You'd think we never had a good school system?

[Go2Peace]

I swear that Generational memory, or lack thereof, is going to kill us.

All this giving in to private schools with the mantra, even on a "Democratic" site, is, basically saying that

"we have no choice"

Well, we *do* have a choice. This is almost the *exact* same ideology that the Republicans spout about government. "Government is Bad", but what they don't say is that:

the problem is not "government", the problem is *bad* government.

You see, we have had better government, better institutions, better systems, and yes, better PUBLIC schools.

So what happened?

All of our institutions are failing. But why? Because they have been under attack! They have been underfunded, and even when they are funded well, the overwhelming confused mix of "values" and other special interest groups toss our institutions back and forth like a salad, then when they lose direction and become inefficient, they all break out on queue!

They say:
Government is BAD. Government is inefficient! Public Schools are Bad. Public Schools are inefficient! Single Payer is Bad! Universal health care is government health care. And government health care is bad... and on.. and on... they go. At each step they DESTROY our institutions, and then afterwords, they claim the institutions are bad, and give the money to the money changers to make new profit centers.

Government and our institutions have never been perfect. But they have often worked and some of them fairly well. But that time is getting farther and farther away.

If only we can keep our "Generational memory", we might remember the truth.

Democrats here, please... stop buying the Republican talking points. Everything that they are doing today, such as "for profit (charter) schools, has been done before! We know what works best and it is not the institutions we are building today.

Good and democratic government is very good and benefits people. It has been tested over time. Don't let any one fool you and try to tell you anything different.

I have a "generational memory", of a time when we had a saying we often told each other. And the message was "don't trust authority". I think we need that memory back. Don't trust the authoritarian bullshit, it's wrong. Don't buy it.

[upi402]

1. The business round table tore the phone book in half

one page at a time. And now it's headed for the shredder. Those asshats can't see the big picture and will regret it when they get what they asked for.

[Hannah Bell]

2. +100.

[Hekate]

3. KnR. I went to truly excellent public schools, graduated high school 1965...

I was completely prepared to enter my (also public) university when I graduated. The school drew from a large area, rural to suburb, a good mix of incomes and ethnicities.

One of the things my old school system did was "track" the kids based on grades and test scores. I understand there were some problems with this method -- but there are problems with any method, and afaik this was pretty effective.

We had college prep and we had vocational tracks; it was understood that not everyone had the aptitude or money to go to college, and that a lot of kids were going to leave high school and go to work right away, and that they needed to be as prepared to get a meaningful job as the college prep kids needed to be prepared to enter university.

A lot of kids leave high school without graduating; they are then labeled failures. Why not give them something to do that engages their interest and talent so they don't leave? Business courses, shop classes, and the like all provide valuable and salable skills that can be put to use immediately in something besides flipping burgers.

My high school had a lot of classes that were not tracked at all, and they gave tremendous value for whoever enrolled in them: art, band, chorus, and drama.

Once upon a time we believed in education enough to willingly pay the taxes to provide it. Anyone who wanted to send their kids to the local Catholic parochial school or an expensive private school was always free to do so -- but they were still obligated to pay their share of taxes to support the public school system.

It was never perfect, but it was sure better than what we have now, after a couple of generations of Republicans tearing down people's belief in it and also tearing it down brick by brick.

Hekate

[Celebration]

10. agree with you

Tracking in classes in high school is the most efficient way to go. If we are going to load classrooms with more than 25 students, there are very few teachers that can teach to all levels. And I went to a school like this in a similar era, in a similar situation. It was kind of funny because I was way better prepared for my private university than most of the private school kids. A lot of them went to schools that didn't have chemistry or physics, because girls didn't want to take those classes. :eyes: (a little bit of the finishing school modality, LOL).

[Smarmie Doofus]

4. K and R. There were *reasons* that we had a Progressive....

... Era and that we HAD a New Deal. The generation coming into ascendancy seems bent on recreating the conditions that made them necessary.

The rest of the industrialized world learned from the mistakes of the past and institutionalized that wisdom.

We just keep going around in circles.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

5. Public schools didn't fail, society failed.

Public schools just happen to be a convergence point where all social ills meet.

I have several friends who quit teaching in public schools because they are TEACHERS and not prison guards, parole officers, addiction councilors, public health nurses and whatever the crisis de jour pressed them into.

As long as public schools are forced to be extensions of the juvenile justice and child welfare systems these problems can't be addressed.

They have their own list of grievances with the private schools they teach at now, but gang related violence and a child coming to school covered in rat bites aren't among them. And when they do phone a parent the first words out of their mouth usually aren't "Don't call me at work you fucking bitch".

[vadawg]

6. +1000 good way of pointing out the difference in the culture...

The amount of gang related and serious drug crimes at the private schools in my area are a hell of a lot less than we see in the public schools, i dont know most of the teachers stay in the system, i think if i had been stabbed twice like one teacher i know i would have left..

[snot]

7. I got a GREAT education in public school.

I had the opportunity to take advanced courses in French, German, Spanish, and/or Latin; math through calculus that made my subsequent college calculus course look simplistic; other advanced courses in English, physics, biology, history, etc.; and we all got plenty of art, music, physical education, shop and/or home ec., etc., not to mention Political Science!

Guess what, it wasn't some intellectual stronghold, but a strong blue-collar, union town.

(The city also had the best public parks, museums, and streets & highway system of any I've lived in.)

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. Thank you for tellng it like it is

[eridani]

9. In the 30s and 40s "good enough for government work"

--was praise of a high order.

[whathehell]

11. You betcha...As one of similar age, I think..I find I'm always giving "little history lessons"

to otherwise bright young people.

[Telly Savalas]

12. We don't have a school system. We have many school systems.

In many places public schools are doing an exceptional job of educating our youth. In other places they're a total disaster.

[surrealAmerican]

17. Exactly ...

... and it has always been like that in this country. Some public schools are excellent, and others are wholly inadequate, just like they were 40 years ago. It's usually the districts with the least money who do the worst job.

[stray cat]

13. The one room school house often had a large diverse class size and not much money

and students who went part time to work in the fields
And were far better trained than many students now

[LWolf]

14. Thank you. nt

[ncteechur]

15. I don't know that we had great public schools. We had schools that were very good for

some kids but there were many many other students that were never accounted for. Expectations for many of these students were very low.


On average, today's students know a hell of a lot more than yesterday's students.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

16. What many Americans don't realize is that public schools are locally controlled

If the parents value education, ride herd on the school board, and keep their own children focused on learning, then the community will have excellent schools. College towns almost always have excellent public schools. I recall colleagues with children frequently talking about how they were going to have to go lobby the school board because of this or that issue of academic quality.

If your public schools are lousy, the answer is not to demand vouchers or charter schools ("My kid über alles--the hell with everyone else") but to start ragging on the school board and perhaps run for it yourself.

[Better Today]

18. You must've never been at a public school in the "darker" neighborhoods

of the deep south. Or pretty much any public school in a predominantly poor district.


Though back then, these things weren't discussed much, I guess, so to you they may have seemed invisible, but unless you can provide a link with actually data backing up your opinion, I would say you are very very WRONG in your starting point.

[Go2Peace]

20. That was the result of prejudice, not "institutional". You are confusing the two

I am not saying the past was perfect. I understand what you are saying, but what happened to those districts proves my point. It is not the institutions themselves, but other factors that cause failure (prejudice in that case). So why are we going after the institutions instead of the "other factors?

[Better Today]

22. No you are wrong, perhaps racism caused their districts to be poor,

but it was the poorness of the district that made it miserable. Any white district with the same economic stats would have had the same miserable results.

I really hate it when folks that don't have a clue try to claim some great embrace of the "good ol' days".

[Go2Peace]

24. no, I am just saying don't throw out the baby with the bathwater

And actually you need to go back a little farther in history. "Private schools" are actually a much older and historical model, and they never provide universal education well.

[timeforpeace]

19. Does it seem the harder we try with government and schools the worse they both get? Lesson there?

[Go2Peace]

21. You don't raze your daughter's home because her husband hit her

You get him the hell out of her life.

We need to fight the ideology, not give into it and become part of it.

[timeforpeace]

28. That doesn't make any sense.

[northofdenali]

23. I graduated from one of the top public high schools in the nation.

In 1972.

Today? That school is worse than failing.

From 1968 - 1972, Lathrop High School was rated in the top 10% of ALL high schools nationwide. We had an extremely diverse population of students; there were NO high schools on the local army and air force bases, none in the towns of North Pole, Nenana, or in any of the outlying villages ("bush" Alaska). These students came into Fairbanks and stayed with relatives and volunteers, only going "home" on holidays. Everyone, from the very poor to the obscenely rich (usually politician's kids) went to the one high school in town. So the "poor students = poor performance" argument just doesn't cut it, or didn't then.

We had art classes out the wazoo, and annual drama/arts/music festival, a band that routinely won top honors in all categories, and a basketball team (no football then) who smashed records on a routine basis. We had everything from bowling leagues to rifle teams, JROTC, Key Club, and the school offered 5 languages for all 4 years. We had advanced placement classes in tough categories, open lunch, a student lounge, and a student rules committee for everything from dress codes to liasing with the elected School Board.

Now? Very few art classes, only one language besides English is taught, the clubs are gone, the extracurricular activities are virtually nonexistent and there are armed police officers on two separate shifts in the school, with a patrol car stationed immediately outside.

The demographics haven't changed much here in town, we're still a very diverse little city. The politics, however, changed drastically during and after the Pipeline years - from left-leaning to very, very right-wing neocon fundamentalism.

Tell me that change didn't make the entire difference, and I'll call you dishonest. Gone are the huge library where you could check out everything from 1984 to government contracts. Gone are the honors classes, the drivers education classes, the arts/drama/music and languages classes. The only advanced placement courses offered must be taken on your own time at the University.

When I was there, our local (and only other high school) small Catholic high school sent their kids to Lathrop for courses they couldn't afford to teach. Now the Catholic high school is much larger, and their waiting list is immense - no one who is zoned for Lathrop wants their kids there.

I hate it. The teachers are just as damn good as the ones I had, the parents are reasonable attentive, the kids don't routinely cause problems (unlike us, who had everything from sit-ins to a principal hung in effigy in the main lobby of the school). The difference? The fucking politicians, the preachers and the idiocy they espouse.

[BrklynLiberal]

27. When I graduated from HS, 85% of the kids went on to college. Today that same school is being

threatened with closure.

It is very sad..and scary...and does not say anything good about this country.

[ibegurpard]

25. The attitude I'm seeing from so many on here is jaw-dropping

Privatize the public schools?

[LeftyMom]

26. Sorry, not interested.

One-size-fits-all education does not fit my kid, and I'm not going to make him suffer through it to make some halfway thought out political point.