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Talk:Public schools in the United States (view source)
Revision as of 00:30, June 11, 2008
, 00:30, June 11, 2008no edit summary
: God bless you for doing that, Dan. If I could hold classroom prayer to start the class with those kids and get rid of the liberal ideology, I could double that graduation rate. But the liberals won't allow it.--[[User:Aschlafly|Aschlafly]] 17:42, 25 May 2008 (EDT)
: God bless you for doing that, Dan. If I could hold classroom prayer to start the class with those kids and get rid of the liberal ideology, I could double that graduation rate. But the liberals won't allow it.--[[User:Aschlafly|Aschlafly]] 17:42, 25 May 2008 (EDT)
==Political Correctness as a Hindering Factor==
It's frequently noted that private schools tend to do better than public schools, and that other countries (India, China, and so forth) are turning out more and better-equipped scientists and engineers than America at present.
I would suggest that there's a common factor: none of those educational environments are guided by the notion that every student has equal ability, and that if we just try really hard, every student can achieve at the same level.
Bluntly: that notion is political correctness, and it's a tremendous handicap for several reasons.
First, it makes it all but impossible to hold students accountable for their own education. Social promotion ensures that students who make no effort continue to be passed on to higher grades. While in school, they face essentially no consequences for lack of effort; the consequences only catch up with them when they get out into the real world and discover that they're woefully unqualified for any job.
Second, the one-size-fits-all approach to education hurts both gifted and non-gifted students in the name of "not labeling." Modern educational theory insists that students at all levels of ability need to be taught in the same classroom at the same time, resulting in a Catch-22. Either the teacher can teach at the level of the lowest students in the class--ensuring that the rest of the class will be bored stiff and receive little useful information--or at a higher level, ensuring that the struggling students will be lost.
This is hand-waved with bland optimism and buzzwords like "differentiated instruction." There's only so much differentiation you can do in forty minutes, though.
''Why'' is it wrong to suggest that working with a group of students who are at roughly the same level will enable lessons to be tailored to that level? Why is it wrong to suggest that students who excel in English, in science, or in mathematics be given the chance to excel and to push beyond the baseline curriculum? ''That'' is how other countries produce better-educated engineers and scientists: they don't try to educate everyone to the same level.
Apologies for the rant, but as a teacher in a public school myself, I'm frequently frustrated by having my hands tied. --[[User:Benp|Benp]] 20:30, 10 June 2008 (EDT)