Quote:
Originally Posted by dksuddeth
the creation of the public school system was supposed to enhance education.
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the creation of the public school system in our country was to get kids off farms and get them ready for industrialization.
earlier than that, school systems were focused on memorizing and recitation, skills viewed necessary to learn the tenants of religion and morals
our education system has only recently been understood as a place to enhance civil values; unless I'm mistaken that was one of the findings of the Warren Court.
critiques of the public education system argue it serves mainly to perpetuate the class system and that it merely acts as a gatekeeper to higher education, which in turn facilitates gatekeeping to managerial positions.
AFAIK, it's never been held that public primary schools are meant to enhance education, per se. that is, if you mean facilitate "learning" or training of minds for analytical thought. if you examine the things students learn, such as, coming to class on time, obeying authority, turning in assignments complete, and the value of personal achievement, you can see how everything up to the master's credentialing process can be understood as gearing students for whichever position in the economy they will ultimately land.
the only place that is believed to produce analytical thought based education is private institutions and doctorate programs...even doctorate programs are suspect, however, in that their goal is to limit one's paradigm to a particular school of thought rather than expand it. such is the process of indoctrination.
anyway, the other portions of your post I basically agree with...except your views on whether we should publicly provide for those who are either unable or unwilling to do so themselves. I have a hard time believing you were making your own breakfast in pre-school. dc_dux is not talking about middle school or high schoolers. the data he's talking about is mainly referring to pre-school students.
it tends to hold true as students age, but if you can't even agree that pre-schoolers deserve every opportunity then I think you're just being an ideologue for the sake of it. you're a smart enough guy, if you want to be opposed to something doesn't it behoove you to actually read up a bit on Head Start before denouncing it as a waste of public funds?
It's great to hear about your mother's dedication. My mother was the same way. I unfortunately ended up in prison for dealing drugs. I also am sitting here eating an omelette while taking a break from writing my dissertation. So what does that tell us about mine and your experience in relation to this discussion? Well, at a minimum it tells us that both of our life stories are examples of outliers.... anomalies. Neither of our anecdotes should be used in this discussion because they aren't going to be experienced by pretty much any other person out there with very, very, very few exceptions.