From: Patricia Schwartz <margaret@glas.apc.org>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.soviet
Date: 11 Oct 92 23:22 MDT
Subject: Re: If you don't like it here.....
Nf-ID: #R:tbucks.com:92100570:glas:84600009:000:3638
Nf-From: glas.UUCP!margaret    Oct 11 23:22:00 1992


I'm sorry, I don't know how to quote other posts on my current system,
but I need to comment on one aspect of our problem in America with
schools.

Since Reaganomics, we have seen a phenomenon known as "feminization
of poverty," which is really "childrenization of poverty."

Increasing divorce rate plus backlash to working women decreased
likelihood of man paying court-ordered child support.

After divorce, typically, the man's financial situation tends to improve
quite a bit, partly maybe from sublimated sorrow into workaholism,
partly from not having to share resources and time with family.

The woman and their children typically become much poorer and have
to accept a far lower standard of living, unless the man happened to
be the kind of wonderful human being who doesn't divorce his children
along with his wife.

So the dynamics of the last twelve (or even twenty) years has
shifted more and more children into lower and lower income
neighborhoods, where because of many factors, not necessarily
quality of teachers in the school, although that is part of it
certainly some finite percentage of the time, they get worse
educations.

So merely improving the "quality" of the education on some abstract
scale according to some definition of "quality" which is a strong
debate in itself, is not likely to really help the sinking knowledge
base or the sinking math and science-educated pool of people here.

I think we also have to use some kind of intervention in this
escalating downward mobility of American children. There are
several ways to do it. One way is to just give more money to
schools to keep children for longer hours so that they have a safe,
educational place to stay until Mother gets home from her miserable
job that she can't afford to change or take time off from because
her husband owes back child support of tens of thousands of dollars.

Another way is the famous "Head Start" program of the sixties,
which was oe of the Johnson-era programs that actually did work.
Children from poor families are put in schools from the ages of two or
three, where they are given a special and rigorous curriculum designed to
teach them to learn and to want to learn and to give them good ideas
about school and their own possibilities for the future.

I agree that there is a certain amount of individual power over
the quality of education. A child who is motivated to be a 
"learner" at an early age can actually overcome the deficiencies
of his or her school curriculum by his or her own efforts.
This idea was prved in the early success of "Head Start"
participants, who were tracked through their later lives.
They did far better in the educations and careers than children
of the same poor backgrouns who couldn't be in the program.

And of course we absolutely must change the horrible cultural attityude
in America towards the whole subject of science. And math.
How do we admire? We (as a country) are obsessed with doctors,
lawyers, police, movie stars, and rich white teenagers, from looking
at the TV program.

Only "Mac Gyver" had any science content, but he was clearly a
fluke, just a "James Bond" who did his own wiring, not a real
working scientist.

We are too undisciplined in America. Weare absolutely great at
anything that requires no discipline, like reading, making
slasher movies,  computer hacking, etc. But our economy is
going to die from the lack of an adequately skilled work force
if we cannot somehow make an adjustment in our attitudes towards
"nerdy, boring" subjects like math and science, which require
a certain amount of totalitarian attitude to teach and to learn.

margaret