<p>'I don’t know if the Finnish model would work much better for our country with it’s very diverse population."</p>
<p>Delaying school until age 7 would be a catastrophe for children with no stimulation at home (aka most poor children). They already enter nursery school with delays relative to their middle-class peers.</p>
<p>I don’t think you can compare Apples to Oranges. If you make public schools in the USA apples, you’re making most other countries oranges. And you’re making private schools oranges. Public schools cannot be compared to other systems because other systems don’t face the same issues public schools here do.</p>
<p>Xiggi–I certainly think that respect for the profession and the kind of autonomy for teachers (not to mention the better pay levels) would help here, but no, given the problems we have societally, it would be at best a start.</p>
<p>mini, I’ve been thinking the same thing:
quote:
How would your thinking change if you considered low-income schools part (and deliberately part) of the prison industry? What if the real shortage in the country was for low-income workers who wouldn’t expect much in wages and benefits, and you needed to design an education system to address that need? How would you go about maximizing profit from a public school system on a systemic basis?</p>
<p>Well, you’d cut funding drastically to public schools, give out vouchers, and hate on teachers. The rich will go to good schools, and the poor will go to what’s left of public schools, taught by those who can’t get any other job anywhere. Perfect solution. Then, I, a business owner, can hire the products of these public schools as “private contractors”, and I pay them whatever I can get away with, no benefits of any sort. Since I no longer have to turn in info for 1099’s, my “contractors” will be happy because they won’t declare their income. So fewer income taxes get collected, and in turn, states and local governments will get less $ from the fed. So, they cut their services and schools even more. No matter, as these poor folks die off, there will be plenty more of them for me to hire from the never ending supply of poor, uneducated students.</p>
<p>Really, we’re well on our way to solving the problem already, don’t you see? </p>
<p>Actually, I find the stats on poverty rates and PISA fascinating. Just what I suspected.</p>
<p>My H and I just watched this movie: [Waiting</a> for “Superman” | Official Site | Take Action](<a href=“http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/action/]Waiting”>http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/action/) and I must say, it was very thought-provoking about the role of teacher’s unions in protecting failing teachers. I am a strong union supporter and, because the teachers I’ve seen in action have all been good, it makes me cringe to think of “union busting”. But our kids from low-income families are being failed so badly.</p>
<p>Bethie–I am not up to another discussion about that movie (we-ve had multiple go-rounds here already), but it’s a very one-sided, biased attack, and there’s lots of discussion of how that’s so on the web, if you look around.</p>
<p>Here’s a link from the Washington Post:</p>
<p><a href=“http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/what-superman-got-wrong-point.html[/url]”>http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/what-superman-got-wrong-point.html</a></p>
<p>Just google “Michelle Rhee fraud” and you’ll have enough reading material for quite some time.</p>
<p>But I didn’t feel the movie was attacking teachers. I thought it was celebrating the many, many amazing ones we have and just talking about some conditions, that in some places, create problems. As I said, here in VT I’ve only seen good/great teachers and I volunteered weekly in my son’s classrooms, so I felt I had a good sense. But even here, they are mostly having trouble with progress for low income kids and I wonder if it’s not a long enough school day/school year and if we do need to start younger and help parents more.</p>
<p>I will look at your link, garland, but I am a total teacher and union booster and I’m still troubled. I thought the film was saying what I’ve been saying for years. If we invested up front in our children (and our best teachers), we could be sending these kids to college (or some other form of post-hs training) instead of prison and save money and save lives.</p>
<p>But what if (as I suggested earlier), school is an important part of the prison industry and in producing what we critically need: low-income workers who don’t expect much?</p>
<p>I think a great part of the success of the American school system (for 80% of the population) is the shorter school year, and shorter school day. But I think that success may be eroding. </p>
<p>We KNOW what low-income kids need to succeed, and we CHOOSE not to provide it. Instead, there are some who would scapegoat hardworking, unionized, and tenured schoolteachers, and there is a reason (read: money) for that.</p>
<p>professor angela davis spoke/taught about this phenomenon in the 90s. she called it the ‘prison industrial complex’.</p>
<p>mini–some people may be choosing not to provide what our kids need. Most people probably just don’t have time/energy to think about it. A lot of parents do care and would CHOOSE for their kids to have better options. I’ve been deeply involved with our school system here in VT, at least my part of VT and am absolutely sure that we are all on the same page. Nobody is aiming for prison for any of our kids. However, we don’t fund our state colleges well and so on.</p>
<p>Well, maybe not a big industry in your state, but it is a huge one in mine. And what we have the greatest shortage of is low-income service workers who will be satisfied with a pittance of a wage, and no benefits. Again, the truism is that social systems are perfectly designed to produce exactly the product they produce. We have prisons because we have designed social systems to have them.</p>
<p>What the kids DON’T need is more school. What they don’t need is people always telling them that their schools are failures, and that if they happen to succeed, it is an accident, which means it’s perfectly okay for Democrats to cut their Pell Grants. What they don’t need is be told that their hardworking, unionized, and tenured schoolteachers are a bunch of goldbrickers, and that their leaders are a bunch of crooks. What they don’t need are more tests to confirm them in their failure status. What they don’t need is to be guinea pigs in someone else’s experiment (i.e. Teach for America). They don’t need “school reform”.</p>
<p>They need food, security, books, and free reading time - without teachers breathing down their necks. (Montessori discovered that a hundred years ago).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Okay, but how do we, as a culture, create this?</p>
<p>First, simply by asking the question, and ending our fixation on schools as the answer for everything, and assuming that if schools aren’t working, more school will solve it.</p>
<p>What DO Sweden or Finland do? Support mothers for up to five years without working so they can take care of their kids. Guaranteed medical care. Guaranteed food security. Guaranteed housing. Nurse home visitors. State-supported parenting education. Attention to ACES (Adverse Childhood Experiences) of mothers. Therapeutic childcare as needed. Oh, and an entirely different approach to the prison system.</p>
<p>My list could be longer. But you get the picture. Really not that hard to do. Just requires political will. </p>
<p>And then, in school, LESS teaching. (The true Montessori secret.) Books in the classroom, lots of them, and free reading time to read them, without teachers breathing down kids’ necks. Books that kids can take home. Less homework (and strict restrictions on it.)</p>
<p>In my state, our Democratic Governor thinks we can drink our way out of the budget deficit.</p>
<p><a href=“http://successfulenglish.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/81-Generalizations-about-FVR-2009.pdf[/url]”>http://successfulenglish.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/81-Generalizations-about-FVR-2009.pdf</a></p>
<p>Every year, when our school board asks for suggested budget cuts, I tell them to stop “teaching reading”. There’s much too much “teaching reading” and not enough reading.</p>
<p>What does LIFO stand for? Are there any benefits of having teacher tenure? I never understood why teachers or even professors should ever get tenure.</p>
<p>It is basic protection of free inquiry, and against political witch hunts. (and if you look at the history of American education, those protections have been critically necessary).</p>
<p>Many moving parts. Pick one and see it the machine stops. Watch your fingers. </p>
<p>Pensions:Public employees may tend to have longevity and thus able to collect a pretty good pension. Often times the pension time-in-service, is transferable intra and interstate. Do you fault the employee for longevity (being a good teacher) or do you fault the managers for promulgating bad policy. </p>
<p>Private employees may tend to move around because of changes in their companies or in their family situation. Any pension that is built up is relatively small, if any. High tech companies tend to have 401ks (defined contribution) if the employee is not a temp, and it’s up to the employee to fund the plan. </p>
<p>In no particular order or inclusive:
Its also undocumented students.
Its the handicapped.
Its the NCLB
Its faster technology.
Its higher expectations.
Its failure to close smaller neighborhood schools.
Its old schools.
Its tenure.
Its the lack of tenure.
Its dedication.
Its busing.
Its higher energy costs to heat/cool the building.
Its free lunch.
Its taxes.
Its tax credits
Its tax abatements.
Its vouchers.
Its insisting on teaching everyone.
Its politics.
and Finally, because you can complain about education at the local level. </p>
<p>Disclaimers: DW and I, have never been govnmt employees or have been in unions. We have been privately employeed or in business. Retired, not by choice. Trying to make ends meet with a single pension and a single SS. Too nervous to tap 401k or IRA’s.</p>
<p>Mini, you have outdone yourself. Bravo! Freire and Ayers should be applauding.</p>
<p>Everyone teaches reading, everywhere; Because you can and because you can measure it.</p>
<p>No one teaches, thinking; Because you can’t.</p>
<p>Why, thank you! I take that as an absolute compliment! (Bill is an old friend; Paolo and I never had the pleasure. There’s an awful lot Bill and Paolo would disagree about - but we’d all agree with Montessori that the fundamental element of a truly scientific pedagogy is the liberty of the child.) Though I would note that what I wrote was descriptive, not prescriptive. </p>
<p>Another major difference in Sweden (don’t know Finland) is how they manage their foster care system. First of all, they spend A LOT more money. Kids aren’t kicked around from home to home (and, as I remember, the system operates til kids turn 21.) They have virtually no imprisoned kids in their juvenile justice system, but rather have spent the funds necessary to train foster care providers, and outreach workers to do the job. They have a highly developed system of respite care. Also therapeutic camps (yes, like summer camps) for the process of reunifying families. </p>
<p>And it works. They don’t expect schools to do the work of other service systems, and so they don’t have to spend all their resources on “education”. They aren’t obsessed with “education reform”, and no one is trying to milk the golden goose (the mixed metaphor is deliberate).</p>