[Alazone]

Lately I have been wondering if Socialism is the "mainstream" choice of political views. Even if it was, I think it's important to note that political messages are almost everywhere. I was reading a shirt made by the infamous brand "Obey", and written on a newspaper it read, "Right Wing declares science fictional"..

What do you guys think of this? I am not for either political view getting more attention. I think people should be able to make their own decisions and media, and especially schools should keep current political views out of peoples everyday lives.

(By Schools I mean Elementary - High School)

[vertical limit]

People are talking about the fail of Socialism but we haven't seen the success of Capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America.


I don't think that this is worthy of a debate.

[Irviding]

QUOTE

but we haven't seen the success of Capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Is that sarcastic because we have actually.

[Alazone]

QUOTE (vertical limit @ Tuesday, May 1 2012, 00:39)

I don't think that this is worthy of a debate.

You just imputed your opinion. That is a form of debating.. - I guess..

[Leftcoast]

A couple weeks ago I heard someone say, "Without socialism, capitalism withers and dies". Not sure of the exact quote, but I thought it was awesome. Think about that one for a bit....

My read on that quote goes back to my thoughts on an educated society being one that is able to thrive and function in the modern world. Without public education, which has socialist qualities, we can't have an educated society, without that we can't compete in a capitalist system. Another important note is public roads and mass transit to get the needed work force from home to work, also has some serious socialist aspects as well.

I find it sad really that we equate "socialist" with "douche hippy liberal" or add "what ever negative connotation you have with liberals" at least in the USA, with no understanding of the fact that without some socialist aspects most of us would be illiterate and therefore not able to post here.

[sivispacem]

I wouldn't argue it's forced, but all democratic political systems have elements of Socialism in them. As for schooling, there's a maxim here in the UK- "those who can, do; those who can't, teach; and those who can't teach, still teach". A brief explanation; teaching has always been popular amongst those who develop a reasonable knowledge at a graduate or post-graduate level, but have no desire to apply that knowledge at a practical level. Many people will claim that teaching is a "life choice", but it's also a cop-out; despite what they say, you aren't working 9-5, you don't lose your weekends and you get 2-6 week holidays scattered through the year. Plus, the teaching sector in the UK is largely public.

Given all those factors, it's largely understandable that many teachers here are left-wing in their political persuasions. All their centre-right, free-market favouring brethren applied their education on a practical level and ended up working in The City.

[Irviding]

QUOTE (sivispacem @ Tuesday, May 1 2012, 01:46)

I wouldn't argue it's forced, but all democratic political systems have elements of Socialism in them. As for schooling, there's a maxim here in the UK- "those who can, do; those who can't, teach; and those who can't teach, still teach". A brief explanation; teaching has always been popular amongst those who develop a reasonable knowledge at a graduate or post-graduate level, but have no desire to apply that knowledge at a practical level. Many people will claim that teaching is a "life choice", but it's also a cop-out; despite what they say, you aren't working 9-5, you don't lose your weekends and you get 2-6 week holidays scattered through the year. Plus, the teaching sector in the UK is largely public. Given all those factors, it's largely understandable that many teachers here are left-wing in their political persuasions. All their centre-right, free-market favouring brethren applied their education on a practical level and ended up working in The City.

I tend to carp with that in the respect that teachers generally do work 7-8 hour days, many staying after and giving extra help for example. If school is from 7 am to 2 pm, that in itself is a 7 hour day. Plus teaching is unique in that teachers have to do A LOT of work at home, though of course many other jobs require this, I don't think it's fair to marginalize teachers like that.

[Leftcoast]

I know several teachers that got into teaching because they wanted to and they didn't want to get shoved into management. With some exceptions, after a certain point engineers are pressured to enter management or head for the door because it's not cost effective to keep them on as engineers, at least according to the finance people.

By far, my best professors were the ones who had real engineering careers before going into teaching. Yes, I went to a public college, in case any one was wondering how that figured in.

[Icarus]

QUOTE (sivispacem @ Tuesday, May 1 2012, 00:46)

Many people will claim that teaching is a "life choice", but it's also a cop-out; despite what they say, you aren't working 9-5, you don't lose your weekends and you get 2-6 week holidays scattered through the year. Plus, the teaching sector in the UK is largely public.

Just to go a bit further along the lines of what Irviding was saying, a teacher will generally be teaching, using my high school as an example, from 0830 to 1530, so that's a seven hour day (but let's say six, because we'll say lunch duty doesn't count). Now that's just strictly teaching. That doesn't include the actual lesson planning (which also takes up a huge chunk of time, especially if you're teaching different classes) and of course, there's always marking, which can take forever (from experience). As well, teachers always get stuck with meetings; I know a few of my teachers from high school disliked the principal because he always wanted to have meetings. So this is going to cut away from your time at home in the evening and to an extent, your weekends. I'm sure if you tally up all those extra hours outside of the typical school day, a committed teacher could easily average eight hours of work per school day, although they're not doing it in the tradition 9-5 sense.

As for the holidays (I'm using Canada as my example; I know it's different in other parts of the world), teachers will get two weeks at Christmas and sometimes they will get a break in March (however, there's usually meetings thrown in there, as well as curriculum development days), but let's say three weeks. For most workplaces in Canada, starting vacation time is around three weeks, so for teachers it's no different than the average workforce employee. While they get about eight weeks off in the summer, it's not really the same as traditional vacation in the work place, because you get paid vacation; during the summer, it's an unpaid vacation as teachers get paid for the academic year, but have their pay stretched out over the full year so as not to have an income stoppage during the summer break. So while they get a nice extended break, they're not being paid for it.

[EDIT] I tend to get a bit on the defensive when it comes to teaching, since it's my career ambition.

[sivispacem]

Your perfectly entitled to get defensive, it's your view at the end of the day. In all honesty, I should have been more specific; I'm talking very much in a British context here. Our school day is 9-3.30 for the most part, with an hour for lunch and another half-hour worth of breaks in the day. Even going on the assumption most teachers work until 4.30- which many do- that's still an hour shorter than your average working day. Also, whilst many of the teaching unions claim teachers at lower levels work considerable overtime designed course materials et cetera, the vast majority of it is done for them by the examining board. They also get one week off every 6 weeks, a 6-week summer (or a 9 week summer if they only teach GCSE students), and 2 weeks at both Christmas and Easter. That's about twice the annual holiday entitlement of any other job.

We basically can't sack poor teachers either. Unless you molest someone or beat a pupil sh*tless, it basically is a job for life. There's lost of talk at the moment about rewarding good quality teaching by paying higher wages to those with the most measurable impact, but of course it's being resisted very heavily by the teaching unions, who seem only interested in preserving the status quo.

I acknowledge that things are different elsewhere in the world. Which is why the UK has one of the worst primary and secondary education systems of any developed country out there. We don't reward teaching the way we should, the way that would encourage people who really were the top of their game to teach, and that's a pity. I mean, it's completely impossible to encourage the greatest talent to teach when basic wages (bearing in mind that you must have both a degree and professional qualifications) are about £20k per year. That, and the above, is certainly true of the state education sector; higher education is dramatically different, as I imagine is private education.

[Icarus]

QUOTE (sivispacem @ Wednesday, May 2 2012, 02:17)

We basically can't sack poor teachers either. Unless you molest someone or beat a pupil sh*tless, it basically is a job for life. There's lost of talk at the moment about rewarding good quality teaching by paying higher wages to those with the most measurable impact, but of course it's being resisted very heavily by the teaching unions, who seem only interested in preserving the status quo.

I agree with you on this. I'm sure most people here can say they've had teachers during their grade school years that were really good and genuinely cared about their students, whereas we probably had others who you know were only there just to get a paycheque and didn't give a damn about the students at all - just the money.

The idea of rewarding good quality teachers has come up before (I forget where in Canada), but the union quickly stepped in and said it's not fair that some teachers will be paid more than others for doing the same work (inequality), although it makes me think of the Animal Farm quote: "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than other." Yes, all teachers are tasked with doing the same job (educating students), but at the end of the day, some do a much better job than others, so I see no problem rewarding those who take the extra initiative. If anything, it would serve as an encouragement for lazy teachers to... well, y'know, not be so damn lazy.

[Irviding]

QUOTE (Icarus @ Wednesday, May 2 2012, 14:01)

QUOTE (sivispacem @ Wednesday, May 2 2012, 02:17) We basically can't sack poor teachers either. Unless you molest someone or beat a pupil sh*tless, it basically is a job for life. There's lost of talk at the moment about rewarding good quality teaching by paying higher wages to those with the most measurable impact, but of course it's being resisted very heavily by the teaching unions, who seem only interested in preserving the status quo. I agree with you on this. I'm sure most people here can say they've had teachers during their grade school years that were really good and genuinely cared about their students, whereas we probably had others who you know were only there just to get a paycheque and didn't give a damn about the students at all - just the money. The idea of rewarding good quality teachers has come up before (I forget where in Canada), but the union quickly stepped in and said it's not fair that some teachers will be paid more than others for doing the same work (inequality), although it makes me think of the Animal Farm quote: "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than other." Yes, all teachers are tasked with doing the same job (educating students), but at the end of the day, some do a much better job than others, so I see no problem rewarding those who take the extra initiative. If anything, it would serve as an encouragement for lazy teachers to... well, y'know, not be so damn lazy.

But how do you think you can decide which ones are better? I got into this debate with someone once at a steakhouse in North Carolina with old fashioned segregated bathrooms (you didn't actually have to follow it, they were for show). Anyway to not ramble the guy was saying that students and parents can simply "tell" which teachers are good and which aren't. I hear this rhetoric all the time that goes something like "oh yeah, education should be in the hands of the parents" or something. But parents are not educators. They don't know what the f*ck their doing when it comes down to it. I can't tell you how many times when I was in HS or JHS I had parents who would be like "Hey Danny, Mike is telling me Dr/Mrs/Mr (yes I had PhD teachers) whatever is a really bad teacher and gives unfair work" and I'm sitting there like, I disagree I love the guy. But if a teacher's style works for only say, 60% of the class, then that teacher would be at the mercy of whichever parents are louder at the board meetings. And I can't stand this idea that we can judge teachers based on test scores, especially state tests. In NY, the regents exams are totally taught to the test in class except if you're in an AP class (with AP, they teach to the AP exam but the AP exams are much more holistic and give more credence to what you're studying; I remember after we took the AP exam in World History in May, for the regents in June, we had to back and study some stupid sh*t that is just completely irrelevant to historians but was on the state test) I remember in Algebra II or Chem or whatever the teacher would say "I gotta teach you this, it's on the regents, though I think it's dumb". Especially in Science it happens where teachers disagree with the other teachers who wrote the exam upstate but have to teach that material since it's on the state test. And that's how we judge a teacher's performance? It just seems very wrong to me, and I agree with the unions for resisting efforts to do either of the suggestions I just talked about. But the thing is, I had no answer for the guy at the steakhouse in NC, and I still don't have one now. What is a method we can use to measure teacher performance?

Just to kind of add this in, I really f*cking hate the union's policy that the last teacher goes first. That's just a horrible way to judge teachers. I had one teacher who had been there for like 30 years who was a f*cking bitch who came in about 20-25 minutes late every day, then I also had a math teacher who was brand new and was one of the best teachers I ever interacted with. I really hate to see new teachers go when they do that.

This post has been edited by Irviding on Thursday, May 3 2012, 00:25

[Icarus]

QUOTE (Irviding @ Wednesday, May 2 2012, 18:23)

But how do you think you can decide which ones are better?

That, I admit, is the tricky part and it is very subjective. For example, when I was in high school, my grade 11 physics teacher was amazing and it was her class that inspired me to go into physics; others really did not like her, because they felt she was making people work too hard (there was a lot of work and some of it was challenging, but she was trying to get people ready for the real world). So if someone asked me my opinion of her, it would be very positive and I'd say she was a great influence on me with respect to physics, but others would argue the opposite, so you end up at a standstill.

I agree that it should not be done via test scores, because you have people who are excellent test takers and some who, although they know the material, might not be the greatest with tests.

[Rown]

If there's a flaw to socialism it's the same flaw found in most societal systems, which is the belief in its own perfection.

No system is "perfect" and therefore cannot be applied universally. Education of one sort doesn't educate everyone.

We need to find a way to let more systems operate simultaneously. Beyond the debates about charter, home, private, and public schools into creative apprenticeships and greater on-the-job training and whatever else emerges. This monoculture is killing us.

Rown

[Chunkyman]

QUOTE (Rown @ Thursday, May 3 2012, 02:08)

We need to find a way to let more systems operate simultaneously. Beyond the debates about charter, home, private, and public schools into creative apprenticeships and greater on-the-job training and whatever else emerges. This monoculture is killing us. Rown

I agree.

I have this theory that we could divide America up into little pieces, and then give each of these little pieces the ability to experiment with alternative types of educational systems, instead of having a one-size-fits-all plan at the national level. We could call these little pieces States, and this diversity would have better results than a national standard. We could even add a Constitutional amendment protecting the semi-autonomy of the States from Federal intrusion.

Of course all of this is just crazy talk.

But in all seriousness, we need to get rid of the Department of Education. It's the epitome of useless government bureaucracies. Despite billions of dollars spent (wasted), students in the United States continue to be about as dumb as they were before the Federal Government got involved.

[Irviding]

QUOTE (Chunkyman @ Wednesday, May 2 2012, 21:20)

QUOTE (Rown @ Thursday, May 3 2012, 02:08) We need to find a way to let more systems operate simultaneously. Beyond the debates about charter, home, private, and public schools into creative apprenticeships and greater on-the-job training and whatever else emerges. This monoculture is killing us. Rown I agree. I have this theory that we could divide America up into little pieces, and then give each of these little pieces the ability to experiment with alternative types of educational systems, instead of having a one-size-fits-all plan at the national level. We could call these little pieces States, and this diversity would have better results than a national standard. We could even add a Constitutional amendment protecting the semi-autonomy of the States from Federal intrusion. Of course all of this is just crazy talk. But in all seriousness, we need to get rid of the Department of Education. It's the epitome of useless government bureaucracies. Despite billions of dollars spent (wasted), students in the United States continue to be about as dumb as they were before the Federal Government got involved.

Actually, they are even dumber. I've always thought it had to do with the fact that tests are becoming the main indicator of kids. Ever since NCLB and all of these federal initiatives, it seems that educating kids is just not important anymore.

The laboratories of innovation argument kind of goes down the tube when you consider the fact that the nations who do better than us with education have federally controlled standards for education. Do you think the reason Finland does well with education is because they have various states that serve as innovation laboratories? I don't think so. You need stringent federal regulation in there. Take the power out of the hands of corrupt superintendents and school boards which have no f*cking clue what they're doing, are not even in the classroom themselves, etc - and put it in the hands of people who have educated before to set standards for the nation. That's the right way to do it. But then we get to the fundamental question - how do you measure students? What's the best indicator?

Also - I figured I'd mention the fact that US students go to school a lot earlier than their foreign counterparts. My school started at 6:45. There is absolutely nothing healthy about having 15/16/17/18 year old kids going to school at 6:45 in the morning, especially when sleep doctors and other experts have concluded that it's unreasonable for a kid that young to be expected to go to bed before 11 due to various biological processes associated with that age.

[Rown]

I'm going to make a point on semantics with regards to the Finland example. You used the term "federal" level likely as a synonym for "national" but federal denotes something different. Federal refers to a type of government over a union of other governments. Nations are distinct peoples.

I would make the case that the "nation" of the U.S. is actually composed of several smaller nations. Dixie is still very much a nation as is New England. Even Texas and California have a good claim to being or containing nations. Each has different needs economically, each has a different make-up socially and politically. However, we don't really recognize these nations legally. The closest approximation we have is the state.*

But dragging myself back to the topic of tests and teaching I think this is a good watch.


Rown

*=(I actually think states can go too far though. Localities also need flexibility. I mean you're from New York originally right? Think of how economy and local needs change across the state. Farms along the west, forests in the north, a handful of heavily urbanized islands in the south.)

[Irviding]

QUOTE

I mean you're from New York originally right? Think of how economy and local needs change across the state. Farms along the west, forests in the north, a handful of heavily urbanized islands in the south.)

Absolutely. The UK has a unitary government which manages the highlands of Scotland along with the urban London. Of course local managements systems are necessary but it seems that when federal restrictions are put in (i use the term federal as a synonym for national/central) we as well as others simply do better. Even when we devolve things to the states and let them manage federal programs with federal resources it really doesn't work. What works better? Categoricals or block grants? Obviously the former. You remove the competing lobbies from the state and the money is spent where it needs to be spent.

[Alazone]

QUOTE (Rown @ Thursday, May 3 2012, 02:08)

If there's a flaw to socialism it's the same flaw found in most societal systems, which is the belief in its own perfection. No system is "perfect" and therefore cannot be applied universally. Education of one sort doesn't educate everyone. We need to find a way to let more systems operate simultaneously. Beyond the debates about charter, home, private, and public schools into creative apprenticeships and greater on-the-job training and whatever else emerges. This monoculture is killing us. Rown

I absolutely agree.

Let the states decide what they want to do, in terms of public education. The states should be responsible for the education within the state, not the federal government.

[Irviding]

QUOTE (Alazone @ Wednesday, May 2 2012, 23:34)

QUOTE (Rown @ Thursday, May 3 2012, 02:08) If there's a flaw to socialism it's the same flaw found in most societal systems, which is the belief in its own perfection. No system is "perfect" and therefore cannot be applied universally. Education of one sort doesn't educate everyone. We need to find a way to let more systems operate simultaneously. Beyond the debates about charter, home, private, and public schools into creative apprenticeships and greater on-the-job training and whatever else emerges. This monoculture is killing us. Rown I absolutely agree. Let the states decide what they want to do, in terms of public education. The states should be responsible for the education within the state, not the federal government.

Why, though? Why should places about 50 miles south of where I am now (DC/Northern Virginia) be educating kids that evolution and science is fake, but 50 miles north of me be teaching kids that science is the answer to everything? That's not how you educate a population. Universal education is the answer and it works in other countries whose education scores are higher than ours. States are not the answer to everything. We tried that under Reagan and it didn't work all too well. That's when the country started declining if you look back to the Reagan years. Trade deficits, massive deficits, deregulation, devolution, I could go on and on.