School Damage

[Bottle]

I went to public school for 14 years, and enjoyed it tremendously, with the exception of Junior High, and I don't think that can be blamed on anything more than the fact that I was 12 and would have been miserable anywhere.

I had some truly wonderful teachers, a great peer group, and when I got to college I found that I was better educated than most of the private-school-educated kids from the East Coast.

I think I'm a great example of what happens when a public school district is (relatively) well supported, both by the state and local government and by the community.

[Bendira]

Notice how you failed to respond to the point made, or how I illustrated how critical the word "unilateral" was to my statement and your distorted mischaracterization of it, other than a predictable backpedal to claim that you already knew you couldn't have "proporation rights", when you were the one that brought up rights of partial ownership to begin with. You miss the point, contradict yourself, and/or don't even to try to respond to it.

What are you talking about. I clearly said that I think public property should be privatized, because I think people should have a right to say what they want on public property, given the fact that they are partial owners.

Then, you project the issue of maturity onto me, in a desperate rendition of the "I'm rubber, you're glue" defense.

It was actually mocking your debate tactics.

I never stated the judicially educated understanding of how free speech works as the "only possible interpretation", I simply suggested that you actually learn what it is before refuting it. If all you have is the most simplistic grasp of free speech, then that's the level you will (and have) debated it at, but don't presume to put words in my mouth.

Omgwtfbbq, are you serious? "Im not saying that the only interpretation of free speech is the U.S. Governments one, im just saying that you need to learn that the only interpretation of free speech is the U.S. Governments one".

And yes, we know you go on at length about what you believe, you just never present any reasoning or evidence about why its a good idea beyond the rants of somebody who doesn't read critically and can't seem to handle the irritations of school.

I presented some problems in OP about schooling, and then I presented some problems about public property. Then you ragequit.

[Bendira]

I went to public school for 14 years, and enjoyed it tremendously, with the exception of Junior High, and I don't think that can be blamed on anything more than the fact that I was 12 and would have been miserable anywhere.

I had some truly wonderful teachers, a great peer group, and when I got to college I found that I was better educated than most of the private-school-educated kids from the East Coast.

I think I'm a great example of what happens when a public school district is (relatively) well supported, both by the state and local government and by the community.

Thats a cute story. If you lock a girl in a cage for her entire life since she was an infant, she wouldn't know any better and probably be happy when she gets her gummy bears once a month and think what a great life she has.

[Bottle]

I went to public school for 14 years, and enjoyed it tremendously, with the exception of Junior High, and I don't think that can be blamed on anything more than the fact that I was 12 and would have been miserable anywhere.

I had some truly wonderful teachers, a great peer group, and when I got to college I found that I was better educated than most of the private-school-educated kids from the East Coast.

I think I'm a great example of what happens when a public school district is (relatively) well supported, both by the state and local government and by the community.

Thats a cute story. If you lock a girl in a cage for her entire life since she was an infant, she wouldn't know any better and probably be happy when she gets her gummy bears once a month and think what a great life she has.

I'm sorry that your school isn't nice to you. That sucks. I can honestly say that I really, really wish you were in a better school.

But--and this is something you'll learn as you get older--not everyone has the same life experiences as you. The things that seem so massively important and serious to you may not be things that touch other people's lives. Trying to assume that everyone shares your experiences isn't going to serve you well in the long term. Nor is telling other people how they must feel, or what their experiences must have been. It's a waste of time and makes you look like a little kid. Which is why everyone here is responding to you as if you are a 4 year old having a snit. Try a different approach and people may come to respect you more or actually listen to what you have to say.

[Nulono]

It varies widely from public school to public school.

[Barringtonia]

'Damage' is probably the word skewing the debate here. Could schools be less formulaic in terms of curriculum and end result of schooling, almost certainly.

Should school be provided as freely as possible if only to increase literacy? Almost certainly.

There's scope for debate over the structure of school without becoming ground down in the current nature of schooling.

There are also enormous constraints in terms of funding, ability of parents to relocate and economic inequality that cause lethargy in change but I suspect far more is being done than people might recognise. There's perfect worlds and worlds we simply live in.

Suck it up, there's a system and you can just as easily exploit it to your advantage and complain needlessly about it.

[Sibirsky]

Home school? Private school? Public hardly seems like the best.

What about those without the time for home school or the money for private, how will parents both hold jobs without a facility to occupy thier children in the meantime.

Public school is fine, want better then pay more taxes.

Funding is not the issue.

[Barringtonia]

What about those without the time for home school or the money for private, how will parents both hold jobs without a facility to occupy thier children in the meantime.

Public school is fine, want better then pay more taxes.

Funding is not the issue.

It is actually, any change in terms of greater variety and flexibility with schooling will require funding. Perhaps in some magical world where there's no vested interests and protectionism over change then everyone would be rational and come to a sensible solution but, for the factors cited above in terms of location and economic equality alone, it will simply take greater funding to solve, especially where education should be provided free [disregarding 'free' in terms of taxes'] rather than at a cost to lower-income families and children.

There are so many factors involved here despite a basic requirement for universal education involving, basically, daycare for children of parents working full time, part time or whatever, basic literacy, the funnel of available jobs and more that means it's going to take funding.

Personally I'd be happy with a government that devoted itself to education and health above all else but, alas, that doesn't seem to be the case.

[The Land of Niet]

I went to public school for 14 years.

14 Years??!

Stayed back a Lot ?! What was the reason, may I ask?

[Barringtonia]

I went to public school for 14 years.

14 Years??!

Stayed back a Lot ?! What was the reason, may I ask?

Is 4 to 18 an impossibility?

[Tekania]

I went to public school for 14 years.

14 Years??!

Stayed back a Lot ?! What was the reason, may I ask?

You can have it without staying back, assuming a system has Pre-K (as some in fact do) a kid could be in school from about age 4 till about age 18, and therefore be in for just a fraction under or around about 14 years.

[Baldwin for Christ]

What are you talking about. I clearly said that I think public property should be privatized, because I think people should have a right to say what they want on public property, given the fact that they are partial owners.

Like I said, you're contradicting yourself, because you said earlier that proporiation rights are impossible on public property (go back and look), but guess what? Once you privatize it, its not public property anymore so your statement "people should have a right to say what they want on public property" at least should have read "people can't say what they want on public property so it should be abolished", but that's very different and you're moving the goal posts again. Like I said, you can't even keep your own argument straight. You also stated that partial business owners have have "certain rights", not realizing that they don't have unilaterial rights because there are other owners, even in a private business (look into concepts like C-corps, LLCs, or other businesses, since you're the one trying to apply the business world and its constructs of ownership as a parallel). So even your backpedaled argument fails.

It was actually mocking your debate tactics.

No, you were attempting to mock debate tactics, you just lack the ability to do so with wit or originality, so you're just projecting back arguments you can't actually present salient rebuttal to.

Omgwtfbbq, are you serious? "Im not saying that the only interpretation of free speech is the U.S. Governments one, im just saying that you need to learn that the only interpretation of free speech is the U.S. Governments one".

Not even close to what I said. When you grow up, you might find that to disagree with something, you should first learn what it claims.

I presented some problems in OP about schooling, and then I presented some problems about public property. Then you ragequit.

No, you presented a lengthy whinge-fest consisting of a simplistic and exagerrated litany of a child's complaints that could be both composed and addressed far better.

And as far as your assumption that I "ragequit", I had to drop my son off at daycare. Again, when you grow up a little, you might find that your misinformed assumptions about other people, what they do, and why they do it aren't always what you think they are. People have responsibilities that sometimes take them away from internet discussions, and if somebody logs off for a bit, it isn't necessarily that they "ragequit". Again, seriously, grow up.

[Sibirsky]

Funding is not the issue.

It is actually, any change in terms of greater variety and flexibility with schooling will require funding. Perhaps in some magical world where there's no vested interests and protectionism over change then everyone would be rational and come to a sensible solution but, for the factors cited above in terms of location and economic equality alone, it will simply take greater funding to solve, especially where education should be provided free [disregarding 'free' in terms of taxes'] rather than at a cost to lower-income families and children.

There are so many factors involved here despite a basic requirement for universal education involving, basically, daycare for children of parents working full time, part time or whatever, basic literacy, the funnel of available jobs and more that means it's going to take funding.

Personally I'd be happy with a government that devoted itself to education and health above all else but, alas, that doesn't seem to be the case.

Education funding per student has increased 4 fold, adjusted for inflation since the 1970s. Test scores have remained flat. We got the money. And we rank #2 in the world in per student spending on education. Hell, LA is building $500m+ schools.

[Barringtonia]

Education funding per student has increased 4 fold, adjusted for inflation since the 1970s. Test scores have remained flat. We got the money. And we rank #2 in the world in per student spending on education. Hell, LA is building $500m+ schools.

210M population over 308M, greater income inequality without counting wider range of subjects and etc., go figure..

Whether my figures have any correlation to results or not, to simplify it is pointless.. is the point.

But something strikes you when you move to America and when you travel round the world; every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects, everyone. It doesn’t matter where you go. You think it would be otherwise, but it isn’t. At the top are Mathematics and Languages, then the Humanities, and at the bottom are the Arts, everywhere on earth. And in pretty much every system too. There’s a hierarchy within the Arts; Art and Music are normally given a higher status in schools than Drama and Dance. There isn’t an education system on the planet that teaches Dance everyday to children the way we teach them Mathematics. Why? Why not? I think this is rather important. I think Maths is very important, but so is dance. Children dance all the time if they are allowed to, will do. We all have bodies, don’t we? Did I miss a meeting? Truthfully what happens is as children grow up we start to educate them progressively from the waist up and then we focus on their heads and slightly to one side.

If you were to visit education as an alien and say, ‘what is it for? Public education‘. I think you’d have to conclude, if you look at the output… Who really succeeds? Who does everything they should? Who gets all the Brownie points? Who are the winners?

Variety costs.

More...

Now our education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability and there’s a reason; the whole system was invented round the world there were no public systems of education really before the 19th Century, they all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism. So the hierarchy is reasoned on two ideas; number one, that the most useful subjects for work are at the top. So you had probably steered benignly away from things at school when you were a kid, things you liked on the grounds that you would never get a job doing that. Is that right? Don’t do music you are not going to be a musician. Don’t do art, because you won’t be an artist. Benign advice. Now profoundly mistaken. The whole world is engulfed in a revolution. And the second is academic ability, which has really come to dominate our view of human intelligence because the universities designed the system in their image. If you think of it the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance and the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not, because the thing they were good at in school wasn’t valued or was actually stigmatised and I think we can’t afford to go on that way.

[Ifreann]

I think the majority of your personal attacks on me have been completely anecdotal, so I will happily wait for your embarrassed apology I am sure will follow when you realize your hypocrasy.

And you are coming off as a crusty neocon imperialist curmudgeon

This is at least the second time I've pointed out you complaining about personal attacks while making them yourself.

[Dumb Ideologies]

I think the majority of your personal attacks on me have been completely anecdotal, so I will happily wait for your embarrassed apology I am sure will follow when you realize your hypocrasy.

And you are coming off as a crusty neocon imperialist curmudgeon

This is at least the second time I've pointed out you complaining about personal attacks while making them yourself.

Yeah but that's also 'hypocrasy' since Iffy personally attacked me that time in Ardennes Forest during 1940. I'll spare you the details, but it's why till this day I still feel sick at the sight of mango chutney and why many villages in the region still worship the cloaked demi-god invader figure known as Iffy von Slapschlong.

[Vectrova]

Ahahahahaha. This is a hilarious topic.

Teenagers raging against high school systems, claiming both that (a): they are corrupt, totalitarian regimes that make the U.S.S.R. or North Korea look fantastic and (b): that they are staffed with incompetent, moronic, and neglectful (if not outright malevolent) faculty.

Stupid Evil can't be that organized and claiming a regime of that nature is so dramatized that nobody could ever live up to such a reputation. But I'm sure you're so smart that you don't need to worry about these details.

Get off it. The system has problems, but student perspective is a far bigger one.

Im in college now, so I hardly feel im one of the teenagers your refering to. Rather, I am somebody that could see through the stupidity of the educators at the school, who often times I would correct midclass because of their stupidity. Both A and B you listed are correct, as in my experience, schools are staffed with total idiots.

I still remember the school lunches in elemantary school. Kids are too young then to realize that they could form together and demand things from the staff. The school lunches were like UNICEF rations. The mental abuse that occurs in those early years really has an effect on us. The horrible lunches, the often times verbally abusive teachers. This only gets better and better as the years progress, until you are in high school, where you are still being abused. The stress and anguish that is forced upon people is utterly disgusting. And for what? Most of it is propagandized garbage in the end, or information you just as well could have gone without.

You are. My post was almost entirely directed at you, specifically because a college-educated student (or one in the process thereof) doesn't come across as so intellectually bankrupt, fauxlosophical, or carry so heavy a persecution complex.

For example, your entire rebuttal for, "Stupid evil cannot be organized," is an almost word-for-word equivalent of, "YES THEY CAN!"Again, this is a very childish means of debate and calls your college admission into question.

Oh, yes, the horrors of being given food and taken care of five days a week six hours a day. State-mandated food that at least attempts being healthy is just so much like rations on a battlefield. So horrific, you must require quite a bit of therapy for the trauma you experienced. Or, y'know, not. Moreover, as corporeal punishment is banned in schools and any truly rotten teacher gets fired, show me even one instance of a teacher being abusive and getting away with it. It doesn't even have to be sanctioned, just show me one scrap of evidence that it even happens.

You'll also need to demonstrate that the entire education process, from preschool to high school, is filled with "propagandized garbage" that "you just as well could have gone without". It sounds closer to that you reject what you are taught on ideological grounds without actually understanding what you are taught, why your ideology rejects it, or how to know when to reject something. As a result, you come across as a caricature - the very definition of an angsty "anarchist" teenager with a persecution complex.

Most of which is "I don' wanna, you can't make me, I'm smarter than alla you but I can't spell simple words in my rant."

I'm flattered that you agree with me and yes, that's an excellent summary.

[Ifreann]

This is at least the second time I've pointed out you complaining about personal attacks while making them yourself.

Yeah but that's also 'hypocrasy' since Iffy personally attacked me that time in Ardennes Forest during 1940. I'll spare you the details, but it's why till this day I still feel sick at the sight of mango chutney and why many villages in the region still worship the cloaked demi-god invader figure known as Iffy von Slapschlong.

Hey! I'll have you know they worship the cloaked demi-god invader Iffy von Schlapschlong!

[Bottle]

I went to public school for 14 years.

14 Years??!

Stayed back a Lot ?! What was the reason, may I ask?

I was in school from age 4 until just before my 18th birthday. I rounded up by a couple months.

Although, technically, my daycare from the time I was 3 weeks old was "public school," since I attended a daycare center for the children of university employees which, based on how the university was funded, was basically the same as a public school. So in that sense I was in public schools for closer to 18 years.

[Bottle]

Im in college now, so I hardly feel im one of the teenagers your refering to. Rather, I am somebody that could see through the stupidity of the educators at the school, who often times I would correct midclass because of their stupidity. Both A and B you listed are correct, as in my experience, schools are staffed with total idiots.

I still remember the school lunches in elemantary school. Kids are too young then to realize that they could form together and demand things from the staff. The school lunches were like UNICEF rations. The mental abuse that occurs in those early years really has an effect on us. The horrible lunches, the often times verbally abusive teachers. This only gets better and better as the years progress, until you are in high school, where you are still being abused. The stress and anguish that is forced upon people is utterly disgusting. And for what? Most of it is propagandized garbage in the end, or information you just as well could have gone without.

You are. My post was almost entirely directed at you, specifically because a college-educated student (or one in the process thereof) doesn't come across as so intellectually bankrupt, fauxlosophical, or carry so heavy a persecution complex.

For example, your entire rebuttal for, "Stupid evil cannot be organized," is an almost word-for-word equivalent of, "YES THEY CAN!"Again, this is a very childish means of debate and calls your college admission into question.

Oh, yes, the horrors of being given food and taken care of five days a week six hours a day. State-mandated food that at least attempts being healthy is just so much like rations on a battlefield. So horrific, you must require quite a bit of therapy for the trauma you experienced. Or, y'know, not. Moreover, as corporeal punishment is banned in schools and any truly rotten teacher gets fired, show me even one instance of a teacher being abusive and getting away with it. It doesn't even have to be sanctioned, just show me one scrap of evidence that it even happens.

You'll also need to demonstrate that the entire education process, from preschool to high school, is filled with "propagandized garbage" that "you just as well could have gone without". It sounds closer to that you reject what you are taught on ideological grounds without actually understanding what you are taught, why your ideology rejects it, or how to know when to reject something. As a result, you come across as a caricature - the very definition of an angsty "anarchist" teenager with a persecution complex.

He also comes across as a rich kid, at least to me.

School lunches aren't great, but they're not terrible either, and for kids who had to be on Assisted Lunch programs they can be a blessing. My folks worked their asses off, but there were a few months when my school lunches were the best meals I got during the day because money was tight and we couldn't afford luxuries like bottled juice or fresh fruit.

Kids who have never been poor often don't understand how much public school is providing. They only see all the better stuff they want to have. They see in terms of what they COULD be getting, not in terms of what they otherwise would be doing without.

The whole rant about "propagandized garbage" and unfair despotic teachers just seems like throw-away teen angst to me. I didn't get "politicized garbage" in school, but that's probably because I was taking classes like Spanish and Calculus and Chemistry. You know, learning shit? Maybe the OP is upset because he thought he could take a History Of World Cultures elective and skate by, but the teacher decided to make the final an essay test? I dunno.

[Mad as hell]

Public schools are simple brainwashing centres for the elite.

[Dumb Ideologies]

Public schools are simple brainwashing centres for the elite.

It almost sounds like you don't want our children's minds to be soaped and sprayed until gleaming. An odd perspective, frankly.

[Vectrova]

Public schools are simple brainwashing centres for the elite.

Any evidence for this, or just another anarchist that wandered into the thread?

Public schools serve a lot of functions, one of which is preparing the student body for the workforce because, surprise surprise, not everyone can go to (or wants to go to) college. If this is "brainwashing" for "the elite", then golly gee willikers, I guess so. Or, y'know, it could be an education center where things like literacy, mathematics, and writing are taught so everyone in the country has a bare minimum amount of understanding and functionality.

[Juristonia]

You're just saying that cause you're brainwashed by the man, man!

[Farnhamia]

Public schools are simple brainwashing centres for the elite.

It almost sounds like you don't want our children's minds to be soaped and sprayed until gleaming. An odd perspective, frankly.

And quite absurd. Public schools? For the the elite? Unless one is British, in which case that's true, because in their adorable fashion, the British call schools "public" that an American would call "private."