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by seanmcdirmid
4696 days ago
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Public and private are quite well defined, actually, don't let the hongbao's fool you...those are all public schools. Low quality, sure, but corrupt? The USA is not china or India, our schools are pretty incorrupt even if incompetent. Getting rid of public education in the states would destroy American society as we know it. We will become more like Mexico, brazil, or South Africa, with the rich hiring body guards and living in fortresses to keep out the crime; thankfully it's is easy to get a gun in the states. We ignore the fact that even our imperfect system is better than the crappy libertarian alternative. I'm sure teacher unions are part of the problem, but lazy parents who blame the unions for the whole problem are just idiots. Finland has teacher unions and they do very good at education. The problems we have are cultural, but deep down inside, the parents are happy to blame the unions and kept things the way they are, like a republican congress they just want to complain, point out their scapegoat, and make sure no improvements actually happen. Right, the farmer has to live in palo alto somehow to get education for ther kids, but plenty of farmers live in Beijing and their kids get squat. |
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Having grown up in the inner city, there were plenty of parents that did not care, they were too busy wallowing in the despair of poverty. But there were plenty of other parents that fought to get their kids a better education and were stymied by a system that simply did not appreciate or care for feedback or parental participation. So those that could afford it sent their kids to Catholic schools, the only place left in NYC to ensure kids got a decent education. I was fortunate enough to be one of those kids, but my parents stretched to make the tuition. Today, it is even worse as parochial schools shut down and magnet schools are not able to meet the rising demand by parents fed up with the public options and desperate for alternatives.
This is not an honest debate. Obviously you are coming from one particular viewpoint and I am coming from another. Part of it might be political views and part might be personal interactions with the US educational system. I have children now in public school and can see how misaligned incentives have created a system that simply does not rewards quality.
As for bringing up Finland, that is a country that has less people than Chicago, a completely different culture, and a homogeneous population. What works there simply does not translate (just as the hagwons in Korea do not translate to the US). What does translate however is making quality the pinnacle for reshaping the US education system, something that oddly liberals resist. Instead they protect the unions and the status quo and that sounds like the camp you support.