Re: Why school?


Robert Grumbine wrote:
This is something I've been meaning to post on for a while, and
which I'm being prompted in to by a thread in a different group
about math education.

Why should there be public schools at all?

1. We, as a society, don't trust each other to do the necessary
things to cultivate little humans into people we would be willing
to ride the bus with so we send them to school for a base
level of civilization lessons.

Support for this comes from no less authority than the
"Everything I needed to know I learned in kindergarden" poster.

2. Public education provides a minimal level of equal
opportunity consistent with mainstream mythologies of
equality. So, it's sort of a socialist plot.

3. Common economic benefit. Just as a family may decide
that educating their kid to become a professional may enable
them to make money to help support the rest of the family,
it is arguable that there is a rising tide effect to having many
other successful people (this is opposed to zero sum game
approaches where the size of the whole economy is fixed
and it's just a question of how it gets carved up).

4. Common indoctrination. People often want values taught
in schools (they disagree about what values, or more to
the point they want their own values taught). One such
value is that education is a virtue itself. This is actually a
very common value only it gets messy as people weigh
different elements of education differently and become
confused in translating the common goal into tangible
action amidst competing objectives (facts versus theories,
memorize vs. understand, arts vs. sciences etc).

.

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