The Sick History of Public Education
aproposofnothing.substack.com
aproposofnothing.substack.com
They say that teachers are being treated so badly by the administration, and that the students are so out of control due to no consequences for anything, that teachers are quitting in large numbers, causing the remaining teachers to have much bigger classes. Then those overwhelmed teachers are quiting, and that is snowballing.
They say the kids learned next to nothing during remote teaching and are now years behind, and so poorly socialized to the classroom that they disrupt it continually, but cannot be stopped or removed. They both once took a lot of pride in their work but feel that their jobs have become about wharehousing kids rather than teaching them.
They let loose with war stories, each one worse than the last.
They're both from the Phoenix area. I can only hope it's particularly bad there.
I think it's the same story everywhere now. No one knows what to do to resolve it. Teachers no longer have sufficient means to provide an effective education to our children.
The school boards and layers of governance have all but stripped the actual educators of any autonomy that may have existed. Using decades of experience to deal with nuanced situations is not a thing that is allowed anymore. There is some strict procedure for everything, and if you deviate the administration will make your life hell.
The solution is probably a blend of: pay teachers more, give them more autonomy, banish smartphones in the classroom, more accountability for abjectly-shitty parenting and a reduction of our total obsession over standardization of outcomes.
If we could only fix one thing - Every teacher I talked to would rate the smartphone as the #1 reason for lack of engagement in the classroom. Even if they arent using it at school, being on tik tok with your friends at home until 3am every day has the same effective blast radius.
We are where parents chose to be with respect to education. Nothing more, nothing less.
Parents wanted accountability--so we have standardization of outcomes. Parents say they want autonomy and discipline--until you apply it to their child and then they sue you. Parents complain about taxes going to education--while teachers have to buy their own supplies (this particularly frosts me).
We are where decades of parents chose to be through their collective actions. The fact that they don't like the consequences of their actions is simply typical of modern society.
In the U.S, parents of public school students did not choose this. The broader electorate chose this, but many who drive the discourse around education are not parents. They are media personalities, politicians, and people without children in the public school system. That's not to say that parents do not have any responsibility for the current situation, but the choices of the broader electorate are generally not the choices of parents.
That is, the only way to really make the parents happy is to never promise a clear path to success, for once you do they will rush to gatekeep it for their child, disregarding the child's motives or perspective. It's the "extrinsic reward negates intrinsic reward" hypothesis at the greatest scale.
At what point did any parent in the state of Texas get to vote on a direct "should we standardize our outcomes y/n" measure? In reality, stuff like this is death by a thousands cuts brought to you by the lobbyists at Pearson (et. al.) over very long timeframes.
Lots of money to be made selling rehashed garbage worksheet volumes every school year. No one is interested in teachers who have a proven curriculum that doesn't require spending millions on new materials every year.
This is on legislators banning students from getting an education outside their district, and banning or significantly hampering private education.
So, why is it that all parents aren't taking advantage of this? Oh, right, they can't pay for it.
Parents magically think that something they already are unwilling to pay for will magically get cheaper the moment you bring the "free market" into the discussion.
And, to be fair, that will be true for some students. If your child is abnormally big or abnormally smart, charter schools will accommodate them.
If, however, your child has any behavioral issues--don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. ADHD accommodation--bye, bye. Threaten to commit suicide or cutting behaviors--you're gone. Depressed and failing because your parents are divorcing--see ya. Got into a catfight over a boyfriend--yeah, that's on social media--you're out of here.
If your child isn't perfect, they will get punted. And generally those parents screaming the loudest, funnily enough, have the children who cause the most issues.
Everybody assumes their child won't be the one on the short end of the stick. Everybody will be in for a rude awakening.
Lots of parents would be happy to stay where they are and pay the cost of private education if it were available.
> magically get cheaper the moment you bring the "free market" into the discussion.
Capitalism isn't magic. It's incentives. Right now if a school is doing poorly there is almost zero incentive to change, because parents aren't legally allowed to send there kids to a different school out-of-district.
This, I think, is the most impossible thing listed.
For the record, I agree with you, but I honestly can already see someone crying that they need to be able to reach their child 24/7.
It blows my mind that anyone could try to teach a room full of young kids without such a policy... what a daunting task.
That is actually very easy, but hard politically
Backpack funding of school choice. End the monopoly of government school districts determining how the money is spent. Let the market, and capitalism work its magic
I am sure however most will disagree with this position
I still agree with your central premise though.
You will not, and can not see that with local schools because the majority of them comes directly from local taxation which can not simply print more money to fund their largess like the federal government does.
Local tax programs MUST be revenue neutral for the most part, baring limited issue bonds for specific things like building a new building
This will limit the amount of backpack funding that would travel with the student.
Personally I would not only want to open the backpack funding to charter schools but also allow parents to use that money for Home Schooling curriculum, programs, or creating School "Pods" like we saw during the schools closures where parents pool resources to hire tutors for their kids
I think we need massive innovation in schooling, including things like Homeschooling, schooling pods, MOOC's, and charter schools
The problem is that you need to define a minimum standard--look at the mess left behind by the coding bootcamps that weren't up to scratch. At which point you are back to the original issue.
In addition, everybody magically thinks that their child won't be the one that charter schools will exclude. The vast majority of parents will be in for a very rude awakening. If your child causes any trouble, they will be punted from the school very quickly and good luck getting into the next one.
A friend of mine put it best: "Having to manage just my own daughter's education through the lockdown was a nightmare. I can't imagine managing 30 students and their parents on a daily basis."
Maybe parents need to start actually parenting again and stop with the new age non-sense we have seen in atleast the last generation. Your child should not be allowed to scream, yell, and throw a tantrum in public while the parents just laugh and say "ohh kids will be kids" bull shit. If I did that as a Child.. well lets just say I would not have been a fun time. (edit: do be clear I do not mean corporal punishment, my parents had a no hitting rule however I also knew I would be punished in various ways should I not follow the rules, or be respectful in public)
The idea that it should be acceptable for child to "cause trouble" in school is the problem, not that the school would remove them.
Used to the biggest threat you could make to a child is "I am going to call your parents" today if a school does that chances are Karen is going to show up and tell the school how great their snowflake is, and how it is school or business that is the problem not that child. Children are not held to any acceptable standards of behavior or responsibility for their actions
I don't disagree with you. However, the tools that a school administrator or teacher have at their disposal is limited.
You can kick a misbehaving child out, but that doesn't help the child. You can fine the parents--who probably don't have the money to pay the fine anyway. You can put a parent in jail--that's not necessarily going to improve the situation. You can take the child away from the parent--but, man, the number of times that improves things borders on non-existent.
So, what do you do to force a parent to start taking responsibility for their misbehaving child if they aren't already? I certainly don't have any good answers.
Markets are not magic. Poor parents will still be stuck with shitty schools teaching their children because reputable ones won't want to serve their area, leaving an effective monopoly to prey on them.
Hell, chances are even if it started with a thriving competitive market it would, before long, conglomerate into an effective monopoly anyway. That's the biggest problem with "free" markets, the big players can ensure they are rarely fair markets by throwing their weight around.
Poor parents are the ones that are helped the MOST by backpack funding, rich people already send their children to better schools, no one wants to send their child to government schools, NO ONE. they all suck
They are forced to by economic circumstance and government regulation, backpack funding removes both of those obstruction
Further this idea that it would devolve into an "effective monopoly" is not backed by any data of any market, and should such a result occur it will likely be a direct result of restrictions placed on the funding by government (i.e no religious schools, no online schools, no co'ops, no education pods, no homeschooling programs, etc)
In my mind backpack funding should be a widely open to just about any educational resources not just brick and mortar schools in the local geographic region that teach the exact same curriculum as the local public schools. That would be pointless
I'm sorry, do we live on the same planet? This happens in all sorts of markets all the time.
I agree that public school system sucks, but I think one of the reasons it sucks is that the wealthy people don't have to deal with it and see it only as an additional tax they have to pay and therefore fight against its efficacy as a means to justifying its elimination. Unfortunately this plagues all government institutions.
I have even answered to you directly on this topic before, but maybe you missed it? Here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28831893
Except that COVID sucked.
So in practice federal involvement in education is mostly standing on the side shouting encouraging words, except where the federal government has some authority for other reasons (such as some nondiscrimination rules).
This is one of the most dangerous threats to a well functioning society.
Whenever we have two-tier systems inequality grows and the closer a society moves to a caste system. Those who can't pay will receive sub-par education while those who can, will receive the best education available according to the means of their family. The issues of public school will be invisible to them and they will feel no need to properly fund it.
This is the same with public education, public funding, public security, public healthcare. Wherever a private system exists that competes with the public (as in "it belongs to everyone") one, it'll consume resources and deprive the public one.
In time, most elected officials will not have experienced it and will neglect it completely.
This is a big part of the problem with the mindset that everything is about "equality".
You are suggesting that a superior private option should not be allowed to exist because it will out-compete a public option (If it were not superior, why would anyone choose it?). I don't think your logic is wrong exactly, a public option will in fact be worse if people are not forced to invest in it, but the problem with this approach is that you're telling those with more resources that they must make due with less (or their children must, in the case of education) for some greater good.
This is where "equality" thinking always seems to lead. You have to tear down those with more so that they don't have something better than those with less. Everyone gets the same mediocrity. The issue is that many people don't want to be collectivists, and they especially don't want to sacrifice their childrens' wellbeing for some utopian ideal. That's an inevitable conflict, and one I think we're seeing playing out right now.
Again, I don't think you're wrong exactly. I just don't think this mindset is one that works outside of totalitarian societies. Implementing it in a society with any sense of individual libery is, to borrow your phrase, "one of the most dangerous threats to a well functioning society", in my opinion.
One way to justify it is to highlight it negates meritocracy. A Boris Johnson who went to Eton becomes Prime Minister, for instance, while not exactly being an exceedingly bright student. Most likely, he's not even the top 50% of the Etonian population. I wouldn't bet in him being among the top 95%.
Ideally, the state should invest sufficient resources to make a private option less advantageous and place it in the diminishing returns region of the curve. Just imagine what a workforce properly educated, who understands the Earth is round, that vaccines work, that wrong is wrong, among many other things, could do for any country.
Equal opportunity is the only moral choice, since every person has the same rights and the same obligations. Allowing money to distort this principle is obviously undersirable.
> Again, I don't think you're wrong exactly. I just don't think this mindset is one that works outside of totalitarian societies.
We all sacrifice some freedoms in order to live in a better society. We can't kill people to take their possessions (or their families), for instance. There was a time we could and that was not only tolerated, but entire economies were built on top of that. Now we know better, of course.
Eventually, we'll know even better, and all this childish "I deserve to be powerful because I'm rich" will be a thing of the past.
The idea that education as we know it is an unalloyed good—as long as we fund schools enough and appreciate the teachers etc. etc—is just false.
Bryan Caplan (economist at George Mason) wrote The Case Against Education (https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691174655/th...). IMO, he's definitely too provocative and it's certainly not perfect but he makes really good points on modern education. My version of a summary below:
1. There's an enormous return to attending 4-year university. 4-year degree holders on average ~400k over there life time than high school graduates. This is somewhat suspicious, because it's not obvious 'HST 105: History of Ancient Greece' is imparting labor market skills.
2. Economists says education builds (1) 'human capital', i.e. education causally makes individuals more skilled and thus labor market success. There are two other stories: (2) action bias which is that universities simply selected people who would have been successful whether or not they went to college or (3) signaling theory which is that the degree communicates to employers you're smart, conforming, punctual, can accomplish ~4 year goals, etc...basically you're a 'grade-A worker'.
3. Bryan lobbies for the signaling theory. A flurry of educational psychology research is presented and it's impressive. A good example is there's almost (A) no scientific evidence that 'learning how to learn' or 'transfer of learning' or 'critical thinking' are taught well in classroom. It's shocking how this appears on every syllabus but that actual research that classrooms can impact this essentially doesn't exist. (B) The fadeout effect, where giving students extra education does boost tests scores for those individuals, but if you track them for the next 5 years the effects fade out -- like many things there's regression to the mean (C) Memory isn't as reliable as we think -- this has been very important in the judicial system that has historically relied on witness testimony. I don't remember anything from my 'History of Rock and Roll' class when I was a freshman.
4. Non-psychological critiques are that (1) the econometrics almost never include the stat that ~50% of all students who attend 4-year college don't graduate (some transfer, so that number is a bit difficult to calculate). But almost nobody guesses baseline of ~50%. The returns to college look good because of survivorship bias. (2) Labor econometrics in general is weaker than we think...for example, how do you operationalize 'experience' -- almost all academic studies on discrimination, pay gaps, etc. have this problem. (3) There's extremely strong evidence and intuition that getting the degree matters, i.e. if go for 4 years but don't graduate returns are much lower.
There's a ton more in the book, but those are the big parts. I was a teacher for 5 years and it's crystal clear to me that 'passive learning' isn't nearly as useful as 'active learning', but for classroom management reasons active learning is rarely viable. Active learning also makes the teacher look like they're not doing much work, which is bad for their bargaining.
At my last employer, which was my first time as a manager, I helped to get HR to remove the requirement to have a degree from all job applications, as it was a major barrier to entry and preventing a lot of great candidates from applying. At my current job, I also don't care if you attended college, and removed it from requirements for my team.
I just care if you can do the job and you're not a jerk about it. I know many other folks in hiring positions who feel the same way, and some large companies are starting to rethink their degree requirements. Hopefully it becomes more widespread so folks don't have to experience what you have.
I am so glad to see others adopting this path. Even with dropping this constraint we are having a little bit of trouble finding good people. I can't imagine how hard it is to hire someone now if you are demanding 4 year degrees and other forms of experience/credential.
I feel the world is changing so fast now, especially in technology, that it has become counterproductive to screen for historical credentials and experience. "Can you deal with rapid change and communicate effectively" are the new major criteria for us.
Indeed, I've found the way that people mindlessly parrot this without presenting any evidence for it demonstrates a lack of critical thinking.
> Most pupils are taught collectively rather than individually
Err, yeah, because that's cheaper. Anyone want to increase the education budget 10x?
> It should be noted that prior to the Civil War, the large majority of Americans were not slaves, indentured servants, nor employees of other people.
Yeah, I wish we could go back to the olden days when we grew Intel Core i7 processes on our own farms, much better to be self sufficient
> The reason for this being that these parents had the gall to demand a say in their own children’s education, protesting and screaming about curricula and mandates that were implemented unilaterally without their input.
If only they'd been to school and learned to communicate without screaming like children.
> Can we honestly say that our accelerating funding of education in this country has been the key to prosperity?
Yes, yes we can.
> The children in public schools who sit down and agree to absorb information are marked as intelligent and tracked as headed for success – the other ones, who critically reject simply parroting and assenting to what is being told of them are labeled stupid and sent on a path for dejection and exclusion with the intent that it should follow them through life.
Has anyone ever politely asked a question about something and been sent to detention?
> Lying to the public
To be fair, the public are a bunch of idiots who'll panic and cause shortages where non exist.
In conclusion people in the past said things relevant to the past.
If only they'd been to school and learned to communicate without screaming like children. ... > Lying to the public
To be fair, the public are a bunch of idiots who'll panic and cause shortages where non exist.
In conclusion people in the past said things relevant to the past.
...
The tone of the comment is ridiculously dismissive. If you do not address existing complaints, at best, they will fester. The response provided did not address the complaint, but instead opted for ad hominem variant.
What's the existing complaint?
Also if education is designed to be conservative, why is it seen as a threat much more by conservatives? Aren't they always complaining about new fangled teaching of evolution/women having the vote/slavery being bad/etc?
<< What's the existing complaint?
Hmm, where do you want to start? There is a reason beyond pure propaganda that makes two sides of US political spectrum ( I do not believe it is that simple, but I am simplifying for the sake of the argument ) opt for private instead of public whenever it is a viable option.
Why is that? Is everyone racist/classist/elitist? Obviously, the answer is not simple for anyone willing to consider the reality for what it is.
But lets start back at the beginning. What is the complaint? Right now, it is the simple fact that parents are not just not being listened to; not just not being heard; not just being ignored. They are actively being treated as a threat to the system.
Is that acceptable?
Some parents are a threat to the system, the crazy ones.
Of course you individually choose private school if you can afford it, as an individual choice that's the sensible option.
Problem in USA is schools are funded by house taxes, so poor areas get poorly funded schools.
Who are the crazy ones and, perhaps more importantly, who are the sane ones?
I don't want to put words in your mouth. I want to understand how you view the world around you.
Then you have the crazy people who hate evolution/slavery is bad/vaccines/masks/wifi
And, one assumes, there's some people making valid points that don't get any media attention. Seems like it's something there'd be a record of in minutes of meetings, even if there's no statistics about it.
I don't really agree. I am sure there are people, who cannot participate due working multiple jobs, other obligations and so on. But you did put a number on it. Based on your estimate, the crazy is less than 1% percent of parents.
<<Then you have the crazy people who hate evolution/slavery is bad/vaccines/masks/wifi
They can hate all they want, but how does that change facts? I don't think reasonable people disagree slavery was bad ( it was -- and I will sound a little flippant here -- I think disagreement is over whether everything is racist, which is a very different can of worms ).
I know that it is easy to dismiss and write them off as crazy/stupid/what have you, but if they come to those meetings, when 99% of parents don't care, isn't it more important to address those the worries of those that do? Even if they yell.. so what? Let them vent. It is de-escalation 101. I will go even further. Especially, if they are crazy, it is extra important to talk to them just in case you get through to one of them. What you do not want to do, which is what seems to a popular sport these days, is escalate to the point cops get called in.
<<And, one assumes, there's some people making valid points that don't get any media attention. Seems like it's something there'd be a record of in minutes of meetings, even if there's no statistics about it.
Here we can actually agree and as a future 1% I simply cannot wait to read previous meeting's minutes.
If someone who's read a whole book about something wants to criticize it, fair enough, but I'll bet money that 99% of people hating CRT can barely spell CRT
Top tip: Don't stand next to a conspiracy theorist, people will think you're a conspiracy theorist. Calm down the crazy people who agree with you so they don't steal all the attention and make you look crazy too.
I used to think this way and I will admit that guilt by association is a very strong driver for one simple reason. It works. But it is a double edged sword. Note how well it was used to lower public support for OWS and now BLM simply by associating both groups with less than savory types the public is not willing to support.
As far the 99% claim, I don't have data to back it up so it is hard for me to opine. I only hear of CRT as part of my news feeds. I mean, it has its own wiki ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory ) and I can kinda see why it is being perceived as a threat to status quo based on that entry, but I personally see it as inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.
As a side note, I want to point to something amusing, which will hopefully lighten the mood somewhat. Not that long, anyone suggesting NSA has the reach disclosed by Snowden was dismissed as a conspiracy nut.
"Reallocate some of the police budget to fund mental health workers" is apparently too long a slogan.
As for the NSA, isn't that why people said encrypt everything though?
The main question to me was could they store/process all the data they could possibly/easily obtain? The original stories were about them being able to store and search everything, which is clearly impossible, they had to target searches to capture small parts of the entire data stream and throw away 99.99999%, and they'd not cracked encryption on any useful scale either.
> Yes, yes we can.
No, we can't.
Where Has All the Education Gone?
Cross-national data show no association between increases in human capital attributable to the rising educational attainment of the labor force and the rate of growth of output per worker. This implies that the association of educational capital growth with conventional measures of total factor production is large, strongly statistically significant, and negative.
https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/1...
The main part of the article deals with the fact that microeconomic data strongly supports returns to educational yet cross sectional comparisoms of countries don't. The author prefers structural differences to labour forces meaning some countries make better use of their educated workforce to signalling arguments.
It's going to take stronger evidence from a paper making stronger claims than that to convince people that the US would be the same place if educational investment was at the pre public education level when most kids didn't learn to read or perform basic arithmetic.
When will this fail finally :( Are you sure it's THAT bad ? Should we really continue resisting the US education model that seems to create an endless stream of indebted compliant morons rather than the non productive philosophers we build everywhere else ?
Also you have to factor in competition, if you don't educate your population another country will and leave you with the low paying jobs.
We should be educating people their entire lives, 1 day a week at school to learn things that were invented after you left school.
To be fair, it happens. It takes some time till abusive teacher is figured. But, it does not happen nearly as often as ideologues like to claim it does.
The kids who get in trouble in school are way less likely to be critically commenting on world history and way more often interrupting the lesson with completely unrelated remarks. Or are just not handing in work done at all. Or just stay mute when asked question.
What a bunch of modernist drivel.
Did Prussia really influence US education philosophy more than Britain did? I find that a bit hard to believe.
Love this "source" in this paragraph:
> It should be noted that prior to the Civil War, the large majority of Americans were not slaves, indentured servants, nor employees of other people.
The source being a link to a 372 page scanned PDF. No page numbers for that reference. Just a thoroughly unsearchable and massively long PDF. Nice reference bro.
> The thread of school being used for ulterior motives runs right up to the present day. In 1967, a book...
Today I learned that 54 years ago is "present day" when discussing education.
Why do I feel like the author had a really bad time at high school?
Because the essay is about public education, e.g. state funded education. Not the history of all education. Public education in the West was pioneered by Prussia in the 18th Century and then copied by other nations in the late 19th Century:
"Prussia was among the first countries in the world to introduce tax-funded and generally compulsory primary education.[3] In comparison, in France and Great Britain, compulsory schooling was not successfully enacted until the 1880s.[4]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system
Moreover the article traces the history of this movement by Horace Mann, an expert on Prussian education and the acknowledged "Father of public education" in the U.S.
> Today I learned that 54 years ago is "present day" when discussing education.
That's not what the essay says. Let me help in explaining what a period means: it ends one thought and starts another. Let me help explain what a paragraph does: it groups thoughts together. Often the first sentence of the paragraph makes a thesis, and then what follows provides evidence for the thesis. So he says it continues until the present, and then as evidence of this continuation he cites data from 1967, 1976, 1980s, 1998, 2008, 2016. That is meant to show continuation until the present.
My question remains - why is Prussian educational thought considered influential in the USA by the author, and no thought given to British educational thought? Because one guy visited Prussia to see their system?
It's not like the USA's lower house of government is called the Diet, I'm pretty sure the USA does things the USA way, education included.
If you want to strongly link Prussian educational thought to American educational thought, you might have to prove it beyond "this guy who thought education was important visited Prussia".
PS - Horace Mann, yep, visited Prussia. However, didn't say shit about "let's use schools to control the people". Which even the author acknowledges with a a slight sneer:
> Mann may have not been as explicit as his German counterparts in his hopes for social control
(But he totally was for it, trust me, I'm a substack author).
> Moreover the article traces the history of this movement by Horace Mann, an expert on Prussian education and the acknowledged "Father of public education" in the U.S.
The person who basically founded the US public education system based it on the Prussian system, not the British one.
Does that imply Prussian education systems? Or Prussian education values?
Because, as I literally quoted the author saying, Mann isn't on record saying "Let's control the people, mwahahaha, wait, don't quote me on that", the author is heavily inferring it with no evidence.
Plenty of systems are adopted without also adopting the values they evolved alongside.
China and free markets. Lots of software companies and Agile. Various "democracies" with the system, but none of the values of "don't commit voting fraud, don't intimate opposition voters" etc.
Adopting a system isn't predicated on adopting the values the system was designed in.
As the mind forms it can be trained to generically look at what is provided and attempt to combine those parts into desired configurations. You end up with nodes sorted into a tree like structure where options are a first class citizen. What is commonly called the prusian system of education is more focused on hammering in lists of items. You end up with a smooth brain that operates in predefined steps. In this model the student is accused of lack of focus when they consider alternative options or if a new bit of information triggers seemingly unrelated thought. The chains of instructions are eventually tied into closed inescapable loops. If you later in life suggest to them that alternative approaches are possible they get furious as if you've cast doubt on their very essence which in a way you did.
The story goes that the main selling point of the system was that it produces soldiers that can march to their inevitable death while carefully preserving formation.
The Prussian influence on the US education system is well known. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system#Unit... .
The thing is, that connection cannot be looked at in isolation.
The main modern influence from the Prussian system we retain is in funding compulsory education through taxes.
But US educators would also have been influenced by other education forms, like the Lancaster System (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monitorial_System "based on the abler pupils being used as 'helpers' to the teacher, passing on the information they had learned to other students").
When that didn't work out so well, in part because the students didn't handle the factory-like/mechanical form of training, people tried the Glasgow System (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Stow#The_Glasgow_System ), which emphasized the training of teachers.
And guess what - the Prussian model also emphasizes the training of teachers.
So when this essay points out how elementary school teachers need to be credentialed under the Prussian system, is that specially a Prussian thing? Or a Glasgow thing that the Prussians copied?
Really, read http://hackeducation.com/2015/04/25/factory-model .
Citations needed.
Yes, if only because the people (General Education Board: Frederick Taylor Gates; Massachusetts Board of Education: Horace Mann; medical schools: Abraham Flexner) behind all of the school boards were "convinced" of the efficacy of the Prussian/German systems -- having all personally visited them (but never for any long enough period to see their outcomes).
> My question remains - why is Prussian educational thought considered influential in the USA by the author, and no thought given to British educational thought?
Because both the U.S. and the U.K. did not have any wide-spread educational systems (the U.K. primarily had some religious schools) until the middle/end of the 19th century.
The reforms in the U.K. to get more schools were driven by the government, while the reforms in the U.S. were primarily driven by ex-unitarian preachers.
They evolved side-by-side, and by circumstance did not really have much influence on the other.
How wide-spread does it need to be to be influential?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monitorial_System including https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_school_(England_and_W...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Stow#The_Glasgow_System which mostly replaced the Monitorial System.
And the US had schools before the influence of the Prussian model - where do you think their educational models came from, and do you think that influence suddenly disappeared?
After this period, I have not done any more reading into Britain's system---only the U.S.'s; wherein, the G.E.B was setup to increase access to (and decide the vision of) public schooling for all, primarily in the South (which relied primarily on private tutors to teach the children of means).
These "grammar schools" following in the image of its U.K. counterparts did not suddenly disappear; but their impact on---already minor, due to tuitions---the greater public was overshadowed by the G.E.B's vastly deeply coffers, and likewise ability to reach more children. While the ends of early "grammar schools" in New England were to teach the Classics, and "enrich" the sons of the elite; the ends of G.E.B's were:
"In our dream, we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hand. The present educational conventions fade from their minds; and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning, or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, editors, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have an ample supply…The task we set before ourselves is very simple as well as a very beautiful one, to train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they are… So we will organize our children into a little community and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way, in the homes, in the shops and on the farm."[0]
I.e. an incomprehensible and non-communicated vision of Frederick Taylor Gates, that one is left to make sense of with his own devices. Nonetheless, these "Prussian Schools" were free from the influence of the common higher-class schooling of the time.
The Prussian Model is a misnomer. It's the "Frederick Taylor Gates" model, that spins and weaves various notions taken from all sorts of places, into an energizing story that helped him escape being a lowly preacher, to a person of means and "importance," via backing by John D. Rockefeller Sr. (in return, the latter continued his campaign of damage control against his public image and legacy).
[0] https://archive.org/details/countryschoolof00gate/page/6/mod...
I'm a programmer, but even I know some of the US presidents had rather informal training.
Lincoln, while mostly self-educated, received formal schooling from itinerant teachers.
Andrew Johnson's education was through his employer and "augmented by citizens who would come to Selby's shop to read to the tailors as they worked" says https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Johnson#Childhood . (This reminds me of Cuban cigar factories of Ybor City, where the workers hired "El Lector" to read while they worked, from topics ranging from socialism and unionization to romantic novels.)
While my formal education didn't really cover it, there's also the infamous and repugnant American Indian boarding schools, whose inhumane practices continue to make the news as people continue to find new unmarked graves.
So that's three distinct education approaches in addition to the grammar school one.
FWIW, I interpret "The Prussian Model" as "tax-funded compulsory universal education." I think this linked-to essay, which cherry-picks quotes to interpret "The Prussian Model" as specifically an educational policy of non-thinking conformity, is poppy-cocky nonsense.
EDIT: there were also schools which started after the Civil War to teach freedmen, eg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampton_University (founded 1868) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_University (founded 1881). These both predate Frederick Taylor Gates (born 1853) who didn't start working with Rockefeller until 1889.
It's easy to agree that the Prussian state educational philosophy was focused on building good citizens for a nation state embroiled in near continuous war, or threatened by hovering on the horizon storm clouds of the next war.
But you can use a Prussian system to deliver results according to American ideals - the Prussian system doesn't necessitate Prussian ideals.
It's like how you can do Kanban, without building cars in a very homogeneous society.
The primary catalyst for "Prussian Schooling Reforms" was Frederick William III's defeat to Napoleon at Jena, and all that ensued after. Prussia's new "soldier unit" schooling system was a reaction to this.
It is inseparable from "Prussian ideals" (or more accurately, ends and means that are strictly "Prussian"). The ends involved with the "Prussian Schooling Reforms" were to create an underclass of citizens that could be used to fulfill the state's ends. The corresponding means was the schooling system.
In the case of the U.S., the ends were to enrich its proponents, and give them a bigger "power base." The "adoption" of the "Prussian Schooling System" was the means to this end.
The ends are very similar, and of a similar "family."
This is a messy conversation, only because the idea of "ideals" and "philosophy" are always post hoc. Rarely does any public policy anywhere stem from "ideals" or "philosophy" -- those are always selling points, and even red herrings, to rally others under a single banner to reach a certain end.
I see this article as symptomatic of the situation having radically changed between wars now being unthinkable between nuclear-armed powers (and their close allies), and more recently the rise of the the World Wide Web.
I would, however, not be so dismissive of Nation-States and the need of citizen endoctrination as the author is : you can easily end up with something way worse, like an Empire or tribal chaos ! (But then the author seems to be focused on the USA, which has always been a weird blend of Nation and Empire...)
Well, yes, since it is factually true.
> But you can use a Prussian system to deliver results according to American ideals
Well, yes, since actual American educational ideals, especially of the ruling class, involve a very similar concept of a “good citizen” to that of the Prussian model, and not even Prussia of the time the model was invented was as continuously engaged in war for as long as the US has been.
Compared to that, my high school was a big relief.
And I had a very different type of schooling, even though it was public. And in a 1970s working class/middle class town. From 1-5th grade, we were taught a subject together, then separately in turn according to our ability and level. While not being actively taught we worked on packets that we worked through at our own pace. This allowed some students to advance years ahead in English or math, as well as preventing teachers from passing kids who do not comprehend the material, while still being taught in the same classroom. I'm surprised this method is not used more often. Perhaps it failed on the whole. It seemed to work well for me.
Although the lower amount of single income two parent households is definitely an issue, as are the modern extended over 40 hour workweek for parents. And the lack of independence imparted from walking to elementary school, which was common then.
This may be a necessary move but it's a steep political battle.
Some kids won't benefit from a formal school at all. I expect HN has a rather larger proportion of that type than usual in the population. Getting those kids out of prison as early as possible and into a situation where they can develop instead of cramp their potential would be a great boon for humanity, I think.
To take a recent example : homeschooling is now effectively banned in France due to the (reactionary) Muslim threat.
(Personally, I'm still unsure as of whether this was the best way to go about it, especially considering how it comes together with an attempt to create a Muslim clergy, which not only seems to go against the (majority) Sunnite practices (closer to Protestants than the better known Catholics which serve as the model here ?), but also puts at the head of it an association with terrorist ties (ties to the Muslim Brotherhood), and finally violates the core principle of separation of Church and State...)
There have been alternatives -- for example based on Steiner, Montessori, Dewey, etc.
The school system tried to shave down our square-peg for years before we re-arranged our lives so we could bring them home. It’s fair to say we have a highly critical view of the education system (in Canada, but I think it’s reasonably similar to the U.S.).
That said: To me, this article is raving. The author is taking real problems and attributing them to the machinations of their own personal hobgoblins.
Just because a historical figure had a sinister motive in education, that doesn’t mean that a front-line teacher in the classroom today is using that ideology when interacting with their children. The quality of the relationship between a child and their teacher, produces at least half of that child’s overall experience (with the other half coming from requirements of “the system”).
There can be bad things in a system that happen for reasons that aren’t sinister. By and large the “round pegging” of children is not harmful at all to kids who are roundish in shape to begin with. Most people who achieve some kind of prominence in their fields as adults came through the school system just fine, but that path is by no means the only one that leads to success.
The key is to note when a particular child doesn’t fit into the available system. Private schools can only provide a slightly more accommodating model, largely because of improved student/teacher ratios (improving that relationship) and less restrictive finances (improving resources). Beyond that it’s a question of how much support the child can be given (by parents, tutors, etc.) to help extract what they can from school, and fill in where it's lacking with other activities.
For a more rational look at the education system and the needs for its reform (towards a more individualized educational experience for each child), I’d recommend:
The End of Average - Todd Rose
Free To Learn - Peter Grey
Someone asked Chomsky what happens to people who are too independent-minded for traditional schooling. He said that they become taxi drivers.
I wouldn’t elevate traditional success as the be-all-end-all of personal education.
There are many, many teachers who provide education in a way that doesn't match this summary at all.
Though I didn't grow up there, I have had some contact with American educators and there's something to it. The bottom end of teachers at my international school tended to have come from the US system. Similarly, American friends tended to have the host horrific stories about their time there.
I know a lot of people from around the world, and most of them do not think so negatively about education, it seems like a US thing.
The UK is not different from the US. Most students don't like academics. Some of them hate it.
[1]Yazzie-Mintz 2010, pp.6-7
[2] Larson and Richards 1991, pp. 427-29
Of course I found my German classes irrelevant and boring. I knew the language and grammar very well and having to find meaning in a green "Emergency Exit" sign being mentioned half way down on page one of the book we had to read was completely pointless to me. I wanted to get out of there and go back to the computer lab and learn more about sorting algorithms. But we only had one hour of that each week.
And sure, biology class was at least interesting but learning and being tested on how a bee dances to let the hive know where to find the field of flowers definitely is interesting but to I would venture more than 90% of students completely irrelevant.
Now reverse everything I said for someone that is interested in language, politics and public speaking. They hate the irrelevant calculus and are bored out of their minds while dreaming of reading and finding meaning in the next Goethe poem.
There is nothing stopping those educators with the ideas/resources/energy from doing everything the OP said doesn't happen in education. Having been to a UK school, I wouldn't have referred to teachers as academics, so that is a strange quote but for sure, I found many lessons quite tedious and I think there should be less excuses now because of the internet and much cheaper multi-media.
I don’t think that’s sustainable at all, for any of the parties. These mythical everyday heroes can’t fundamentally reform a system of education which is more about control than enlightenment.
I have read somewhere that smaller classes are better.
What’s enlightening about that?
We really ought to question mass education as we know it.
It seems to me like the author had a bad experience in school (hey, so did I!), and seems to have massively overgeneralized that into a entire diatribe about how the current entire institution of school is a irredeemable failure.
If the author is claiming that the current educational system is irreformable, they're not presenting any alternative other then anarchy.
I'm not sure what the point is.
The whole thing is basically concern trolling wrapped in ancient references that no longer apply and overgeneralized specious citations. It's a level beyond concern trolling, it's concern masturbation.
My on the spot quick fix: This rigid and harmful "educational" system is best to overcome if children til the age of 12-14 are not exposed to it. Most can handle it pretty fine from then on. Starting with something resembling "Montessori pedagogy" and then just enter the formal system at the age of puberty. It has worked out pretty well for Sergey Brin and Larry Page, to name a few. Wojcicki's mother is also a very interesting example. Bezos as an different example was heavily influenced by his then retired maternal grandfather (space technology and missile defense systems at Darpa in the late 1950s; in 1964 appointed manager of the Atomic Energy Commission) spending a lot of his forming years at his ranch.
And so on.
> There have been at least 25k deaths due to vaccine
We're obviously all going to die as brainwashed corporate drones. Also, Rockefellers, did I mention the Rockefellers enough?
Also, what if you discovered that, say, some astrophysicist whose work was being discussed was also a devout Christian? Would that suddenly make the original work less valuable just because they admit a religion you don't share? How about if they're Satanist?
It's possible to disagree with others, about specific subjects, and still interact socially with mutual benefit. It doesn't threaten your purity to do so.
Ironically, the original article is the one trying to divide people into thoughtless drones that never question the dominant narrative and other people like the author himself. Got to say, that if mindless acceptance of an extraordinary claim made by (checks) a programmer's blog is the sort of critical thinking that can be expected from those too independent for the schooling system, I'll settle for being a mindless drone
(PhDs being the most vaccine hesitancy is something of a tangent, though it doesn't really support the contention in the original argument that education breeds only conformity, or say anything about whether people with relevant PhDs' myriad of reasons for being more cautious about novel vaccines has anything to do with the credulity involved in believing vaccines have killed 25k people despite the lack of evidence)
Speaking of, do you have a source for your last statement? I'd be interesting in reading it :)
This is especially true when "The Facts" are not a controlled lab experiment or a logical derivation, but real time data collected in a chaotic enviromnent of the pandemic by a wide variety of actors with different level of methodological rigor and - please do not deny this - often political and financial motivations. It is not the way of science to put such Facts on the pedestal and refuse to question them just because they fall out of line.
The study you asked for (it's a preprint): https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.20.21260795v...
Kind of ironic to elevate the most educated as being the most independent-minded given the topic of this thread.
For a compelling essay against this view, read "The Invented History of 'The Factory Model of Education'" at http://hackeducation.com/2015/04/25/factory-model
Here are my comments about this essay:
> The first largescale education system put in place in the Western world was in the Prussian and Austrian states in the mid-to-late 18th century.
"Large scale" is in the eye of the beholder.
In Colonial America, the Massachusetts Law of 1647 required "towns of fifty families hire a schoolmaster who would teach children to read and write. Towns of a hundred families must have a grammar schoolmaster who could prepare children to attend Harvard College." (Quoting https://www3.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/masslaws.html ).
It's not "large scale" because (now quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_School_Laws ) "By the end of the 1650s, all eight of the 100-family towns and a third of the 50-family towns had met the respective requirements for grammar schools and the hiring of teachers."
But it's not like there weren't older systems. Charlemagne "pursued educational reform, requiring monasteries and cathedrals to establish schools to educate boys to read and write in order to make the Bible and other religious texts more accessible and in turn broadening and deepening the spread of Christianity. The schools would also teach religious music, singing and psalms to encourage the spread of the faith, as well as grammar so that religious texts could be revised and edited." in the 700s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admonitio_generalis .
> or monastery like colleges.
"monastery like colleges" is a rather broad brush. The medieval period had cathedral schools in addition to monastic schools. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_school .
Or, see how https://www.britannica.com/topic/education/The-Carolingian-r... distinguishes between "Monastic schools" and "Urban schools".
I think the point is that education was considered as part of religion. But "monastic like" seems too constraining. "Scholastically inclined minds" couldn't help but enter a religious school, because that's all there was.
> The teachers will have certificates attesting to their pedagogical competence. Pietist schools were the first to require formal training for elementary schoolmasters,
Note here the "elementary" qualifier. Pedagogical competence requirements existed for centuries. Quoting the same Britannica link:
] The success of the urban schools was such that it was necessary, in the middle of the 12th century, to define the teaching function. Only those who were provided with the licencia docendi conferred by the bishop—or, more often, by the scholasticus—could teach. Those who were licensed taught within the limits of the city or the diocese, whose clerical leaders supervised this monopoly and intervened if a cleric set himself up as master without having the right.
> > The pupils you observe use only textbooks that have been approved by the state board of education.
That's not true! At least in 2013, "Thirty states allow local agencies or schools to choose textbooks." - https://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/01/09/23/10923.pdf Egs: Kansas, "Individual school boards are responsible for adopting appropriate textbooks; Michigan, "The board of each school district shall select, approve,and purchase the textbooks to be used by the district."
> Mann may have not been as explicit as his German counterparts in his hopes for social control
But, but, but ... schools have always been about social "control". Colonial Massachusetts started public schools because the Calvinist Puritans believed a literate populace that could read the Bible "was an essential requirement for temporal living and eternal salvation", and they required the education be under the "Puritan leaders, in order to avoid "false glosses of saint seeming deceivers"." (Quoting WP from earlier.)
We see that same topic of 'social "control"' in the arguments about laws banning schools from teaching "critical race theory".
We see that when Charlemagne wanted to broaden and deepen "the spread of Christianity".
So connecting 'social "control"' specifically to Fichte is nonsense.
> > “Our schools are, in a sense, factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products…
Cherry picked quotes do not make a good history. Again, see "The Invented History of 'The Factory Model of Education'" at http://hackeducation.com/2015/04/25/factory-model ,