Do public schools kill creativity?Follow

I bet you were just adorable in your Pink Ladies jacket.

While public schools CAN kill creativity, it is not inherent in their nature, and at the least the one I went to enhanced the creativity of most students, to the point where the student-run newspaper won a west-coast-wide award for best designed paper, upperclass jazz bands (broken up into self-organized trios, quartets, etc.) played wedding receptions and clubs (and got paid for it) as part of their classes... I can't speak for most public schools, but I can say from experience that at the least, they are not uniformly anti-creativity learning factories.

You should have put out more.

i agree.

but the alternatives are infantly worse. private school, which are mainly religious based and biased, severly limit the material kids are exposed to, and thus limits the bounds of their imagination, and home schooling is even worse. it limits the bounds of their imagination to the scope of one or two individuals.

so, whats the answer? political will to improve the school system. it just is not there.

it is what it is.

school is just a foundation to build from. people shouldnt look it as something that should be all encompassing. thats what finnishing school is for, ie, college.

public school does a very good job of offering a wide foundation to the masses from which they can build from. that math you hated? every one takes it, and thus, the masses have a good, solid basis to deal with math issues in their life from ballancing a checkbook, or figuring out how much wood they will need to build a tree house or fix a front porch. the english they do teach is very basic. but it gives people enough understanding of language, how it works, and how to understand it to allow them to function in society.

and that is all it was designed to do.

from that stand point, it works just fine.

the problem isnt really what is being taught, or how encompassing it is, the problem is convincing kids about how important it is to have a good, solid fouindation of a wide range of learning so they can accell in society.

that math you hated? and did poorly on because you were so boared with it? it is used in just about every profession known to man. and the better versed you are with it, the more sucessfull you will be in whatever you do.

the problem wasnt the math, or how boaring it was to you, the problem is your peers and parents didnt get through to you about how iomportant those baseic skills were going to be to you. atleast not enough to MAKE you more interested in the math itself and how well you did in it.

remember that whole "if train a leaves the station at xxxx time traveling at yy speed....." crap you swore you would never use? i do. i hated it. but i understood how important the concept was so i paid attention to that boaring crap and i did very well in all my math classes.

ironically, im an air traffic controller. i use that "if trian a...." crap ALL DAY LONG, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year. the same crap i swore i would never use.

my point? you never know what will and wont be important. but i guarentee you, if you dont have a wide foundation of basic knoledge, you will be passed over for a good job by some one who does.

the problem is not the schools and what they teach. the problem is instilling in our kids how important that information that boars them to tears is to THEM.

asian children do excepionally well in our school system. why? because they come from a place where school was a privelege, not something you HAD to do. they soak that boaring crap up like a sponge and go on to really good paying jobs at a much higher percentage than anglos or other minoraties who are second and third generation americans.

why? not because of the outstanding public schools, but because their parents and peers instilled in them the importance of gaining knoledge NO MATTER HOW MUCH IT BOARD THEM.

the problem is not the schools, it is the spoiled kids we send to them.

Edited, Jun 17th 2007 12:06pm by shadowrelm

It is easier to thrust a kid in front of a TV and get on with the million and one things that the average adult has to do. Bob knows how little time most of us have for recreation in the modern world.

Work 50 years ago was probably more physically demanding, but i find i am much more able to play with my son and do all the daddy things on a day when i have done mainly physical work.

The sheer mental stress placed on anyone working in a modern competitive marketplace doing anything from call centers to medical consultancy is what leaves people more likely to put kids in front of the TV so that they don't have to deal with the stress of keeping thier offspring entertained after a days work.

The changes in the way women bring up children, often returning to work soon after the birth also i feel has an impact, child care is not the same as a full time mother.

Schools are very much the least of the reasons kids are not creative, in fct i think kids CAN be more creative than thier parents where given time, attention and encouragement.

Gee could that have been the piint i was making? Nah couldn't be

I went to private school for my 4 years of high school, after coming to the States from Canada. There, I found that my creativity wasn't limited, so much as it was inspired differently. With my school being made up of 2 straight hallways, and classes of 15 or less, pulling **** required a great deal more skill than it had previously.

It's all about outlets for your creativity, which has little to do with your location, besides the outlets changing slightly.

If you are allowing the school to educate your child, you are a ****-poor parent.
If you have your kid in so many after school activities that they are spending over half their time under someone else's instruction, you are a ****-poor parent.
If you can't figure out how to instill the necessary lessons in your child to allow them to cope with the avalanche of bad information they get from schools and teachers, you are a **** poor parent.

Of course, like the line says, you have to get a license to drive a car, but any butt-reaming a'sshole [or self-absorbed c'unt] can have a kid.

Edited, Jun 18th 2007 8:43am by MoebiusLord

Which is what the smart kids had been doing all along.

schools have always been underbugeted. will always be that way too. there is no political will to change that. Jeb Bush gace away 5 million dollars to a for profit bio-medical company to buy land and 15 million in tax breaks, but didnt build a new school or hire more teachers.

bio-medical labs have lobbiest who pay better than the teachers union. bottom line.

and as poor and underfunded as schools already were, now a big chunk of my kids in class time is used to teach them how to score well on the F-CAT so the school can get more funding.......to hire better teachers.......to teach kids to score better on the F-CAT.....to get more funding......to hire better teachers......to teach kids how to score better on the........

you get my point.

it has fallen more on the parents to fill in the gap. my kids mostly get assignments in school and bring the work home as homework. 3 to 4 hours of homework sometimes ad they are in the 2nd and 4th grade. and what this wil ineviatably lead to is a widening of the gap between the haves and have nots. parents with resources and two parent households will have kids who do better in school than poor parents or single parent house holds.

it is ineviatable.

and as such, the poor neibhorhood schools will get less funding becuase of poorer scores on the "no child left behind" program.

what they really ment is "no rich child left behind"

the moral majority working for you.

its up to the parents now. has been for some time.

Edited, Jun 18th 2007 2:18pm by shadowrelm

Moe - Chemicals is expensive Shit. 2 Housebricks are effective, economical, and add a certain slapstick element.

School is for developing the skills Mom & Dad teach (reading, writing, necromancy) and learning how to interact with other kids.

I'm with you 100% on this one - I mean, the last people on earth I'd allow to instil values and perceptions on my kids is fUcking teachers.

The following article rings bells with me (it's part of a diatribe about Schools in general)

/whoosh

School should complement a good education. It is not a substitute. Geddit yet?