4 ms·

Montessori had the right idea here, but goes pretty much ignored by the mainstream. It's a travesty, really. I think it has to do with scalability; our current

by skulk 6y ago

Montessori had the right idea here, but goes pretty much ignored by the mainstream. It's a travesty, really. I think it has to do with scalability; our current education system scales much better within the ridiculous budget constraints education faces (in the US).

JPKab 6y ago
Ridiculous budget constraints? Washington DC public schools get more money per student than anywhere else in US. My son's private school tuition is half what the average public school system in the US gets from taxpayers (local, state, and federal combined). The spending efficiency of public schools in US is horrible, and they tend to focus on quantity over quality with teachers, due to a misguided idea of reducing student teacher ratios that Malcolm Gladwell has written about. This constant excuse repeated everywhere about not enough funding isn't backed up by data. I spent my entire childhood in public schools. 3/4 of my teachers were lazy shitbags who treated it like a govt job. The other 1/4 were punished every time they broke the mold in any way to fix things. The day public schools realize that their primary role is educating kids OVER providing jobs to as many teachers union members as possible, we can start fixing them.
- __MatrixMan__ 6y ago
  Public schools like the one you describe exist, but they're on one end of a spectrum. My wife teaches English at a pubic school on the other end. Their student body is mostly minorities. The library contains only books written by dead white men which the students are inherently mistrustful of. They can't afford new novels, so the teachers print excerpts at home and bring them to class. In 2017 they blew their printing budget. In 2018 and 2019 we printed more than 35k pages at home because the school couldn't afford more toner. In 2021 they'll be in the black re: toner again, so my home printer will get a break until they blow the budget again. Public schools are funded based on property taxes of the surrounding neighborhoods. Some of them have money to burn, others can't afford books. My wife's school has the best teachers in town. Nobody goes into teaching for the money, and nobody teaches as a school like hers because they think it's gonna be an easy job--those sorts gravitate to the schools with money to burn and students that aren't also homeless. More important than fixing the absolute amount of funding that public schools have is fixing the way it's distributed. It should a flat rate per-student, adjusted only for cost of living at a city-by-city granularity, not a neighborhood-by-neighborhood granularity. Once the public school experience is more equal across the board it will be easier to distinguish the good teachers that lack supplies from the bad teachers with resources to waste.
- TMWNN 6y ago
  >Ridiculous budget constraints? >Washington DC public schools get more money per student than anywhere else in US. NYC public schools are #1; DC isn't in the top ten (https://www.silive.com/news/2019/06/how-much-does-new-york-city-spend-on-each-student.html https://www.silive.com/news/2019/06/how-much-does-new-york-c...). Baltimore is #3, though, and four DC suburbs are also in the top ten, all no doubt offering much better education than the Baltimore (or DC) schools. >My son's private school tuition is half what the average public school system in the US gets from taxpayers (local, state, and federal combined). Private schools pay teachers less money than public schools, too.
  - JamisonM 6y ago
    I would add to this that the presumption that private school tuition reflects the cost of private school on a per student basis in its entirety and can be fairly compared to per-student funding of schools is probably incorrect. (Even more so if only comparing based on the tuition of one particular kid.)
orwin 6y ago
Montessori is not ignored in my country, but: - Cost more money for the state - Cost more time to the teacher (its an issue since early grade teachers are already swamped) - is in "testing" since the late 90's at least and is not quite there yet. So we took another approach, more like germans. Reduced schools hour and add 2x2 hours of learning something else. Woodworking, board game, wird sports, anything the teacher can put in place (often boring stuff tbh, but i heard really good initiatives from friends that stayed in the social "business"). Well, in the end, it costed more money, took more time from the teachers anyway, was poorly implemented all around and was rolled back in some areas. But weirdly, while rural areas often get the short end of the stick when this kind of change rolls out, in this case, this created a lot of social link and learning opportunities (as they got no money, they had to ask parent/grandparents and people living around for help and this often was a success)

by skulk 6y ago

JPKab 6y ago

Ridiculous budget constraints? Washington DC public schools get more money per student than anywhere else in US. My son's private school tuition is half what the average public school system in the US gets from taxpayers (local, state, and federal combined). The spending efficiency of public schools in US is horrible, and they tend to focus on quantity over quality with teachers, due to a misguided idea of reducing student teacher ratios that Malcolm Gladwell has written about. This constant excuse repeated everywhere about not enough funding isn't backed up by data. I spent my entire childhood in public schools. 3/4 of my teachers were lazy shitbags who treated it like a govt job. The other 1/4 were punished every time they broke the mold in any way to fix things. The day public schools realize that their primary role is educating kids OVER providing jobs to as many teachers union members as possible, we can start fixing them.

__MatrixMan__ 6y ago
Public schools like the one you describe exist, but they're on one end of a spectrum. My wife teaches English at a pubic school on the other end. Their student body is mostly minorities. The library contains only books written by dead white men which the students are inherently mistrustful of. They can't afford new novels, so the teachers print excerpts at home and bring them to class. In 2017 they blew their printing budget. In 2018 and 2019 we printed more than 35k pages at home because the school couldn't afford more toner. In 2021 they'll be in the black re: toner again, so my home printer will get a break until they blow the budget again. Public schools are funded based on property taxes of the surrounding neighborhoods. Some of them have money to burn, others can't afford books. My wife's school has the best teachers in town. Nobody goes into teaching for the money, and nobody teaches as a school like hers because they think it's gonna be an easy job--those sorts gravitate to the schools with money to burn and students that aren't also homeless. More important than fixing the absolute amount of funding that public schools have is fixing the way it's distributed. It should a flat rate per-student, adjusted only for cost of living at a city-by-city granularity, not a neighborhood-by-neighborhood granularity. Once the public school experience is more equal across the board it will be easier to distinguish the good teachers that lack supplies from the bad teachers with resources to waste.
TMWNN 6y ago
>Ridiculous budget constraints? >Washington DC public schools get more money per student than anywhere else in US. NYC public schools are #1; DC isn't in the top ten (https://www.silive.com/news/2019/06/how-much-does-new-york-city-spend-on-each-student.html https://www.silive.com/news/2019/06/how-much-does-new-york-c...). Baltimore is #3, though, and four DC suburbs are also in the top ten, all no doubt offering much better education than the Baltimore (or DC) schools. >My son's private school tuition is half what the average public school system in the US gets from taxpayers (local, state, and federal combined). Private schools pay teachers less money than public schools, too.
- JamisonM 6y ago
  I would add to this that the presumption that private school tuition reflects the cost of private school on a per student basis in its entirety and can be fairly compared to per-student funding of schools is probably incorrect. (Even more so if only comparing based on the tuition of one particular kid.)

orwin 6y ago

Montessori is not ignored in my country, but: - Cost more money for the state - Cost more time to the teacher (its an issue since early grade teachers are already swamped) - is in "testing" since the late 90's at least and is not quite there yet. So we took another approach, more like germans. Reduced schools hour and add 2x2 hours of learning something else. Woodworking, board game, wird sports, anything the teacher can put in place (often boring stuff tbh, but i heard really good initiatives from friends that stayed in the social "business"). Well, in the end, it costed more money, took more time from the teachers anyway, was poorly implemented all around and was rolled back in some areas. But weirdly, while rural areas often get the short end of the stick when this kind of change rolls out, in this case, this created a lot of social link and learning opportunities (as they got no money, they had to ask parent/grandparents and people living around for help and this often was a success)