[KaiserJeep]

Those that deny history will be forced to repeat it.

[Plantagenet]

Had it occurred to you that perhaps, even racists, or simple right-wingers would prefer not to be reminded of their own racist pasts. Not all racists are idiots.

Good point. Except this is all about the Ds and their idiotic racist past.

The Ds put these monuments up to honor their heroes of the Confederacy after they lost the civil war and now the Ds are taking them down to try to literally "cover up" this part of American History. Its like the Ds want to "disappear" US history.

I think it would be much better to leave them up as curious monuments to the failed D dream of slavery and The Confederacy. People could learn from it all that way.

The whole liberal fantasy that we should turn everywhere into a "safe space", i.e. a smiley phony Disneyland, where nothing will "trigger" them off is just childish.

Cheers!

[Cog]

Decades of Marxist leaning professors have finally borne fruit for the left. Safe spaces, no free speech zones, destroying history and rewriting it, are all outcomes of this.

[Newfie]

It's not the kids.

[Tanada]

We have the same thing in my country too Cog. We have had decades of left leaning professors too.

Once upon a time I thought I wanted to be a teacher so I took some education curriculum courses at University. After three semesters I dropped the idea because of the 10 or so different professors I had in those three semesters 9 were hard core left and down graded and discouraged anyone who was not of their mindset from becoming a teacher. Fast forward 30 years and the students I was in classes with back then are now the majority of Primary, middle and High School teachers across the country. Almost none of them have real world experience outside of part time jobs they may have held while attending school as I had back then. From discussions I have had online with some teachers now in the system in their 30's the situation has become every further along this same trend. Today American school children from Kindergarten through University are all taught the way to get a good grade is to agree with whatever the 'educator' says. Independent thinking skills are actively and passively discouraged.

Most parents don't realize what has happened but those who do have been fighting for 'school vouchers' and 'charter schools' for going on 20 years now. My great hope is the new secretary of Education, Betsy DeVoss, can get these programs implemented and encouraged on a national scale. For those overseas a 'charter school' is a sub category of private school chartered (contracted) by the state to teach kids that would normally be in the public school system and 'vouchers' are the system where federal and state school funding are tied to the student and go to whatever school that student attends, Public, Charter, Private or Parochial. For a very long time in the USA Public schools were only in competition with Private and Parochial schools, both of which charge significant fees for tuition. The parents of those same kids in Private or Parochial schools pay taxes for education but were not allowed to direct those funds to cover tuition costs, all the tax money went directly to the Public Schools.

The worst news is the students in the Public schools with the highest per student costs tend to be inner city schools with the worst achievement records.

[Subjectivist]

You forgot the Home School movement in your list.

[AdamB]

Those that deny history will be forced to repeat it.

Peak oilers know this one by heart at this point. Peak here, peak there, peaks everywhere!

[Ayoob]

You forgot the Home School movement in your list.

I'm homeschooling my kids. They're doing well. Reading, writing, rithmatic. And Minecraft.

[evilgenius]

Those that deny history will be forced to repeat it.

I don't know if, in this case, it isn't more about current events than history. Each side wants to impose their own ideology upon the outcome. They want their kids to understand the world the way they do. The trouble is that the ideological definitions are off limits. Kids are expected to pick those up by osmosis, I guess. They aren't laid out for them ahead of time. And they certainly are not kept track of and recounted so as to provide understanding. If you did that then it would also open those arguments up for the kids to decide for themselves. Ideologues can't have that. As a result they make the kids have to wander into the confrontations and observe the wrangling going on between both sides and somehow figure out where to stand. It's a recipe for nostalgic references and a loss of innocence at some time related to gaining either a greater understanding or falling back on a more practical approach. The nearest thing to it in the curriculum is probably how the emphasis changes perspective between either the revolutionary period or the civil war period depending upon who is winning or losing in society at large. But the perception of who is winning or losing itself if probably at least a decade behind.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Even the idea that private schools are better despite the massively greater funding is doubtful under many studies.

If you don't cite the studies and who is FUNDING the studies, don't expect to learn much.

I was curious due to this statement, and looked up a few such studies via Google. And lo and behold, the groups behind the studies were often far left wing "public policy" groups whose reason for being centers on things like whining about income inequality, social justice, etc.

Thus their interests in the results of such studies are likely to be about as balanced as industry studies used to show that (for example) tobacco isn't unhealthy, AGW doesn't exist, etc.

...

It may be that a big part of why private schools succeed is because of interested parents. However, objectively, in my experience in my city, the best private schools tend to produce students that are on a whole different level than public schools, in terms of academic achievement.

Now, is it worth all the extra tuition? That's up to the individuals paying the tuition, IMO. But the gap in things like vocabulary, math ability, foreign language knowledge, literature and history knowledge, etc. is astounding.

Based on my college experience, it's not hard to forecast a very different level of success there for the two groups. And it's not hard to guess that parents willing to spend big bucks on K-12 private schools will be willing to send their kids who do well in private school to college, BTW.

...

I saw a lot of conflicting opinions and information on my brief foray into this subject. Of course, it's not hard to figure out what the opinion of the public education system itself will tend to be, as teachers' unions and politicians seek to maximize their self interest (more money for public schools).

So all I'm saying here is it's far from obvious that this issue is anything like settled that private schools aren't better.

[evilgenius]

Had it occurred to you that perhaps, even racists, or simple right-wingers would prefer not to be reminded of their own racist pasts. Not all racists are idiots.

Good point. Except this is all about the Ds and their idiotic racist past.

The Ds put these monuments up to honor their heroes of the Confederacy after they lost the civil war and now the Ds are taking them down to try to literally "cover up" this part of American History. Its like the Ds want to "disappear" US history.

I think it would be much better to leave them up as curious monuments to the failed D dream of slavery and The Confederacy. People could learn from it all that way.

The whole liberal fantasy that we should turn everywhere into a "safe space", i.e. a smiley phony Disneyland, where nothing will "trigger" them off is just childish.

Cheers!

Except that the worm has turned, and the Republicans now think like those Democrats of old. They are the absolutists who argue for state's rights. If you put slavery aside and consider the other issues that led up to the civil war, you find that today the Republicans are the ones advocating the positions that the South once embraced.

It's too bad the monuments don't come in context. Aside from their obvious antagonism toward black people, they might also tell about conspiracy theory thinking and a desire by the rich to keep hold of and further concentrate their power. They might talk about what happens to a people when they worship freedom over union. They might remind us about a certain kind of ideological enslavement, one that happens to a so-called free thinking people, when they decide that liberty and society are mutually exclusive things.

[jedrider]

We have world class educational institutions. I hardly think that they are at fault.

However, a society that doesn't value education seems to be more an impediment than the institutions themselves.

We have a society really polarized and unable to communicate with each other. A recipe for disaster as is currently unfolding.

I don't see how we unwind this current predicament: The truth is not pleasant, so why should the truth being given any higher priority than anything else?

I see people fixed in their politic views and changing their views will not make them any happier. A bit of a conundrum IMO.

[Tanada]

We have a scatter few world class educational institutions and a vast number of diploma mills that don't care how ignorant you are so long as your tuition check clears at the bank.

[evilgenius]

Another thing is a problem, although it is only a problem for the conscientious. That is that while the scientific approach works fantastically it necessitates experiment. The whole idea with experiment is to find out if theory meets reality. The conscientious will not experiment with an entire generation of children. They won't experiment with a subset, or risk taking a few valuable years out of even one child's life.

You can argue that where education is now requires experiment to figure out how to do it better. The trouble with that kind of thinking, however, is that it would exclude the conscientious from the system. I think the system needs the conscientious. I also think it needs some experiment. Perhaps a method of experiment which exercised enough self-restraint that it never tried to go too far over any one period would fit the bill? There is a danger in this approach as well. It could be that what is required to arrive at the kind of change needed must have a sort of critical mass in order to work. You can see that this may, in fact, be true from viewing the importance of peer groups in children's lives. This alone isn't a stopper, but it does mean that changes have to occur across more than a narrow range of students at any one time. It also means they can't come completely out of context, such that speculation over them leads to misunderstanding and abuse which run counter to the goals of any initiative.

[Subjectivist]

Another thing is a problem, although it is only a problem for the conscientious. That is that while the scientific approach works fantastically it necessitates experiment. The whole idea with experiment is to find out if theory meets reality. The conscientious will not experiment with an entire generation of children. They won't experiment with a subset, or risk taking a few valuable years out of even one child's life.

You can argue that where education is now requires experiment to figure out how to do it better. The trouble with that kind of thinking, however, is that it would exclude the conscientious from the system. I think the system needs the conscientious. I also think it needs some experiment. Perhaps a method of experiment which exercised enough self-restraint that it never tried to go too far over any one period would fit the bill? There is a danger in this approach as well. It could be that what is required to arrive at the kind of change needed must have a sort of critical mass in order to work. You can see that this may, in fact, be true from viewing the importance of peer groups in children's lives. This alone isn't a stopper, but it does mean that changes have to occur across more than a narrow range of students at any one time. It also means they can't come completely out of context, such that speculation over them leads to misunderstanding and abuse which run counter to the goals of any initiative.

In lieu of experimentation we could look at what worked before 1950 when America was a leading country in terms of science and inventions and move towards a system more like that to see if things improve. I wouldn't call that experimentation, more retraction of what we know does not work in favor of things we know did work.

[Cog]

Here is a multiplication table. Memorize this or get smacked. This method of education has worked for hundreds of years. Perhaps even thousands.

Your child is not a special snowflake. Your child is a retard, is average, or a genius. I will educate them according to what they are able to absorb. Don't complain to me about your kid not getting into MIT. The world needs ditch-diggers too.