Problems with the public education system

[Valentine]

Not enough women with this name teaching: Autumn Leathers

Three things, what she did was wrong, very wrong.

Who names their kid that?

Shouldn't she be a porn star with that name?

[daria7483]

Autumn Leathers? I know someone with the last name Leathers, and I've known plenty of people named Autumn. So was her mom supposed to not give her the family name since it had the word "leather" in it? Anyway, I'm not saying what she did was good, and it was very stupid, but the kid was 15 and came over to her house. He knew what he was doing.

[Dark Bringer]

Hmm... In Australia we had a public phone company. It's now privatised. Now you don't get reception in central Australia. Or even on many parts of the coast.
Also, I've experienced your US privatised phone companies. I was in a country town for ages (Massachusetts) and nobody could afford broadband because Verizon could just rip everyone off because it wasn't profitable to have upgraded phone lines in that town.

Really, I can't speak for Austrailia but if you think the US phone companies are bad, would you rather not even have cell phones existing or it being illegal simply to have an answering machine. That's the way it was before phone service was deregulated. Although AT&T was (and still is) a private company, they had a virtually monopoly. Look at all the innovations that have since occurred with private competition for phone service.

Don't you see the joke here? American car companies are going under. They're failing. They're in their death throws. The only reason they may survive is because your government gave them money. God those CEO's run their companies well.
What about the banks? Private companies are nearly the sole reason why the world economy is collapsing. 2 years ago it was forecast that Australia and China would boom for another 15 years but that died because of some banks in America. Go private industry. Thanks for being the cause of the loss of millions of jobs world wide... so far.

As for the car companies, yeah they screwed up like a lot of other retirement funds have because people didn't die soon enough. Okay, what I mean is that they based their retirement and pension plans on the life expectancy of the 1960's where people wouldn't live longer than 10 years after they retired from the car company. And then some would re-marry someone much younger who would be eligible for the spouse benefits. The two tier benefit system recently negotiated was long overdue. The Big Three (GM, Ford, Chrysler) should not have caved into the UAW's demands for so many years. Why would you ever have a jobs bank? But still, any car made by the big 3 is light years ahead of the Trabant. I don't know what your point is, I said cars are almost a necessity in many parts of America. The private sector does a much better job of providing automobiles than government did. I never said it had to be an American company. Even with the American car companies struggling, it doesn't mean cars have become scarce in the US.
The government could help by not imposing all these regulations by environmentalists who seem to want the car companies to go under. I hear it was the higher milage standards that created the SUV market because a lot of soccer moms needed something bigger than the sedan. So the companies make really tiny cars to please the environmental laws but nobody wants to buy them. As if that passing a law will change people's tastes and preferences for anything. If they really want to promote conservation, they should raise the gas tax. But unfortunately, the eco fascists would rather just ban all drilling in places where it doesn't fund terrorism so they can deflect the blame onto the oil companies and carmakers and say that the free market has failed and more regulations (that sabotaged the companies in the first place) are needed. I've heard that 60% of a new car's cost simply covers government regulation. But if mandates and coercion are such a great way to achieve progress, why not try them with other ways. Let's pass a law requiring hospitals to cure 50% more cancer patients by 2012. Why not abolish the common cold?

And don't blame private banks for the housing mess either. The government told them "Lend money to people who can't afford it." Then when that surprisingly had adverse effects, the government turned around and said "Why did you lend money to all those people who wouldn't be able to pay it back? Free market has failed, government must control more." Would you ever let someone borrow something from you if you thought they would not be able to give it back? Why would a private company want to lend money to people who they didn't think would be able to pay them back? But would a politician want a company to do that because it would temporarily look good? Sure!
Last time I checked, when government dictated to private companies how to conduct their business, that's not a free market, it's more of a government planned economy.

I see you didn't mention your private health system. Which is a complete failure compared to the rest of the modern world's public health systems. (If we look also at the people at the bottom end of the socio economic hill.

And health care in America is a complete failure? Okay then, what county has the most drugs and medical technologies developed in? Which country has the most private research done? I believe it is America. So are the other countries really so good or are they just freeloading off the US.
Let's say a company spends millions of dollars to make a movie, then encode and transfer it to dvd with bonus features. Somebody in Hong Kong rips the disc and sells copies for about $3 on the street. Am I way off or are other countries basically doing the same thing by imposing price controls on drugs. So does Hong Kong have a really good movie distribution system that enables them to sell commercial movies for basically nothing? Should America try to follow it? Where are companies going to research and develop new drugs if America follows other countries with government health care.

Where would the incentive be to build a school in a poor neighbourhood? No private company will make a profit from that. Our high school spent $65,000 on cleaning vandalism alone in one semester. That's $130,000 a year. That's not including the theft or security. How could a private company afford that?

How does merit funding hurt schools? Now I just want to slap you. But that's domestic violence since I'm marrying you.

There is a number of schools which by year 7 (end of primary school) a minority of children can read. Now, this is not the teachers or the schools fault. In fact, in one of these schools, Western Australia's best teacher teaches. In merit funding this school would be an absolute failure but the school is counted by everyone as a major success. Why? Because 50% of the enrolled kids turn up in an area where 2 or 3 in a school of 50 used to show up. Merit funding would see this school closed. With our government funding this school gets more money then nearly any other school. Teachers are given the resources to entice children to school. Once they're at school there's a possibility to teach them.

I'm not quite sure I understand what you're saying about that Western Austrailian school where a only a minority of kids read.
But don't tell me poor people wouldn't be able to afford education under a privatized system. Poor people in america can afford many things like air conditioning, cable television, automobile... that are considered luxeries elsewhere. Charter schools have been able to graduate 95% in a city (Detroit) where the government graduates 25% at a fraction of the cost. Private companies generally have an incentive to make their product as affordable as possible so that they can have as many customers as possible. I can't see much of a profit motive for Cornerstone Schools in Detroit. Or for many of local pro athletes to appear in their commercials asking for people to join them in donating. You still haven't explained how America survived for so long without government schools. And at that time, people were much poorer. But again, I've got nothing against government funding education so long as it funds the individual parents and not the system.
A private company would probably be more proactive in stopping vandalism because people take better care of stuff that belongs to them instead of everybody. How come there isn't a lot of vandalism at private companies? Is it just me or is most grafitti/vandalism on public stuff. Like bridges, subways and parks?

Why do you think the majority of people become teachers? The money? Haha. The lazy hours? The majority (not all of course) of teachers spend another 2-3 hours after school working on things. At home or at school. (On average) So you're still doing 8-9 hours a day.
Maybe it's a cruisy job. A teacher hears there name called 500-600 times a day. Most teachers only teach for 5 years before leaving due to stress.
What is the real reason? The majority of teachers CARE what happens to the kids. (Note I say majority so don't come back with "But this one teacher" thing) Hell, teachers in Australia get a $600 budget to spend on their class yet most spend at least $1000. $400 of their own money. In one of the schools in my district the teachers buy fruit and make sandwiches for kids who don't show up with food.

Now back to the main reason for kids not caring about school?
Parents. If a parent doesn't value education why would a kid value education? In short, it is very unlikely a child will have a good opinion of school if there parents don't.

I'm sure that most teachers do care and want to do a good job. The problem is the current system punishes them and rewards the incompetants. The teacher who sends sex emails to a 14 year old student gets paid the same amount as the one who voluntarily helps out students after school. And then the dedicated teacher is told to stop working so hard by the union because it makes the others look bad. Would merit pay really be such a bad idea if it meant that the better teachers made more so people who really tried felt some kind of validation? We already have this merit grading system. Or should everybody get a C regardless of what they score on the test?
I think parents care too. But how can they get excited about a school they were assigned to? You wouldn't like shopping for clothes if you were forced to buy size 34 like everybody else. Want more parental involvement? How about letting them pick the frickkin school, for starters.

Ok, now I know what you're going to respond. Something about the government not being fit to control stuff... blah blah blah. So what is that really telling you? That public education sucks and needs to be done away with? No. Public education has been shown in the rest of the developed world to work well. What that information is really telling you is that your GOVERNMENT needs to be overhauled. Your SOCIETY needs to be overhauled. And yes, your public education system needs to adapt to how children and society have changed since 30 years ago. It needs to keep changing. Like the rest of the world has.

I think it has been shown that government funded education has worked well. But government controlled education seems about as good of an idea as a state run newspaper. Sure, our system needs to adapt. But hell will freeze over before the government does that.
If you say our government needs to be overhauled, I can't say that I disagree. So just curious, got any ideas?