They achieve this through a progressive tax code and socialism (read: sharing).

You don’t care about the poor, like too many of us. That’s why we have the highest child poverty rate in the industrialized world.

Moron.

Period.

Nobody is saying to fail a kid, because they aren’t good at art, but being artistic and understanding art are different things. They’re different goals, and the latter has a measurable effect at how those students perform in math, science, and reading.

My little nieces are very lucky to go to a school, which even though it serves mostly impoverished students, has a strong art focus. She gets a lot more art education than I had at her age. She has daily art and music classes, and three-times weekly PE classes. Her grade school is out-performing even the “rich” schools on their standardized tests.

As for generational poverty, statistics show that the solution exists, but it’s embarrassingly banal: finish high school, get a job (any job), don’t commit crimes or do drugs, get married and stay married, and only then have kids. Anyone who does those things reduces their chances of staying in poverty by a huge amount.

But artistic people will be artistic despite whatever curriculum you put them through. Artsy classes in school are extra-curricular, certainly not something everyone needs. I’d hate to fail a highschool kid because he can’t make a pretty picture.

But math people will be mathematical despite whatever curriculum you put them through. Higher math classes in school are extra-curricular, certainly not something everyone needs. I’d hate to fail a highschool kid because he can’t do calculus.

He says that the other teachers all just stared at him until one of them finally said, “We don’t want kids to think for themselves. They might think the wrong things.”

But artistic people will be artistic despite whatever curriculum you put them through. Artsy classes in school are extra-curricular, certainly not something everyone needs. I’d hate to fail a highschool kid because he can’t make a pretty picture.

Trigonometry is just as emotionally moving and inspiring to me as the Brandenburg Concertos.

Good for you. Meaningless to most everybody else.

no, no, no, what they need to learn are bowhunting skills, nunchuck skills, computer hacking skills…

there’s nothing wrong with teachers collectively bargaining for their rights as employees. just because they teach school does not mean they should have no rights.

With a highly educated population it becomes possible to do almost anything.  Without one it becomes inevitable that your country will decline.

More than a military, more than tax cuts, more than health care, education is the single most significant predictor of future prosperity.  And yet we continually sell our kids and our own futures short with simplistic cost cutting and inane debates about teachers.

Schools should be amazing places, with maximum 5 kids per teacher.  Kids should come out of school with the ability to analyze and solve real world problems at a level none of us were taught to do (even at the now-vaunted private schools). 

Simple fact is we have no idea what the employment or economic environment will look like in 15-20 years, when current children become adults.  The best we can do it give them the tools to adapt and think creatively.  The worst we can do is warehouse them in Lowest Common Denominator institutions that will work for the kids at the top of the bell curve and utterly squander the rest.

Whats wrong with that?

(From Article) For example, the 1995 edition, still in use in many places, introduces a decimal division problem as follows: “Will is saving his allowance to buy a pair of Nike shoes that cost $68.25. If Will earns $3.25 per week, how many weeks will Will need to save?” To the right of the text is a full-color picture of a pair of Nikes.

One in the 1999 edition, gives a plug to Oreos, made by Nabisco: “The best-selling packaged cookie in the world is the Oreo cookie,” it begins. “The diameter of an Oreo cookie is 1.75 inches. Express the diameter of an Oreo cookie as a fraction in simplest form.”

~New York Times   http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/public/math_texts.html

Your fellow peers are those who are like minded, supportive, and  usually steering towards a common goal.  A young girls dance troupe can range from 6 to 16, and they are all peers. 

Putting older children and younger children together promotes good learning, Here’s how: many children learn by showing i.e. teaching. In my grade school,  5th and 6th graders mentored 2nd, 3rd, 4th & 5th graders in reading & math.  It taught children how to follow,  and it taught others how to lead.  A 10 year old is more apt to understand a 15 year old’s language rather than the monotone droning of an adult mixed with the squeal of chalk. 

You might disagree with me, but the only thing off top was bitching and moaning and about local funding mean that you have deeply impoverished school systems.  Sure, that was off top topic.  Saying that our current system all but demands standardized testing, on topic.

There is a way to verify if schools and individual teachers are truly teaching students critical thinking, problem solving, social skills, etc.  They are called portfolios, and they show the changes in students over years if schools keep them long term.  The reason they are not commonly used is that they require the same skills to interpret.  You have to have creative teachers and problem solving administrators looking at them, and that takes work.  Merely looking at a score on a standardized test and saying “oooh that’s a big number.  She must be smart!” is much easier and simpler to process in bulk.  With a protfolio you have to get to know a human, and look for where they started and where they ended and the path they took to get from A to B.  A student who starts with little or no skills and can then make a simple project has done much more learning than a gifted student who half-asses but does something huge.

These ideas have been around for decades.  Check out Project Zero from Harvard Graduate School of Education, or Google “Making Thinking Visible”.  There are hundreds of schools around the country that are making a difference but you have to get past “academic rigor is demonstrated by test scores” mindsets to find them.

The goal for secondary education shouldn’t be specialization. That occurs later. The goal should be a basic proficiency with a broad range of subjects. This, in my opinion, is how an intellect is developed. Secondary education prepares you for the world not by making you an expert in one topic, but by developing your mind. This is why rote learning and teaching to curriculum standards of standardized tests are so detrimental–they do the opposite.