Well, I’m truly sorry that you feel that way.  Turn all our schools into charter schools, just one more step in the privatization of our government, see where that gets us.  A bunch of students taught nothing but reading and math.  And a lot of students going to schools with virtually no funding in poor areas.

I agree with critic Derrick Bang: “If you don’t leave the theater feeling outraged — and despondent — then you’ve not been paying attention. Documentarian Davis Guggenheim, who helped transform global warming from a dry scientific theory into a hot-button political football with An Inconvenient Truth, has returned to indict another of-the-moment calamity destined to become a similar wedge issue: the absolutely deplorable condition of America’s public school system.”
http://derrickbang.blogspot.com/2010/10/waiting-for-superman-teaching-point.html

We are privatizing everything, and are left with a hollow government, ran by corporations who’s only interest is to make a buck. The real answer to our school problems? There isn’t one.  There are too many factors.  But we should start with funding them better, and equally. You shouldn’t be punished for living in a poor school district.

Egomet Bonmot:

You’re a rarity in cyberspace - a cyber gentleman. Or the female equivalent as the case may be. Thanks for the civility.

Charter schools are not “reform” and it is misleading to call them that.  Charter schools is the push to privatization, while killing unions and community participation in education AND with public funds (so some wise guys called it “public education”). 

See articles on charter schools on Black Agenda Report http://www.blackagendareport.com 

I am a graduate of public education through college and was a public school teacher for 5 years before I became an artist.  I was active in the first NYC teachers union. I went to a private university grad school in Amer. Civilization (yes, a misnomer of the ‘60s) on public funds: the GI Bill from my dead WWII vet dad.

tdbach:  Well it’s eight hours later and I still can’t find the Massachusetts literacy study Gatto cited.  So in the absence of proof I’ll concede the point to you.  Cheers.

Rudolfo:

If there are more reprehensible voices in important debates than those like Marty Nemko, I can’t think of them. You read/see them everywhere, including here at TD.

Here’s their modus operandi: say – or better still, quote – something outrageous, something they believe but would never have the balls to admit; pause and strike a thoughtful pose, saying that they are only presenting this opinion to start an “important” discussion (“Let’s all be reasonable!”), knowing full well that what will ensue will be a volatile combination of “you got that right” agreement with the outrageous claims and “WTF! Are you out of your mind?!” spasms of outrage from the other side. I think the fun for these guys (and they do seem to be more often men, for some reason) is watching the mayhem. But more important, it’s how these “discussions” generally unfold: the wackos who age with him will generally respond in reasonable tones – after all, they’re on their home court with a sympathetic ear, and it behooves them to be “reasonable” even if their ideas are wildly out of the mainstream; the other people who are rightly outraged, respond with outrage, which means that usually sound shrill and sometimes even incoherent with rage. And Nemko and his ilk eat it up.

Of course it does nothing to actually advance the underlying debate – in this case, how to make public schools more effective for inner-city children. But that’s not his objective. It’s to discredit the other side.

We know where you stand, Rudolfo. Nemko’s your choirmaster.

rudolfo: My argument with you is not that such classrooms don’t exist.  I know they do.  But they are not “average” or “above average”—but mostly inner city with too many students coming from poor uneducated, often broken, drug-infested homes where there is no vision, no hope for the future, no emotional security—nothing but trouble.  More often than not in such districts,  the schools themselves are in a state of complete disrepair. 
  If this is what you call “third world” then my answer to that is, make it possible for such families to “get in” the second world, of not the first. Don’t keep permitting the situations that keep them “out.” 
  Ignoring them for decades, and then blaming them is mean-spirited and exclusionary.

..... By gerard, October 18 at 8:13 pm Link to this comment

..... Outlandish video, Rudolfo. If you take this as anything more than an unusual chaos in a particularly out-of-control classroom, you are mistaken.

Not at all.  My sample size is small, but I’ve seen it, just like in the vid.  Par for the course in the schools in at least one major city.  Hey, that’s where the problem is right?

To see how ‘normal’ this vid is, visit ....

http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2009/06/white-teacher-speaks-out-what-is-it.html

Read not only the article, but the hundreds of comments that follow.

.....  In my sixty-some years of experience in public school classrooms at every grade level,

Where?  Doing what?  It’s not the grade level, it’s the location.  The schools without third world students are still good, but the ones with a significant # of third world students are bad.  And because of them, the whole system is in peril, with the testing mandates, charters, etc., etc. ....

.....In fact, maybe it was “made to order” for this very video.

Get real.

Tdbach wrote:

“Don’t stop at the first 5 links. Do a little more research. If you put those words into Google, exactly, you’ll get over 4 million hits, most of the first few pages of which include that precise quote, word for word. None attribute it or offer a link to this mysterious study, including the eccentric Mr. Gatto.”

In fact I said the first 5 Google *pages* of links, but never mind.  I was refuting MrWebster’s claim that a Google search turned up nothing on it.  Now you want me to play factchecker and produce the actual study for you—well ok I guess.

You’re of course right about the echo chamber effect and I’ll get you a cite for the Kennedy paper, but give me 8 hours—Gatto’s the historian, not me.  In the absence of proof by all means let common sense prevail, but I’ve gotta disagree with you:  Gatto has always been rigorous in his writing and citation (in the meantime why not Google *me* any claims to the contrary).  Back soon.

Outlandish video, Rudolfo. If you take this as anything more than an unusual chaos in a particularly out-of-control classroom, you are mistaken.  In my sixty-some years of experience in public school classrooms at every grade level, I’ve never seen anything even approaching this bad, though I know that some inner-city districts have many inter-related and untreated problems.
  From the video it is impossible to diagnosis what may have started the mahem or who was “to blame.”
Personally, I blame the person who put it on YouTube as it does nothing to help a very sad situation. It only undermines confidence in the minds of people who don’t now the facts—which is, of course—its purpose. In fact, maybe it was “made to order” for this very video.

Egomet Bonmot -

“Senator Ted Kennedy’s office released a paper not too long ago claiming that prior to compulsory education the state literacy rate was 98%...”

Don’t stop at the first 5 links. Do a little more research. If you put those words into Google, exactly, you’ll get over 4 million hits, most of the first few pages of which include that precise quote, word for word. None attribute it or offer a link to this mysterious study, including the eccentric Mr. Gatto.

One thing about the internet: If you say something that tickles the fancy of everyone with a similar ax to grind, regardless of whether there is any truth to it, it will be picked up and repeated forever, to the point where everyone assumes it’s true.

If there’s a link to this Kennedy Study – the actual study – please provide. Without it, common sense shall prevail. When Massachusetts instituted its public school system in the mid-19th century, it is not only highly doubtful that 98% of its citizens were literate (as defined in modern terms), but it is even more unlikely that such a statistic was available. And now MA can’t get that rate over 91%? One out of 10 people in my state are illiterate? And Kennedy, a fierce advocate for public education was the one to trumpet this statistical shocker?

Come on man, use your head.

Mr. Webster wrote:

(Re: “Senator Ted Kennedy’s office released a paper not too long ago claiming that prior to compulsory education the state literacy rate was 98% and after it the figure never again reached above 91%.”)

“A quick google search gave me immediate pause over this claim.”

Gave you immediate pause as in you found nothing?  Really?  My Google search using keywords ‘Ted Kennedy literacy study Massachusetts’ yielded nine and a quarter million hits.  The first five Google result pages all addressed the Kennedy study directly.  I quit after that.

.....By gerard, October 18 at 4:11 pm Link to this comment

.....Talk about stereotyping and generalizing!

You’re right, of course.  Stereotypes exist for a reason.  Generalizing is also known as thinking.  But, if you want the specifics sans stereotypes and generalizations .... watch the video ....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfDS-y7XKlQ&NR=1

BTW, I was a math teacher, (just) like the fellow in the vid !  Public education is essential to the US, but it is being destroyed right in front of our eyes, and the politically correct posture of head in the sand and ass in the air ain’t helpin.

Talk about stereotyping and generalizing!  Rudolfo says “a very high percentage of the students in the public school system are ‘third-world’ students.  And, not only are third world students difficult to educate themselves for a variety of reasons, they also drag down the rest of the students by disrupting the educational process to the point education is secondary and survival is primary”
“a very high percentage”—how high? where? 
“third world students”  What does that mean?
“difficult to educate”  Difficult in what ways?  Why?  For “a variety of reasons”—such as?
  “they drag down the rest”—how?  why?  whose fault is it, if true?”
  “disrupting the educational process”—how? why>
  “survival is primary”—whose survival, or the survival of what?
  Honestly, how can mud-slinging like this pass for anything but canned anti-public-education propaganda?

A couple points on education:

If the US student population has fallen to the bottom of the industrialized world in educational outcomes, it can’t be because we rely on public schools for a majority of our children. ALL of the other industrialized countries rely on public (or private, if you’re a Brit) schools. Something else is at work.

A bad teacher - or even a few bad teachers do not ruin a child’s education any more than a rotten apple spells the end of fruit in our diet. In no other enterprise do we expect uniform superiority. It’s…inhuman.

I contend that our biggest problem is that we insist on labeling our educational system as “in crises.” It’s not in crises. Like everything else in society, it needs improvement. We should always strive for improvement. But once you put the “crises” label on something, anything effort short of draconian, revolutionary is by definition insufficient. Nonsense.

Here’s a suggestion: work within the system. Explore way to make your curriculum more engaging, current, interesting to today’s youth. If you identify lousy teachers, sit down with them, tell them they are not doing the kind of job you expect of them, offer training, and tell them they are on probation. And document everything. If children, parents and staff still complain about their performance, fire them. Even with tenure, you can do that.

Not revolutionary enough for you? Too bad. Revolutions have more often than not made a mess of what they have tried to cure. I don’t want my grand children to suffer because you want to exercise your Che impulses.

Have a look inside a classroom today, surreptitiously filmed by a student .....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfDS-y7XKlQ&NR=1

Guys:

I grew up with lousy teachers and I’m beyond 60.  They have always been around for a lot of reasons.  It’s unfortunate that unions have institutionalized bad teachers and that should be corrected ... by the unions.  They should uphold certain standards for their members or throw them out.  And, least we forget, teacher’s unions came about because teaching was such a crappy profession in the old days with low pay and those 3 month vacations with no money coming in.  Many teachers in the old days worked construction or other jobs in the summer to make ends meet.

There are many problems in public education that need to be addressed.  Respect for teachers is one.  I’ve been in teacher conferences for my kids and listened to an asshole parent deride the teacher because his idiot son, who was more interested in the latest drug circulating in the school than in gaining an education, was not getting straight A’s despite never attending class.  I’ve watched teachers struggle while the administrator sucks up to a wealthy parent and abandons the teacher despite the teacher being right.  I’ve watched politics wash across my school system at the school board level and stupid ideas were voted into motion because they were politically correct, not just the right course.  Schools have become a political football because they are expensive and because they have such massive impact.

But I, for one, do not see private schools as the answer.  Private companies at the public level are a recipe for disaster.  Look anywhere there is a private/public interface and you have an opportunity for corruption.  A private school will hold the city hostage and extract far more money per pupil than any public system.  And, there is no guarantee that teachers will be any better.  We had a very exclusive private school in my town and I knew many of the teachers.  They were not the best caliber as pay in private schools is far worse than in public.  Many were rejects from public school systems!  So, if you want an even more expensive school system with low paid, under motivated teachers ... pick private.  It will definitely make your day.

One final observation: during my kids school days we had a school superintendent who was a leader in the charter school/private school industry.  While he administrated our system he was constantly traveling the country selling his stupid ideas about what schools should be like.  While he was traveling the country, the school system he administered was ranked in the bottom third of all systems in the state.  He was a disaster as an administrator and as a person.  I was overjoyed when he finally quit and became a senior administrator of a private education company.  We were paying him over $300K to run our small system.  Talk about overpaying for a product!

You want good schools?  Pay teachers a good wage, hire only the best, find competent administrators and have a proactive and intelligent school board.  And make sure the administrators back up their teachers and stop sucking up to the rich in town.  Rich people ruin school systems ... I’ve seen it in action first hand.  And idiot politicians who have no idea or business messing with school.  Screw these stupid tests for merit.  Judge teachers by how the kids react to them and how they perform in class.  Kids migrate to good teachers automatically.  They love them!

OK, let’s try this slap in the face - the US is an ‘industrialized’ country, but a very high percentage of the students in the public school system are ‘third-world’ students.  And, not only are third world students difficult to educate themselves for a variety of reasons, they also drag down the rest of the students by disrupting the educational process to the point education is secondary and survival is primary.

There are tens of thousands of teachers in classrooms every day doing their best under many difficult situations.  To judge from remarks here, most of them are inadequate,lazy and incorrigible.
  That simply can’t be true, yet the overall effect of decades of teacher-bashing (followed by teacher-union-tenure bashing) has undermined the profession to the point where morale is lower than a gnat’s eyebrow and getting tax money adequate to paying decend salaries, maintaining old buildings and adding new ones is a fight tooth and nail in many if not most districts.
  This is no way to treat people involved in educating kids for the future.  As long as the noxious criticisms continue, things cannot improve.
  Why does the noxious criticism continue, year after year?  Because private enterprises are dying to get their hands on the public school system to sell them books, equipment, contracts for this and that test-oriented “improvement”. build buildings, install computers, dictate curricula, etc.  In short, capitalism sees a market for huge profits.
  So war on the schools is little different from war on Afghanistan except that, though there is no blood on the floors, millions of kids miss the help they need to grow up and become intelligent citizens.  The evidence is already staring us in the face.  USA! USA! USA!

Thirty years ago the right began withdrawing from the US and also trying to take over the US.  Every institution was demonized other than the military, prisons and police.  Institutions and infrastructure were underfunded with constant attempts to privatize everything. I believe in public schools, but I also believe in a village with better family values who honor all the public schools and all the students in them. I no longer want to live with children taught the propaganda established by the Texas Board of Education and so-called “Christian” textbooks. It is possible to channel children through a public school system according to their abilities and provide wonderful education without using various excuses to educate only a select few.  Charter schools are “exclusive” and not “inclusive” and more private than public if the truth be told.  They are the currently “politically correct” form of education trying to simulate private schools within public funded education or more smoke and mirrors.  We refused to fund Catholic schools, home schools, “Christian” schools.  Now we have “Charter” “public schools”.

The status quo in America’s public schools is such that it is nearly impossible to eliminate poor teachers from the classroom.  All this defensive talk about how this film and others are bashing America’s oh-so wonderful teaching force is horseshit.  For every poor teacher that stays in the system, hundreds (possibly even thousands over the course of that teacher’s career) of students will have their futures hampered.  I would feel far more comfortable knowing that a few more teachers were wrongfully removed rather than coming to terms with the fact that classrooms full of young people (coincidentally almost always black/brown students) are denied even the most basic education because a tenured teacher who doesn’t give a rat’s ass is leading them nowhere.

“I find our system of public education to be a very important part of the American cultural experience. I further believe that those deprived of said public education are missing an invaluable socialization that will quite possibly haunt them for their entire lives.”

Thank you ardee for making my day.

And thank *you* Fat Freddy for that amazing link!  I’d heard the story of The Worst Mother in The World but didn’t know the aftermath, and it’s great to know she fought back on her own terms.  That’s definitely the site for me, and thanks.

I find our system of public education to be a very important part of the American cultural experience. I further believe that those deprived of said public education are missing an invaluable socialization that will quite possibly haunt them for their entire lives.

I say this knowing full well that my opinion is just that, not backed by fact or statistic, yet I am a product of public education, as are my children, though I could have afforded private school had I so chosen, and now their children as well.

I remember meeting kids from other cultures, even waaaay back then, kids from neighborhoods not my own and not as lily white as mine either. I met my first oriental friend in public school,as one example. I grew up in NYC, which is a giant place population wise but is comprised of , or was in that long ago era, of small villages rather defined as to race and ethnicity. Thus the public school was a sort of melting pot.

I think that the successes we hear about Charter Schools, or Home Schooling are far from the whole story, and, if one should care to look,stories about unsuccessful such schools abound. Students with out of date texts, students remaining unexposed to important facts and events because their school offers slanted or agendised educations.

We see today an increasingly vocal segment of our society calling for the privatization of everything, and politicians proving their points by withholding funding and thus making the public school far less competitive than it should be. I believe that, in the fullness of time public school education will, if properly financed and administered, be shown to be on a par with the best of the charter schools and better than many such. Coupled with the aforementioned socialization skill sets that makes public schools a better choice, at least it does to me.

****************

With the number of people ever increasing, it
will also be harder to educate the young to not
just compete in the world but to function with a
basic foundation that should make for better
‘decision making’ for short and long term living
and cooperation in communities and the world.

Treat schooling like raising cattle and the end
product will be that far to many will end up as
dumb as cattle, which is quite possibly what the
‘men behind the curtain’ want in this world.

That home schooling seems to be the best way
but I can’t be sure. But one thing I am pretty
sure of, the msm is NO help when its facade of
education is nothing but marketing gimmicks
with empty values and if parents are concerned,
then teaching the detriments of relying on too
much msm influence will not be helpful at all.

One question must be addressed: all the industrialized
countries who outrank the US in education outcomes do
so with primarily PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEMS.

Why do public schools succeed in other countries, yet
many Americans claim the public school system is at
fault for America’s poor showing?

Egomet Bonmot

Interesting, indeed. Before I go on my little rant, I’m still on my first cup, I’d like to address something in that passage that may or may not be pertinent:

Children and old people are penned up and locked away from the business of the world to a degree without precedent - nobody talks to them anymore and without children and old people mixing in daily life a community has no future and no past, only a continuous present. In fact, the name “community” hardly applies to the way we interact with each other.

There’s a website created by “The World’s Worst Mom”. She was given that title, because she let her 9 year-old son take the NY subway alone. It’s called “Free Range Kids”. Take some time to explore it.

http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/faq/

From “Why Schools Don’t Educate,” by John Taylor Gatto

We live in a time of great school crisis. Our children rank at the bottom of nineteen industrial nations in reading, writing and arithmetic. At the very bottom. The world’s narcotic economy is based upon our own consumption of the commodity, if we didn’t buy so many powdered dreams the business would collapse - and schools are an important sales outlet. Our teenage suicide rate is the highest in the world and suicidal kids are rich kids for the most part, not the poor. In Manhattan fifty per cent of all new marriages last less than five years. So something is wrong for sure.

Our school crisis is a reflection of this greater social crisis. We seem to have lost our identity. Children and old people are penned up and locked away from the business of the world to a degree without precedent - nobody talks to them anymore and without children and old people mixing in daily life a community has no future and no past, only a continuous present. In fact, the name “community” hardly applies to the way we interact with each other. We live in networks, not communities, and everyone I know is lonely because of that. In some strange way school is a major actor in this tragedy just as it is a major actor in the widening guilt among social classes. Using school as a sorting mechanism we appear to be on the way to creating a caste system, complete with untouchables who wander through subway trains begging and sleep on the streets.

I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my twenty-five years of teaching - that schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet.  No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and do work very hard, the institution is psychopathic - it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to different cell where he must memorize that man and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.

Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the state of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted - sometimes with guns - by an estimated eighty per cent of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until the 1880’s when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard.

Now here is a curious idea to ponder. Senator Ted Kennedy’s office released a paper not too long ago claiming that prior to compulsory education the state literacy rate was 98% and after it the figure never again reached above 91%. I hope that interests you.

Here is another curiosity to think about. The homeschooling movement has quietly grown to a size where one and a half million young people are being educated entirely by their own parents. Last month the education press reported the amazing news that children schooled at home seem to be five or even ten years ahead of their formally trained peers in their ability to think.

I don’t think we’ll get rid of schools anytime soon, certainly not in my lifetime, but if we’re going to change what is rapidly becoming a disaster of ignorance, we need to realize that the school institution “schools” very well, but it does not “educate” - that’s inherent in the design of the thing. It’s not the fault of bad teachers or too little money spent, it’s just impossible for education and schooling ever to be the same thing.

(That’s about half of it.  The rest—equally brilliant—is freely available online)

Dawkins writes that ‘...Superman’ sets up a false argument by not speaking with current teachers.  Then later she states her solution to the issue with zero qualification.  While lack of training could be a factor, as could a general lack of respect for the profession you can’t just write that and expect it to stick.  As for a ‘lack of attention to out of school factors’ I have no idea what planet she lives on where a study has not listed that as a contributing factor to poor grades and high drop out rates.

My .02: Maybe that lack of respect for the profession comes from policies that make it impossible to fire someone.  Or maybe it is the teachers that say ‘give us more money’ when most teachers make more in nine months than most of the families of the kids that attend their schools make in a year.  Or is it the teachers I’ve known that do it just for the summers off? 

I haven’t seen the film so I’m not even debating the validity of her points regarding it.  However, I think anyone with a stake in public education -which is all of us- are sick of academics saying the last thing we should do is fire teachers, or impose stricter standards, or discuss merit pay, or question the teacher’s union’s stake in things, or wonder aloud if privatizing could help.  I guess we should just let the teachers keep running things just like they are, but maybe give them more money?  I’d love to believe that teachers can be taught to teach but what is their motivation to do so?  The only teachers I know that got more education was to get a pay increase, not to make them better teachers.  And how do you judge a ‘better educator’ anyway?  Every time someone says we should evaluate teachers, teachers scream at the top of their lungs that it is impossible to do so fairly.

In short, Dawkins’ views are myopic because she’s a teacher and has a personal stake in this just like every other commentator Truthdig seems to trot out ad nauseum.  I’m officially done with Truthdig.  Not that anyone cares, or that this post will last more than a few seconds beyond the first moderator, but I’m unsubscribing from the RSS feed.  This is the third article in as many weeks that barely qualifies as opinion and literally decries something and then proceeds to do exactly what it decries. Unlike parents and students I have a choice.  I can remove what is doing me a disservice by unsubscribing from this nonsense.

I absolutely don’t support privatization (so-calledA) of public education.  It will end by favoring students from upper-class families who have more money to invest in their local schools and the profits will end up making corporations in the “education business” rich.  It is part of a general movement that favors the rich and casts the poor and otherwise handicapped students aside as of less worth. It dooms at least one half of its students to second-class citizenship.
  Every child should have an equal amount of resources spent on his or her education from K through high school, paid for by government funding from taxation of property and income, with the rich paying more and the poor much less.  This ought to be regarded as a minimum civic duty and an opportunity to help create a better future for the country as a whole. Local communities should not be allowed to fall or rise on the basis of property values or racial discrimination, nor should those with less “ability” judged by testing be categorized as less worthy, or more deserving. 
  I dare the American government to try it for ten years and see what happens.  My recommendation is based on rather broad experience in public schools as a parent, a teacher, an administrative employee of a local community district in charge of public relations,teaching part-time in a community college, and working after retirement part-time as the Administrative Secretary of a local district teachers’ union

Discussions of education in the US are almost surreal, because the true problem cannot be voiced. Amazing !

I do have a little experience, teaching at the college and secondary school (briefly) levels.

And now, the solution?  Privatize education !