3 ms·

I think snark is appropriate. If you asked the children what they want, you would get accurate answers. If you asked the teachers what the children need, you wo

I think snark is appropriate. If you asked the children what they want, you would get accurate answers. If you asked the teachers what the children need, you would get accurate answers. Instead, we ask (and get answers even if we don't ask) the adults what the children want and the bureaucrats what the children need. The bureaucratic, overmanaged, underfunded education industry is not structured for education. It's structured to be controlled at successively broader levels of government and industrialized at national and international scale; optimized for inculcating into children the civil religion [1] and a receptiveness to strict organization of their time by authority figures. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_religion

crazy1van 11y ago
> underfunded education I was sympathetic to your argument until this part. It varies by region, but we spend what seems like a fortune on school. DC public schools spent over $18,000 per student in 2010 [0]. That's more than my state college tuition. Where does that money go? [0]: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/finance_insurance_real_estate/cb12-113.html http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/finance_ins...
- danharaj 11y ago
  s/underfunded/misfunded Money that is wasted may as well never have been used.
- germinalphrase 11y ago
  Not sure - but as a high school teacher I've been turned down to buy paperbacks (that actually have all their pages) for my classroom due to budget constraints. You're not wrong, and there is a lot of money in compulsory education (hence the push since the 80's to privatize)- but the macro view of educational budgeting doesn't necessarily speak to the direct effect of budgeting on classroom resources.
  - ryandrake 11y ago
    Don't worry, there's plenty of money for sports and administration. The Assistant Vice Principal doesn't have money problems.
  - aianus 11y ago
    That was the opposite of my experience in high school. My math teacher was forced by admin to buy a shipping pallet of shiny new $130 Calculus textbooks which sat in the closet unused all year because the new textbooks covered less material than the ones from the 80s we were already using (the curriculum had since been dumbed down).

crazy1van 11y ago

> underfunded education I was sympathetic to your argument until this part. It varies by region, but we spend what seems like a fortune on school. DC public schools spent over $18,000 per student in 2010 [0]. That's more than my state college tuition. Where does that money go? [0]: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/finance_insurance_real_estate/cb12-113.html http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/finance_ins...

danharaj 11y ago
s/underfunded/misfunded Money that is wasted may as well never have been used.
germinalphrase 11y ago
Not sure - but as a high school teacher I've been turned down to buy paperbacks (that actually have all their pages) for my classroom due to budget constraints. You're not wrong, and there is a lot of money in compulsory education (hence the push since the 80's to privatize)- but the macro view of educational budgeting doesn't necessarily speak to the direct effect of budgeting on classroom resources.
- ryandrake 11y ago
  Don't worry, there's plenty of money for sports and administration. The Assistant Vice Principal doesn't have money problems.
- aianus 11y ago
  That was the opposite of my experience in high school. My math teacher was forced by admin to buy a shipping pallet of shiny new $130 Calculus textbooks which sat in the closet unused all year because the new textbooks covered less material than the ones from the 80s we were already using (the curriculum had since been dumbed down).