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Why One Woman Says Sending Your Kid To Private School Is Evil
theodp writes "Slate's Allison Benedikt is ruffling some feathers with her recent manifesto, If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person. 'Not bad like murderer bad,' Benedikt writes, 'but bad like ruining-one-of-our-nation's-most-essential-institutions-in-order-to-get-what's-best-for-your-kid bad. So, pretty bad.' If your local school stinks and you send your child there, Benedikt explains, 'I bet you are going to do everything within your power to make it better.'"
Thanks for telling me up front that you don't know what you're talking about so I got to save time by not reading the rest.
Don't Bogart the fish sticks
where most schools are private, and the public ones are more prestigious than the private ones.
Just enrolled there myself. I'm taking Lair Design 140, Manic Laughter 210, Hero Killing 112, and Physical Education 100.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
I had to go to a private school to get (neo) Marxist indoctrination. It was pretty great ;-) (for one year. Between dropping out of college - I was 13, and got into a fight with my program administration - and going back for lack of other reasonable options.)
Public school... well, one of the lines that annoyed me the most is about how your gifted child will be fine. For some kids, yes. Or maybe your district has a decent gifted program. But for many children gifted education is a type of special needs education, and keeping them in a standard setting is not only cruel, it's likely to turn them into angry disaffected hackers who get lousy grades and blow things up for kicks.*
Er, not that I'd know from first hand experience or anything.
Gods, when people say that your teens are the best years of your life...
* Oh, wait, technically that was the gifted program, right before they decided I needed to try college.
Hero Killing 112
I took that class and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone having any interest in executing heroes. They teach you everything about constructing high tech execution machines, but when I asked the teacher why a bullet to the head wouldn't be more time and cost effective I got shouted at.
You can vote for a new school board. Volunteer to help their election campaign. Or run for election yourself. You actually have MORE voice there than with a private school, where losing 1 customer is quite frankly not a big deal.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
The school we’re zoned to is not just tough, it’s dangerous- Most teachers don’t try to teach; if they prevent major crimes from occurring, they've had a good day. The stories that come out of that place are gut-wrenching; the kids there aren't being prepared for squat. I've busted my ass and sacrificed a lot to send my son to a private school as a result.
What little good that could come of us participating in the local public school would pale in comparison to the harm it has the potential of doing to my son- not only to his well being day-to-day, but to his chances of success afterwards as well. I'm not sacrificing my son's future on account of Allison's idealist prattle. From what I've seen, not many of the our local public school system's participants: teachers, parents (especially the parents), or the students give a rat's ass about making their school system any better.
I attended a very tough school while growing up, and learned more about avoiding having my ass kicked than anything else that I needed for college- as a result, it took two tries and 6 years to finish my first degree- my first two years were spent learning what I should have learned in high school.
Allison Benedikt has her opinion of me, and I have my opinion of her. My son is my responsibility until he's grown; if his young life is made difficult by starting out with a rotten education, I can't see Allison getting very worked up about it... I mean, it's no skin off of her ass, is it. Allison can go fuck herself.
I dont coment often but i had to do it this time.
Isnt it a tragedy if our public education system is not good enough to make sure your kids get a education that is good enough for them to actually pursue their goal. I mean most families doesnt have the luxury to pay alot of extra money for their kids to go to private schools.
I think its a serious problem for the future when important personalities like Matt Damon, Bill Gates, and the american president says that public shools wont give their own offspring the skillssets needed to progress in the american society. This means essentially that for +80% of the population the "american dream" is stone dead. All the big paid jobs/popular jobs will be reserved to the rich minority who are lucky enough to be born into a rich family, that can afford private schools for their children. The rest of the population will be left in the dust, fighting for the scraps.
I really dont see how a country can keep up the stability and prosperity with that policy and mindset from the people we see at the top of our society today.
Hero Killing 112
I took that class and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone having any interest in executing heroes. They teach you everything about constructing high tech execution machines, but when I asked the teacher why a bullet to the head wouldn't be more time and cost effective I got shouted at.
The worst bit is having to memorize your entire evil plot so you can soliloquize in front of the hero, while you think you have him/her utterly at your mercy, so they can then make an improbably escape and foil your plot.
But then, it can't be all milk and cookies at the hero academy, having to practice your improbable escapes and practice remembering entire evil plots, so you don't leave anything important out while foiling them. Nothing more embarrassing than finding that female reporter rotting away in a dungeon cell several weeks later, when all you had to do was rip the door off its hinges.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
You (and everyone else) are missing the point. The point is, if "good" parents are disinvested in the public school system, they will not strive to make it better. Public education will keep getting worse because the people who can make the biggest difference lack the incentives to do so.
There are no private schools in Finland. Turns out, when you make the kids of the rich and powerful go to the same schools as everybody else, those schools turn out to be decent. Here's an article on how Finland outperforms the USA in education.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Indeed concrete individuals should take priority. I think she's approaching from a kind of categorical imperative. Hence her statement, "Whatever you think your children need—deserve—from their school experience, assume that the parents at the nearby public housing complex want the same. No, don’t just assume it. Do something about it." Or, again, her rather annoying, "ruining-one-of-our-nation's-most-essential-institutions-in-order-to-get-what's-best-for-your-kid bad." In other words, she would prioritize the needs of the "nation" over those of your "spawn" [her word, not mine]. After all, wouldn't it be wrong to put your own children before the common good? Isn't it selfish to secure for your own what humanity is often denied?
This kind of thinking always puts me in mind of a passage from the Brother Karamazov. In the passage a woman declare to Elder Zosima her great love for all of humanity, but her apparent inability to actively love an individual. Zosima replies:
Loving and caring for abstractions like humanity or the nation is comparatively easy. Humanity, nations, or the people are objects which can be loved without fear. They will never leave or reject you. They can be readily idealized, so one never doubts the worthiness of loving them. And since they're abstracts, one needn't have to worry about them remembering those times you didn't particularly feel like caring for them. It's also very rewarding. In some cases, all we need to do is vote the way we think best, and then we can hold our heads up high, even regarding neighbors in scorn who have failed to see our good sense.
Loving and caring for concrete individuals is quite hard. They are sometimes ungrateful--in the case of infants and teenagers, it can seem almost constantly so. They have bodily needs which require unpleasant cleaning. They have wills of their own and cannot be idealized. They can remember your bad days. They can suffer and you may feel responsible, even when you're not. They can break your heart. They die.
This, I think, is at the heart of the preference many have, particularly among the educated and white collar, for giving priority to abstracts. A person such as Benedikt can hold you in contempt, for she prioritizes the higher ideal of the national good, while you privilege your "spawn" by giving them the
TL;DR: If we play Prisoner's Dilemma, I'm defecting.
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Most of education outcome is more correlated with the parent's money than anything else. Children who grow up in poverty tend to underperform no matter what you do with them in school. Overcoming a difficult home life is really hard, and neither teachers nor their lesson plan will change that very much. Meanwhile, rich kids can do well anywhere. If all a child has to worry about are grades, their life is straightforward.
When someone has a terrible local school, their options include private school and moving to a higher class neighborhood. Since school quality depends more on the parent's wealth than anything else, those neighborhoods also cost more. That's not just a correlation, it's a direct cause and effect. Expensive areas block children from lower incomes, which makes all of the jobs a school has to do easier. Has nothing to do with the effort parents put into school or the kids; it's just plain easier to focus on being a student (and have the resources to do so) when your parents have money. The writer of this article is pretty naive to think that all parents can affect a change simply by being more involved.
The only way to equalize this issue across the population of the US would be a massive shift toward socialism, probably via higher taxation, to more evenly distribute wealth across the country. Good luck with that.
I'm a public school teacher, and I see some of the issues you address above on a regular basis. However, that is not the norm. Teachers do NOT try to create passive cattle. Most teachers work hard to teach students to be independent thinkers, while they go home to households that don't care about their education, don't push their kids to be more than obedient, and don't help find the children the support they need to prosper.
Are there terrible teachers? Yes. Should we fire them? Yes. They are not though the norm. Think of any professional environment and the slackers that do as little as possible. We all have those losers.
We also have to quit thinking of schools as external from our society. We need to see them as a part of a larger whole. We can escape blame that way, but it isn't accurate or beneficial. Do you know who your local school reps are? Have you spoken to them? Have you raised a voice that asks for more accountability or initiative from the students, teachers, and administrators?
Of all political bodies, school boards are the most local and relatively responsive to community input.
We have serious problems with our public schools, but I believe educating our children is essential for a functioning society; it is more so for a democracy. Let's not throw out the system because it has flaws. Let's work together to fix them.
Start locally.
An important change for education.
...Public school... well, one of the lines that annoyed me the most is about how your gifted child will be fine...
They are ALL gifted... if you check each and every kid will have little trophies, awards, ribbons, and certificates stating that in no certain, exact, or quantifiable way... It's not like they're keeping score... (they could be sued, or worse, someone might feel bad). I'm shocked they are still allowed to even hold a spelling bee.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Sadly, I believe you'll find that --as far as education is involved-- Slashdot is not a place that welcomes people with experience. Instead, people are valued for uninformed opinions and political stances based on anecdotal experience. To them, it is better to punish a hundred people (teachers) because one of them annoyed them ten years ago than try to actually try to analyze the problems.
If someone posted on a story saying "I'm a restaurant waiter and I think we need to seriously look at adding some restrictions on the Open Source system" they would get 800 comments laughing at them for talking about something they know nothing about. But say: "I'm a coder with self-diagnosed Aspergers and people should listen to what I have to say about the education system" and somehow its considered "informative".
They don't care about your experience. They don't care about logic. The vocal minority (I hope) here simply thinks that their limited experience is both typical and sufficient for them to draw conclusions about a diverse system spread across a country.
I went to one of those middle class highschools. While we don't have gunfights in the hallways, I'd say there's plenty of anti-intellectualism (the real deal, not the leftwing slur), dogmatic policy, and athleticentrism while I was there.
1. sports programs need to be separated from academia. move them to camps, state or privately funded. They don't belong in school. This really needs to happen at the university level too. athletics is some kind of cult in public schools in the USA. If you don't play some kind of sport, you're branded a 'loser' by the students AND the staff. While I don't mind them, and I do realize they can teach life lessons when they aren't neutered by political correctness, they compete for academic funding and relative importance within the school culture. that has to stop. same thing goes for other extra-curriculars.
2. The school budget should focus solely on math, science, the english language (in the USA), history (not 'social studies'), and a life-skills program (minus the political correctness in current health classes). This program would cover things like: eating habits, sexual behavior, phys ed, and at least a basic program on managing money. If the kid plays sports in after-school camp, then he's exempt from phys ed.
3. remove the tenure and bureaucracy that rewards non performers. Also, get rid of the crazy overreacting discipline policies. Stop expelling kids for bringing a fork to school to eat lunch, etc. If a kid's trouble, warn, then throw him out for the period. If it happens repeatedly, call the parents. No need to confiscate belongings, search lockers, or tell them what they can wear. If the policy gets in the way of doing these things, change the policy.
4. kids don't need ipads or other stupid toys.. They need teachers, decent textbooks, and buildings that aren't 90F in the summer and 40 in the winter. Bonus if they don't smell like urine. For technology access, a few computer labs are sufficient.
Any belief that forcing public schools on everyone is seriously misguided. Nothing ever gets better when it's forced on people. The best schools in the world are in Finland, where a voucher system forces public schools to compete with private schools.
Uh, wrong. There are no private schools in Finland. Everyone gets the same education, and the results seem to be exactly what the author of TFA is suggesting.
I'm sorry, I can't agree with most of that reply. What I'm referring to is awards for "participation", which has nothing to do with effort. We have created a system that actually builds a false sense of worth in students. People that have ability above the norm are termed "gifted" and punished for fucking up the curve. Isolated, uncool geeks and nerds are going to do poorly if they do not have challenges that would humiliate their contemporary classmates. With the exception of sports (where it is OK to abuse the less gifted) everyone else must be equal... until they hit the market place at 18. Thus the only option the (often themselves gifted) parents have is to get their kid the hell out of a school or district that will not work in the best interests of the student. Making everyone feel good only benefits low grade teachers and administrators. Looking at results via cost per student tells us we are not going about education in the correct manner
http://rossieronline.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infographic/
and there is no way for any parent to change that by demanding change at the school level... THEY have to do what is best for their kid, and maybe that kid can grow to occupy a place where accountability will roll down hill and change the system... but given the way things work in the upper levels, I don't hold much hope for that happening.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office