Steven Crowder: Obama's proposal for longer school days

[Ryeland]

Is it a good thing though that the government is progressively increasing the cookie cutter information provided by a variety of schools, or a bad thing? I'd argue the latter, since the quality of schools is already decreasing on the government's watch. It's an awful idea to restrict skilled teachers and prevent them from teaching the things they wish to emphasize in favor of giving us all the same crap to just regurgitate back? If a teacher does a good job, send your kid there, if they do a lousy job, send your kid elsewhere.

Who said anything about the government creating more cookie cutter information? For engineering for example the CEAB (Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board) is a group run by industry saying what has to be taught for a school to gain accreditation. And for engineering this is an excellent thing as it standardizes us so that when hired to design the car you drive, or the house you sleep you can be sure we learned how to design it for safety. Medicine is the same way, as is law. If teachers want to go beyond that its up to them. But the standard exists to create a way to measure the performance of a school. However I know many professors who would claim they are "skilled" who go off on tangents about partial differential equation solution methods that are not at all related to the subject matter. Given their own free reign these people would go off the deep end. Many professors and teachers have no idea what to teach because they themselves have never worked in the field they are teaching in. Government standards protect students from hearing day after day about what this person did for their thesis. While I am not saying all teachers are like that, developing super individualized programs would cause many headaches.

Ryeland, it is pretty naive to think there would be specialty schools for elementary/high schools, that's exactly my point. There is no way the elementary/high school schools are going to change to the point where they become pre medicine or pre engineering classes, or anything similar. First and many second year university classes don't even do this! Besides, again, if you don't like the school, don't send your kids there. But, I would think it would be pretty expected/encouraged that schools at the elementary level focus on an academic approach, and of course allow for other classes typically electives like shop, music, home ec, and whatever else (which, if anything, are the ones that get cut when the government makes program cuts, so more private schools would probably mean more of these, not less).

I disagree, even within the public school system specialization is apparent. I am sure in your town, if there was more than one school, each school had something go to it for. My school was the academically high class school in town, then there was the school that had better shop facilities, and the other one that had an excellent sports program. Shop courses are very valuable to all age groups. In my opinion the importance of academics has been overstated in recent years. In addition, overly academic programs do not serve young males at all. The school system has begun to decline because of the feminisation (another rant i won't go into too much) of the educational institutions. Shop classes and music and art are essential to developing boys as it allows them to learn with their hands and get out some energy. Private schools have no better records for supporting shop programs than public schools.

 

[Ironslave]

Who said anything about the government creating more cookie cutter information? For engineering for example the CEAB (Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board) is a group run by industry saying what has to be taught for a school to gain accreditation. And for engineering this is an excellent thing as it standardizes us so that when hired to design the car you drive, or the house you sleep you can be sure we learned how to design it for safety. Medicine is the same way, as is law. If teachers want to go beyond that its up to them. But the standard exists to create a way to measure the performance of a school.

Well, again, I'm still not sure why we're discussing professional degrees like engineering and medicine, since this thread is related to primary/secondary schools..... Buttt...

Engineering is going to have standards I'm sure, and that's not overly a bad thing, medicine and law do as well, obviously, as you mentioned. But the thing is, licensing exams exist to ensure that those who go into the profession are qualified, and if you flunk it, you can't work in the field. That's the easiest way to measure the ability of the schools, by having huge comprehensive exams which are essentially standardized.

The problem is though that again, the regulations are such that it overly restricts the number of people who can be qualified to even write these exams. You will agree that in Canada, especially rural parts of the country, there is a massive physician shortage. Yet, the schools aren't really opening up to allow as many students as they should. If the standards to open a school were a lot more of a free market, and the government got out of the way with all of their absurd red tape, there would be tons more schools that train future doctors. They could still write the same comprehensive exam, so there's no reason to think that the quality of students who come from those schools would be any different. (the ones that pass, of course).

However I know many professors who would claim they are "skilled" who go off on tangents about partial differential equation solution methods that are not at all related to the subject matter. Given their own free reign these people would go off the deep end. Many professors and teachers have no idea what to teach because they themselves have never worked in the field they are teaching in. Government standards protect students from hearing day after day about what this person did for their thesis. While I am not saying all teachers are like that, developing super individualized programs would cause many headaches.

Then fire them. I went to a private school, and my grade 12 math teacher literally had worked for NASA. The guy was absolutely brilliant, he could do all these crazy things like look at a plants and draw mathematical equations related to them (well, of course nobody could verify if he was right or not, or was just a crackpot making it all up, but either way, brilliant guy). However, he was the WORST teacher ever, and he did go off on all these tangents (however, after he taught us a chapter on mathematical matrix's, a few of us convinced him to let us watch the movie The Matrix in class, lol). Anyways, when it came to evaluation time, we obviously all wrote how bad he was, and he was let go.

Also, if the schools don't fire the teachers, then there is another simple solution, allow parents to send their kids to different schools where they feel the quality of education is better. The current government zoning regulations make it so that you essentially are forced to go to a particular school, and if it happens that the teachers there are awful, you're stuck with them (especially considering how powerful the unions are in preventing them from getting let go).

In the physiology classes I was involved in teaching, I had essentially 100% free rein to teach as I pleased in the lab. For professional degrees like the ones you mentioned, fine if the regulatory organizations want to have some standards, and licensing requirements. But for primary, secondary, and even early level post secondary, there's a million different ways to skin a cat.

I disagree, even within the public school system specialization is apparent. I am sure in your town, if there was more than one school, each school had something go to it for. My school was the academically high class school in town, then there was the school that had better shop facilities, and the other one that had an excellent sports program. Shop courses are very valuable to all age groups. In my opinion the importance of academics has been overstated in recent years. In addition, overly academic programs do not serve young males at all. The school system has begun to decline because of the feminisation (another rant i won't go into too much) of the educational institutions. Shop classes and music and art are essential to developing boys as it allows them to learn with their hands and get out some energy. Private schools have no better records for supporting shop programs than public schools.

I'm not sure what the point of this is. Your school was the academic one, but government regulations of zoning kept you in that school, and out of experiencing more shop classes or what not (which I never disputed have educational value). It's also irrelevant to really compare elective classes between private and public schools now, because of the restrictions private schools are so damn expensive, so the school is going to focus on producing graduates who go into high salaried positions, so that the alumni can give back, and so they can convince parents of future generations that their school has a better record for producing academic success, and they'll send their kids there. In a system which is much much much more of a free market with more schools and more choice, chances are there'd be more options for everyone to choose.