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I am not an American, nor live in the USA anymore, but this comment made me sad. That the first thought of public school issues is not writing to your represen

I am not an American, nor live in the USA anymore, but this comment made me sad. That the first thought of public school issues is not writing to your representatives and voting for better schooling of future generations; instead, to isolate your children's education. As a Frenchman, I noticed this feeling from USA citizens that the government is against you and there is nothing you can do about it. It was pernicious.

LeifCarrotson 5y ago
As an American and a parent, there are two thoughts: To me it's obvious that the first thought should be for my child. I'm personally responsible for them, and I'm going to do what it takes to get them a quality education. The second thought, to write to my representatives and improve education for everyone, is still there. I volunteer at a makerspace downtown that provides computing resources to inner-city kids that don't have anywhere near the same resources as my outlying, high-performing suburban district with our labs and awesome teachers. I have no delusion that a single letter to my representative would fix the underlying systemic issues like racist redlined housing districts, the inequality of property taxes for school funding, and the penalizing of 'underperforming' school districts, and give my child a good education. Can I improve it? Sure! Fix it? Not for everyone, no, so I'll do what I can for my own child.
simon1ltd 5y ago
The US government is toxic, and it is openly promoting racist policies and ideologies that are outright offensive. No, it can't be trusted with my kids future and education. It's necessary that it exists, and it can handle the basics (probably), but the government is not, and cannot, be a replacement for caring and involved parents. Any performance based comparison between school performance and life outcomes needs to include stats broken out by the homelife of the child. You could call it "Parental Responsibility" in most cases -- and that figure/statistic will represent most of the issues that everyone wants addressed. The thing is, it's the most impactful to the child, and it can't be meaningfully addressed without massive government control of family life. Parents are responsible for their children's education. Success in anything is a mix of effort, knowledge, ability and luck (I consider timing part of luck). I am going to give my children the best opportunities I can give them, within the bounds of my values and life experiences. It's irrational to believe the outcome of an education should be identical between children. Unless you remove parents and have children raised by institutions, then parental involvement will always have a major impact on academic performance. Strawman: If my child is interested in computers, and spends all their free time reading about and learning to program them, while their contemporaries choose to watch TV and play video games, should they be limited by what the "average" person in their class is able to do? Of course not! It's akin to the school district that noticed that not enough black kids were in a gifted class, so their solution was to get rid of the gifted class. That's insanity. Public schools should provide a solid education to children, and society needs to expect that the outcome of that will be based on the actual performance of the children and their circumstances. A school cannot fix everything that comes from single-parent households and broken families. It can (and should) try and help, but I think it's ridiculous to hold back other students that perform better because they have parental involvement that other children don't.

LeifCarrotson 5y ago

As an American and a parent, there are two thoughts: To me it's obvious that the first thought should be for my child. I'm personally responsible for them, and I'm going to do what it takes to get them a quality education. The second thought, to write to my representatives and improve education for everyone, is still there. I volunteer at a makerspace downtown that provides computing resources to inner-city kids that don't have anywhere near the same resources as my outlying, high-performing suburban district with our labs and awesome teachers. I have no delusion that a single letter to my representative would fix the underlying systemic issues like racist redlined housing districts, the inequality of property taxes for school funding, and the penalizing of 'underperforming' school districts, and give my child a good education. Can I improve it? Sure! Fix it? Not for everyone, no, so I'll do what I can for my own child.

simon1ltd 5y ago

The US government is toxic, and it is openly promoting racist policies and ideologies that are outright offensive. No, it can't be trusted with my kids future and education. It's necessary that it exists, and it can handle the basics (probably), but the government is not, and cannot, be a replacement for caring and involved parents. Any performance based comparison between school performance and life outcomes needs to include stats broken out by the homelife of the child. You could call it "Parental Responsibility" in most cases -- and that figure/statistic will represent most of the issues that everyone wants addressed. The thing is, it's the most impactful to the child, and it can't be meaningfully addressed without massive government control of family life. Parents are responsible for their children's education. Success in anything is a mix of effort, knowledge, ability and luck (I consider timing part of luck). I am going to give my children the best opportunities I can give them, within the bounds of my values and life experiences. It's irrational to believe the outcome of an education should be identical between children. Unless you remove parents and have children raised by institutions, then parental involvement will always have a major impact on academic performance. Strawman: If my child is interested in computers, and spends all their free time reading about and learning to program them, while their contemporaries choose to watch TV and play video games, should they be limited by what the "average" person in their class is able to do? Of course not! It's akin to the school district that noticed that not enough black kids were in a gifted class, so their solution was to get rid of the gifted class. That's insanity. Public schools should provide a solid education to children, and society needs to expect that the outcome of that will be based on the actual performance of the children and their circumstances. A school cannot fix everything that comes from single-parent households and broken families. It can (and should) try and help, but I think it's ridiculous to hold back other students that perform better because they have parental involvement that other children don't.