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How Can Tech Help Fight Education Costs?
http101 asks: "With the ever-rising costs of fuel, we seem to forget those that are truly having problems affording it. No, not the homeless, but our own kids. 'Kids,' you ask? Yes, because being driven to school on the 'Yellow Dog' or the 'Edu-Express' better known as a school bus, is costing your state more money than ever before. In my neighborhood, we have a plethora of home connected by fiber and at least high-speed internet. So my question is, how can technology be better-implemented to ensure a student's studies and also lower the costs of fuel for the districts?"
School is still babysitting. Unless you have a parent or tutor in the home who is capable of directing the child to maintain their studies - or a particularly dedicated student - the problem is not one of information transfer, but of physical control.
Those costs, however, are education overhead, if you will. Busses do not scale with learning or technology. If every other student stays home the bus is even less efficient. Unless you can convince all of the distant students to learn from home... of course, in my area, these are often the ones who cannot get/afford high-speed access.
I do think technology can help education costs. Technology can provide students a way to obtain and submit their homework electronically. Technology can automate grading. It can provide online, linkable calendars of each course with the daily details of homework, tests, quizzes, etc. Technology, harnessed properly, can mean more productive time for student and teacher, alike. Along the way, it might save a gallon of gas or two, but mostly for the parent who's child left their books/homework/reading at school.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
I can see having a one day a week class at home via a live webcast. The teacher can still take attendance and the kids can still get the knowledge. Unfortunately, this is only feasible if every single kid has access to broadband. And, even with all the advances, there are a LOT of people out in the country that can't even get cable TV much less broadband.
Now, this might work in the inner city, but at that point you'd have to subsidize the cost of broadband for all those people that can't afford it. And saving 4 days of bus driving a month compared to making up for 100 or 200 kids worth of broadband at 15-50 bucks a month isn't a savings.
It would be good to save 1/5 of the gas (or more) that's needed for the buses, but that's not going to happen in the near future.
A man with a gun is called a citizen. A man without a gun is called a subject.
So my question is, how can technology be better-implemented to ensure a student's studies and also lower the costs of fuel for the districts?
;-)
Just home school. Through this mircale of modern technology, kids can be better taught than through any other method known to man! Not to mention that your child will receive his very own "teacher unit" who just happens to also be related to the child! A Win-Win situation for all!
Joking aside, Home Schooling is a very good option, especially in rural areas where familys can better afford to only have one parent working. The results of various studies show that the home schoolers easily outperform their publically educated peers, and that the social aspect isn't as big of an issue as was once feared.
From Wikipedia (which actually links to quite a few more sources):
"The academic effectiveness of homeschooling is largely a settled issue. Numerous studies have confirmed the academic integrity of home education programs, demonstrating that average homeschoolers outperform their public school peers by 30 to 37 percentile points across all subjects. Moreover, the performance gaps between minorities and gender that plague public schools are virtually non-existent amongst homeschooled students. Source"
---
"According to the findings, children who were schooled at home 'gained the necessary skills, knowledge, and attitudes needed to function in society...at a rate similar to that of conventionally schooled children.'
"The researcher found no difference in the self concept of children in the two groups. Stough maintains that 'insofar as self concept is a reflector of socialization, it would appear that few home-schooled children are socially deprived, and that there may be sufficient evidence to indicate that some home-schooled children have a higher self concept than conventionally schooled children.'" Source
Technology only bolsters the abilities of home schoolers. Where as a home schooler of my generation had to be satified with the curriculum, materials the parents could afford, and the local library (an excellent source itself), modern school children can find information on virtually ANY issue simply by checking the Internet. Also, whereas labs done by my generation had to be performed by video tape, the modern generation is capable of actually video conferencing with a lab instructor for more precise education.
Isn't modern technology wonderful?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Am I getting this right? Is this person trying to say "How can tech be used to homeschool our kids instead of sending them to public school?"
(If not, what are they doing talking about transportation costs?)
Are there any deer in the theater tonight? Get 'em up against the wall.
...every kid in the country jacked into the same classes.
School is basically a daycare for most families. Even if they have high-speed internet access, they can't leave their kids home alone when both parents work.
Sounds like a loaded question if I ever heard one...!
Part of going to school is also to teach kids how to be social and interact with others.
How does/would home schooling deal with this aspect?
Distance education could be a possible solution. However, it would not be without some major issues. First of all, the ability for children to learn with distance education would be an issue. Age would definitely be a factor in that regard because they may or may not have the discipline or concentration to handle it.
Secondly, there are some social implications. Distance education means that kids would not be interacting with other kids in the physical sense. They would be in front of a screen. That may or may not socially impact them. On another note, distance education could mean the end of school shootings as we know it. Kids would have the Internet to provide some protection from being made fun of because there is no visual contact with other students.
A third issue with distance education is the obesity epidemic. As far as I know, there are no gym classes with distanced education. That also means no playground. And if children become attached to the computer, they will less likely to be physically active. This also adds the question of how distance education would impact extra curricular activities.
A definite advantage of distance education is that it would teach children to use proper netiquette. It can also teach them ethical computer usage. Another advantage of distance education is that school buildings wouldn't bee needed which means lower costs. That includes janitorial work as well as electricity, property maintenance, etc. There would be a building, but none that has the requirements of a school building.
Maybe they could use those high speed connections to buy bikes on ebay?
It can help in-class teaching, but kids belong in classrooms, not at home. It's just not as easy to learn at home, especially when your teacher is on the TV.
...what a misleading article stub. The article had absolutely NOTHING to do with linux on PPC...
Well, running under the assumption that the goal is for children to still attend school instead of home-schooling, then the most obvious answer would be to organize carpooling and the like. Not that this is better organized by fiber-optics and high speed though. Set up a community board, or a school website that has forums for parents to organize such things. One would assume that most of the students live in the area, so why not discover that Jimmy's mom drives Jimmy to school every day, and he lives 2 streets over, so maybe Mrs. Jimmy's Mom can drive Sally too.
- In hell, treason is the work of angels.
Maybe we can hire Honda to make something efficient to put under the hood of those oversized, non-aerodynamic beasts. I mean seriously, when was the last time Cummins was into fuel efficiency? Wonder who DOES make the diesels in those things...
Yes, I'm sure all this world needs is more anti-social youth with unlimited information at their fingertips...
and also eating and drinking soda all day at home...
Standard I/O Error. Incompetent/Operator.
If you want to significantly cut fuel costs for schools, have them go back to a 9-month school year instead of today's 10-month school year. That would cut out a full month's worth of fuel for schools and parents. To make up for the missing month, cut out all of the junk that students "study" and get back to teaching basic READING, WRITING, and ARITHMETIC.
- Organize adult-supervised bicycle rides for kids who live within 3 miles of their schools
- Stop buying computers for primary schools that provide little educational value compared to cheap books and good teachers. The savings could pay for school bus
- Replace old school bus with efficient new ones. Perhaps even a hybrid concept or something similar. Very high cost upfront, but gas savings.
- Raise taxes. Gap! yes! raise *YOUR* taxes so that *YOUR* children may go to school and have a chance at a good education and a good future, a concept America as a whole has completely forgotten for some reason.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
With the mention of fiber connected homes and broadband connectivity, I cannot help but think perhaps the poster has some sort of idea like: "well we don't need schools anymore, let's have all the kids learn at home!" That's a beast of a discussion in and of itself.
As for the main question of how technology in general can help save money now being spent on fuel for school buses, the immediate choices are more obvious. They include things like hybridization of the vehicles, natural-gas burning buses, and other forms of making the fleet more fuel-efficient. It's only a matter of time before some of the efficiency improvements we're starting to see in the family car show up in school buses.
Visit the oldest currently running "webcam" on the internet
Who is General Failure? And why is he reading my disk????
quit spending money on computers and internet, and bam
=)
...that 'real-life' social interaction and regular structured excercise are no longer needed for kids in the 21st century?
I assume all the above goes on in America just as it does in schools across the world.
I think the school bus or just getting kids to walk to school is about as good as it gets. Perhaps a more efficient HFC or EV bus could help with long-term costs?
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
I think it's true. It's good to be damaged. I don't mean physically or to the point the cloud humor fails to make you laugh but rather attack; I mean rather that you get a little ruffled, that your edges get some tatters and the sh&t slides off much more slickly. Now don't use this as an excuse to break out the old chain clippers and let me fall...I'm just saying, in my own syphonic way (sluuuurp!), that I don't think tech should be so bombastically lusted after like warm meat. Just let the kids go throug the pheromonal miseries in a sea of hormones at school with rusty IBM PS/2 to practice typing on. A shiny Mac will just make them wimp jelly.
In some cities the High School Students go to school on the city buses. When it is time to go to and from school, the bus routes change to stop at the High School.
Remove all of the porno on the Internet. Then remove all of the Java and Flash games out there too. Make sure that students don't have CD drives or powerful video cards to play games, watch porn, and while you're at it ask their ISP companies to remove Instant Messaging / Email capabilities on student internet lines.
Then maybe highschool students will be able to actually learn from their personal media devices.
Sigs are for Terrorists.
I heard on the news about a local school system mixing some sort of oil (french fry oil maybe?) into their deisel buses to cut costs.
Push the technology of hybrid vehicles and extend them to buses that take kids to and from school.
I think the submitter was hinting at having kids learn from home with the high-speed internet access, but I've taken college courses over the net and it's just not the same as being there in person. I do not believe we are there yet...
Step 1: Learn to walk
Step 2: Learn how to ride a bike
Both will get you to school without paying for fuel.
Personally I welcom a $10 a gallon price.
I would think fuel cost is the least expensive thing about school. Telecommution barely works in a work environment - and now you expect 10 year olds to sit at home in front of their pc.
My view is that education is not really about learning the most important thing is learning sosial interaction with real people at your own age. Without to sosial interaction school provided me (with real people) I would still be sitting in front of my computer being upset by slashdot articles..
The view that school is for learning lot of facts is not really a realistic view (in my humble opinion). Retoric: Who makes the most money good scientist or good salesmen?
Look, it takes incredible production values to give highly trained presenters half a chance at being half as compelling as someone in the room. This just doesn't lend itself to mass production.
And do you want your teachers acting like local news clones? Ick.
Put the powerpoint away, hand out books instead. Actual learning may be involved.
> 'Yellow Dog' or the 'Edu-Express'
We used to call it the "luser-cruiser."
-DB-
E-mail is like a prison: a prison with no walls... and no toilet. -Strong Bad
Put lots of people in a room and they aren't allowed to talk to each other. They learn not to interact with the people around each other. Schools teach that even passing notes is a "bad thing". Also there's hardly enough time to go between classes. At least homeschooling, there aren't any other kids around, so no penalties for trying to interact.
Home schooling actually came to mind when I first read this article, but I think children need to be in a social setting because that is a big part in the learning process.
Not all home schooled children learn the social aspect of life.
Run the school buses on biodiesel?
Telltale Games: Bone, Sam and Max
compared to the salary cost of the bus driver. If you need to lower the cost of bus transport, then you need to pack more sardines in the can.
Therefore, we need smaller children - reduce obesity - stop the balanced diet propaganda. To be small, thin and unhealthy, we need to put our children on unbalanced diets - it works in the rest of the world...
...is the kids who were home schooled typically lack social skills.
Then you have cleared the way for the kids to download MP3's and non-porn divx movies all day long. No more flash-games to distract them. Good going!
AND...it only costs $16.99 for a whole school year. Who would have known that the answer was right under out feet!
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
The most significant problem with trying to use IT technology to fix this that more and more households have both parents working. School allows kids to be monitored while parents can go off and make the money.
The implication here is that somehow IT will make it so that kids won't have to leave home, and right now in US society that's not realistic. Children need to go somewhere else to be taught and monitored until society shifts back to a model where only one parent is a breadwinner.
You might think this will work for teenagers in high school, but I guarentee you no matter what controls you put on your lessons to try to motivate them to attend a "lesson" online, you'll have a dramatic rise in goof offs unless you have a parent who has the time to stay home and make sure they stay involved.
The answer here is alternative sources of energy, not alternative teaching methods.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Oil prices are volitile, they may be $35/barrel by this time next year - or $235.
Instead of thinking "quick fix" let's think long-term.
Unless we go to a neighborhood-only school setup, or cut the # of days of school down from 170-180, our school buses will still have to drive just as far as they do today.
Investing in alternative fuels and sources of fuel for buses and mini-buses is the way to go. Bio-diesel, electric or hybrid vehicles, and the like are a Big Win for budgets and maybe the environment too.
One thing tech can do is allow "virtual field trips" to museums and elsewhere. This year schools are canceling field trips to save money. Replacing them with "virtual field trips" using their existing computer labs helps restore some of what the students lose by not having a "real" field trip.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
There is no substitute for personal attention from a real teacher.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
A bus is much more efficient per passenger mile than the SUV (or probably even the Prius that eco-mom drives). 30 students moved 10 miles (at say, 10 mpg) takes 1 gallon, move those same 30 students 10 miles in individual cars that get 50 mpg would take (30*10/50)=6 gallons of gas, or in other words, you would have to pack 5 kids in each 50mpg hybrid to match the transportation efficiency of the ugly yellow bus.
I don't know how close we may be, but a cyborg implant that can download data, and then be accessed by the brain seems like it could lend itself to helping our children learn at a rapid pace without ever letting them go to school. Might be overkill, but hey ... it does what you want, doesn't it?
Growing up in rural Oklahoma, I had the good fortune of riding the school bus. In my school district the bus drivers had the freedom to pick their own route through all the backroads, twists, and turns. The only requirement was that they had to pick up every child that needed a ride. Most of these routes were passed down from the departing driver as he trained his replacement. I am not sure how efficient the route was that my driver drove, but as it was a human creation, I'm sure that there was room for improvement. I'm guessing that a computer aided route creation program could shave a few percent off of the mileage/fuel costs. Given that there are not a huge number of stops, the solution should not be that difficult or time intensive. It would just be a matter of convincing a 60 year old man that the computer generated route is better. Have fun with that!
Since we're also supposed to be considering alternative fuel sources, why not have some of those High School Chemistry classes have a focus on BioDiesel? :)
I don't recall them complaining about school buses back then, but then again I was only 11 and didn't pay much attention.
My son and I have walked to his school since he was in first grade and he's going into ninth grade now.
Sure, if it rains a heck of a lot, we get in a car, but people are too slack - when I was a kid we had to walk anywhere from one to two miles on snow-covered roads just to get to the bus stop in the first place.
And, yeah, it was a lot of fun.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
How about instead of bussing kids all over the place you let them attend the schools that were built in the neighborhood for that very purpose?
Why apply technology where sneakers excel?
Have those youngsters put all that extra energy to good use! ;)
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
In PA we have state sponsored Cyber Charter schools. It's public school, and we have a teacher we work with/through. All the stuff needed for the entire year is shipped to us "free" and a computer (per child enrolled) and internet access (reimbursement of $17.95 per child enrolled) are provided "free" as well.
My kids are very young (oldest of three is just now in first grade...others not yet in school) so we haven't had all that much experience with it. The experience we have had has been excellent.
It doesn't hurt to have a wife who has an Elementary Education degree either, but any dedicated parent should be able to do this without much problem (at least for younger grades).
Hopefully more states will follow PA's example and "sponsor" Cyberschooling for kids...it's money well spent IMHO.
B
In the past, there has been concern for the health of students carrying around heavy backpacks of books. Now, that weight is adding to the fuel bill.
Assume 20 lbs/student, times 60 students on a bus, that's 1200 lbs!
Keep your eBook at school, and use the PC at home.
Now, about the added eye strain...
Once upon a time when I was a little boy . . .
We walked 1 mile to school in the morning.
We walked 1 mile home for lunch.
We walked 1 mile to school for afternoon session
We walked 1 mile home at the finish of the day.
We not only had no busses, we did not have
a cafeteria.
It felt great! I always looked forward to those
walks!
Nobody even suggested we take a bus.
The only time mom ever drove me is if she had
to take me to the doctor's on the way to school
or some other errond.
How I long for those innocent, peacefull,
inspirational walks!
I think there is a nice solution right in our
own communities. Walking. Riding a bicycle.
Skating. Skateboarding.
Now that we have cafeterias, we don't need
the trip home for lunch.
If a little boy like me could walk to school
and back twice a day, then I would think that
many of the children today can walk the one
trip per day.
Love
Mrs. Clear Plastic
Cleara
if you can afford a home that has a fiber connection, maybe you should help pay a little more in taxes to help those students who cannot afford any internet.
it is over $3 in some parts of California, for example, and about $2.80 around here in Washington state.
But we could always have the kids bike to school - and when they get old enough, they could get a single seat moped.
Those get great mileage, and they're babe magnets (for either gender).
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
if parents want to live out in the hinterlands(far from thier town school) then they should have to pay the cost for transporting the kid in every day. or get the district to build satalite classrooms. while were at it lets stop subsidizing cheap gas/diesel.
no sig today, come back tomorrow
Why bus kids to school? Build smaller neighbourhood schools, that kids can walk to. Get the off their bums, get some exercise, then we won't be raising a generation of obese slugs.
Just elect a US President whose family fortune wasn't made in oil.
Bush's family and friends are the beneficiaries of the price of gas, now well over twice what it was when Oil Baron Bush and his Haliburton friends were "elected" in 2000.
<sarcasm>
It's a good thing Kerry lost, imagine how much Ketchup would cost now!
</sarcasm>
stop them from throwing money down a rathole on Microsoft products and they will have more for gas.
I don't mean to troll, but I have ot say that the question seems poorly written and completely off-base. Unless kids are now paying for school, I don't see how it's an issue for them to afford it or not, since the parents and taxpayers are the ones usually paying. The cost of busing children to school is more now that fuel is more costly, but if I were a parent dropping my child off at school or letting them drive I'd certainly be working hard on finding a carpool or making them use the bus.
Then the question goes off into another tangent about fiber and broadband in neighborhoods connected by fiber, and I assume the question goes something like this: "We have a lot of broadband... Why can't our kids stay home?" Well, going ont he false assumption that all families have access to broadband and that it will not cut anyone out of the process, your logic is still faulty.
You're saying the best way to cut a school's transporation costs are to eliminate buses and have them learn at home (full or part time). The concern is not the school's transportation costs, but the costs born by the parents.
If you take your kids to school, having them ride the bus instead is going to cut your fuel costs in a much quicker and direct manner than some overarching learn-over-the-internet plan. If your kids are already taking the bus, those fuel costs are a relatively small portion of your school taxes.
Once we finally get to the question, we are asked, "How can technology be better-implemented to ensure a student's studies and also lower the costs of fuel for the districts?"
That's a loaded question, in that you are assuming technology can lower the cost of fuel for the districts. (I don't want to be pedantic here, but I am assuming you mean total fuel costs, not cost of fuel per unit). Again, here the answer is that parents not driving their kids to school are not feeling a crunch because it would take the school district months or years to pass those rising costs through taxes; although you could argue they might lower other school expenditures, therefore still hurting the kids. For parents driving their kids to school... don't! Have them use the bus or carpool with a bunch of other kids. Not only does this cost you less, but you're directly showing your children responsible use of environmental and financial resources.
As far as using technology to ensure a student's studies, that's difficult as well. Technology can only open more avenues to possibly enhance student's studies, but it will never ensure it. Take a school library without internet access. One student might be doing research on aviation and another one might be goofing off. Put the internet in there. Now, one student is doing research online, and the other is goofing off online. Technology is only a tool, and not a solution.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
I've heard that in Iraq most people are actually only paying 5 cents for a gallon of gas. I cannot understand how the gap. Shipping gas from Iraq to US should not add up another 2.60 to the price tag.
..at least for your grammar. 'Absolutely' is an adverb, and you're using it to modify an adjective, which is incorrect. In addition, 'worse' implies a comparison, which is not being made here. "School is the absolute worst place.." or, "School is absolutely the worst place.." would have been acceptable alternatives.
Sayin'.
--- What
It becomes a more interesting problem because you have to start/end at the node representing the school, and you're not just traversing one big graph, you're optimizing a whole bunch of little traversals by X number of buses, that must when combined touch every node and return to the school.
Someone come up with an algorithm-- throw together a quick and dirty solution and save schools some gas money.
Other than that, I don't see how technology and the internet can minimize a schools fuel consumption by buses. Unless you get a majority of students to stay home to learn-- which is a bad idea for a whole bunch of reasons.
The premise of using home schooling to reduce the state's cost of fueling the school buses is absurd. To do that would mean an all or nothing proposition. If you've got 50 kids on a school bus and 45 decide to opt for home schooling, you still have to get those 5 and take them to and from school. Depending on how many stops were actually able to be skipped, my guess is that the fuel savings is minimal.
Reason for kids not being able to be schooled at home are endless. Biggest one being THERE IS NO ONE THERE TO SUPERVISE THEM.
I don't know where you came from, but where I came from, kid's parents worked to put food on the table.
Several thoughts:
...Or better yet, support your school through levies, student fundraising, etc, etc, etc.
-- Kids must be in the classroom. Distance learning for kids ages 5-18 can't happen as they have a much shorter attention span than most - Numerous studies have shown classroom education to be the most effective. Also - you shouldn't have to force parents to stay home with their children instead of working.
-- Why not emulate city bus stops where kids are dropped off by parents at a desingated spot that is monitored by an adult (enclosed shelter). The key is to minimize the routes which is a huge problem in rural communities who are already strapped with funding issues. Urban schools can seek the city for assistance in allowing them to use their busing systems (where available).
string.Empty();
The problem isn't school buses. The problem is suburbs. Until people realize that these are an essentially stupid form of growth, we are going to be stuck with a lot of these incidental costs.
What a stupid question in the first place.
"Tech" can lower cost of education for a few years, then evereyone gets to the same "cost" level and "expensive" again becomes a relative term.
What's the cost difference between two schools that use open source for everything?
Dick.
Anyone who dooms their children to twelve* years in government schools is guilty of gross negligence, bordering on purposeful, intended cruelty - maybe even sadism.
I wouldn't put a dog in a government school, much less an innocent, defenseless human child.
And, quite frankly, the so-called "private" schools aren't much better: The only way to be absolutely certain what it is that your child is being taught is to teach your child yourself.
*And it's up to 13 years for the children of most absentee parents, since they [the parents] are more than willing to take advantage of the "K" in "K-12".
French Fries to Fuel
Clark County School District, Nevada
The Clark County School District operates almost all its 1,186 buses on B20, which is a cost-effective way to improve the safety of its 246,000 students, according to district vehicle maintenance coordinator Frank Giordano. "It was our obligation to explore alternatives that would help clean up the exhaust from our diesel engines," says Giordano. "We worked with the engine manufacturer to include its new generation of cleaner burning diesel engines, and got its consent to run them on biodiesel."
Because the local area lacks a supply of soybeans, the traditional biodiesel feedstock, suppliers turned to one of the area's plentiful resources: cooking grease from restaurants and casinos. Clark County restaurants produce twice the national average of three gallons of grease per resident per year. A joint venture between Nevada-based Haycock Petroleum and Biodiesel Industries supplies the grease-based biodiesel to the school district.
Androids, nothing but Androids baby! Professor Data & C3PO will be good teachers!
Frankly, the cost of gas just isn't that high. Look at the overall budget for a school, and then look at how much of it is fuel costs. It's just not very much money.
In the mean time, just don't pick up kids who live within 1 mile of school. They can walk.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Unfortunately most of the us communities are built and planned around the internal combustion engine. Until the infrastructure in terms of government investment/support of telecommuting for work and school This is going to be a problem. We need to re-design our communities to be just that and not points on a road map for cars to pass by. This is the single most important issue of our time. We need to address it. My drive to and from work is 75 miles and 2-3 hours of my day. I used to spend about $100/month for gas for my commuting now its $150 because of the rise in gas prices. Soon it will go up .10 more per gallon to support.. you guessed it more roads.
We just need to wake up!
two cans and a string, now that's innovation
I went to 13 years of public school, and all it taught me was how to interact with people born between October 15, 1974, and October 14, 1975. When I got out into the real world, I had no idea how to interact as an equal with people who were 20 years my senior.
I'll leave up to the other replies to discuss whether or not the socialization aspect of public school is otherwise a good thing.
How Can Tech Help Fight Education Costs?
Cliff: "Oh, Mister Open Source Community..."
Open Source Community: "What is it, Clifford?"
Cliff: "Our educational system is hurting for money. Is there some way (any way??) we could possibly, as those involved in Technology possibly find a way to reduce its financial stress? Think of the children!!"
Open Source Community: "Well, Clifford, you say that the educational system has no money and they need a technological solution to offset rising overhead costs?"
Cliff: "Uh huh!"
Open Source Community: "I suppose it would help if the solutions were free for anyone to use, had nearly unlimited scalability, and were available in many different flavors, wouldn't it?"
Cliff: "Wow! That would be neat!"
Open Source Community: "Well, Cliff, you're S.O.L."
Cliff: "Super!!"
(please, oh please, don't kill me!!)
adverb Audio pronunciation of "adverb" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (dvûrb)
n. Abbr. adv.
1.
1. The part of speech that modifies a verb, adjective, or other adverb.
2. Any of the words belonging to this part of speech, such as so, very, and rapidly.
Oops!
Jesus saves and takes half damage.
Gas would probably have to be $10 a gallon or more, maybe $50 before "Tech" could /lower/ the costs of education rather than raise it.
/per student/!
The article mentions 12 million gallons of fuel a year? To bus what, several million students, several hundred thousand at least? Any amount of "Tech" that results in keeping kids at home and still getting educated is going to cost the state and/or the parents probably hundreds of dollars in start-up costs and possibly multiple hundreds of dollars a year in service and maintenence costs. And that is
Current "student laptop" trials have been very costly and of dubious educational value. "Tech" is not the solution to everything. Maybe a little old fasioned home schooling or smaller, more local schools is a better solution.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
What makes you think that most parents are qualified to be teachers? In all subjects?
The parents that DO home school their kids probably do so because they know that they are qualified (and probably have some actual classroom teaching experience in the past).
A parent that home schools their child simply for financial reasons, in order to save taxpayer money, may not be giving their child a decent education.
Plus, the school bus will still have to run the same route anyway, using essentially the same fuel, regardless of whether the child is on the bus or not.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
How about cutting technology budgets and not worrying about how to get children to school? It's amazing how well books and teachers can educate children.
One way is to not 'give' away old equipment. Just imagine if those hillbillies had givin some effort to selling the ibooks. 4X the profit.
You are all a bunch of idots.
Unfortunately, the long-term solution to that particular energy problem is the same as it is for the kids' parents' commute: higher-density housing, more but smaller schools, more kids within walking distance. But that's a 20-60 year undertaking.
Using technology in schools could save money, you could swap over paper and jotters for some type of technology you can write on. It could also store information giving notes, books could be stored on it schools could just update the books on them if needed. Cons about this would be it could be expensive to replace stuff if broken by kids. This would save money on stationary things and paper which would also help the enviroment.
Here in Hawai'i, we have "charter" schools which are experimental schools less restricted by the rules and policies of the Dept. of Education. Of these charter schools, we have ThompsonAcademic.org, an "E-Charter" school which teaches its courses almost entirely online. Teachers actually gets more face time one-on-one with the students who need it, because only struggling students are required to come in for direct personal tutoring. This school attracts a mix of students from both ends of the academic spectrum-- from the overacheiving homeschoolers to the borderline drop-outs who are fed up with traditional schools. Thompson Academic does require its students to enroll full time. If students only want supplemental online courses, there is E-School (http://www.eschool.k12.hi.us/). Hawai'i needs online education in part because it is hard to provide a full spectrum of courses to every island. And many students are surfers (some pro) who would skip school anyway when the surf is up. Online education is not for everybody, but I wish I had this option growing up.
Cuting cost is eazy !!!! Just not go to shcool and join the mighty army to suport R troups and R predsiednt.
To save the public schools money families that can afford to do something better for their children should; i.e. private school or alterative education such as home school. This will free up money for public schools be able to transport children, reduce over crowding, and free up other moneys associated with having too many students in a school. Everyone wins. Your kids get a better education. Those who cannot afford to do something different also have their children receive a better education. The PS system saves money. Tax burdens may be reduced. Everyone wins in this perfect world.
I'm not against home schooling or schooling via the Internet, but there is something to be said about the social aspect of the schoolyard. I learned a lot about social settings and how to play with others, sharing, and even whom to avoid from having to "go" to school. I think that if we all start homeschooling our children or having them learn via the Interenet to save money on the bus driver's fuel bill there will be some aspects of growing up and things that don't develop properly.
I live in a relatively safe area and State for that matter, but there are still violence, gangs, drugs, etc... Not as bad as say downtown LA or Washington DC but there are still problems here. There are potential benefits for both at home and in class schooling. Gas costs shouldn't be a reason to take that away from kids. I am personally happy that I was able to be in an environment where I was able to get the social aspect of the school experience. I wasn't the best or most studious student, but pulled off about a 3.5 GPA. I spent half of the time high school and college learning about other people (Mostly the opposite sex for that matter) and the other half learning what the teacher was teaching. Of course I'm a self proclaimed people person. I'm sure there are many here on /. (and many places for that matter) that are just not people people and would rather learn from home.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that if I had to bring say 1 dollar a week to help the bus driver keep the tank full so I could make it to school, it would be worth it to me, and it would be worth it for me to send my kids to a public school. (So long as the education was good)
Generation Trance: What generation are you?
My local school district only provides bus service to students that live at least 1.5 miles from school. However, the school busses seem to stop every few blocks when I get behind one in the morning. The obvious solution is to put school bus stops at least two miles apart. Less stopping-and-starting means more fuel efficiency!
Those big yellow busses (which are not very yellow) eat up a HUGE amount of diesel. why not have the state invest some cash into alternative fules. City buses run on natural gas, which is far cheaper then diesel. Air powered engines are also available from the french manufacturer MDI - http://www.theaircar.com/
And last i heard there are some busses in vancouver that are running on hydrogen. Im not exactly sure if they are as profitable as natural gas but still, alot cleaner.
A morning without coffee is like something without something else.
mass transit buses have to meet certain federal guidelines, including fuel consumption. school buses are excempt from the same guidelines, including general safety and load restrictions. fix that and you have more fuel efficient school buses.
It achieves the goal of dumbing down the whole population, and only the special, select people getting a true education. It's a way of their parents to care, making sure they can better compete in the coming world, because one way to compete is not to do better than the rest, but concentrate all your effort on making sure the rest really sucks, and then you, even mediocre, get to shine. School desegregation that buses were supposed to achieve was always a half-hearted, halfassed thing, the administration was always against it, and said, ok, if they want the education system, let them have it. Public education, which, according to the spirit of the founding fathers, should be a human right, is replaced by private education that gets to be a privilege. What's an education provided as a right, for free, worth, if it's crap?
How about these 'grass-roots' efforts to divert education money to 'faith-based' organizations, because we still can't deal with Darwin's evolution? How about the 'get-your-GED' places, outside the school system but publicly funded, that are just means to offload all the troubled kids, so the school system's statistics still look good, while all the skeletons are hidden in the closet, 'offshored' like Enron would do it. It's just a problem waiting to blow up in your face, especially when the Japanese make better cars, when Europeans donate more to tsunami victims, and the Chinese and Indians are about to step up on the global scale. How you gonna make it in this world, when you screw yourself first, without screwing everyone else at the same time? Aha, let's screw up all the others too, problem solved, then we can still rely on this divine-right-privilege-education world. Good luck trying to screw up the chinese and indians, cultures that lasted the longest on earth - it's not impossible, but good luck.
For one, I can't believe the buses are still 1960's design. How about getting modern school buses, that run on natural gas even, and don't look anything like a dinosaur? At least that would show that the administration cares, even if it doesn't.
Back in in the olden days when I went to school we walked to our bus stop. For grade school the bus stop was only about 1/10 to 2/10 of a mile frm my house. But for jr. high and high school there were fewer routes and stops and my bus stop was about a mile from my house. This is the north where there was often significant snow to walk through, and some icy hills to climb. Now I live in the mid-south. No snow for the kids to walk through (they close the schools for a week if there is even a dusting of snow, sometimes on the threat of snow that doesn't come). But the school buses drive up and down the streets, delivering the kids to their doors! I live on a dead end street that's less than 2/10 of a mile long, yet several yellow busses rush up and down the street every school day morning and afternoon transporting kids. Apparently these kids can't walk up our relativey level short dead end street to meet the bus on the main road. Or even get of at the end of the street and walk down the dead end street to their homes.
So maybe the increased gas costs will finally get the policy makers to tell these kids they have to walk to the bus stop. But I rather doubt it, when they can just use higher gas costs as an excuse to raise taxes. Still, one can hope. Now if we could only in some way address childhood obesity. Hey, wait ....
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
As with everything related to education, you look at the responsible person--the parents.
The blame for home schoolers who lack social skills should be placed firmly at the feet of the parents.
The blame for kids who bully should be placed firmly at the feet of the parents.
But the kids who don't bully and aren't super popular and try to lead normal lives never receive any attention.
Same goes with home schooled kids who are provided ample opportunity for social interaction away from home (having a job, volunteering, 4H, church, going to the mall, movies, YMCA, theatre groups, sports clubs). They receive no attention.
From either side it's mostly bitching.
On the topic at hand, the amount of money spent by schools is dwarfed by the amount of money being sent into Iraq now in the form of weaponry.
"When the military had to have a bake sale to buy a bomber..."
How about converting school busses to run on the waste oil of the 100,000 or so fast food outlets in the country?
Over here in the UK we don't have school busses, you get the train, a normal bus, cycle or walk to school. On the other hand, we are a fairly densely populated country, and high fuel prices benefit a country that is more densely populated. For us, fuel has gone from £3.50 a gallon (imperial) to £4.50 a gallon - a nasty 25% price rise. For Americans, it has gone from $1 a gallon (US) to $2.50 (according to that article). That's a 150% price rise - that's really really nasty! Our fuel is still more expensive overall of course ($6.75 per US gallon), but we're used to it and have adapted (smaller cars, better public transport) and I expect our average yearly mileage is a lot less than an Americans because of our more compact country.
Public education is the largest jobs make-work program that the US government runs.
It is the largest employment sector in the entire country, and I wouldn't be surprised if this were true of other countries. For every teacher there are numerous bureaucrats and fantastic levels of overhead.
But how is success measured in a bureaucracy? Larger staffs and bigger budgets.
By bureaucratic standards, the forced public schools are fantastically successful.
Oh, you child isn't actually learning how to read? That has nothing to do with it. It never did.
As Hopper says in _A Bugs Life_, "It's not about food. It's about keeping those ants in line."
If the schools improved their efficiency, actually taught, there would be less need for remedial teachers, assistant teachers, they would loose staffing! No bureaucracy wants that.
So eliminate the single biggest stumbling block preventing education: Public Schooling.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
School is not a fucking social experience. It's a zoo.
Until kids can go to public schools without having to deal with crazy niggers beating on white girls, they should all fucking rot.
Lemme tell ya, I'm a pretty big fucking dude. And, like most nerdy white kids, I keep to myself. I went to all sorts of schools growing up, 7 in all. Every one of them had more than a few degenerate fucks that liked to attack people for no reason. I have had my face grabbed, kneed in the groin, by random people I didn't even know. Friends were beat to the ground and kicked by niggers for looking at them wrong, or for just being white. A friend had their kid stabbed in the face, near the eye, with a pencil just recently at a public, mostly black high school. The principal is now trying to force her to put her kid back in the same school. Fucking idiot.
And god fucking help you if you decide to fight back when attacked. The whole mantra all through my degenrate public schooling was that "if you defend yourself, you get suspended along with whomever attacks you". This is the kind of doublespeak bullshit that the public schools have become. Blame the victims because all the fat stupid fuck teachers are too lazy to do their fucking jobs.
It was not a fucking picnic. I am not putting my kids through any kind of similar experience.
There was a time not long ago when entire sections of a town would be burnt to the fucking ground if some white person got the fuck beat out of them by a crazy bitch nigger. Now, people just roll over and take it for granted that they have to go to school, work, and live their lives with mongoloids.
Well, I'm fucking sick of it. I will not pay taxes to support it. I will not send my kids to be abused. I will be happy to point out whenever people are being railroaded by bullshit affirmative action and pansy-ass blame-the-victim mentality. I didn't fucking keep slaves. I didn't enact any fucking Jim Crowe laws. But I sure as fuck will unless niggers learn how to act.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Sorry, you're missing a vital point. Schools are designed to contain and monitor ('imprison' is so politically incorrect) children. Parents who work (like me) appreciate the idea that someone paid by the state is (or will in my case) watching their children while they get money to pay the bills. As older teens, when parents might otherwise let their teens stay at home alone during the day, the community at large often wants children in schools, even more so than the parents. For example, the school district in which I was taught didn't allow teenagers off campus during lunch. The principal claimed that downtown businesses supported the ban, because it prevented shoplifting. Lifting the ban probably would have also triggered layoffs amongst the lunchroom staff. Rightly or wrongly, many older, voting adults consider unacompanied teens a nusiance in public places - rude, loud, and statistically prone to minor crimes. The school district, which is run by a body elected by the voters, responds to those concerns by creating rules which restrict their access to public places in the community. Yes, education is important, but there are always some teens who refuse to be educated, and for whom more school serves them no useful purpose. However, it serves a useful purpose to the community of voting adults, by keeping them couped up 7 or so waking hours of each day - 180 days each year.
I surely can't compete with an actual teacher regarding suggestions, but as a student, I loved when teachers taught us in a fun, interesting way.
When the teacher was cool and informal, we enjoyed much more than with stiff old men wearing suits and dictating - which makes me consider that one of the the problems in teaching is the passive educational model, please refer to the book "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!".
Also, one of the reasons History gets boring is that it becomes bloated with facts you have to get memorized. My idea of history is NEVER, EVER separate it from politics. For example, we can study the history of muslim nations and how Islam became every time more "fundamentalist" to the point of having people like Bin Laden... you can go back as much as the crusades.
With math, well it's a bit different, but there's always some way to make it more fun. Don't say it's not possible, ask Jaime Escalante.
Students go to school 3 days a week, and learn the rest of the week from home.
Colleges do it.
If they really want to make it cool, half the class goes to school on Monday/wednesday/friday. The other half goes on tuesday/thursday.
The part of the class that goes three days a week goes for shorter periods (maybe 5 hours/day) while the other guys go 7 hours/day. This helps bring smaller class sizes. Students can learn from home.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
actually... around here's milk's just over $2, but gas is almost up to $3
Distance learning could save by enabling decentralization of schools. As schools have been consolidated to save money on administration costs over the past decades, transportation costs have gone up (but not by as much as we saved by cutting admin costs).
Now that fuel costs are rising, it may be cheaper to run smaller community or even neighborhood schools that are far closer to where the students live.
The first reply post said schools are about physical control / babysitting. Well, distance learning would allow the return to something like a one room schoolhouse! You only need the on-site babysitter, (cough) Learning Facillitator, to keep things under control and focused, basically just lead the class... while the bulk of classroom material is presented by the best teachers in each subject from wherever they are. No need for secretaries, principals, assistants, counselors, nurses, janitors, or any of that. A one-room schoolhouse has even less administration work than individual teachers do now. In a current middle school classroom the teachers have to do set-up / clean-up, attendance tracking & reporting, etc... 7 times a day! Versus once a day with distance ed in place. Or to look at it another way, if a typical English teacher has 7 periods with 25 students in each, thats 175 students, and of course they only get 45 minutes with each group. With distributed, one-room schoolhouses, each on-site teacher has 30 students and gets all day every day to know them, and hopefully be a better teacher for them.
And, of course the schools would have to be wired with broadband, so they could generate revenue by selling internet access after school hours. And while we're at it we'll make sure to use Linux on all the PCs!
Someone who is motivated can learn a whole lot by themselves. For example, the ratio of in-class instruction to material expected to be learned decreases with each level (Grammar School to Secondary to College all the way to Post Doc.).
If students could be motivated, perhaps by some change in the inverse meritocracy, they could be left at home to study more on their own, only requiring the relatively occasional meeting with teachers and peers to discuss, trouble shoot, etc.
Good though luck, getting kids motivated (read: interested) in anything you are forcing them to learn. But it's still better thantrying to solve a social issue with technology.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
I have a lot of respect for teachers. I think that on the whole they try hard despite being inadequately trained, paid, supplied and supported.
But that doesn't mean that school isn't babysitting. Most of the way schools are funded are about keeping students in seats for numbers of hours. The beauracracy is designed with that as the primary goal and learning as the secondary - or worse - goal. Frankly, the teachers have no control over this and the administrator of a given district doesn't have that much either.
And the resistance to change at all levels is tremendous.
There are several scientfically validated reasonably well-known systems that provide much better results in terms of learning - Precision Teaching is my favorite example.
PT has been implemented in many existing schools. Universally it gives improved results on whatever metrics you choose to measure it with. And fairly universally the answer has been to dismantle the PT structure because it made the previous way look so bad.
Morningside Academy, Ben Bronz Academy and the Judge Rotenburg Center all use principles of PT, and all of them take "slow" learners who are unsuccessful in mainstream public systems and not only have them keep up but usually actually _catch up_ to their mainstream peers. JRC also deals with extraordinarily severe behavioral issues.
The fact that it is possible for this catching up to routinely happens is clear evidence that we are doing our mainstream students a great disservice.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
Don't forget people use school as a babysitter. In poor neighborhoods, students would be left to their own devices; while they're supposedly at school with their parent(s) at work. That idea alone terrifies me.
The one thing that would help education and enviroment the most would be to have smaller schools closer to the yungsters home.
HTTP/1.1 400
At the beginning of the semester, the teachers download each kid's books for the semester into the device. Doesn't have to be a computer, does have to be a viable replacement for a book. No more 3rd graders lugging 40-pound backpacks.
Frankly, the cost of gas just isn't that high. Look at the overall budget for a school, and then look at how much of it is fuel costs. It's just not very much money.
From the couple articles I read, it isn't the busses that are draining the schools, it's heating/air conditioning the buildings. A problem that generally has nothing to do with suburban sprawl, so everybody blaming it on that should look elsewhere.
As for making kids living withing a mile walk, many districts already do. Some actually push it out farther than that. Though usually elementary schools pick kids up a little closer to school than junior-high/high schools.
Whenever an education referendum comes up in my area, one of two things happen. If the referendum is to build a new school, it will likely pass. If the referendum is to provide continuous funding to said school, it will likely not pass. It seems that my local community is aware of overcrowded classrooms, and willing to begrudge a few dollars at certain points in time, but at the same time unwilling to pay for recurring costs such as teacher's salaries.
Many indicators of the American educational system point to how low American's rate in the subjects of science and mathematics. Maybe we should off shore to those countries.
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
I don't have any spare feelings for my local school district. My school district had this great idea about making every school a magnet school and changing every teacher and student up. We have 5 elementary schools. My 2 kids are elementary school kids and we've been told that basically they'll learn the same thing at each of the 5 schools. So why change? Because their will be the perception that their is an art focus at one, a math focus at another and an international studies at another. My kids were going to a school about 5 blocks from my home. Now its a good 5 min drive to their school. I'm told that now every one has the option of taking their student to the local school to be bussed around to other schools.
If this was middle school or high school, I could understand. But elementary school? We only have 1 highschool. When I went to school there were 2 junior high schools. They've since changed it so some grades go to one school and other grades go to another school. Why? Beause people were actually selling their homes and moving to be at one of those 2 junior highs. They were teaching the same exact material.
My wife and I wanted to homeschool. We changed our minds. Its a nice thought, but I don't make enough money for my wife to sit at home teaching the kids. We pay taxes for that. Even if we home schooled we still have to pay the taxes so we'd just be spending more money for something we've already paid for once.
Fuel efficiency is technology, too, and could probably help a whole lot more than shoving kids in front of computer sceens all day in an effort to reduce their use of gas-guzzling vehicles.
How much more money we're wasting on technology in today's schools? I'd say, remove computers from classrooms completely, keep a computer lab with a knowledgeble teacher. That will save tons of money, and students may actually learn something.
> What makes you think that most parents are
> qualified to be teachers? In all subjects?
The fact that most parents have finished high school and supposedly have a diploma signifying that they know all the stuff they are supposed to know. If you don't then how can you justify keeping your diploma? If you do, then you should be able to explain it to your kids. If you can't, then you know you don't know it, and should probably refresh your knowledge.
Why can't more communities focus on how people actually live? We have created this problem for ourselves.
I go to UC Davis and our bus system, Unitrans, is pretty well-known.
From the Wikipedia entry:
The system is well known throughout the area for its use of several distinctive ex-London Transport double decker buses, as well as its fleet of modern natural gas single-decks. Ridership exceeds 3 million passenger-trips per year on 16 weekday and 4 Saturday routes. Current (2004) fares are $1.00 for the general public and free to undergraduate University students.
Sony ha
The MJS series posted within the past week seemed to indicate schools should have been investing their technology dollars in developing efficiencies in staffing and office needs rather than putting all their money into "a computer in every classroom" approach. Now that those moneys are drying up they not only still have bloated bureaucracies that suck vital funds from the classroom, they have an aging IT infrastucture with no way to upgrade and maintain it. If the money were earmarked for administrative upgrades this would be one area where technology could improve the schools.
:-)?
Also, schools should stop getting conned into buying proprietary software. Most of what kids do on computers in school is surf the Internet and type papers. Why pay Microsoft (or Apple for that matter) for a proprietary system which is going to force them to upgrade or be antiquated every few years. Business may want its employees know how to use MSOffice, but come on - how hard is it to switch from Open Office to MSOffice and Firefox to, well, Firefox
The cost of schoolbooks is a locally a never-ending debate because our glorious goverment pays for parts of the school book cost. But they are still extremely expensive and mothers everywhere naturally have their regular huge outcries. The problem is obviously that all books, also schoolbooks, are subject to Copyright and the copyright holders keep together to gain maximum profit by selling them in what looks like a monopoly. Technology is pushing forward "free" IP licenses like GNU Copyleft and GNU GPL and these are used by a lot of wiki-projects. Books like http://immortalpoetry.com/The_Art_of_War can now be read on-line, but there are not yet any such projects for schoolbooks. However, it remains or vision to setup a Wiki dedicated wiki for schoolbooks where they can be edited and created collectively like any other Wiki project. Such books would not only be available to anyone, anytime, anywhere at no cost; they would also be free to be printed out and used by students everywhere as a valid alterantive to traditional books. Sadly, we are currently short of the funds required to hire two professors and a teacher to work full-time on such a project; but this will very soon be reality.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
While I generally applaud increasing or adding to our general use of technology in helping to solve US educational deficiencies or to just help keep our educational system in tune with the world; on this one I have to call into question the logic of a technological solution to a social / infrastructure issue. As much as school is an educational institution, for many it is also a social institution, and while many home schooled groups do resolve this missing ingredient of regular social interaction among peers many do not. School is where our children learn (or fail to) how to interact, respond to, and respect others and other groups. That aside, I think the greater concern is that we are looking to technology to resolve a financial issue rather than a methedoligy or substance issue. Providing home schooling for moral, ethical, or simply quality issues is one thing, but providing it as a means to lower fuel cost comes across to me as fixing the symptom and not the problem.
If we want to reduce our fuel cost for schools, let's look at mass transportation. We need to consider doing like the MTA's (Mass Transit Authorities) and switch to cleaner, more efficient fuels for schools buses (CNG, etc). In metro areas we need to encourage having kids ride the metro bus system instead of maintaining two bus systems (school and general transit). We could place a "school official" (a.k.a- the current bus driver) on each MTA bus that picks up kids, and then they would be responsible for safety and counting fares. This would reduce fuel and maintenance cost for both the school system and the MTA, it would also introduce social change in our society by removing the stigma of riding public transportation. Over all it would be a benefit to many, and in rural areas the application of alternative fuels and more efficient modern buses would most likely be a better solution than attempting to build out some expensive county wide internet/ multimedia network infrastructure.
Trying to solve a social/ infrastructure problem in life by throwing more technology at it generally does nothing but complicate the situation. Social & infrastructure problems require a social or infrastructure solution. Technology is not the end all be all solution- the tech bubble should have taught us that.
Just my thoughts....
Huh?
Why don't you try walking to school?
Nope, that's not how it would work. Must be a slow news [sic] day at the slash-eh corral to post this ignorant drivel as worthy of comment.
Please engage brain before typing!
Mod parent up!
The reason home schooled students do better is because their parents are more likely to give a shit about their education. It has been consistantly shown that in schools higher parent participation correlates with higher scores. You never have the drain of the kid whose parents never give a crap on the aggregate scores. Home schoolers generally don't have single parents, divorced parents or the poorest parents. Also when you talk about scores, please say what test you are talking about or at least the scale the scores are graded on.
How about allowing the free market to come up with effective solutions to schooling instead of lockng entire communities into government monopolies.
Yes, because being driven to school on the 'Yellow Dog' or the 'Edu-Express' better known as a school bus...
When I was in grade school, we called 'em "Cheese Wagons," but whatever.
Don't get me wrong, PSoIP ("Public School over IP (TM)," yep, you heard it hear first. ^_~ ) is a cool idea, but unless the school systems foot the bill for Internet access, that sort of thing won't take hold. (The question is, do they spend that much for each child on transportation?) I'm sure low-income families go to the same schools that kids from neighborhoods with the fiber hookups do. Some of them just can't handle the $30-50/month for high-speed Internet.
Anyway, my first thought is propane or natural gas, but I don't know how suitble a fuel that is for larger, high-weight capacity vehicles. I realize that many government and businesses use propane or natural gas powered fleet-cars as a way to save money/be 'green,' but those are usually just small sedans. The buses tend to be refueled at a diesel pump in the district garage anyway, so it doesn't make much difference that you can't get it elsewhere. Besides, they can always keep a handful of diesel buses to use for long-haul (field trips, etc') trips.
Anyway, that's my take on it.
This sig rocks the casbah.
That's laughable. What records? You write down that Johnny went to class every day? How does the state know you aren't coaching your child on tests?
How does the state know you aren't letting him play outside one day a week and you fake the records cause you're tired of teaching or need to catch up on other things?
Blar.
One of the requests we constantly hear about (being as I'm a) out of school and b) not a parent) is the need for text books.
Text books are HORRIBLY expensive.
Why can't a State DOE contract out the creation of school books, just like they do software, and then distribute those books electronically to the campuses where they can either access them directly via computers, or they can simply print them out at bulk printers.
I mean, seriously, does teaching Algebra really change that dramatically over the years? How about having an always current Science or History book, updated annually.
You're telling me that you can't find an author willing to take $50-100K to create a solid text book? State pays them once and then has perpetual copyright and redistribution rights (or even shared copyright). Then the State can offer these books as options to the districts.
There must be some revolutionary new market we can create (maybe some new drug) that will solve all of this mess. Maybe we could let little Jonnies and Jannies telecommute and not ever half to move there fat..... Well once you look at the cost of user support, networking and all the rest it's not going to happen unless priorities change and we start spending money on schools but I'm not holding my breath.
Ok, maybe I'm thinking way outside the box here. But what about having the kids walk. Let's map this out in a simple equation. Less fat, no diesel = better health and lower costs. Maybe we could even put some of those savings into some technologies to bring our schools up to date.
In inner cities kids can walk in groups with volunteer parents (walking school bus) and everyone gets there safely.
provide We're having a childhood obesity edpidemic
I don't know where you live, but in Northern IL, USA, milk is $1.99 a gallon (and has been for awhile) while gasoline is $2.659 a gallon... Milk is actually cheaper than gas for a change.
They were shocked when my mother's first grade teacher told them that their daughter already knew how to read. Shocked, because they certainly hadn't taught her. My mother could read so well, that after moving to New Mexico half way through the year, she was getting in trouble for reading ahead.
My grandmother said that mom's older (2 years) sister and the caretaker's kids helped her. I asked mom about learning to read, and she doesn't remember getting much help, just that she was horribly bored at the caretaker's house.
John Taylor Gatto says that it only takes 20 hours to teach a child how to read once they've expressed interest in learning. Forcing a kid that's not interested does more harm than good.
And that "teacher unit" will in the majority of cases not be competent to teach every subject at the high school level. And in addition to overestimating their own competence,
The important thing my mother learned while at the caretaker's was not how to read. She learned that if there was anything she wanted to learn, it was her responsibility to teach herself.
Normally you'd expect someone who bounced from school to school to school growing up to struggle academically. Mom finally spent her last three years of high school in one place, and graduated valedictorian. She went on to get a nursing degree (her father's gender-predjudices kind of prevented other options), and a master's degree too.
homeschooling parents also have a tendency to overestimate their child's desire to spend time with them. Your kids don't like you that much.
Mr. Gatto says in his Underground History of American Education that one of the side-effects of compulsory government schooling in this country has been the destruction of the family unit.
No, government schools are bad for children.
Mom didn't know any better, and sent me to school to learn how to read. I learned the alphabet and short words in Kindergarten, simple sentances in first grade, slightly more complex sentances in second grade, etc. And today, while I can read /. just fine, if it's anything sufficiently complex, I'm lost. I couldn't read Moby Dick in my 10th grade "honors" english class, I've tried to read The Hobbit and Fellowship of the Ring multiple times (but can't get more than 20 pages into them). I certainly couldn't read Last of the Mohicans - I couldn't even finish the second Harry Potter.
And I tried to read the assigned reading for my
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Why don't you just email your children to school? -pf
thanks for the money and banking book and hull's option book I needed this semester mr. usenet poster
Namely, social interaction. It's far more valuable than three quarters of all subjects. The fact that home schooled kids are weird is not just an urban myth.
The Raven
Use block scheduling for small high schools. Instead of having 8 class periods every day have 4 one day and 4 the next. This allows pricey math and science teachers to commute between small high schools.
For a while Iowa has been in a consolidation bid. This saved money in the short term, but it is coming back to bite them with higher bussing costs. If they would have done block scheduling/teacher commuting they could have saved more money.
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
they's gone done buyin' up all that middl eastern o'l... making that dag gone price go up...
;^)
BTW, I'm one of "them" chinese...
<sarcasm>
It's a good thing Kerry lost, imagine how much vietnamese food would cost now!
</sarcasm>
I hate to be bitter, but you are just dumb. This article should not be on slash. And who the hell calls it the "edu-express"?
-But really, do you expect to see thousands of public schools offing internet classes to the kids, overnight ? aka before the gas prices dip down?
Of course it's still in development, and has had a hard time finding support. But then, the post asked how tech can help...
Nearly 100. All of the teachers love it, and the kids get a kick out of tabbed browsing.
Rhapsody in Numbers
US needs to create an Operating System for Public Education, to allow users to educate themselves, from home.
The PEOS would be basically a client-terminal to the Public.Education.Network (PEN).
The PEN would track all students activities, including login/logout times, desktop idle time, and information access logging.
This would of coarse have to be a proprietary system based upon Open Source Technologies, to ensure the continued 'un-restricted' technological development of the system, by authorized developers, nation-wide.
pros:
> save money on gas
> save money on teachers/books/etc
> save money on facility upkeep/maintenance
> give children the ability to access information, quizes, and automated test results, in real-time.
> track user attendence/activities remotely
cons:
> lack of supervision
> lack of social interaction
> lack of 'realistic' justification for such initiatives
I saw education and I placed the word "Teach" instead of "Tech" in my mind, I guess because of word association, and I was like "WTF? Crazy Slashdot editors", but then I was like oh, "Tech"!
Haha, public education at its finest.
CATAPULTS!
Certainly not government testing. About the only way to cut a teacher loose these days is if they sexually harass their students.
Fail a teaching test. Take it over, and over, and over, and over. What I find hilarious is that some states have the arrogance to hold home schooled children to higher test scores and competence than their peers in public schools.
Also note, that I don't know of any state which will not still tax you for public schools just because you home school. Most home schoolers make significant monetary sacrifices to do so. While not as great as those who send their children to private school the burden can be high.
What I have noticed about home school families is this.
1. The children are very much better behaved.
2. The children are quite capable of holding intelligent conversations with adults.
3. The parents are willing not to keep up with the Jones's and instead focus on family.
Given the choice in neighbors I know which I would choose. The public schools here in my state make me wonder why DFAC doesn't arrest anyone who sends their child to public school.
It should be a crime. We put the interest of teachers before the students. No amount of technology will overcome the NEA. The only way to overcome the NEA is to remove yourself from their scope.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
This may require a time machine to implement. Barring that, a miracle.
I attended elementary school in Chicago, and walked a half block to get there. The idea of bussing kids is odd to me.
Cites shouldn't bus. Reaasign kids to their own neighborhoods. If the school isn't safe, well, that's the problem, isn't it? If your kids don't go there, you won't give a damn about funding or safety. Feedback loop; cut to disaster.
Build suburbs in a configuration to enable kids to walk to school. The suburbs are immensely expensive to maintain for society as a whole, but the costs are off the books. The cost of fuel is highlighting this particular cost.
In cities, stop bussing kids around to "magnet" schools. Kids should go to school in the district they live in.
Stop funding schools by taxing homeowners. Federally fund schools on a per capita basis. No exceptions. Tax private schools in some fashion so they stop being attractive to parents.
None of this can happen. But it is the cure.
and in many cases it is a good indication that the money already being raised is being wasted. Look at some of the costliest per student school systems and you will find some of the worst.
What has been their answer each time they are confronted with low scores and high drop out rates? "we don't have enough money". Give it to them and suddenly every damn relative of the school board, the mayor, and the city board suddenly has nice high paying jobs doing nothing.
My school taxes are nearly $1100 per year based on millage rate on the value of my house. This doesn't even account for the SPLOST of 1% that comes and goes.
What have I seen this spent on? Schools covered in marble that costs more than most high end counter tops. Administration buildings with atriums that take nearly thousands of dollars a year to maintain. Teacher retreats to far off places.
Spare me this crap about raising taxes. Make the teachers and the administrators accountable first. End tenure and remove the damn unions from the school system, a union which only serves to maintain its existance and could not give a damn about a student.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
This is probably the most hypocritical and narrow-minded "Ask Slashdot" thing I've read. Ever. Of all the issues related to the use of gasoline in America, we must now discuss how to keep the school buses going.
- What about the gas price in other countries? Gas prices in the US are reaching, what, over half the global average? Get some perspective! Over where I live, the price of gas is so high that we can't afford dedicated school buses. The kids typically walk or bike to school. Of course, we have more and smaller schools, where teachers and students actually know each other by name, so there are fewer drug abusers and petty criminals and neighbourhoods are pretty safe.
- What about meddling in the middle-east? How many wars do you need to start in order to protect the oil supply? Each time you fill up your car, you can say to yourself: "Here goes 1/100 of our war casualties. Thanks, dude... whoever you were!"
- And what about the environment issues? The US alone causes so much pollution it's not even funny. Bush refuses to sign the Kyoto agreement, the government rewrites scientific reports to downplay issues... I don't know, this is like peeing in the swimming pool and then maintaining that it doesn't smell and even if it does it's not related to us peeing in it.
--Bud
Stupid analogy but I hear it a lot.
The pain of cost increases is proportionate to the necessity of the product and the rate you go through it.
How many gallons of milk does the average household consume each week? Probably 1 at most. And even then you can probably make do without it for a while, switch to another beverage.
How many gallons does the typical commuter go through a week? Probably at least 10-20.
Once you cut out extraneous travel and you downsize your car, there isn't much else you can do to minimize your commuting costs. Living close to work is not always economically possible or the area might not be very safe.
Public education, which, according to the spirit of the founding fathers, should be a human right
You don't have a right to a free public education. No founding father ever said anything like that.
It's been interpreted, correctly I might add, that if there is any public education at all, it must be provided to everyone. But that doesn't change the fact that it's a priviledge.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
No it doesn't. Here, milk is $2.39/gal and gas is $2.65. Where are you living?
Though fucking noogies. You reap what you sow. If the US had not painted itself in the corner of acute petroleum dependence it would not be in such a predicament.
Those are self-inflicted wounds who will not gather a single tear of sympathy elsewhere in the world.
The reality is, we don't want breeds of anti-social children who don't interact and sit at a computer all day- they'll have enough of their work-life to do that.
School is an opportunity to get the kids out of the house, into a LEARNING ENVIRONMENT sorounded by success (hanging people's work on the walls of elementry schools promotes doing well), with other children trying to achieve. They can not get this from home.
Maybe you could take a day off of school or something, but the trip to the building has a serious mental impact.
FYI: Schools can buy deisel for 50-60% of what consumers buy it at due to the volume of the fleet and arrangements with fuel companies.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Fastforward about 10 years...
I did learn Spanish. My 2 years of HS Spanish were REALLY a blessing to me. My accent is cleaner than most of my college classmates, and my grammar is good. I make a little money translating professionally. My interest in history (especially military and political) is really nothing more than an awakening of something that I think was planted by teachers long ago. The trumpet is a great joy in my life (I can make my own music! That's really something!) Learning how to prove something in a structured manner is actually a good skill to have. Now, I sure wish I had taken auto shop.
"I wasn't in high school but many years later I was. I still remember that teacher though and wish I could sit there and listen to him talk about those battles once again. Cest la vie..."
I'm with you. I wish I had that chance again, but I think the seed they planted is paying off now.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
I've been around some rural schools that have done school 4 days a week. This means students go to school longer Monday-Thursday and always have a 3 day week end. This would help with saving transportation costs for all schools. However, it would cause problems with babysitting for parents, etc.
Over all this type of school schedule seems to work best for most rural and some suburban areas. Most farm towns enjoy it because that's 3 days that the farmer's kid can drive the tractor.
Of course, no homeschooling is a great way to teach children. I'd imagine that most people here have at least as good of an education as the teachers. Of course, the average person could easily know the material for primary schools. However, the downside is many homeschooled kids aren't pushed to really work at school. I know people that would have hardly passed 9th grade, but some how managed to pass homeschooling. My wife and I have discussed homeschool our children. However, I refuse to have children that can't spell, write or can't pass high school math.
schooltool.org is a vertical market packaged aimed at school districts funded by Shuttleworth(yes that one). IMHO Technology can make various administrative and overhead costs much lower.
I'm a professional educator. I give classes in public schools for a living.
But, I would never let someone I care about attend public schools in their current state.
Why, you ask?
Because in public school, children do not get to make meaningful decisions. Sure, they can decide if they will follow the rules or not - but that is not really a meaningful decision. A meaningful decision is chosing how to spend your time. The world is so full of knowledge that it is impossible to know everything. So, some amount of specialization is important.
Allowing children to make meaningful choices (not just which test to take, the hard one or the easy one? or to do homework, or not?) takes some guts. You have to step back and let children make mistakes. This is hard. We want to "save them." But the power to choose leads to this self confidence, self reliance, self TRUST - that is impossible to gain any other way. It's not something you can make up for later in life.
People throw around the word "learning" like they throw around the word "technology." Technology is ANY TOOL - not just microchips. And learning is any experience, not just memorization. Factual knowledge is a commodity. Being happy with and trusting yourself, and helping other people are truely valuable skills.
Learning happens all the time in everything you do. People are naturally curious!
The problem with allowing children to choose how to spend their time is that they are growing up into a highly scheduled rat race of a society. This is a tough transition. But the challenge is worth it for happier, smarter people.
Home schooling isn't about sitting at home being lectured by parents. It's about experiencing the world around you, and taking advantage of all of life's opportunites. It's about letting children choose how to spend their time, and letting them make mistakes, and learn from them. Keyword: let.
Just some of my thoughts...
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
School also teaches you ... that people ought to be segregated by age and ability level. Is this the kind of world you want to live in?
Is this what you really want (cliche ahead) for the children?
People need to be working together, not apart!
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
I work for a company that produces transportation management software. Basically, the programs can use algorithms to optimize travel routes. This can reduce the number of buses used, thereby decreasing fuel and maintnenance costs. There are actually a number of firms in the pupil transportation software industry. Before I got hired it was a niche I never knew existed.
So how can new tech help out with rising fuel costs?
Better vehicles/transport systems for kids to get to school, better productivity for the parents so they can become more interactive with their kids, and possibly drive them to school, as well as increased communication between school and home.
I think the question which should be addressed is how can we improve the situations for teachers, parents, children in terms of public education becoming a priority in the American System. That opens a whole new can of worms.
in first year university, we had a new text book that had an online access package that came with it (http://www.masteringphysics.com/). The online material was integrated with the course (assignments, quizzes, etc).
the result was that you had to spend extra money buying the next text, OR you have to pay extra for the online package (bundle with the text is cheaper). not only that, after using it, the book is less appealing on the second hand market because buying a new one saves the extra cost of the online portion.
I am unique, just like you, and you, and you...
For many reasons, will not work.
1. You cannot force people to make a neighborhood safe. If the majority of the people won't work to make it safe, it will not matter what the safety minded minority want. Result: If the safety minded people can only get their kid to a safe school by moving, they will move.
2. If the kid can't get the kind of education he/she or their parents want, they will move to be attend the "magnet" school that provides what they want.
3. Nation-wide federally funded schools would be a disaster. Since when has the politicos in DC known how to do anything correct at a local level? If anything, the feds are already too involved.
At my district they wanted to reform the budget, save some money across the board. At the time, I asked a board member how it was going. He stated it was terrible and frustrating. He stated that more than 70% of the budget could not be changed in any way because of federal and state mandates. They had to spend money for programs and things that we don't need but the laws demand.
4. I pay taxes for the public schools whether my kids attend or not. Why should I be penalized for sending my kids to a private school by spending even more of my own money?
Eliminating private schools will not automatically improve the public ones. It primarily would do two things: Make the public schools worse because they would then have an absolute monopoly and, again, the people that care will move to the good schools. And there will be good and bad schools no matter how enforcement same-ness is tried.
It is not the cure. It would only segregate things more and make the bad even worse. People that care enough about their kids' education will get around the "forced improvement" by changing their residence.
First, vouchers. Let the market have at it. And if anyone objects that private schools won't take the hardest-to-educate kids -- B.S. They already are. Districts in Illinois farm out special education students (learning disabilities, severe behavior disorders) to private alternative education schools that are paid $150 per kid per day.
/.ers are too young and single to appreciate why this can make a parent of 4 angry...
Second, deal with the damn unions. As a parent, I'm sick and tired of seeing NEA insiders "take care of their own" with respect to TRS, by retiring after 5 years of top admin jobs at outrageous salaries.
But actually, just let (1) happen, and (2) will be forced to take care of itself. Then the union will whine about competition raining on their freakin' parade. Tough. Catholic schools have been doing college prep excellently for more than a century.
How is it democratic to have a monopoly hold your kids hostage while they yawn, don't promote or fire based on merit, and architect the country's most powerful retirement system?
I suspect most
How do you homeschool your children if you have a job? I can see it if you're a stay-at-home parent, but most parents, especially the ones who's children probably need the most help, have to work at least one job just to pay the bills. I don't see how they're supposed to be able to educate their children on top of that.
Stop shuttling. Have them housed at school. Without luxury. And cut costs by having them raise their own food, do most of the cleaning and all posssible maintenance. Parents would have visiting rights and at least one weekend a month. ... Boys Town, was it ?
:->
Remember
A real Utopia, if you believe Plato.
To 'fix' this problem, we need to look at society itself. How do we create a society where kids are accepted as equals, not inferiors?
What we do is build an army of robots, and take over the Earth. Then we create a StarTrek-like society, but more practical. DOWN WITH CAPITALISM!! The intellectualy elite should run the world.
Just like everything else.
1. Hire people in India whose annual salaries are less than the kid's allowances to be remote instructors.
2. pass out laptops with webcams in them and community broadband Internet
3. PROFIT!!!
PROFIT???
Oh WTF, it's not like they're going to find jobs when they graduate anyway.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://en.wikipedia.org/
The high school that I went to (graduated recently) had up to 40 year-old buses, much before fuel economy was even thought of. Granted no matter what bus you'll use, it'll suck diesel. Perhaps they should be using newer buses, which I've heard have much better gas mileage.
Sometimes I comment just to hear myself typing.
And no matter how you slice it, the costs of education are going up. Unless you decide that a complete paradigm shift is going to happen, you won't see a change.
The entire state of South Carolina is looking at a $1.4M shortfall, according to TFA. A quick Google shows that the state budget for education is $1.4B requested for FY2006. Now, while I agree that a million four is a good chunk of change, it is 1/10% of the budget, and accounts for less than 1/2% of the $3XXM increase in funding requested for FY2006.
My suggestion: DON'T add more technology to the schools. Quit buying MS licenses for the computers you have.
Here's antoher suggestion: Stop building schools that look like college student centers and convetion halls. I work in the A/E/C industry and see all the waste we're spending on soaring glass atriums and circular media centers and other very expensive features. Even something as small as the design fee can be reduced if we weren't trying to build the next Getty Museum for our children to learn in. Hotels are similar in complexity, and yet the chains manage to spend 2.5-4% of construction on design fees, while new schools will command 6-8%. Seems like a small change, but the last 1000 student high school I was involved with was $20M for the building (plus $10M for sitework and other improvements)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Well said. My folks actually left an incredibly important decision in my hands at a very early age: whether to continue attending public school in the first grade, or get out and do home schooling. I wanted to learn, and I actually stayed in school for about four months before I realized the two were completely at odds. Blah blah blah, I turned out okay and did well in college.
I even have a social skill or two.
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
They should look at a way to use Biodiesel in the busses.
Not only would it be cheaper than regular diesel (inputs for making Biodiesel could come from local restraunts, fast food joints etc) but it would re-cycle waste products AND help the environment too.
Although I am sure there is a reason Biodiesel might not work (be it Biodiesel in general or for specific school districts)
How does the state know you aren't letting him play outside one day a week and you fake the records cause you're tired of teaching or need to catch up on other things?
You're right! What if unscrupulous parents devise a (downright socialist, if you ask me) four-day week, because teaching five days a week wears them out? Those poor kids don't have a chance in hell without school on Friday!
A parent who coaches their child for tests is teaching that child a lesson far more valuable than anything learned in school: That society is full of bullshit like standardized tests, and they should be regarded as the games they clearly are, rather than any measure of intellect or ability.
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
Look at some of the costliest per student school systems and you will find some of the worst.
I have to call bullshit here. Please back up your incredibly unlikely assertion with some evidence other than "I pay a lot of taxes and my school sucks."
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
http://www.opensourcetext.org/
/. tech centric again, fixing the most basic problems with public schools would be hundreds of times more cost effective.
California spends $400,000,000.00 each year on K-12 textbooks.
If California printed their own textbooks from open content, freely available books, they would be able to spend the $400 million elsewhere or better yet return it to the citizens.
Tech fiber, internet access, etc just
You get them documented and validated by a lawyer. That's how my parents did it for high school. They have copies of every quiz, test, etc. in a file. Sure, i could have faked it. Proof is in the testing.
Between the ACT, and the standard entry tests I was accepted into the university of my choice with the highest level of scholarship they award. The standardized tests will catch the cheaters.
-everphilski-
I seem to recall this certain type of technology which uses no fuel, is environmentally friendly, isn't an eyesore, is silent and promotes good health.
r ement heh heh heh.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle
And now to dismantle any complaints about this argument:
But a bike costs money!
* With the amount of money spent on fuel alone for a 30 MPG car (assuming the lifetime milage is 150,000 and the average price of gas is 2.50/gallon) -- $12,500, you could buy 5 or 6 high priced bikes and pay for all necessary tune-ups and such.
But it's so far to my school!
* Good, more exercise for you to work your statistically 24.5% likely (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4183086.stm) obese body down.
But it snows where I live!
* Stop being a such pussy -- people used to cope with far worse in the past (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Trail)
I don't have any legs.
* This is a handicapable-aware facility. http://www.rexdonald.com/handbike.htm
But I'm blind!
* Get yourself a tandem bike and make a deal with your buddy where you do most of the legwork. http://www.komotv.com/news/story.asp?ID=25830
But how am I going to impress girls if I can't drive around in a 4-ton behemoth?
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_armstrong#Reti
But
* Quit jackin your jaw and get on the bike already. You don't want to miss homeroom.
Come on /. 'editors'!!!!! Get us some better questions.
If parents were experts on subjects, all Republican parents would teach only intelligent design to their kids..
It can't - not unless families want to stop being two income families, which a lot can't. It would be really tempting to say that a six year old could be left at home alone with a computer all day, but he or she can't. Not legally and not practically. So why don't we have groups of kids gather in neighborhoods and be supervised by an adult who could help them learn? Oh yeah, we do this. It's at a place we call a... a... wait a minute, it's right on the tip of my tongue... oh yeah, a school. Now I will agree that many of the schools today are too big and gather in kids from too wide-ranging an area, but that can be solved by dividing the districts to make neghborhood schools neighborhood schools again. But that would probably cost more than the cost of fuel. Actually, come to think of it, any technology would probably cost more than the fuel. So, no, there is no easy technological fix.
That is all.
I recieved top of my state for maths, was good at sciences, and etc... I left school to go into uni - a comp sci/Math degree. After a couple of years I changed. I now study a double degree with majors in Law, History, and Politics. Whilst I still love the maths and so on, I think the stuff I have really learnt to appreciate in school was the history and politics. Whilst knowing maths is nice, and its fun, it doesn't compare to actually knowing about the world. I think teenage boys just happen to be good at math and science, and for many it turns into a life long rut. Nevertheless, I would hope my pedagogues never feel discouraged for though I never appreciated them in my day, I do now. I would never have vied my education as babysitting.
With more tech there's just more stuff to pay for. OTOH, unless you live in a very rural area, your children can bike to school faster than the bus... that is unless they are too heavy.
Is homeschooling really a solution? First, this question isn't quite valid. Saying that schools aren't working, then countering that avoiding school altogether is a non-argument. The problem here is that students have no chance to learn things from their friends, be motivated by a peer group, or generally avoid insanity.
Dont get me wrong, I had 12 years of homeschooling, or maybe I should say 8 years of homeschooling, and 4 years independent study. After I got to high school my mathematics proficiency was as high as my mom's and she certainly wasn't going to learn topics ahead of me. Instead I got textbooks that didn't address the subjects I needed to learn. Honestly, most professors make poor textbook choices, how could you expect your mom to make a good one?
Everyone is different, so it would be wrong to assume your child will do well on his/her own, or the other way around. Their academic performance may improve if the student is a lazy kid at school and needs more personal attention(you dont have 2-3 younger kids who pretend they cant read), or it might degrade.
Here's the real problem though. Your highschool education will not help you. Without a scholarship and a university education path, all the work in highschool is a waste of time. Now try taking your A student homeschooler against a AP/IB program motivated kid from a public school. Any self respecting university will ignore your homeschooler. Even if they give you a method of getting in, you'd have to know ahead of time all they really want to see out of homeschoolers is high scores on SAT II's. Do you really expect most parents to plan that far ahead?
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
"With the ever-rising costs of fuel, we seem to forget those that are truly having problems affording it. No, not the homeless, but our own kids. 'Kids,' you ask? Yes, because being driven to school on the 'Yellow Dog' or the 'Edu-Express' better known as a school bus, is costing your state more money than ever before. In my neighborhood, we have a plethora of home connected by fiber and at least high-speed internet. So my question is, how can technology be better-implemented to ensure a student's studies and also lower the costs of fuel for the districts?"
Hook the busses up to Cat5 cords and use Power over Ethernet?
Sometimes technology isn't the answer.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.h tm
weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
is that it might be an answer for you but its not an answer for anyone else.
First, consider that to get anywhere with it you need to be rich. Rich enough that one partner (oh, you can't be divorced either really) essentially doesn't have to work and that you can buy all the materials required. OK, thats the bar just for you to do it, we'll assume you and yours are bright enough to do it and one of you despite these qualities and drives doesn't feel much like a career. Or that much contact with adults in their daily life either. If you won't trust schools with your kids I very much doubt you'd trust your neighbours either.
Second, what about everyone else who isn't that rich or that smart. The American way of thinking is so strongly individualist ("I'm alright Jack" as we called it in the army) I don't think this registers. If all the middle class parents pulled their kids out and homeschooled the result for society as a whole would be carnage. I wouldn't want to live amongst those people, with their public schools decimated in funding (the middle classes would certainly demand and get their tax cuts for this, undermining economies of scale). And thats the good outcome. The bad income is that some of the crazy/stupid people you meet everyday suddenly follow suit and become America's homeschool "teachers" (today we shall have PE, run down to the store and get me another bottle will you son...). Half the pressure already upon public education is parents who frankly cannot be trusted to be parents. The eight hours a day their kids get away from them and their craziness is those children's only hope of escaping their fate. Again then, those kids are screwed. Which you might say, well, sucks for them, but unless you want to live on a desert island one way or another its going to suck for you as well.
The problems in American schools require strong collective action to address and a widespread will toward improvement. The fracturing of this into private and home schooling is a major problem afflicting it. The solution is greater engagement, not complete disengagement.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
Yeah because printing is free and people who write open source books are real concerned with the politically correct bullshit that is required of classroom textbooks these days. Oh wait, no. Most freely available books are made as a reaction against the tripe that most states require in their text books--until you can get these authors to not only write for free but also write absolute crap which they don't agree with for free you are looking at a lost cause.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
The only problems the US has are by design of its planning - the city layouts appear to be designed by fuel companies. I live far out in the suburbs of London, yet I can walk to a pharmacy,liquor store,newsagent/general shop,cafe,computer shop,solarium(!),indian/chinese/pizza takeaways,churches within five minutes, and within 20 minutes to many schools,a vast supermarket and collection of pubs/restaurants etc. This is typical of european urban areas.
The US approach of segregation assumed dirty industries and cheap individual transport.
If the law mandates 5 days, you do 5 days or you can just not accept that state diploma! This is auite black-and-white. Don't like it? Let your home-schooled kid take the GED.
I also meant, that the parent give the kid answers or hints while the kid is taking the test. I would hope that any parent would take time to help their kid prepare for a test.
Blar.
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Here is the eighth-grade graduation test given in Salina, Kansas, in April 13, 1895. It was taken from the original document on file at the Smoky Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, Kansas and reprinted by the Salina Journal:
Grammar (Time, one hour)
1. Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.
2. Name the Parts of Speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph.
4. What are the Principal Parts of a verb? Give Principal Parts of do, lie, lay and run.
5. Define Case, Illustrate each Case.
6. What is Punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of Punctuation.
7-10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.
Arithmetic (Time, 1.25 hours)
1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50 cents per bushel, deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?
4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $.20 per inch?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around which is 640 rods?
10.Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.
U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4.
I'm a gnu world man.
Washington DC has a per student cost (IIRC) of $12000/year and is generally acknowledged to be the worst in the country.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I said according to the spirit of the founding fathers, and not according to a quotation by them.
How can you have a society of equals then? Equal opportunity to every child? Not according to those who currently hold more opportunity, and want to mold the system in their favor even more, a system that rewards without merit. Welcome back totalitarian, rule by iron fist, those who can get on top, will, like in ancient Rome, and murdered by backstabbing, and so on. Also, way to lose out on a lot of talent, that should benefit everyone. How about Faraday never getting a chance, because he wasn't born 'noble?' A mind is a terrible thing to waste. The founding fathers never believed in nobility, and never believed in privilege rights by birth. Can you say equal opportunity to every child, in this society, no matter what his birth was?
How can you have a society of equals then? Equal opportunity to every child?
Had they wanted to create a society of equals, the founding fathers certainly could have tried. They did not. Equal opportunity doesn't even mean that all people are of equal talent and means. (But of course the phrase "equal opportunity" also appears nowhere in the Constitution nor in any of the writings of the founding fathers.)
To say that men are "created equal" does not mean that they are equal in all respects. It means that they are equal in their rights.
The founding fathers never believed in nobility, and never believed in privilege rights by birth.
That's true. I think you're misinterpreting what a "right" is. Of course you have a right to an education; but having a right doesn't mean the government (or anyone) has to provide it to you. Free education provided by the government is rather a priviledge. And the US government doesn't even have a mandate to provide that priviledge.
The nobility that the founding fathers fought against and that they so despised, denied men their equal rights, so much so that it even prevented people from engaging in a trade of their choosing. That was nobility as they knew it: government dictating what they can and can't do. They certainly weren't fighting for equal handouts from government. They were fighting for their ability to choose their own damn way in life.
Also, "according to the spirit of the founding fathers," they would be more upset with someone's right to their own property/money being taken from them, whether to fund education or anything else not included in the Constitution they wrote.
want to mold the system in their favor
That's the point. The system the founding fathers created can't be molded at all, because it was barely a system, more like the bare minimum. What it has become, of course, is a giant mess, mostly because of people taking expansive interpretations of all of government's legitimate functions, and adding more that weren't included to begin with.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
"That's true. I think you're misinterpreting what a "right" is. Of course you have a right to an education; but having a right doesn't mean the government (or anyone) has to provide it to you. Free education provided by the government is rather a priviledge. And the US government doesn't even have a mandate to provide that priviledge."
Let's take this topic to the other extreme, to shed better light on the balance point. The case of no education whatsoever, because it's not mandatory to provide:
I think no education whatsoever can be the equivalent of child abuse, and not simply because 'a mind is a terrible thing to waste', there is a lot more, deeper upsetting thing to it. There is a term called the forbidden experiment, and it's called so because no people of moral conscience would willingly subject children to such a psychological malnourishment, that naturally occurs with feral children.
So coming back from this other extreme, to the balance point, just how much mental malnourishment is acceptable? Food is not a right guaranteed by the Constitution, but when it comes to lack of food, to children being malnourished by their parents or their community, we get pretty aroused morally. Why don't we do the same when it comes to psychological malnourishment, because after all, a child, after his stomach is filled, is just as curious and hungry for an education as he was hungry for food.
As the Chinese Prime Minister would say it, a chinese farmer, even before getting his full breadth of human rights and freedoms, he'd much rather have a decent education first. The Constitution guarantees you your freedom and your rights, without guaranteeing your education, but even there, just how much of one thing do you want, while accepting none of the other, how much freedom and rights are you not willing to budge from while accepting zero education and culture?
Where is the optimum balance point? You could say not everyone has the right to being provided and education into a brain surgeon or an opera singer, but there is that set of things we call "basic education", a set of absolutely necessary things in order to function well in a democracy, that I feel everyone should have the right to, just like they have the right to learn language, and if that right is not guaranteed to them by the Consitution, it should be.
Some things are just so obvious, that the founding fathers left it out of the Constitution. Perhaps we should add a 0'th amendment, the right to oxygen, the right to air to breathe, together with the right to learn a spoken language.
Perhaps we should add a 0'th amendment, the right to oxygen, the right to air to breathe, together with the right to learn a spoken language.
You have all of those rights. And they did add that amendment (of course it would be kind of pointless to put it at the beginning). Perhaps you should, you know, *read* the Constitution before debating it. Of course, that won't make a difference until you understand what a right actually is.
I think no education whatsoever can be the equivalent of child abuse
So what? I think not providing all people with free shelter is abuse. Surely people need shelter more than education. Maslow would agree. You don't see me going around stealing from people to build houses, do you?
The case of no education whatsoever, because it's not mandatory to provide.
Education existed before government. Lots of things exist without government, without being mandatory. There is no balancing point necessary because you're arguing from a faulty premise.
The Constitution is the absolute law of the land. We don't need you to balance it with any of your ideas of what should happen. If you feel everyone should have an education, start a damn school. Don't whine and cry and ask for the government to make people help you.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
It is no different than a large corporation insisting that you not wear torn blue jeans and a t-shirt to work.
Of course it's different. Corporations aren't held to the First Amendment. And I'm not forced by law to attend a corporation every day until adulthood.
School is not fucking job training.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
You are right I haven't read the Constitution from beginning to end, it's the spirit that counts, and without the proper background of why something is in there, empty words can be taken way out of context. Almost every word in it has a history, it's meant to counterbalance something. Perhaps you'd like to point out which amendment contains the right to oxygen? By the way, every text is subject to misinterpretation, and while I may not be able to recite the Constitution, I feel that I fully know the spirit of it, and I'm not misinterpreting it, and take offense to being told otherwise.
Education existed before government. Lots of things exist without government, without being mandatory. There is no balancing point necessary because you're arguing from a faulty premise.
Society existed before government - it's hard to imagine a person fully cultured, in all his shine, without some culture in him, without seeing other people expressing themselves in him, be they parents, neighbours, teachers, books. Nobody goes alone at it in this world, and if they do, like the feral children, they suffer tremenduously. Even Newton said he saw further because he was standing on shoulders of giants. Whenever you speak, 90% of what you say comes from the socail fiber you're part of, and maybe 1% is something you add to this collective, 9% is just noise. Being part of a society, being part of a culture is a need for every human, even if we grant him all the rights to freely choose which culture he wants to be part of. Education should not be mandatory to accept, however it should be mandatory to offer and provide, at least I'd like to live in a utopian society like that. Government is a form of social expression, it's our choice as a group, how we want to be.
The Constitution is the absolute law of the land. We don't need you to balance it with any of your ideas of what should happen.
You have to know that even the Constitution, the Supreme Law of the Land is not something absolute, it's not something given a priori, but it's a creation of man, a collective choice made by people in how they want to live out their earthly lives. And in that, at least this land's Constitution, strives to grant as much freedom as humanly possible, it forces a choice on people that leaves the most choice intact. And in that, in how we want to live our lives, everyone has a voice, a right to voice his opinion - even I do, even if you don't like listening to it or disagree with me.
Unfortunately a prime fault of democracy is that majority oppresses minority, or more exactly, those holding power oppress those who don't hold much, whatever shape that power may be, and even if those who hold it are in minority. This opression naturally happens even while there is a Constitution as a counterbalance protecting the power of the powerless. The Constitution is not perfect, and in this protection of the powerless, what could be more effective than leveling the playing field, and enabling everyone, empowering everyone. Education is a key thing in that. Clothes don't make a person, money doesn't or shouldn't make a person. You could say that even education doesn't make a person who he is, it's not a measure of his worth as a human being, and you'd be right. Still, in the comparative sense, education and culture "makes" a person a lot more, than his material belongings or monetary power do. Culture, knowledge and education is something that's very hard to take away once it's given, though not impossible.
I'm fed up with this crusade to introduce a knowledge economy without level playing field, jacking education prices through the roof, where knowledge is so locked down and controlled, that only those who got rich daddys are allowed to "own" any knowledge. You can't "own" human knowledge, it's everybody's, you have a right to know. We do use intellectual property laws as means to provide incentives for crativity, but those in power would like to squat the system even more, and introduce a world
while I may not be able to recite the Constitution, I feel that I fully know the spirit of it, and I'm not misinterpreting it, and take offense to being told otherwise.
You should be offended. You admit you've never read the Constitution. You're merely arguing from a socialist perspective without really understanding what it is you're arguing against.
I say that because you should know what the Constitution actually says and means. It's not as bad as you think. And it's definitely not as bad as you would expect from looking at the current sorry state of affairs.
The US government is a wonderful concept that has been absolutely ignored in implementation.
The rights you seek are protected in the 9th amendment.
Unfortunately a prime fault of democracy
The US is not a democracy. It is a Republic. It exists at the consent of the governed. The majority have no power to compel you to do anything.
Education should not be mandatory to accept, however it should be mandatory to offer and provide, at least I'd like to live in a utopian society like that.
Well I'd like to live in a utopian society in which I can educate my children without the interference of government and without having to support schools they don't attend. And, oh look, guess what? I do! If you'd like to live in a socialist utopia, you're free to gather up some like-minded people and go for it. Leave me out of it, please.
The Constitution is not perfect, and in this protection of the powerless, what could be more effective than leveling the playing field, and enabling everyone, empowering everyone.
The playing field is level. But, as I've said, it's a logical impossibility to level the playing field in more than rights, in those actions which are granted to all of us equally by our creator, and which do not by definition cause harm to others by their exercise. In going beyond this, you must take from one person to give to another. This is not a level playing field, no matter its outcome. This is theft, pure and simple.
How is a world where you owe your existence to some royalty, you owe him to pay him for the air you breathe, for the knowledge you "consume," for your right to exist, any different than the very system the founding fathers fought against?
You don't! And it's not! Even patents and copyrights were not meant to apply to average people! They were meant to benefit average people. They only apply to US corporations, mythical constructs of commerce. You only incur their jurisdiction by competing with said corporations. Implementing patents and copying works of art for your own use are inherently beyond the scope of the United States.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
9th amendment page has a link to natural rights, which looky look! Lists education as a right. Perhaps you'd like to go ahead and edit it, because wikipedia is free for everyone to toss a word in. But without you pointing the 9th amendment out, it would have just gone over my head if I read through it.
The US is a democracy too, but also a republic. Democracy means things are decided by majority-preference. I was bitching about the majority oppressing the minority, as a key imperfection, or more exactly, the nondemocratic monetary power minority opressing everyone else. You could say our Republic functions via a Democractic decision making process, or at least that's what they say it does, by majority vote, and not by the few access to power tweaking the majority and dazzling them like snakecharmers with bullshit.
Well I'd like to live in a utopian society in which I can educate my children without the interference of government and without having to support schools they don't attend.
I'd like to think you're not only responsible for yourself alone, or your limited circle of family, or your greater flock that you call yours, that you call "us", and nobody else outside that. Why should we send aid to Africa? Don't you think you bear some responsibility for every person in the world, even if to a lesser degree than you are responsible for say, your children, or very near people? Doesn't your "us" include everyone in the world, to some degree? Or you'd rather prefer the "us" vs. "the enemy" stance. The term "enemy" has quite a brainwashing power, look at how it captured Nixon and his gang. At least back in those days there was still some conscience in the American public, and no, they were not 'siding with the enemy' no matter how hard you looked, but were speaking their own conscience against human indifference. Then came sex, drugs and rock-n-roll, to snakecharm that freedom loving and conscious bunch too, and all you have now is brainwashed zombies that feed on what's 'cool', feed on any hype you toss to them. Welcome back days of whitchhunting.
"The playing field is level. But, as I've said, it's a logical impossibility to level the playing field in more than rights, in those actions which are granted to all of us equally by our creator, and which do not by definition cause harm to others by their exercise. In going beyond this, you must take from one person to give to another. This is not a level playing field, no matter its outcome. This is theft, pure and simple.
Yeah, a level playing field dominated by a single monopoly. Like that's not theft, like extortion isn't pretty much equivalent to theft? It's just getting screwed in more subtle ways. Monopolies don't have the right not to be interfered with, even if you would like to have it differently. In a sense, you must take from one to give to another, you must take from a monopoly what it acquired through usual practices, and punish too much success in such a 'survival of the fittest' competition, because the fittest gets to be the single dominant power, and everyone else gets to suffer. In a sense, the freedom of the monopoly is checked by how much that freedom affects others. You are never completely free, other than in your inner world, but in the external world, your actions affect others, and it's a cooperative process that gets people anywhere, as a whole. The US does have antitrust laws, and they go against the very grain of noninterference you speak about. Is it a socialist thing? Why do we have social security? Is that a socialist thing? I guess with people like you rattling the cage we won't have it much longer. Because a world without an absolutely safe safety net, where there is a 95 year old woman, who just ran out of her lifesavings, because some idiot on the phone was clever to scheme her out of
9th amendment [wikipedia.org] page has a link to natural rights, which looky look! Lists education as a right.
Yes. It also says that education is a "right", in the sense of Rosseau, that must be provided by government. The founding fathers would not have agreed with Rousseau on this point. They mostly preferred Locke on matters of natural rights. Rousseau's view of rights, which is more in the tradition of socialist governments in Europe, is deliberately at odds with the structure of the US Constitution. Most Americans travelled a long way and fought more than a few wars to get away from philosophies such as these.
(P.S. -- I'm going to continue to use the word "socialist", because it's accurate, not because it's disparaging.)
Yet, even Rousseau, whose writings were a major basis of socialism in Europe, recognized that man's duty to his fellow man is subservient to man's duty to himself. In a country such as the United States in the 17 and 1800's, providing for one's own welfare was more important (and practical) than providing for others'. Even today, many problems would be solved by Americans taking greater responsibility for their own problems than by meddling in the affairs of others. We're pretty terrible at that to begin with, and with such a diverse population, it tends to cause more trouble than it's worth.
Like I said, under the Constitution, you have a right to an education. You don't have a right to extract money from me to provide it.
The US does have antitrust laws, and they go against the very grain of noninterference you speak about. Is it a socialist thing? Why do we have social security? Is that a socialist thing?
As is pointed out on Slashdot all the time, monopolies are usually a product of government intervention. The railroads were given patents on rails and all the free land they could take. Telephone and electric distribution monopolies are given land every day. Microsoft is given absurd 70-year copyrights and quite a bit of legal protection against reverse-engineered competition. You could argue that Standard Oil wasn't really a government-granted monopoly, but I'm sure they had their fair share of patent protection. As you know, patent and copyright are a giant mess. I'm not sure I consider it "socialist" for the US to clean up this mess in a roundabout way using antitrust laws.
And, yes, social security is a socialist thing. That's why it's nearly bankrupt.
You are never completely free, other than in your inner world, but in the external world, your actions affect others, and it's a cooperative process that gets people anywhere, as a whole.
It doesn't require government for Americans to cooperate. We happily form the largest corporations on the face of the earth. And where there aren't corporations, there are co-ops. We have some of the largest private charities, and religious institutions. Hell, look at the internet, and FOSS in the US. We have amateur astronauts, for Christ's sake! Americans are pretty much self-organizing. And it mostly just requires government to get the hell out of the way.
Because a world without an absolutely safe safety net, where there is a 95 year old woman, who just ran out of her lifesavings, because some idiot on the phone was clever to scheme her out of her last dime and buy life insurance on it, or she just simply ran out of funds, we owe her nothing, it's not our duty to care for her?
If you'll notice, society (without the help of government) has already evolved quite an effective safety net for little old ladies. It's called "inhereitance". Little old ladies are some of the richest people on the planet.
Regardless, let's take your example to it's logical conclusion. Let's assume, 30 years from now, that technology exists to keep a person alive indefinitely at the cost of $100,000 per year. You have a right to life. Does the government have a responsibility to provide this treatment to you? What if the treatment requires,
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
monopolies are usually a product of government intervention
I don't agree with that. Without government, there is a natural tendency toward monopoly. You seem to idillicize the wild west, but what do wild west towns look like without a good sheriff? Some kind of gov't is necessary for people to live a happy life, otherwise a select few bandits get to subdue the rest, at gunpoint. Remember the days of maffia? Before the days of FBI? Is the FBI, the police of police, such a bad thing, just more bureaucracy, instead of a good solution? What's more monopolistic than the maffia? You could say that monopolies meddle in the affairs of gov't and there are a lot of structures erected that help them - it's our job as citizens to point out and speak up against such things. Remember, it's supposed to be a government by the people, OUR gov't, against which, according to the 2nd amendment we have a right to excersize our Donald Trump rights.
You don't have a right to extract money from me to provide it.
People and their private property are sacred. You have a right to property, to your home, to your own domain. Every man's house is his castle, that, no matter how modest, even the King of England may not enter without his permission.
"The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It may be frail -- its roof may shake -- the wind may blow through it -- the storm may enter, the rain may enter -- but the King of England cannot enter -- all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!"
However, don't forget taxes - they've been with us ever since the founding fathers. Taxes are not optional, but mandatory, forced on you by the gov't, or more like the majority that votes in agreement with such practices. Because without taking some of your property, things wouldn't function - it would be back to the wild west days.
Also note that in this taking your property, we punish the success at the 'survival of the fittest' game, we don't have flat taxation in a sense that everyone must pay, say, 5000 a year, nor do we even have a flat percentage rate, such as everyone must pay 30%. What we have is a highly highly skewed tax system, that punishes those on top the most, and doesn't even take from those on the bottom, but gives to them. Everyone can go at it, because if you fail, and fall through the bottom, there is a safety net that's supposed to catch you. Dont' you think this is a socialist construct? Take from one guy give to the other, on a large scale? This kind of skewed taxation system is less agressive and violent than revolutions, "nationalizing" your property away, or even turning you into a gulag, because you succeeded too much. If you succeed too much, you get to bear a larger tax burden, and that's how it is right now, even if those who "succeed" are always at it, trying to change the system, not knowing they are asking for a revolution, for nationalizing, or for being turned into a gulag in this process. Maybe when the guns get so good, the mechanisms of control and keeping tabs on everyone via computers get so efficient, that no revolutions are possible, because there is no peasantry being able to grab their scythes and run head on against all the cannon fire, maybe when that day comes, those on top need not fear being 'punished for too much success.' Maybe that day is very near.
Let me keep using that word balance, again, like you keep using the word socialist. Oh I recognize all too well the bullshit and inefficiency that bureaucracy causes, and I'm always vocal against it, to cut through the crap and artificially erected rules that make no sense, and the unnecessary bureacracy, unnecessary gov't. Still, ever since this country was founded, there was bureaucracy, there was gov't, and there were taxes which are forced, mandatory donations, and a mechanism to take from one, to pay another, be it military, police, or hurricane victims. You may be able to run a small family or a small boat
Of the pieces that may be considered speech, the schools are generally justified in prohibiting them.
No, actually, they're not. In fact, preventing exactly this sort of government regulation of completely harmless behavior is what the First Amendment is for. You should read and understand the Bill of Rights.
no suggestive images
Sounds like expression to me.
they are seen as gang symbols
Also, expression. Specifically, expression you don't like. Gee, does that sound like a constitutional right we've heard of before...
suggestive clothing
But I'm sure there are exceptions for cheerleaders and football players.
In a fight, they can be a weapon.
Thousands of things in schools can be and do become weapons in fights. Most of them were put there by the school.
In a PE class, they are dangerous.
PE is dangerous. Yet, it's required. Chains are dangerous. They're banned. See how this is getting stupid...
chains... not a form of expression in a general sense.
Okay, let's assume you're right for a second. They're a form of self-defense. You still have a right to defend yourself and your property. You have locks on your lockers that can easily be used as weapons. Chains are there to prevent crime, to prevent someone from stealing your wallet. It's sad that a person's self-defense is a reason for you to persecute him.
A dress code is part of that.
No, it isn't. Dress is not behaviour. Clothes do not cause behaviour. Despite the beliefs of millions of left-brained idiots, people actually are the ones responsible for their behaviour. Not clothes. Dress codes are extraneous and unnecessary...
Wait a minute...
Do you have a fucking web site with a UK address????
Are you a Brit????
Mind your own fucking business, then.
We wrote our Bill of Rights because of you idiots, you know.
We don't need you to interpret it for us.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Clothing is not protected speech. If you think that it is, you may want to review the Supreme Court cases involving dress codes. As to suggestive clothing and profanity, why don't you take that up with the FCC? Stop making assumptions. It makes you look bad. Though the personal attacks weren't helping your case much either.
There is one major case that I can think of in which the SCOTUS has struck down dress policies. That was Tinker v. the Des Moines School District. In that case, it was ruled that wearing black armbands in protest of the Vietnam War was okay because (1) the students were quiet and passive (2) the students were not being disruptive and (3) the students were not impinging upon others rights.
Now, have a look at this article: http://www.modrall.com/articles/article_13.html
The bibliography is important as well, there are several Supreme Court cases referenced. Dress codes are legal and enforcable in public schools. Again, freedom of speech does not mean that you can say whatever you want where ever you want.
Now, let me take your example about self defense. A knife is for self defense. So is a gun. Should kids be allowed to bring these to school? And under the pretense of first amendment protection? I am inclined to say no.
Finally, I am an American. I was born in Arizona, raised in Iowa, went to school in California, and now live in Nevada. The website that I link to is Introversion Software's site for their game Darwinia. Before you start calling names, you ought to try and get your facts straight.
Rhapsody in Numbers
Without bureaucracy that makes it so slow and difficult to turn the ship around, without the inefficient bureaucracy, what's your alternative? Chaos?
But the founding fathers didn't build a ship of state. They built an empty hull. They said, "if we need to go somewhere, people will get on board." They realized that governments, if given the opportunity, will mostly sail around in circles for no real reason.
Well, I don't remember boarding this ship. But we've been sailing around in circles for a while now. We've raised the Jolly Roger and attacked lots of other ships for no real reason. There's a slavemaster whipping us now. Though we started out with mostly Americans, there's lots of Mexicans on board for some reason. The officers are putting the cannons on lifeboats and transferring them to other ships. The ship is falling apart. There's talk of mutiny. And the onboard movies they show us just keep getting worse, which is sad because they're mostly remakes. I want the fuck off.
those who don't take care of their future, have no future.
Ironically, that's the best argument against socialism that there is. Socialist governments are too busy caring for the present, putting out fires, dealing with this week's catastrophe, making poor investments to cover up people's bad decisions, to begin to care about the future. And that's if you have a moderately well-run socialist government. If you have a socialist government run by idiots, or worse, greedy idiots, you're completely screwed.
Look at social security. Everybody was told it's a "trust fund" and a "lockbox" and that their money is being stored for them for when they need it. It's complete bullshit. That money is spent the day it's received, often on things that have nothing to do with caring for the elderly. It's a pyramid scheme of the first order. The entire system collapses when it stops growing.
Under the US Constitution as written, however, it doesn't matter who's in charge. It doesn't matter who wins the next election. Because, ultimately, each and every person is mostly responsible for their own future.
You're the best person to know what you'll need in old age. My grandmother does. She has a house. She has her church. She has a garden. And she has a canner. And she's happy as hell and will live until she's 105.
Without a safety net, people learn not to do hazardous things, like build homes and live in dangerous areas. If they know the government isn't going to swoop in and rebuild their home, people might invest in more disaster-proof structures. Or they might have a back-up plan, a trailer in the sticks, in case the worst happens.
Now, of course you can argue it's not an efficient allocation of resources for everyone to have two homes. But look what it produces: responsible citizens! You can't buy that with safety nets.
Here's an anecdote I've heard a few times. Native American babies don't cry. You'll never see one crying. They are quiet and peaceful and content. Little white kids, on the other hand, cry like they're being abused. Until way into childhood, white kids cry at the drop of a hat.
Why? Native American mothers will let their kids cry. They say it's good for them. They feed them when necessary, let them cry the rest of the time. It lasts about two weeks. The kid learns that crying doesn't get you attention, or food, and quits. Some people never seem to learn that lesson. We'd all be better off if they did.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
You haven't yet given an example of clothing that infringes on any of those requirements.
Besides, that's not really what that decision says anyways:
And under the pretense of first amendment protection?
Come, now. The First Amendment has been broadly interpreted, but it's not that broad. There are nine other amendments in the Bill of Rights you know. Some of them even protect expression that isn't speech.
Finally, I am an American. I was born in Arizona, raised in Iowa, went to school in California, and now live in Nevada.
Please accept my apologies, then, for implying that you were of anything less than American stock.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
While interracting with adults is important, I think interacting with your peers is even more important. Kids need to be kids.
I don't know about you, but I grew up seeing the adults as my peers, or at least the people I related to best. Given Slashdot is largely composed of highly intelligent individuals, I wouldn't be surprised if others felt the same way growing up. I just didn't relate to people my age. For the most part, I still don't.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
First of all, have you ever considered the costs of a dual-income family? What with child care costs and higher taxes on the higher incomes, I wonder how much money these second jobs really pull in. Secondly, I take mild offense at your assumption that someone who decides to stay at home to be a full-time parent is betraying their "qualities and drives" by that choice. Parenting is a full-time job in itself and I feel you are implying that a person who chooses that job is aiming low in life. Lastly, I'm a little confused by you feeling that one has to be rich to support oneself with the income from just one job. If you live modestly, it's really quite possible. People do it every day.
For the record, I was not home-schooled. I went to a private elementary school through 6th grade because my parents liked the idea of us attending a Catholic school and because we could get a better education there. I attended public schools for the last 6 years. Throughout my life, my mother stayed at home to help raise us. It was what she wanted to do, what she felt was right to do. She was educated with a BA in Psychology. Now that all of her children are in school of one sort or another, she's picked up a job.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I have only one more thing to add to the thread (because you obviously did not read the article that I linked to): there are many, many Supreme Court cases that bring up dress codes. In some cases, the SCOTUS has ruled that certain dress codes are constitutional, in other cases, the Court has ruled other types of dress codes unconstitutional. As nearly as I can tell, the differences come from two things:
(1) The type of speech abridged must be "important" or "valuable" speech in order for a dress code to be unconstitutional. Political speech is valuable. Obscenities and fighting words are not. Thus, political speech is protected more than obscenity and fighting words. Thus, a school is well within its rights to insist that students not wear t-shirts with graphic sexual images, or halter tops that are overly relvealing, or pants that sag down to one's ankles.
(2) The neutrality of the dress code is also important. A dress code that bans chains is neutral with respect to the content of the speech. Schools are not trying to prevent kids from wearing chains because they object to the content of the speech, but because the chains themselves are dangerous. By the same token, guns are not banned at schools because schools object to free expression through sporting a weapon, but because guns are dangerous. A prohibition against hats falls into a similar realm, i.e. banning hats is done not to squash a particular statement, but as a general rule -- it is neutral to the content of the speech (and even then, there are exceptions, i.e. yamakas for Jewish children).
The point is, whether or not you agree that public school dress codes are right, they have been held up by the Supreme Court, and they are legal. My point has not been that dress codes are a good thing (though I think that certain restraints are more than appropriate), but that they are legal, and constitutional, and enforcable. If you think that they are an inhibition to free speech, then you ought to find a lawyer, and sue a school district. Maybe your case will make it to the Supreme Court, and dress codes will be overturned. I doubt it, though, as there is a fairly large amount of case law on the subject, and I doubt that you would get out of the Circuit Court.
Rhapsody in Numbers
Socialist is the new buzzword? You're not the first one to try to hang it on me. I don't prescribe to movements and ideologies, but evaluate everything at face value for myself. If you wanna label me, call me a Scientist and a Consitutionalist, because I really like that stuff I see in the US Constitution, even if a lot of it is just smoke and mirrors, but some of it bites, some of it does actualize in real life.
The nice part of the Constituion is that you can keep adding Amendments to it, it's open to change, just like science is. But there are some fundamental beliefs in science, such as the conservation of energy, that we believe in so deeply, and when faced with something that seemingly violates it, we start looking at all the other excuses first. Fermi "discovered" the neutrino, his brainchild humbug, by laying his faith into this principle. 20 some years later it was verified by experiment, and thus far we have yet to encounter an event, an experiment that disproves its validity. I feel the same with the amendments of the Constitution, they are open to change, but we better encounter something really surprising before we start picking at this faith.
We're full of safety nets - bankruptcy, social security, etc. Elect Howard Dean, and he'll go - hiyyyaaa.. Social Security - down.. hiyyyaaa.. bankruptcy - eliminated.. hiyyyaa.. Getting off the ship? Go ahead, but don't try to get to be the captain and try to run it toward the iceberg. Answer me, what would you do about the 95 year old lady stuck in the wheelchair? While you might vote that the only reasonable way to get things done is for everyone to pitch in, and agree with the principle, when it's time to live up to that vote, when the time comes to act on mandatory donations, such as taxing, church donations, or paying into the research funds by business units, everyone gets a gutwrenching feeling - we're all human beings, and setting the bar of expectations too high doesn't work in the real world. Everyone - well, most everyone - needs a little nudge, and is needs to be ushered and reinforced into keeping up that behaviour by their peers and the social fiber - be this fiber the IRS, the other people's eyes in the church, and who knows what inside a company. With taxing, and selflessness, without the surrouding social fiber, the maxim is: don't tax me, don't tax my buddy here, tax that guy over there, hiding behind that tree. Just ask Bush how he feels about it, how his buddies at Enron and Halliburton feel about it.
People caring for themselves is a good idea, but hardly anyone lives completely alone, and instead people live in something called a society, and cooperate. Because of this dealing with issues together, you also get the sophisticated complications of who gets what. Though there is a way to get a lot by contributing a lot, there is a significant driving force to get things by unfair means, to subvert and scheme the system. The land of lawlessness and safety-net-less wild west is still a system, a system that can be subverted, and a gang or a maffia dictating terms to everybody else, because there is cooperation going on. Only in a world where there is zero cooperation, nobody dealing with each other, but everyone living in the woods or on a farm independently sustaining themselves from the rest, can you accomplish your utopia, of no government at all, and people taking care of all their problems, by themselves, as they happen. But look at what happened to the Greeks and their decide-your-own fate by yourself city states? They got invaded by the Persians, and they had to reevaluate too much independence. Counterinvading the Persians - an eye for an eye - was probably not the proper answer. In a utopia with the rule of everyone for themselves independently, 0 taxes, 0 government, you set yourself up for chaos, either for outside invasion, or inside invasion by a gang. In a small society where everyone knows everyone, reputation is often more important than cold cash. In a massive society where reputation doesn't work that much, religion