]

And I maintain that YOUR experience described above IS NOT universal. It was not MINE until I moved to Tennessee. Prior to that, in public schools I had a vastly different experience, from classrooms that didn't even HAVE desks, where everyone sat in a circle and discussed the topic as a class, devoid of lectures as the learning experience was a hands-on group experience, to classes done outdoors, to student directed learning... IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

I'm not doubting you, but that's an interesting experience. In fact, it sounds a good deal like a Charter School.

[....]

In terms of schools, I see both homeschool and public school as viable options within their own right. However, with public schools, I think the dynamics change when the school is massive. I don't know where you went to school, but my high school had the population of a small town. When a school is that big, it changes. It is no longer about the quality of education so much, but about maintaining an order. Now, I won't lie, I went to an excellent public school. But it's actually a fact that during the 20th century, U.S. schools were widely structured after the military.

I think public school is fine, because you get exactly what you put into it. And I put in.
The only thing that bothered me was having to wear the ID tags, and then random searches at the school entrance (I think it was twice a week)--just in case anyone wanted to bring a gun.
But, I realized that was just the way they might have had to do things for it to function.


Also, no I did not go to school in the ghetto. It was just policy.

[Kiehlroy]

ACT score in the top 1% of the country

So why not just state your ACT score? I myself was 99 "percentile" through JH and HS but that had absolutely nothing to do with any city schools I attended after 5th grade. Hell, I had "quota" teachers who hated me because I(7th grader) already knew more than them. Shit! Just try passing an "English" class in the inner city when you top out in reading comprehension and vocabulary scores state-wide! All I really ever wanted were qualified teachers who actually knew something I didn't know already.

There were a few actually.

In other words... intelligent, educated, and grown-up teachers appreciated and passed me and I simply skipped the cheeseburger classes and was passed solely by my test scores... "administratively"

"Quota" teachers live by their "quotas" afterall... It wouldn't look too good for a "quota" teacher to flunk a top(99percentile) test scorer now would it? It might just look like they suck-balls as teachers huh?

So, yes, I was passed in classes that I rarely set foot in because I scored "College Level" in those certain subjects in 7th grade. No thanks to the schools and their "quota" level staff. Encyclopedia Britannica, PBS(at that time), National Geographic, and "BOOKS"... maybe those helped a bit.

Welcome to public education...

[Cartesiantheater]

I'm not doubting you, but that's an interesting experience. In fact, it sounds a good deal like a Charter School.

Lol I did attend a charter school (which are funded publicly, the school meeting their charter as the ransom...)

[....]

In terms of schools, I see both homeschool and public school as viable options within their own right. However, with public schools, I think the dynamics change when the school is massive. I don't know where you went to school, but my high school had the population of a small town. When a school is that big, it changes. It is no longer about the quality of education so much, but about maintaining an order. Now, I won't lie, I went to an excellent public school. But it's actually a fact that during the 20th century, U.S. schools were widely structured after the military.

I think public school is fine, because you get exactly what you put into it. And I put in.
The only thing that bothered me was having to wear the ID tags, and then random searches at the school entrance (I think it was twice a week)--just in case anyone wanted to bring a gun.
But, I realized that was just the way they might have had to do things for it to function.


Also, no I did not go to school in the ghetto. It was just policy.

Tis a fair point, but the biggest point of all is "you get out of it what you put into it." Hell, what about a Good Will Hunting? The public library is FREE.

So why not just state your ACT score? I myself was 99 "percentile"

Because I like being mysterious. Suffice to say it was somewhere between 32 and 36.

through JH and HS but that had absolutely nothing to do with any city schools I attended after 5th grade. Hell, I had "quota" teachers who hated me because I(7th grader) already knew more than them. Shit! Just try passing an "English" class in the inner city when you top out in reading comprehension and vocabulary scores state-wide! All I really ever wanted were qualified teachers who actually knew something I didn't know already...



There were a few...

In other words, intelligent, educated, and grown-up teachers liked and passed me and I simply skipped the cheeseburger classes and was passed solely by my test scores... "administratively"

"Quota" teachers live by their "quotas" afterall... It wouldn't look too good for a "quota" teacher to flunk a top(99percentile) test scorer now would it? It might just look like they suck-balls as teachers huh?

Welcome to public education.

Okay, let's argue your point. Let's say education had nothing to do with your high test scores, and everything to do with your INTELLIGENCE. How is education policy going to fix that? Some people are just stupid. You can't fix stupid.


That said, we can only go by personal experience and statistics, but since education policy is largely decided locally, when there are great differences between how one county or even a school does things and another, it' because the local communities care about their students' education to different degrees.

My personal experience is greatly different from you all, and sure, I went to magnet schools and charter schools, but those are STILL PUBLIC EDUCATION, funded by public funds. If the student shows aptitude (although this isn't even required in all cases), it doesn't take much on behalf of the parent to have his/her student transferred to one of these PUBLIC programs where education is approached from a non-traditional angle. If, however, your local government doesn't see the need for such things, well, it says a lot about how much your community gives a shit about their kids, sorry to say.

[Kiehlroy]

Owwww!!!

My head's bleeding again!

Thanks alot CT!