From: wbralick@afit.af.mil (Will Bralick)
Subject: Re: Chelsea's school ...
Organization: Self-similar
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 20:02:53 GMT

In article <nate.1042@psygate.psych.indiana.edu> nate@psygate.psych.indiana.edu (Nathan Engle) writes:
| wbralick@afit.af.mil (Will Bralick) writes:
| >nate@psygate.psych.indiana.edu (Nathan Engle) writes:
| >| The values school children carry into the classroom have 
| >| a definite tendency to reflect the values that the parents display at 
| >| home, and I'm not convinced that unmotivated kids are going to be any 
| >| better students in private classrooms than they are now in public ones.
| 
| >So _all_ the kids are bloody well just going to have to suffer together.
| 
|     Well, that's effectively what we are all eventually faced with when 
| we live in this society. The unmotivated kids grow up into unmotivated 
| adults, but they are still our fellow citizens. We can learn to live with 
| them now, or we can learn to live with them later, but we have to learn 
| to live with them sometime.

Learning later after one has matured (we hope) would seem to be the
preferred option.  I think that I can say that, in general, children 
are more impressionable and more easily led astray than adults.  Better
to wait until after they have matured.

| >With school choice, the motivated kids will not have to suffer at the 
| >hands of the unmotivated kids.  The parents who care will not have to try 
| >to undo the damage done by being forced to put their kids into such an 
| >environment.  
| 
|     IMHO all that school choice accomplishes is to delay the time when 
| the motivated will have to "suffer at the hands of the unmotivated". 
| Parents are free to try to shield their kids from that sort of reality, 
| but I'm not sure they're doing their kids that much of a favor.

Au contraire.  I can understand this reaction -- it is theoretical for
you, because you are not yourself a parent.  The natural impulse for
parents is to shield their children from dangerous situations.  That can
result in overprotection (which is not good for the parent or the child)
or it can result in underprotection (SAA) or it can result in some 
level of protection between those extremes.  

Children do not need to be subjected to the influence of the slothful to
know about sloth.  They do not need to be subjected to the influence of
the angry to know about anger.  The same obtains for all of the seven
deadly sins as well as the opposing virtues, although I personally
believe that they will find it easier to fall into any of those vices
and harder to achieve any of the virtues.  The children who are already
given over to vice will not easily become virtuous by being exposed to a
few virtuous children.  The few virtuous children may well fall into
vice by being exposed to rampant vice in school.

| >|     I'm sure it would go a long way. I would imagine that the gap between 
| >| public and private schools would become even more pronounced, and with the 
| >| departure from public schools of the last students who really care I would 
| >| imagine that the peer group values in public schools would become even 
| >| worse than they are now. I certainly can't argue with the fact that it 
| >| would result in change, but I'm not sure that I would call it progress.
| 
| >Ah, yes.  We want everybody (except the rich and powerful) to have the 
| >same abysmal education.  Thus everybody (except the rich and powerful) 
| >will be equally well (?) educated.  
| 
|     Believe it or not, it *is* possible for motivated learners to go to 
| public schools and become educated. It might be more of a challenge, but 
| the system is working for a lot of people.

And fewer of them every year!  Test scores just keep going down, down, 
down ...

It is possible, but is it likely?  Well, that depends on the school
system and the level of vice within the school.  In a situation where
the child hopes to survive each day there is a bit of a drag on the
learner's ability to learn.  

Note that the school choice programs are _more_ important in the inner
cities and other troubled school districts and less important where the
rich and famous (like the inestimable Governor of Arkansas) live, e.g.
suburbia (which has been described as the largest private school system
in the country).

| >Every child taken out of that kind of environment will benefit.  It is
| >not clear that harm done by leaving those students who care in the
| >environment you prefer for them is actually helping those students who
| >do not care.  
| 
|     Would you care to elaborate on how students are harmed by being left 
| in public schools? If you want to dwell on the drugs or the violence, then 
| I would agree wholeheartedly that we should get rid of the drugs and 
| violence,

| but I'm not convinced that the way to get rid of those things 
| is to shut down the public system.

Nobody has suggested ``shutting down'' the public education system.  If
everybody flees then it will shut down.  If it is _that_ bad then it
should shut down.

| Drugs and violence are impediments to 
| the public system, but not inherent components.

Someone else pointed out that many problems are generated from requiring
children to be in school when they are not motivated to learn.  It is
probably that element which causes many (if not most) of the problems
with drugs and violence.  I am more concerned with protecting children
from those elements than with risking children in the hope that somehow
their good attitude will rub off on those with crummy attitudes.  The
drugs and violence are more likely a result of anti-truancy laws, then.

As you have pointed out, the public schools have to incarcerate, uh,
educate every child no matter how ill-behaved.  Well, if these children
refuse to learn and their parents don't or can't control them, then what 
do you do with them?  Put them in school anyway and let them drag everybody 
else down?  I don't like that answer.

| >Policies are, after all, more important than people, eh?
| 
|      Well, you said it, not me. Personally I think that people are able 
| to fend for themselves pretty well if you just leave them to it.

This is precisely my point.  Provide to the parents a portion of the money 
spent per child in the public school system and then just leave them to it.  
You are the one who supports the idea that almighty government is a better 
judge than the parents of which school is right for little Suzy and Johnny.

| The answer 
| to poor conditions in public schools is not necessarily to throw money at 
| every parent who wants to place the kids in private schools. It might be 
| worth the time to simply clean up the system we already have in place.

Well, uh, gee, uh, ``simply'' clean up the system.  OK, *snap* wasn't
that simple!  Sorry, but right now the educrats have no incentive to 
``clean it up.''  Principals, superintendents, et al belly up to the 
trough and feed and generally have little concern about losing their
jobs over inconsequentials like job performance.  

OK, how do you ``simply clean up the system we already have in place?''


Regards,

-- 

Will Bralick			          Speaking _only_ for myself.

Standard disclaimers apply.            Void where prohibitted by law.
Newsgroups: alt.rush-limbaugh