On 30 Mar 2005 11:21:57 -0500, (Herman
Rubin) wrote:

In article ,
Bob Coleslaw wrote:
Is it better for the government to give out vouchers so parents can
send their kids to private schools, or to use that money to fix up the
public schools?

On this question, I have no problems. The public schools,
as they are run, are hopeless. The idea that children
should be with their age groups, instead of being taught
to the best of their abilities, whatever they may be, is
antithetic to real learning. Even the idea of a child
being in a "grade" needs to be scrapped.

And what private schools exist where children are not also
grouped with their peers, Herman? There are a few, but not
very many. Skipping grades is not encouraged in most
private schools any more than it is in public schools and
aside from the higher grades (high school, mostly), there are
no more independent study classes in those academic
private schools than there are in the public schools my own
children attended.

Also, most of the teachers can no longer teach concepts.
One does not learn to understand concepts by memorization
and other rote material. The not too strong mathematics
courses of most of a century ago have been scrapped in
favor of teaching how to get answers where the questions
are not even known, instead of incorporating the conceptual
advances of the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries.
Attempts to teach the concepts to teachers have been
largely unsuccessful; they know too much that ain't so.

This is a generalization you continually make with *no* proof
that it is true other than your assertion that you have had some
few education majors in your classes whom *you* could not
teach concepts.

At this time, we do not have a good idea how to teach well,
so we will need to have lack of control. There are now
very few academic private schools. Most will continue to
use the public schools while we find out how to do even a
fair job of teaching, and I suspect we will end up with
mainly electronic schools, not computer programs.

We might, I suppose end up with at least some electronic
schools and distance learning. For many kids this will *not*
be a sufficient way of educating them, however. Humans
need contact with real live adults,and with their peers in
education as much as in other areas of their lives.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits