Education and America .. WTF is wrong?

[Ichingcarpenter]

[woo me with science]

1. Huge K&R

And the answer to what is wrong is the purchase of our government, both parties, by profit mongers.

[liberal_at_heart]

8. That is precisely the problem.

[msongs]

2. we have 2 political parties whose leaders believe in for profit education...race to the top nt

[golfguru]

3. You will all answers to your questions in this USC blog

It has nice graphics and you will not have to read through pages after pages of boring text.

http://rossieronline.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infographic/


It is easy to see from this blog that while US spends more per student than other countries, student performance is no where near the top.

To improve student performance, US schools need to employ the most powerful and proven tool .... foster competition among schools, public and private.

[HiPointDem]

7. oh bullshit.

[golfguru]

30. That is astounding!

Your depth of counter-point, that is.

[HiPointDem]

32. I've made plenty of counterpoint in the other threads where you push the same boilerplate

neoliberal bullshit.

You can't respond in any depth because you actually don't know much about education, nationally or internationally. All you got is talking points.

[knitter4democracy]

18. I've looked at that, and the data is definitely flawed.

I can find data to refute all of that.

I now go to that school, but honestly, just because someone posts some cute graphic on a blog doesn't mean you should automatically believe it because the blog is attached to a university. Those universities profit off of education reform as much or more than a lot of other entities.

[golfguru]

29. That is basically true

One blog somewhere is never the verdict from SCOTUS.
But it certainly looked interesting enough to generate good debate here.

[knitter4democracy]

31. Always look to see who paid for it.

When you see Gates on anything, be extra skeptical. Even more so when you see TFA or Broad.

[Le Taz Hot]

4. It's no accident that the curriculum

was dumbed down after the Boomers. We asked too many questions and we challenged the inconsistencies. Other than the Occupy Movement (and I think they are magnificent!) I don't see much concern for the decline of our democracy in the generations after us. The younger generations were not taught to be academics, they were taught to be consumers. "You don't have to learn how to manually multiply, divide, add and subtract. Here, buy this calculator and it'll do all the work for you."

[mike_c]

20. as a current working university professor I don't believe curricula have been "dumbed down..."

...in any systematic sense. In my own field-- life science-- just the opposite has happened. We teach stuff to first semester undergrads that was advanced material when I was in grad school. If anything, the life sciences curriculum has become a fire hose that's difficult for undergrads to drink from. At my institution we're bolstering that with team learning and active learning pedagogies that shift even more responsibility for learning onto the students (because data indicate that approach is more effective, even though it's more challenging and therefore less comfortable for students). But dumbing down? Not anywhere I've worked in the last 25 years.

I will agree that students seem less well prepared for that today, in general, than they seemed nearer to the beginning of my career, but part of that is likely age/perception gap as well. I'm nearly two generations removed from most of my students today.

[Le Taz Hot]

21. And my experience when teaching community college

was the appalling lack of mastery of the English language. Students not knowing the difference between two, to and too. Not knowing the difference between they're, their and there. These are BASIC language constructs.

Further, the university level is different than K-12. While K-12 pursues STEM, the implementations are poor and shallow. Too much emphasis is placed on answer-selection techniques as opposed to thinking, reflection and discovery. Inquiry is degraded to a group prediction of what might happen.

[mike_c]

25. agreed-- I thought you were talking about higher ed rather than K-12....

You make an interesting point about community colleges. I learned some interesting statistics recently. I'm quoting from memory, so the precise numbers will be inaccurate, but we (faculty union representatives) were speaking with my university president and provost about enrollment trends and the conversation turned to our local community college. We're in northern California. Of course, one of the stated objectives of the community college system is to provide inexpensive lower division curriculum alternatives that serve to feed transfer students to baccalaureate institutions.

My campus is fairly remote within the CSU system, and I believed that our local community college was instrumental in directing students from the surrounding region into baccalaureate programs here. Turns out I was mistaken. Although many of our transfer students do come from community colleges, individual community colleges often don't feed a large proportion of students into four year institutions. Fewer than five percent of the students at our local community college transfer to baccalaureate programs, despite articulation agreements that make it straightforward. When we look at campus diversity the situation is even worse-- underrepresented minority students who start at community college are significantly LESS likely to complete a four year degree program than minority students who begin at baccalaureate schools.

It turns out that MOST of the students at our regional community college are not on an academic trajectory at all. Most are taking remedial (high school) or vocational training. The problem is so acute that our regional community college is beginning to give up the pretense and is cutting academic programs in favor of vocational and lifestyle courses.

[Le Taz Hot]

28. I should have specified K-12.

Community college is now teaching subjects that used to be taught in high school. Most CC students now have to take 2-3 courses just to make it to English 1A -- which brings one to approximately 9th grade level.

But what I'm referring to is more insidious than that. The latest debacle, of course is NCLB and RTTT because teachers are forced to teach to the test as opposed to teaching concepts and basic constructs. Consequently, students are asked to reach no further than level 1 on cognitive rigor scales. If students aren't taught critical thinking skills they're never taught to challenge; to question. All they know is how to be good consumers, not scholars.

But the decline started well before that NCLB and RTTT. I started teaching CC in the 1990's and the decline was evident even then. I happen to believe that that was planned and, believe it or not, the late Howard Zinn actually agreed with me (or I him).

Historically, one of the first groups to suffer oppression in an oppressive regime (dictatorship or fascism) is to suppress the academics. You can either kill them off or imprison them OR you can make sure that few new ones are made.

[Jamaal510]

5. But, but...the Everest Guy wants me to continue paying for my education!

How can I turn him down with his sideways hat?
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[HiPointDem]

6. I'm confused; wikipedia says e.g. swedish higher education is 'free,' but -- it looks like part of

that is actually student loans:

Every student is entitled to 12 semesters of allowances and loans, totaling 2,230 SEK per week (September 2012: 261 EUR, 339 USD, 209 GBP) for full-time studies (after 1 July 2006).[31][32] Allowances are usually 699 SEK per week (September 2012: 82 EUR; 106 USD; 65 GBP) with loans covering the rest. The limits for loans and allowances may be substantially increased under certain circumstances.[31]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Sweden#Higher_education

[Ichingcarpenter]

10. Tuition is free

books and other expenses are not.

[HiPointDem]

12. thanks for the clarification.

[pansypoo53219]

9. college + trade schools are the new high school.

[HiPointDem]

13. that is some kind of religious wingnut site.

[Ichingcarpenter]

14. The Absurd Contradictions

[Joel thakkar]

16. While i agree with the all points given in the infographic above

I don't know how more black and latino prisoners means "Racist justice system"?

Please explain.

[Ichingcarpenter]

17. Scholar articles

Race and Class Inequality in U.S. Incarceration

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2696029?uid=2&uid=4&sid=21101953549991

Race and Class Inequality in U.S. Incarceration

Beyond Crime and Punishment: Prisons and Inequality
http://ctx.sagepub.com/content/1/3/37.short


Race in the United States criminal justice system

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_in_the_United_States_criminal_justice_system

Racial Inequality in the Criminal Justice System

http://www.learnliberty.org/videos/racial-inequality-in-the-criminal-justice-system

[Chisox08]

24. When it comes to the "drug war" blacks and latinos are often targeted by the police

They also serve longer jail sentences than their white counterparts. For example crack which is viewed as a black drug carries a harsher sentence then the same amount of powder cocaine. NYC stop and frisk is another example of our racist justice system, because most of the people stopped are either black or latino. Blacks and Latinos often get more jail time then whites for the same crime.

[TheKentuckian]

23. Yet many insist that are problems are at their source about faces and personalities.

The systems are broken, our institutions are corrupted perhaps to the core, and the hole digging never pauses.

This stuff is well beyond the right face, name, race, gender, age, or party being selected. Not at the roots, there has to be focus beyond the arrangement of the deck chairs. The ship is what someone has to keep in check or the rest is of little consequence beyond competing rhetoric to sell the same outcomes.

[krakfiend]

15. awesome

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[jsr]

19. Awesome post

[Chisox08]

22. Prisons and War are more profitable then education.

As well as burdening students with crippling debt. Until we get money out of politics and put in people who actually put people over profits nothing will change. Oligarchs want a people that they can control and well educated people without crushing student loan debt will be impossible to control.

[mike_c]

26. and in the U.S. EVERYTHING is for sale....

[YoungDemCA]

27. The problem isn't Americans....

The problem is that the wealthiest, most-connected, and most powerful people have gained and are gaining control over more and more aspects of the lives of Americans.

The neo-liberal revolution was not done democratically or with the active support of many Americans. That is antithetical to its nature, of concentrating power in the hands of a privileged elite.

[hay rick]

33. Great link on comparative teacher hours worked/salaries.

Ironically, I plucked this out of the comments section at the blog recommended by golfguru.

Link: http://www.upworthy.com/which-countries-pays-their-teachers-what-theyre-worth