The Times has an interesting story on Diane Ravitch’s abandonment of many strategies for improving education associated with “conservatives.” I support some of these strategies, like trying to inject markets and competition into the educational system, and oppose others, like national standardized testing, which I suspect may raise the lowest common denominator, but be the enemy of excellence.
Anyway, one paragraph in the story, explaining why Ravitch has come to oppose school choice and charter schools, really stood out: “In 2005, she said, a study she undertook of Pakistan’s weak and inequitable education system, dominated by private and religious institutions, convinced her that protecting the United States’ public schools was important to democracy.”
I’m torn between “Really?” and “Huh?”
(I’m suggesting that Pakistan is so dissimilar to the U.S. in so many ways that it’s hard to believe that a study of Pakistan’s educational system could lead an eminent scholar like Ravitch to draw any meaningful conclusions about the U.S. system. Also, there are many other countries far more similar to the U.S. that have much more diverse educational systems than is common here, without obvious apparent damage to democracy. Why focus on Pakistan, of all places?)
rpt says:
The import of your last line is unclear. Do you believe that public schools are not important to democracy?
March 3, 2010, 9:27 pmDavid Bernstein says:
I’m suggesting that Pakistan is so dissimilar to the U.S. in so many ways that it’s hard to believe that a study of Pakistan’s educational system could lead an eminent scholar like Ravitch to draw any meaningful conclusions about the U.S.’s system.
March 3, 2010, 9:31 pmNorthern Dave says:
Actually, that’s how I read your comment, David.
Comparing apples and oranges is good slight of hand if no one is listening, but elsewise…..
Publically mandated standards and mandatory schooling for children are necessary for Democracy, but charter schools have been the best thing in the last 40 years of pre-University education. It has forced the Public Boards to provide better client responses and tone down the political rhetoric. As well, I met a fellow who’d set up a system someplace in the midwest that ran on 1/3 of the admin budget for the regular system while paying a full complement of teaching staff union rates (seems about right from my personal observation of where the real overspending is in education).
Having been in the education game too at several points, I would argue in favour of standardized testing. Addressing the needs of gifted children through filtered access to specialized programming ought to be better managed but without standardization your base population is worse off. (Apparently the Israeli’s do a great job of fast-tracking bright kids but I’m not familiar with their system personally and as I recall it involves the military somehow….)
March 3, 2010, 9:46 pmAbdul Abulbul Amir says:
No meaningful conclusions, but a handy strawman.
Why study Pakistan when Wisconsin has better quality data, and is less costly to study.
March 3, 2010, 9:50 pmGD says:
Yeah, those KIPP schools are absolutely terrible! Our public schools have the finest teachers’ unions in the world!
March 3, 2010, 9:51 pmbyomtov says:
Don’t you think it might be a good idea to read the study before criticizing the conclusions?
After all, an eminent scholar like Ravitch is surely aware that there are huge differences between the US and Pakistan. I suspect she took these into account before reaching her conclusions.
I mean, maybe she didn’t, in which case your criticism is justified, but attacking her based on a sentence or two in a newspaper article doesn’t seem justified.
March 3, 2010, 10:11 pmDavid Bernstein says:
When I say “it’s hard to believe that a study of Pakistan’s educational system could lead an eminent scholar like Ravitch to draw any meaningful conclusions about the U.S. system,” I mean either that I think Ravitch was looking for support for a preconceived conclusion OR that the reporter didn’t quite get the facts straight.
March 3, 2010, 10:16 pmAnderson says:
Prof. Bernstein needs to get out more. Surprise-inured tho I be, I am surprised that a Jewish professor could be so unaware, or unconcerned, about the fundamentalist Christian “madrassahs” in America (“homeschooling,” we call them).
(Not all homeschoolers are fundie reactionary whack jobs, but in the South, it’s a substantial percentage, says my anecdotal evidence. I have had some … interesting conversations with nice people who just assume their interlocutor is opposed to Darwin, racial equality, and the Federal Reserve.)
Right now, they’re statistically insignificant, but hurrah for Ravitch for being able to spot a trend and change her mind about something important to her.
March 3, 2010, 10:48 pmKazinski says:
I heard Ravitch the other day on NPR, and she was just was just as incoherent on a subject with nothing to do with Pakistan. When asked whether she still supports charter schools and other competition she said something like this(this is so dumb it hurts):
March 3, 2010, 11:24 pmMadrassahs? I'll show you Madrassahs says:
Yeah, just like those open-minded free-thinkers in public education. Everyday I have to undo all the church of environmentalism b.s. my kids’ teachers keep foisting on them about global warming. Schools will freely pass out condoms but god help the poor child who doesn’t put their pepsi can in the recycle bin. Now that we know the high priests of environmentalism have been cooking the books it sure seems more and more like a cult intended to keep the congregants in line. I’d say driving the world economy into a tailspin because of environmental dogma would be a far larger evil than what a few home schoolers could do, who let us note actually far outperform their peers on measures of achievement and ability. I’m all for global hygiene but what they do in public schools makes Sundays at a fundamentalist church look like a social club.
March 3, 2010, 11:28 pmrpt says:
Doesn’t market competition in education mean a race to the bottom?
March 3, 2010, 11:28 pmAbdul Abulbul Amir says:
Even discovering what all the significant differences are between two very different societies is task that is likely beyond the ken of mere mortals. How to account for those differences is at the least the work of a lifetime.
March 3, 2010, 11:30 pmMadrassahs? I'll show you Madrassahs says:
“Doesn’t market competition in education mean a race to the bottom?”
Right. Because people want their kids to be stupid.
March 3, 2010, 11:31 pmKirk Lazarus says:
Sure sounds like an eminent left-wing scholar to me.
March 3, 2010, 11:32 pmKazinski says:
Wait I found the transcript, here are her actual words:
I should explain why that is so stupid, because I know some just aren’t going to get it, first of all public schools use proprietary education material all the time. Private companies and universities develop it, copyright it, patent it and market this material it is a major industry. In fact I’d be willing to wager the Ravitch herself has copyrighted or patented material before and has gotten royalties for its use in a classroom setting. Second, one of the main rationals for Charter schools is to create a laboratory where new ideas can be developed and tried out, without all the bureaucracy, work rules and other impediments of the traditional public schools system.
March 3, 2010, 11:34 pmMadrassahs? I'll show you Madrassahs says:
When I think of teachers’ unions I just think of a nice happy, cooperative family. No conflict with management there at all. They never put their occupational interests first. No sirree. It’s always what’s best for the kids. I’ll prove it to you. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/31/090831fa_fact_brill
March 3, 2010, 11:37 pmMadrassahs? I'll show you Madrassahs says:
When I think of teachers’ unions I just think of a nice happy, cooperative family. No conflict with management there at all. They never put their occupational interests first. No sirree. It’s always what’s best for the kids. I’ll prove it to you. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/31/090831fa_fact_brill
March 3, 2010, 11:37 pmorca says:
Really?
Math and Physics are different over there?
March 3, 2010, 11:58 pmDesiderius says:
So she’s become conservative with age. What’s the surprise?
That those superintendents giving her the standing ovation think that our Prussian-style government-monopoly (with the monopoly part perhaps being if anything the more destructive aspect) system will magically deliver those things she, and they (and we!) want, when it has shown no signs of doing so throughout her entire lifetime despite the herculean efforts of thousands like her, whatever their political disposition…
Well, something about the definition of insanity comes to mind.
March 4, 2010, 12:39 amDesiderius says:
“Schools should operate like families.”
Good God. She needs to read some Tolstoy.
“The fundamental principle by which education proceeds is collaboration. Teachers are supposed to share what works; schools are supposed to get together and talk about what’s succeeded for them.”
Yep, we’re supposed to. Trouble is, we don’t do it as much as our peers in the “private” sector whose jobs depend on doing it and doing it well. There is a simple fairness issue here.
Competition is not the war of all against all. To compete effectively requires effective collaboration in a way that the CYA ethic of protected monopolies does not.
March 4, 2010, 12:49 amShelby says:
Why focus on Pakistan, of all places?
Obviously, because all non-public schools in the U.S. are run by people indistinguishable from the Taliban. Yet, somehow, the Obama girls seem to struggle through!
March 4, 2010, 12:52 amKazinski says:
It must hurt to be that dense.
and:
March 4, 2010, 1:26 amorca says:
So?
We just had another 2nd Amendment hero gun down a teacher in front of her students this week.
Shall we list all the school killings that have taken place in America thanks to the N.R.A. and its nutty supporters?
March 4, 2010, 1:35 amTRE says:
Our childrens is doomed.
March 4, 2010, 1:42 amDesiderius says:
“We just had another 2nd Amendment hero gun down a teacher in front of her students this week.”
Our rendezvous with density continues…
March 4, 2010, 6:44 amDesiderius says:
BTW, those superintendents?
Regulatory capture on an utterly massive scale.
March 4, 2010, 7:39 amAbdul Abulbul Amir says:
Are you referring to way so called gun free zones attract killers?
March 4, 2010, 8:24 amfalafalafocus says:
I would love to see a list of all school shootings that were financially or morally supported by the N.R.A. Please include in your list a citation or link showing that the N.R.A. or its “nutty supporters” supported the attack.
March 4, 2010, 8:27 amJoseph Slater says:
I don’t know what she meant by the comparison to Pakistan, but her concern about cooperation as opposed to competing through secrets is clear and correct. Under No Child Left Behind, public schools compete with other public schools for resources based on test scores. So, if teachers and/or administrators in school A come up with some new, productive teaching/learning techniques, they have an obvious and significant financial incentive not to share that with other schools. That’s obviously bad, and Ravitch was correct to point that out.
March 4, 2010, 8:35 amRichard Nieporent says:
Let’s see what the difference between these acts are. In the first case you have a concerted effort to destroy schools for girls since according to the Taliban educating girls is un-Islamic. In the second case you have an isolated incident of someone being shot at a school where the killing had nothing to do with the fact that it was a school.
Orca, do you remember the old saying that goes “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” I suggest you really think about it.
March 4, 2010, 8:53 amBrendan Murphy says:
Then when the Chartered (notice it is actually chartered not charter) school finds something that works that information is to be freely given to public schools to see if they work in large scale.
March 4, 2010, 9:29 amBrendan Murphy says:
So are you saying schools should compete or teachers should compete?
Should school competition be about money or quality?
Can schools have a competition in the effectiveness of their collaboration?
The old ways of school obviously worked very well for the majority of the readers of this blog, but that doesn’t make it the best practice for all. As a matter of fact it might make it the worst practice for others.
Chartered schools were never meant to supplant, or even fix education, they were meant as a “lab” to experiment with the educational process; delivery of education, administration, teachers, etc. Chartered schools are in essence ways to exploit niche markets. To serve them up as models of competition and the saving grace of the American Educational system puts far too much importance on chartered schools and demeans the system that is currently in place.
I’m not saying we don’t need a change. What I am saying is your notion of change is short sighted and small minded.
Oh and why didn’t anyone complain about the final paragraph comparing the U.S. Educational system to Japan and Finland. Those societies have about as much in common with the melting pot that is American as Pakistan.
March 4, 2010, 9:45 amkarrde says:
For the record, I (and my parents) are heavily involved in the homeschooling movement.
Regrettably, we are in a Northern state (near a large city that used to be known as the center of the automotive business worldwide).
In my experience, people meet home-schoolers who are otherwise-ordinary, and miss the fact that they are meeting a home-schooler.
Then they meet a home-schooler who is far-from-ordinary (thinks Evolution is a conspiracy against religion, insists racial equality or the women’s vote ruined America, think the income tax is unlawful, etc.) and think of that as an example of how weird home-schooling is.
Like most anecdotal evidence, both your and my evidence has the problem of selection and identification.
But I will confess that meeting with other home-schoolers (and private-schoolers, and public-schoolers) taught me not to judge a group by its extreme members.
As a movement, home-schooling attracts people who have at least one trait out-of-the-ordinary (taking a direct, personal hand in educating their children), but also attracts people who have other oddities.
At least they are selecting themselves out of public schools, rather than trying to force public schools to accept their views.
March 4, 2010, 10:41 amBob from Ohio says:
Really, Anderson, that is a really bigoted statement. You, unlike a few others here, are usually better than that.
March 4, 2010, 10:56 amA. Criminal says:
“What do these solutions have in common? They propose to cure a problem caused by socialism by some more socialism. It’s the standard recourse of the alcoholic: more of the hair of the dog that bit you to get over the inevitable hangover.” — M. Friedman
The “problem” here is cost, not results, because the sad and very ignored fact that teaching methods, class size, money, homework etc, etc, are not nearly as important as the students themselves when evaluating school results.
From the somewhat rambling but very informative Arthur Hu:
(I reformatted the first list so it’s readable without using HTML tricks)
http://www.arthurhu.com/index/timss.htm :
These overheads show eighth-grade mathematics data from the 1992
Second International Assessment of Educational Progress (IAEP-2) and
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).1
The data look like this:
Top Scorers
287 – Asian students, U.S. schools
285 – Taiwan
284 – Iowa
284 – Top third of U.S. schools
283 – Korea
283 – Advantaged urban students, U.S.
277 – Hungary
277 – White students, U.S. schools
…examine NSF 96-52 ( which may be on line), full title is “Indicators
March 4, 2010, 10:58 amof Science & Mathematics Education 1995″ and is a National Science
Foundation publication. Figure 2-19 on page 28 is most interesting.
Want to really know the top 20 countries for math proficiency for 13
years olds? OK, hold your hat, here they are.
1. Tawain
2. Iowa
3. Korea
4. North Dakota
5. Minnesota
6. Soviet Union
7. Switzerland
8. Maine
9. New hampshire
10. Hungary
11. Nebraska
12. Wisconsin
13. Idaho
14. Utah
15. Wyoming
16. Connecticut
17. France
18. Colorado
19. Israel
20. Italy
+++ end info from Hu ++++
ShelbyC says:
You’re right. Pakistan and the US are exactly the same. But you’re obviously dead wrong about what happened last week. Schools are gun-free zones.
March 4, 2010, 10:59 amA. Criminal says:
Sorry, in the previous post when I quoted Kazinski, I was actually quoting Kazinski quoting Ravitch: “Yes. There should not…” is Ravitch’s rambling.
March 4, 2010, 11:03 ambk says:
you must have clearly missed all the reporting on helicopter parents and the many many parents that are directly involved in their children’s schooling despite sending them to public schools. either that, or homeschooling instilled in you a massive ego and a feeling that you are better than everyone else.
March 4, 2010, 11:38 ambk says:
A. Criminal,
if you’re going to break out the US by region, why not break out all of the other countries by region? i find it hard to believe that all of the soviet union scores exactly the same, that north and south korea have identical scores, that urban areas on taiwan score the same as rural farmers in taiwan, etc. in other words, the lists are comparing apples and oranges.
i would guess this wasn’t done because it would push much of the us states off of the list.
March 4, 2010, 11:43 amAndy Bolen says:
Just goes to show that women can only think anecdotally.
(kidding, kidding)
March 4, 2010, 11:44 amAndy Bolen says:
Seconded.
March 4, 2010, 11:45 amorca says:
Gun free zones don’t do much good when any psycho with a chip on their shoulder can easily pick up a gun and go hunting teachers and students, do they?
March 4, 2010, 11:53 amiawai says:
Why do we care what effects schooling has on democracy? Isn’t schooling supposed to be about the pursuit of truth and practical knowledge, with the benefits to “democracy” being secondary through having a thinking electorate?
Ravitch is entirely correct, IMO, that public schools are a necessary tool in grooming the rationally ignorant.
March 4, 2010, 12:38 pmHarryEagar says:
What Anderson said.
Home schooling is like home medicine. Not good for your longterm health or intellect.
Charter schools are looking to be the 2010s’ version of nursing homes in the ’60s, too.
March 4, 2010, 12:45 pmSarcastro says:
[Gotta say I disagree. Seems to me that the specialized training required of medical-types isn't quite the same as teaching. The former is a skill, the latter seems to me to be more of a talent. Could be because I have a way with words, and cannot stand the sight of blood though (typical liberal)
Sure, there are the crazy homeschoolers, but I've seen no convincing statistical evidence that homeschooling itself creates dullards. Till I do, I say live and let live.]
March 4, 2010, 12:49 pmUnderdog NY makes finalist list for Race to the Top | Paperless Media says:
[...] The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Ravitch on Education Policy [...]
March 4, 2010, 1:58 pmUnbranded Bovine says:
I assume you have some idea on how to effectively restrict a psycho’s access to firearms? Hmmm….we’d have to enact and aggressively enforce a complete ban on private firearm ownership. While we’re at it, we’d have to eliminate physics and chemistry from our educational curricula, in the hopes that nobody will be able to figure out how to make guns illegally–you know, the way New York City youth gangs were doing back in the 1950′s. If only those hooligans hadn’t been so well-educated…
March 4, 2010, 2:33 pmBen P says:
[quote]The “problem” here is cost, not results, because the sad and very ignored fact that teaching methods, class size, money, homework etc, etc, are not nearly as important as the students themselves when evaluating school results.[/quote]
That’s a variation of an argument that almost always comes up here when school policy comes up. The point is that while the “average” American student under performs compared to other developed nations, the top third or half in American schools are generally pretty competitive, while the bottom groups falls far behind.
It’s certainly an interesting point, and I’d think it’s a valid ground for impeaching any educational study that doesn’t acknowledge it to some degree, but it also sidesteps the issue. Which is that, even if we acknowledge the top performers are competitive, is it a problem that the lower performers are not? and what do you do to fix that?
March 4, 2010, 2:36 pmkarrde says:
It could be true that I missed that.
Or that I blurred the case while making my point.
Or it could be true that “helicopter parents” and others still constitute a minority of parents of traditionally-schooled children.
It is still the case that the dominant, out-of-the-ordinary trend among home-schooling parents is that they are willing to attempt the education themselves.
Perhaps I should have phrased my statement better.
March 4, 2010, 2:37 pmUnbranded Bovine says:
By the way (to continue with the tangent), I’m concerned that if access to firearms is effectively restricted, more nutcases will figure out how easy it is to build a flamethrower.
Okay, I’m once again being flippant about a sensitive subject…
March 4, 2010, 2:39 pmkarrde says:
Back to the point of the original post:
Using Pakistani schools as a comparison-point for drawing lessons about American schools is like using Mexico as an example for reducing corruption in law enforcement in America.
March 4, 2010, 2:42 pmAbdul Abulbul Amir says:
Actually gun free zones seem to invite that bad behavior.
March 4, 2010, 2:45 pmorca says:
That would be fine with me.
March 4, 2010, 3:25 pmA. Zarkov says:
Why should a “Jewish” professor be more aware of fundamentalist Christian “madrassahs” than any other kind of professor? The planted axiom here is that fundamentalist Christians are somehow anti-Jewish. In my experience, that’s exactly wrong. Let’s take a concrete example. Holocaust survivor Suzanne DeWitt, who brought the terror-wrecked Jerusalem Bus 19 to Berkeley, faced stiff opposition from the usual suspects in Berkeley, and even some Jews opposed her– like her own rabbi! However she did get unqualified support from the fundamentalist Christians. I’m afraid your remark is pretty lame.
I am usually loath to make personal comments, but in this instance you have gone beyond the pale.
March 4, 2010, 3:37 pmA. Zarkov says:
Some years ago I shared an office with a young man who was home schooled for K-12, but did go to a university. He was one of the most intelligent and best informed people in the office. He also seemed well-adjusted and extremely sociable. He told me that his parents were former public school teachers. I guess they had inside information.
March 4, 2010, 3:45 pmSuzy says:
I assume she was making the comparison only because this was a shocking example of what happens in the absence of the kind of public school system we enjoy here. I took it as a general remark about how a strong public education helps to strengthen the democracy. Even if you support the proliferation of other options for parents, you might still agree with that statement.
March 4, 2010, 4:32 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
It’s not obviously bad compared to the alternative, which is for the school to not have the incentive to develop the new, productive teaching/learning techniques in the first place. (Let alone any incentive to share them.)
March 4, 2010, 6:34 pmDesiderius says:
Nicely put, Suzy.
Ravitch has done so much good – hard – work, that she should be able to do what she pleases these days, no questions asked.
youth ever longs for
March 4, 2010, 6:35 pmprogress. age tires of longing
time too short for dreams
Kirk Parker says:
Orca,
I assume you’re talking about the atrocity in Tacoma? Sorry, that guy is no kind of “hero” of any kind, and given the fact that he was already under a restraining order was not a legal possessor of firearms anyway (imagine that!) However, despicable as he was, at least he didn’t in fact do his deed in front of her students (it was early morning as the teachers were just arriving at work.)
March 4, 2010, 7:08 pmElliot says:
All the talk on this blog about schools competing makes one think of how important those US News rankings appear to be to the legal profession.
March 4, 2010, 7:47 pmricky says:
“a strong public education helps to strengthen the democracy”
Or maybe a strong democracy helps to strengthen the public education system? You can claim cause and effect but for complicated phenomena it’s mostly arbitrary. But don’t let that stop anyone from dictating policy based on their ridiculously small-minded worldview. I mean, I happened to look at some statistics and I noted that European Christian countries are prosperous and well-educated, while Arab Muslim countries are backward third-world cesspools… but I’m no so arrogant as to think that any causal relationship can be inferred from this. I learned in college that all religions are the same and therefore charter schools here in America would turn us into Pakistan.
March 4, 2010, 8:14 pmKirk Parker says:
Now you’re longing for a police state? Sheesh. Though I’m willing to bet that, in practice, you’d find it not so much to your liking–what makes you sure you’d be part of the nomenklatura?
March 4, 2010, 10:35 pmorca says:
It would be no harder than keeping drunk drivers off our streets…in fact, the police could perform the two functions at the same time.
March 4, 2010, 11:54 pmFat Man says:
I won’t claim to be an eminent scholar, but after 9/11, learning about the educational systems in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the PLO, caused me to rethink my attitudes toward vouchers.
There is an Islamic school in Northern Virginia that has had several alumni arrested for terrorism. I don’t see sending public money to them.
March 5, 2010, 12:27 amDesiderius says:
Fat Man,
“caused me to rethink my attitudes toward vouchers.”
As if a voucher is necessarily unrestricted in its application. Should Pell Grants and Student Loans go too?
The University System (tops in the world) serves as a standing refutation to those who would keep our K-12 (not even close) locked in the chains of monopoly.
March 5, 2010, 6:39 amUnbranded Bovine says:
You missed the point of my sarcastic reply, and selectively quoted from it. Firearms are very simple technology. Give me a $250 Home Depot gift card, and I’ll have everything I need to set up shop in my basement and illegally manufacture revolvers. With a $1,000 gift card, I can get what I’d need to make automatics. I wouldn’t do this, however, because I respect the law. Murderers, rapists, drug dealers, robbers, extortionists, and other such scum are generally not so constrained.
It’s an age-old argument–I don’t want to beat a dead horse.
March 5, 2010, 12:12 pmMalcolm Kirkpatrick says:
Ravitch may qualify as “conservative”. She has never supported market-oriented education policies. While Ravitch devoted __Left Back__ to sharp criticism of 100 years of bad US pre-college education policy, her criticisms of education policy have always presumed that some experts should prescribe for other people’s children.
Numerous lines of evidence support market-oriented education policy. The idea that democracy requires State (government, generally)-operated schools is obviously false. The US was a democracy (federation of representative republics) before the compulsory attendance at State (government, generally) operated schools became general policy. Hong Kong, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Ireland support policies which give parents options outside State-operated schools. According to G.T. Kurian, Postlethwaite, and OECD (Education at a Glance), majorities in all these polities attend independent or parochial schools.
“Public education” (government operation of schools) is a threat to democracy, just as government operation of newspapers and broadcast news media would be (are, in totalitarian countries).
Marvin Minsky
Interview
Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery )1994-July
“Robert Lawler just showed me a paper by Harold Macurdy on the child pattern of genius. Macurdy reviews the early education of many eminent people from the last couple of centuries and concludes (1) that most of them had an enormous amount of attention paid to them by one or both parents and (2) that generally they were relatively isolated from other children. This is very different from what most people today consider an ideal school. It seems to me that much of what we call education is really socialization. Consider what we do to our kids. Is it really a good idea to send your 6-year-old into a room full of 6-year-olds, and then, the next year, to put your 7-year-old in with 7-year-olds, and so on? A simple recursive argument suggests this exposes them to a real danger of all growing up with the minds of 6-year-olds. And, so far as I can see, that’s exactly what happens.
Our present culture may be largely shaped by this strange idea of isolating children’s thought from adult thought. Perhaps the way our culture educates its children better explains why most of us come out as dumb as they do, than it explains how some of us come out as smart as they do.”
Clive Harber,
“Schooling as Violence”
Educatioinal Review p. 10, V. 54, #1.
(Quoting) “…It is almost certainly more damaging for children to be in school than to out of it. Children whose days are spent herding animals rather than sitting in a classroom at least develop skills of problem solving and independence while the supposedly luckier ones in school are stunted in their mental, physical, and emotional development by being rendered pasive, and by having to spend hours each day in a crowded classroom under the control of an adult who punishes them for any normal level of activity such as moving or speaking.”
Clive Harber
“Schooling as Violence”
Educatioinal Review, p. 9 V. 54, #1.
“Furthermore, according to a report for UNESCO, cited in Esteve (2000), the increasing level of pupil-teacher and pupil-pupil violence in classrooms is directly connected with compulsory schooling. The report argues that institutional violence against pupils who are obliged to attend daily at an educational centre until 16 or 18 years of age increases the frustration of these students to a level where they externalise it.”
Please read…
E. G. West
March 6, 2010, 5:03 pmSchooling and Violence
Benjamin Hemric says:
Kazinski wrote [additional words in brackets are mine -- BH]:
Wait I found the transcript, here are her [Diane Ravitch's] actual words:
Q. …Is there something wrong with inserting some competition into the education marketplace, if you want to call it that?
A. Yes. There should not be an education marketplace[; "education" is a governmental function, similar to in some important ways, the criminal justice system, for instance, for instance]. There should not be competition [in true governmental functions. Just as you wouldn't want commercial competition driving the criminal justice system either]. Schools should operate like families. The fundamental principle by which education proceeds is collaboration. Teachers are supposed to share what works; schools are supposed to get together and talk about what’s succeeded for them. They’re not supposed to hide their trade secrets [with teachers competing against, rather than collaborating with, their co-workers] and try to have a survival of the fittest [as in zero sum game for public funding] competition with the school down the block.
Benjamin Hemric writes:
From the above excerpt, I suspect that Diane Ravitch and I have similar beliefs on this issue. (Although I’m not sure if I agree with the “family” part.) While I doubt I will be able to change any minds, I would like to explain why I don’t think what she said is “stupid” — although at one time I would have probably thought so too.
I see myself as currently being someone who is basically economically conservative (in favor of the marketplace) and socially moderate. Originally I was also a big believer in the “reinventing government movement” (even thinking to myself, “I wish I had come up with that”), and charter schools also seemed to make sense to me. Even in those days, however, certain governmental functions (e.g., prisons and the criminal justice system in general, being a prime example) did not seem to me to lend themselves to the “privitization” and “reinventing government” movement, though.
Eventually I also began to have doubts about charter schools too. Yes, they seemed likely to be more efficient, but it also seemed to me that in this case, like in the criminal justice system, “public purpose” trumps efficiency. And to me, a proud alumnus of NYC’s post WWII baby boomer school system (which I suspect was its true “golden age”) — the public purpose of public education is not to just to provide a “freebie” entitlement to the parents of school age children. The public purpose is to create the conditions that help further a (relatively) free and open democratic society (even, of course, for those who don’t have children). And as I thought about it, this inevitably seemed to mean to me a publicly owned and operated school system (despite all the turmoil, trouble and inefficiencies that such a system involves). (And if the parents don’t like it they can 1) try to improve the schools, just like they try and improve their own neighborhood; 2) send their kids to private schools — that one of the privleges of money; or 3) vote with their feet.)
My thinking along these lines was given a big boost by Jane Jacobs’ AMAZING book, “Systems of Survival.” While the book is really about ethical systems, and might be best thought of as “Ethical Systems of Survival,” it seems to me that “off label” (so to speak) it also has powerful implications for the debates regarding government vs. the private sector. Briefly, in the book she argues that the human race has two distinctly different (and even contradictory) morality systems: a set of ethical precepts that apply primarily to government-type work (“the guardian syndrome,” which also includes the clergy, the military, etc.); and a set of ethical precepts that apply primarily to the commercial sphere (“the commercial syndrome”). While sometimes these ethical systems (and more importantly the mindsets that accompanying them) can be employed successfully in the same activities (e.g., the newspaper industry, etc.), it’s rather difficult and tricky. Most of the time, though, a mix creates “monstrous hybrids,” like political corruption (a mixing of the commercial syndrome into goverment), the mafia (a mix of government function into economics), etc. Thus, it seems to me (although she may not be saying this explicitly), it’s NOT a good idea to try and mix the two worlds.
Thus, if you agree with the Jacobs viewpoint, you might not want to take the public education function of public schools and make it fit into the commercial syndrome — just as you wouldn’t want to commercialize law enforcement or the criminal justice system. (Civil courts are a different matter.)
Whether one ultimately agree with Jacobs or not (obviously I agree), I still suspect that readers will find this book a stimulating and very enjoyable read. (Although there is a section in the middle where it’s not quite as entertaining as it was earlier or will be later.)
P.S. — For those here are attorneys, one of the illustrations she uses to explain her thesis is the legal system, and its customs, in Great Britain. Although I assume attorneys here will be aware of her illustrations already, I suspect that they will be interested in the interpretation that she gives to them.
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Kazinski wrote:
I should explain why that is so stupid . . . first of all public schools use proprietary education material all the time . . .
Benjamin Hemric writes:
I think these are pretty good arguments. But I’d like to try to briefly address them from what I understand to be the Jacobean point of view, as explained in “[Ethical] Systems of Survival.”
Yes, schools use proprietary educational material all the time. But that’s like saying, so it seems to me, that the police force, the courts and the prison system, should be privatized / commercialized because they buy rather than produce their own equipment: e.g., pencils, paper, PCs, computer software, books, etc. But in both of these guardian systems, the criminal justice system and, in my opinioni, the public school system, the basics of the system are still controlled — and still should be controlled — by “guardians” and subject to “guardian” rules and a “guardian” mindset, not a commercial or competitive mindset. (Lest you think Jacobs is an anti-commercial leftist, this book and some others, too, are a virtual paean to the marketplace and commerce — it’s just that she feels government and commerce don’t mix.)
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Kazinski wrote:
Second, one of the main rationales for Charter schools is to create a laboratory where new ideas can be developed and tried out, without all the bureaucracy, work rules and other impediments of the traditional public schools system.
Benjamin Hemric writes:
Governments (and police forces, court systems, and public schools, tax systems, legal codes, etc.) are already a laboratory — although on a different scale. People vote with their feet. So from Jacobs standpoint, that’s part of the beauty of small goverments — having a lot of them compete against each other. (One of her books is a vigorous defences of the French separatist movement in Canada — along with other separatist movements in history (particularly Norway’s [?] non-violent spearation from Sweden [?]. She has also argued vigorously against the Euro for similar reasons.)
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As mentioned, I hardly expect people to be convinced by my very sketchy arguments here. But I did want to present what I see as a litle background that might explain where Ravitch might be coming from.
And I hope that in any comments that people have, they will make allowances for the fact that Jacobs, who is a much, much better writer than I am, took a great deal of time to write an entire book — even though it’s relatively short, it’s still a substantial book — to explain her ideas. (And I may not have the same kind of time to respond to comments here.)
The end product — if you want a good explanation of how Ravitch can think the way she apparently does, I highly recommend Jane Jacobs stimulating (and, I think extremely ENTERTAINING) book, “[Ethical] Systems of Survival.”
Sat., March 6, 2010, 10:10 p.m.
March 6, 2010, 10:10 pm