The Great American Flaw

[Gob]

Gob, I am familiar with the International Baccalaureate program and I think it's great. I enrolled my son in an IB school & program when he was in 9th grade, but he decided to transfer back to the public school (largely because he felt guilty about our having to pay a high tuition at the IB school - though he didn't reveal his motivation at the time).

It would have been free in the UK, I think we are expected to contribute about 2 grand a year to Hatch's college.

[oldr_n_wsr]

It would have been free in the UK, I think we are expected to contribute about 2 grand a year to Hatch's college.

Add $26000 to that and that's a what I "contribute" to my daughters education each year.

[Rick]

I took a Soils class during the Fall 2010 semester.

3 hours plus an hour lab.

Cost a smooth $1,000.

Glad I didn't have to pay for it...

[Gob]

It would have been free in the UK, I think we are expected to contribute about 2 grand a year to Hatch's college.

Add $26000 to that and that's a what I "contribute" to my daughters education each year.

Just to be clear O-n-W, the course we are talking about is for 16-18 year olds (give or take a year or two), it's not a degree level course.

[Sean]

My European (mainly German and British) friends have described to me an educational system that is very competitive, includes no interscholastic sports...

I guess that means the boat race is off next year then...

I recall reading an article in the London Times a number of years ago when students in certain areas were down graded on their exams and, thus, prevented from advancing in the areas of choice. There is no ideal system.

I'd love to see that article Big RR. In the UK state exams are marked by teachers and teachers alone. As an A Level teacher in the UK I was also an exam invigilator and marker. . You are given a stack of candidates' exam papers and the relevant marking criteria. Each candidate is identified only by a number. There is nothing in the number to help identify the student, school or area. For all you know you could be marking your own students' work (reasonable steps are taken to avoid this but it is possible if highly unlikely). Papers are given to markers on a random basis: no marker will receive more than two or three from the same school and generally no more than one. The idea that students from certain areas could be downgraded is preposterous!

[Andrew D]

I agree that the notion that everyone should go to college is absurd. Colleges are (or, at least, ought to be) institutions of higher education -- places where those people who have certain skills/talents which lend themselves to academic sorts of endeavors hone and build on them.

The notion that there is something to be looked down on in the trades (and, hence, in the trade schools) is bad for everyone. It attracts illegal immigrants -- care to take a bet on whether the workers on that roofing crew you saw the other day are all here legally? or the people changed the linens when last you stayed in a sizeable hotel? -- it robs us of the talents of those who very well might have pursued promising careers in trades had they not been relentless pushed toward college, and it robs the students themselves of opportunities to follow the paths toward which their gifts and inclinations lead them.

But it seems to me that at least in the lower grades, there is a systemic problem which we are not addressing. We (collectively) have been ignoring it for decades, due in large part, it seems to me, to the fact that is fundamentally not about the education system. It is a macroeconomic problem.

As a culture, we are relying more and more on schools to raise our children, not just to educate them. And the principal reason for that is that in the typical two-parent family, both parents have to work in order to make ends meet.

Well, someone has to watch over the children -- or pay at least some attention to what they are doing, anyway -- and if the parents aren't there to do it, that leaves the schools. Thus, we have teeming hordes of children who are dropped off at school by a parent at around 7:00 AM and retrieved from school by a parent at 6:00 PM.

Not many decades ago, a single income from a reasonably well paying white- or blue-collar job could provide for a family of four. One parent had to work outside the home, but the other was there to see the kids off to school in the morning (after ensuring (a) that they actually ate some sort of breakfast and (b) that such breakfast actually had some nutritional value) and also there when the kids came home in the afternoon.

But these days, except for the very high income-earners (and the trust-fund babies and so forth), that is simply impossible. Children are packed off to school at preposterous hours of the morning -- in the winter, often before sunrise, which is not merely absurd but obscene -- and may not be retrieved from school until later than people used to be sitting around the dinner table when I was a kid. So have ended up delegating to the schools the primary responsibility for raising our children to the schools, because the macroeconomic circumstances in which ordinary people find themselves have been radically altered (in some substantial part at the behest of the powerful few who benefit most from such changes).

The schools, however, are not equipped for that enterprise. They are not designed for it, their employees are not qualified for it, and there sure is no adequate budget for it. The upshot is that schools have become as much caretakers as institutions of learning, and what is left of the learning has no perceptible purpose other than to ensure that our children grow up to be productive and acquiescent drones.

What percentage of public schools include music or visual arts (in both cases, either practice or appreciation) as parts of their standard curricula? Or have well-stocked libraries? (Or, for that matter, enough textbooks so that each student actually gets one?)

If you're really in the mood to be disheartened, look at the surveys that are periodically done about what our children actually know by the time they "complete" (i.e., are processed through and extruded from) high school. Eighteen-year-old kids -- legal adults -- who cannot name two nations which border the US, who cannot correctly place the Civil War within 100 years of when it actually occurred, who can't even make change unless ther register calculates it for them, let alone balance a checkbook, whose reaction to "When in the Course of human Events" is "They teach a course on that?", to whom "We the People" might as well be "the Village People", who not only cannot find Iraq or Afghanistan on a blank map but place them on the correct continent only by blind luck, and so forth.

There are lots of things that we can and should do to improve our education system. But all of our efforts will accomplish precious little unless we rearrange our economic system so that parents can actually afford to raise their children rather than merely depositing them with government custodians.

[Gob]

Nicely put Andrew.

[thestoat]

The world needs plumbers, electricians, carpenters, mechanics (auto technicians?) etc. and those jobs cannot be outsourced to India.

Not true at all. In the UK that is happening all the time, though usually Poland rather than India.

Andrew - well said! Certainly in the UK the whole concept of grades has been dumbing down for many years and it does nobody any good. If someone isn't academic enough to go to University, then so what? There are loads of ways they can contribute positively to society and their own bank account by learning a useful trade rather than getting a pointless degree.

[dgs49]

You're right Andrew. In my own household, we were able to keep my son with his grandmother while he was still a kid, but at around 12 or so he rebelled and became a "latchkey" kid. As far as I know it didn't do him any harm, but if you multiply that by the tens of thousands, those kids get into a lot of mischief between the time school lets out and parents get home.

I wonder how many couples could live on one income but choose to retain two so they can afford to live better. I'll bet it's a lot. But at what price?

[Big RR]

My European (mainly German and British) friends have described to me an educational system that is very competitive, includes no interscholastic sports...

I guess that means the boat race is off next year then...

I recall reading an article in the London Times a number of years ago when students in certain areas were down graded on their exams and, thus, prevented from advancing in the areas of choice. There is no ideal system.

I'd love to see that article Big RR. In the UK state exams are marked by teachers and teachers alone. As an A Level teacher in the UK I was also an exam invigilator and marker. . You are given a stack of candidates' exam papers and the relevant marking criteria. Each candidate is identified only by a number. There is nothing in the number to help identify the student, school or area. For all you know you could be marking your own students' work (reasonable steps are taken to avoid this but it is possible if highly unlikely). Papers are given to markers on a random basis: no marker will receive more than two or three from the same school and generally no more than one. The idea that students from certain areas could be downgraded is preposterous!

Sean--I googled and found this article among a number; it looks like it occurred in 2002 (might some of the reforms happened later?):

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Exam+grad ... a092406156

The article I read in the times went further into where the downgrading occurred, etc., but I don't recall all the details.

[oldr_n_wsr]

It would have been free in the UK, I think we are expected to contribute about 2 grand a year to Hatch's college.

Add $26000 to that and that's a what I "contribute" to my daughters education each year.

Just to be clear O-n-W, the course we are talking about is for 16-18 year olds (give or take a year or two), it's not a degree level course.

When/if Hen goes to college (University to you) what is your expected contribution? Does it depend on the school and where it is? My daughter could have gone to a NY state school and it would have been at least half as much. But when said daughter out performed 99% of her class and has a grat work ethic and really wanted to go to this school and was accepted to the honors program in that school, how does one say no?


While I don't disagree with you AndrewD about the schools becoming a 12 year long "day care" for the kids, I still think that the emphasis is mostly on getting the kids into college. I keep seeing stats upon stats how the high schools are rated on how many kids graduate (first stat) then how many kids go on to college (second stat). I would really like to see a stat on how many of the high schools graduates actually complete and graduate college. I am betting less than 60% complete college from any given high school.

But I do have to say about most school districts here on Long Island, they are, for the most part, very good and have many activities and variety of courses.

And when the wife and I were just starting out and were blessed with child (ooooops!!!! ) we determined that one of us would stay home while they were young. It turned out my earning "potential" was greater than hers (even though she already had a college degree and I was still going to night school to get mine) so she stayed home. Sure it was hard for those many years, but I'll be damned if a new car or new stereo trumped the family bond that can only be gotten when a parent is home full time for their children.

I do realize that some families cannot afford this luxury, but we really couldn't either. It was paycheck to paycheck, week to week, as much overtime I could get was taken and still, very little if any was saved (we always tried to pay "us" first). But we made it through and the "penny pinching" we did to survive back then, is still with us now that times are better and the extra goes into savings/retirement plans/investments.

[Crackpot]

Pssst! it's Hatch!!!!

[BoSoxGal]

Very nice post, Andrew.

However, it presumes that most parents are actually engaged in positive parenting as a priority in their lives, such that reconfiguring our economic system would result in lots and lots of well-raised children.

Call me jaded, but I am finding in my experience of this life that such is not the case for the majority of people who breed.

[Crackpot]

THe two feed into eachother. the more one is "taught" at home the more one will teach at home. absenteeism in one generation leads to the expectation to be absent in the next.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Pssst! it's Hatch!!!!

OOOPPPS!!!

Gob substitute Hatch for Hen in my past post.

[oldr_n_wsr]

I "grew up" and lived during the change to two income families. At first I believe it was not necessary but was a source of people being able to get what they wanted NOW and not have to save for said purchases/luxuries, thing our parents (and some of us) would do without or save for years to afford. After a while it became a necessity as prices (for everything) went up to compensate for this new found money.

I remember taking my kids to school functions in a 1972 dodge dart (this was in the early to late 1990's) and noticing all the brand new (or 1-2 yo) SUVs picking up the kids. I always wondered where these people got the money for these cars. I mean, 90% of these people could not be making that much more than I was. I then realised, their kids were latchkey and the SUV's were leased. These people owned nothing and refinanced their houses to the point they can't get any more credit. I now see many of their house for sale with the bank being the seller.

Be frugal to a fault, it will serve you (and your children) better.

[Gob]

O-n-W, here you go;

Tertiary fees Australia

Tuition fees UK

[Gob]

ONE Sydney school produced three students who achieved the perfect score in the International Baccalaureate, outperforming the entire United States, which produced just one top scoring student.

Barbara Stone, the headmistress of MLC Burwood, said it was the second time that three students from her school had received the perfect score of 45, which is equivalent to a university entry rank of 99.95.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/educatio ... 19f5i.html

[oldr_n_wsr]

Thanks for that Gob. So it looks like you (and your UK "kin") pay 1/2 to 1/3 what I am paying. Of course the tuition difference would be much less had my daughter gone to a NY state school, but as I said, she is a great student so who could say no to the school of her choice. I did try and 'bribe" her to go to a NT state school as there was one she really liked, but after all was said and done, she went to the University of Maryland rather than Geneseo. Good thing I set up a college fund when she was first born.

[Gob]

Hen and Hatch's dad did the same, set up a fund, which we have continued, O-n-W, it's a very good thing to do.