[potatolicious]

As someone who went through the tortuous education system in Taiwan, where the culture of cram schools also existed, and standardized testing was king, I would not wish it upon anyone. In fact, I think cram schools are one of the worst ideas ever conceived in education.

All it does is created socially retarded (in the non-derogatory way) children unable to deal with anything that doesn't come out of a textbook, with no discernible life skills whatsoever.

I've spent years unlearning things from that stage of my life, and I'm still not done. Every day I'm learning social norms and life knowledge that I honestly should have found out at age 12, not age 24. When you send kids to a public school for 8 hours, then spend the next 6 hours not interacting with people, and instead cramming for their next exam so they won't be hopelessly left behind, you're creating a massive social problem for later. When your children's only free time in a day is spent wolfing down packed dinner while the taxicab speeds from one cram class to another, you are doing yourself and your children a grave disservice.

There is a fundamental difference between school and education, one would be wise not to confuse the two.

More schooling is an absolutely ass backwards solution to our educational problems. The solution is better education, not slapping de facto mandatory private schools on top and making our kids work more hours than an EA employee.

[untamedmedley]

Given a choice between what we have now and a cram school culture, I would prefer the latter. At least then the (predominantly poor, black, and latino) students our public education system routinely fails would have a fighting chance at a decent life.

That said, I don't want to give the impression that cram school culture should accepted and imported wholesale to America. I used cram schools as an example of outside forces based in capitalism acting as a self-correcting mechanism for a public school system. Given the political difficulties of transforming public schools, I think it would be helpful to have at least one place students can go to receive an education.