Honestly, if I were giving the author peer review, I’d make him break this sentence up… but there is something magical about it, no?
That sounds like it would cost money, result in better teachers who would demand higher pay, and not justify privatizing schools while maintaining public funding. So we shan’t do that.
25 years and I can’t point to a single battle won. Even though I’ll occasionally win a war by virtue of being ‘technically correct’ I’m not allowed to claim victory. I’m the Neville Chamberlain of my household.
The UK is suffering “Singapore envy” at the moment. My kids happen, by chance of geography, to be in a fantastic public elementary. It’s progressive and the principal is a tiger with the local politicians. People take their kids out of private schools and move into the ever-decreasing circumference of admission, it’s that good.
But … the general thing is the UK looks at its maths outcomes, and decides learning by rote is the best answer, which is what they do in Singapore. So they don’t learn to dance around with numbers (I ‘suffer’ number fantasies, where numerical systems and patterns set off all manner of whacky thought processes), they just learn “if I see this, then that”. That’s fine for computers, but not for people. It doesn’t stimulate creativity or imagination, which, given that computing is increasing in usage and capability incredibly fast, seem to me to be massive assets for the future.
Maybe the UK is going to focus purely on the financial sector.
How boring for everyone.
I’ve heard that some people homeschool because there are proscribed activities going on in the home (typically, smoking or selling marijuana) and parents don’t want their children to be tricked into turning in their relatives to the authorities.
Ach no, you unfortunately can’t really compare without looking over massive periods of time - like how your economy performed, what shifted the quality of life, that sort of thing. Standardising comparisons across standardised testing … I like Singaporeans, for instance, but I’ve yet to have a Singaporean explain to me the nature of the correlation between Russian and French literature.
Why’s that important? It figures large in current day international relations.
Yeah, something that crowded is usually too long, but it packs in so much good info, and still reads well – great writing, righteous content, what’s not to like? Something magical indeed.
Exactly. It’s kind of like what Germany does, which results in happier teachers and bilingual children by the age of 15. So we are definitively not going to do that, we have a pair of wars we need to pay for.
Pyrrhic victories have always been my personal favourites.
For that matter, how do you determine who the “best-performing educational systems” are, without SOME kind of standard metric to measure them against ???
I don’t have an answer, just wonder how you justify one system being superior to another without a common yardstick to measure by. . .
Bill Nye’s not my favorite person right now. His actions saved that Creation Museum, and he’s been talking about doing more such debates to “further science.” He got paid pretty well, and brought in a ton of money for the Creation Museum. That place was going to have to file bankruptcy by the end of the year, now they’re talking about how they have enough to finish the “Ark” project as well as fund them through the next five years. They’re setting up other speaker’s series too.
My love for him shattered into a million pieces when he did that.
My dad called it “0 For Life.”
He just prolonged their eventual demise, and possibly sapped away at some of the base. In the long run I think what he did was for the best.
Ugh. That clip. It’s like debating creationists.
Good question!
My kids are going to High School in the public school system now. If I withdrew my kids from the standardized testing I’d have the school principal beating down my door, because my kids are driving up the average and everybody knows it.
Yeah, I’m bragging. Sorry, it’s my Celtic heritage!
You should use that as leverage. Maybe get some free sodas and snacks out of the machines. Just saying.
I plead the fifth amendment.
Ok, you’re totally right.
The link about Prussian-Industrial Model article is in their “Our Philosophy” section. Which actually seems a bad placement because I immediately took it as their philosophy, instead of what they are totally against.
Being totally corrected, they seem to be good guys.
That said, the comparison is a bit severe to today’s problems.
Horace Mann, credited as the father of the American public school system, studied a wide variety of educational models before implementing the Prussian system designed by Fredrick the Great. King Frederick created a system that was engineered to teach obedience and solidify his control. Focusing on following directions, basic skills, and conformity, he sought to indoctrinate the nation from an early age. Isolating students in rows and teachers in individual classrooms fashioned a strict hierarchy—intentionally fostering fear and loneliness.
We may still sit in rows in our classroom, but we are far from the actual industrial factory child exploitation days of the 19th century.
But, to use this as a contrast to what we have now, it’s very clear that we have come very far, and are constantly trying to improve things.The what and how to teach can be very different, but at least we all agree that we do have to teach something somehow.
I’m glad you understand the origins, now. But how far have we come, really? Consider the developmental differences between our youngest children in public schools. In my state, you must be 5 years old before Oct 1 to enroll in Kindergarten. If you are born on Oct 1, you must wait a year. So Harry born on Sept 30, 2009 enters K on August 1st, at the age of 4 yrs and 10 months old, but he is lumped with Sally, born Oct 2, 2008, who is 5 years and 10 months old. There is a 20% difference in age in these kids at the very beginning of their education. Why do we lump them into the same class? Prussian-Industrial model.
During grades 1-6 of Harry and Sally’s education, they get standardized tests like DIBELS, (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) which informs the teachers and parents how they are doing compared to other student. Sally consistently shows very high marks in DIBELS and her parents are pleased with the teacher and Sally and ponder what she will be when she grows up with great anticipation. Sally receives praise and learns that expectations for her are high. However, unrevealed by this test is the fact that Sally is actually behind developmentally compared to other kids at her biological age. Harry, on the other hand, scores consistently lower. His percentile ranking at every level shows him to lower proficiency than his peers even though, for his biological age, he may be above average. Still, for his grade level, he is below average. His parents worry, his teachers worry and his parents consider his future with great concern and dread. Harry receives no praise. The age disparity does even out, of course, but at what cost?
Why do we expect teachers to perform well with students when in practice we strive to treat all children of a certain grade as if they are developmentally identical–like parts on an assembly line?
Compare this with a non-Prussian-Industrial model school, like in Montessori which has been around for generations, and you will see how utterly stuck the US is in this factory mindset.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/25/oecd-education-report_n_3496875.html
Strange indeed to pick an outlier when in fact almost every school district in the US outspends almost every school district anywhere else in the world.