School Super Asks Governor To Make His School District a Prison

quipalicious writes "A Michigan school super asks the state governor to make his school district a prison, highlighting the various rights and privileges that prisoners get and public schooling students don't."

Comments

Very well written

[gomiam]

Sometimes I would like to be able to give +1 Insightful to articles outside Slashdot :)

Re:Very well written

[eln]

Most kids in the worst-performing schools DON'T get that stuff at home. The worst performing schools are almost always in the poorest areas, and it's not because poor people are naturally stupid or because teachers in those schools are naturally incompetent.

Parental involvement is the most significant single indicator of student success. Parental involvement also decreases as income decreases. Sometimes it's because parents have to work multiple jobs. Sometimes it's because the cycle of poverty creates despair which leads people to make bad decisions like turning to drugs and crime, which often lead them into our well-funded prison system. Schools have gotten worse as the gap between rich and poor has widened. This is not a coincidence.

It's wrong to say all schools are failing. In wealthier districts, schools are by and large doing very well, even the public schools. The ultimate solution to repairing schools is reducing that gap between rich and poor back to a more reasonable level. Unfortunately, since any attempt to help the poor is seen as socialism and there's a pervasive feeling in this country that poor people are poor for a reason and don't deserve any help, we debate endlessly over symptoms rather than fighting the root cause.

Re:Very well written

[TheRaven64]

Actually, looking more closely, that's not true - my mental approximation of inflation was off by a long way. In the UK, state schools receive around $8700 per pupil and the fees for the school where I went are now a shade over $15000. My mother taught at a state school, and the funding was really tight (it's increased by about 85%, ignoring inflation, since then, about 50% factoring in inflation). So $7000 per pupil is probably below the minimum I would expect. My mother was having to teach classes of over 40 pupils, with one textbook between two and a lot of them so old that they were falling apart. With $7000, maybe they could afford a few new textbooks, but class sizes would still be too large.

Schools are Prisons

[Anonymous Coward]

Public school teachers are in much the same position as prison wardens. Wardens' main concern is to keep the prisoners on the premises. They also need to keep them fed, and as far as possible prevent them from killing one another. Beyond that, they want to have as little to do with the prisoners as possible, so they leave them to create whatever social organization they want. From what I've read, the society that the prisoners create is warped, savage, and pervasive, and it is no fun to be at the bottom of it.

In outline, it was the same at the schools I went to. The most important thing was to stay on the premises. While there, the authorities fed you, prevented overt violence, and made some effort to teach you something. But beyond that they didn't want to have too much to do with the kids. Like prison wardens, the teachers mostly left us to ourselves. And, like prisoners, the culture we created was barbaric.

from "Why Nerds are Unpopular"

Clever but inane

[SniperJoe]

While I appreciate the point that the superintendent was trying to make (especially given the relative funding difference per person), I'm sure that the students would have some things to say about being forced to remain inside the school for 24 hours a day. Prisons spend so much money and provide items such as health care, exercise facilities and food because those people are forced to be there. You can't really just offer lunch in prison. Besides, I think the dollar argument is disingenuous. Comparing dollar figures for people that are in prison 24 hours a day / 365 days a year to those that are in school for 180 days a year / 8 hours a day on a per capital basis isn't exactly fair. From the article itself, $35,000 a year for a prisoner divided by 8,760 hours (24 hours * 365 days) is roughly $4.00 an hour. $7,000 a year for a student divided by 1,440 hours (8 hours * 180 days) is $4.86 per hour. By that metric, they are spending 22% MORE per student on an hourly basis than they are on a prisoner.

Re:Success, not failure

[SomeKDEUser]

If you are tough on crime, this means, presumably, that you are arresting more people. Now, this means that the people locked up do not commit any more crimes while locked up (after is a function of whether your prison system makes sense or is just a relic of medieval thinking).

The number of youth turning to crime, according to you, is a function of the number of criminals around them when they are growing up. Now if this were true, the crime rate would be significantly affected by the imprisonment rate, all over the world. But we find this to not be the case. Although locking people up does keep them off the street, it is a very costly and inefficient way of combating crime.

Which is why the most likely explanation for the drop remains legalised abortion. It is not growing up around criminals which matters in particular, but growing up in difficult circumstances. Abortion prevents births in bad circumstances and allows mothers to only carry their pregnancy to term when it makes sense to them.

Indeed, the drop would be observed not 12 years after the measures, but 17-18 (the human violence peak). Guess what happened at the end of the seventies?