Do public schools kill creativity?Follow

That makes you a good parent. I hope I am not being mistaken for saying parents have no or little part in their child's education.

I see the schools as being where the majority of the fixable problem is. There will always be good and bad parents. But it is very difficult to make moderate progress in improving the way bad parents raise their children. All the government can really do is ask them many times everywhere they go with ad signs. It is difficult to fix bad parenting on a massive scale, and comparatively easy to fix schooling on a massive scale.

Schools are a highly controllable factor. If budget is the only problem then that is changeable. If busing programs are the solution then that is implementable.

For the same amount of time and effort education would be improved far more by targeting the school system rather than parents.

When apathy is the problem paying any attention to your kids at all makes you a better parent, in general. But this is the beginning of an irrelevant tangent argument.

It does not contradict. I said here you reap more for your money by improving the school system. I said previously that parents should still be involved in the education of their children. Where is the contradiction?

Edited, Jun 18th 2007 6:38pm by Allegory

I would appreciate a quote.

My intended meaning was that people should put more effort into improving the school system rather than blaming parents for the failures and allowing the situation to continue.

You agree that good parent generally improves a kid's education right? You agree that good schooling generally improves a kid's education right? You also agree that it is easier to improve schooling nationally than parenting right?

x+5y=z
x+y=20
Which variable should be focused on to maximize z? Seems like simple math to me.

So where exactly is the disparity between what we are both saying?

I think you made your point.

Good Parenting + Good School = A rounded person with knowledge and life skillz

Good Parenting + Crap School = A rounded person with some knowledge and life skillz

Crap Parenting + Good School = A fUcktard with knowledge

Crap Parenting + Crap School = A fUcktard

Crap Parenting + Crap School + Wikipedia = gbaji

Now do you see how much better than you I am?

Actually, my high school biology teacher was the butt of every joke for several years until he finally retired.

People joked about the biology teacher at my school as well. She was a complete irate all the time, a complete *****, but whenever she insulted a student for missing homework or goofing off she was clever and witty so we liked her.

Edited, Jun 18th 2007 7:23pm by Allegory

1. Allegory is too stupid to quote in a interwebs forum

2. Allegory will still respect incompetence if it's dressed up with niceness or wit

Yes. Nothing happened.

Cost-effective, yes, but not effective. Is his point. Do you really think asking parents to do a better job is actually going to change them?

Waah! The problem's too big. I can't wrap my head around it. Too intimidating to change.

Do I think it would change them to ask for and expect parental responsibility? Maybe not at first, but eventually the culture changes from one that relies on the teet of big mamma guvm'nt to get them by and allow them to be complete f'uck ups to one where we own our own lives and our children have a shot at something more than being a ******.

Too many twats here think Moe's arguments (and mine) are in defence of home schooling. Kids need school to learn to fight, bully, argue about sports and survive the process. Home schooling is too isolating - kids need kids to learn that the world is full of cUnts and you need to stand your ground.

I am arguing that Education is the parents' responsibility, and school is simply backup for while you're out earning money and should just be giving them skillz to learn for themselves. Teachers just want to stuff their heads full of facts and useless baggage.

I'd happily remove teachers from school and just provide supervision so kids can think for themselves - IF the parents are taking their own responsibilities seriously.

I think that in order to address this, you also need to look at the purpose of public schools, especially in contrast to a "traditional" private education.

Before public schools, education was about learning. You sent your kids off to school so that they would learn things that you could not teach them yourself. Every parent is not going to be an expert at math, science, literature, etc...

The public school system (in the US at least) arose first as a means to make each generation "American". It was instituted after the Civil war and had very specific political goals in mind. Make people think of themselves as being citizens of a single nation instead of whatever state/teritory they were from. Standardize the language and practices so as to make everyone fit into a mold so to speak.

With the Depression and the New Deal, public education became about economics. It was more about keeping the kids off the street and out of the workplace, while allowing the parents to work during the day without having to care for the kids. This is the time period when the federal government really took an interst in education beyond some standards and regulations, and also when school for children became mandatory instead of optional.

Private schools, meanwhile, continued to be about education. Always had been and didn't change. However, not everyone could afford to send their kids to a private school. Over time most became religious schools because the respective churches could afford to build them and provide them to their followers (making it more affordable for them). Truely secular private schools became a very small minority even within the group of just private schools.


IMO, what's going on now in the US is that the public school system is having a crisis of identity. Really, it's been going on since WW2 and the GI bill (since that increased dramatically the number of people who went to college), but it's grown even more since the 60s and the growth of the idea that everyone *deserves* an equal shot at life. Suddenly, an institution that was never really designed for actual education was expected to be one. The gap between the expectation and the reality has grown, not because the school system has gotten worse, but because the expectations have grown.

Couple that with the growth of the idea that it's the government and the government alone that is responsible for educating our children, and you've got a real problem. Before this idea became popularized parents did assume the duties of teaching their kids what they could, and expected the school system to simply fill in sufficient amounts to make their kids capable of holding jobs when they got older. Now, every student is expected to leave school capable not just of holding a job, but of entering a university. And at the same time, many parents have stopped bothering to teach their kids *anything* assuming it's the school's responsibility instead.


Thus, I don't think the schools "kill creativity". I think that we place unrealistic expectations on the school system. I certainly agree that most public schools don't encourage creativity, but that's largely becaues of the need for a "one size fits all" approach to public education. Kids can be creative, but they need to do it the same way they always did: At home, encouraged by their parents.

What I find amusing and troubling is a trend for public schools to look at what private schools are doing and think that since private schools statistically provide better education, that the public school should adopt the methods of the private school. The mandatory testing is one good example, but there are more. That's a valid approach for a school in which the goal and structure is to educate every single student to the maximum possible. It works because the schools themselves have entrance requirements. Public schools have to take everyone. It's absurd to assume every student is going to leave with sufficient knowledge to pass a university entrance exam, but that's somehow become the expecation. Predictably, high dropout rates in public schools are the result.


My opinion on this is the same it's been for well over a decade now (probably more but I don't remember). I think that we should not so much have a "public school system" as a "public education system". I believe that if we've decided it's worth spending tax dollars on education, that we actually approach it with the goal of allowing all students to achieve the maximum they both can and *want* to achieve. I support the idea of school vouchers. Allow all schools to be private schools. The public education system can provide funds for parents to send their kids wherever they wish (hence, the focus on funding education rather then funding "schools"). This gets rid of the "one size fits all" problem. Additionally, it allows schools to tailor themselves to the specific needs of any given set of students.

This way, if a poor kid is bright enough to handle the material at an education focused private school, he'll be able to attend. Kids who aren't so bright will attend schools designed to handle them. The kida aren't separated by how wealthy their parents are, but by their own capabilities. This also eliminates the assuption of "university or bust" in the system. Let's face it, 80% of the population is not going to get a 4 year degree. Why are we teaching as though 100% will? Schools can tailor their education to the workforce as well (trade schools essentially), providing a route for teens to get into the workplace quickly and successfully, without feeling like they "failed" because they didn't get into a 4 year university.


Dunno. Lots of problems. Most of them caused IMO by insitutional perception problems within the system itself.