Nathan A. Barclay wrote:
"0:-" wrote in message
ups.com...

The distrust of teachers has been carefully cultivated as part of the
campaign to educationally disenfranchise children of all but the elite.
The wealthy and powerful.

In any profession, some of the people who enter it are very good, some are
incompetent, and most are somewhere in between. And in any profession, it
is possible for people who start off good to become lazy or complacent, or
to get burned out.

Yep. So? Standardized testing will compensate?

In most professions, the free market sorts out such differences, with
workers who aren't measuring up getting replaced by people who do better.

Not in large organizations. People get jobs through patronage there just
as in government. People can go for years without being productive.

And they have unions.

But because our public education system is a government monopoly (or, more
precisely, made up of a bunch of local monopolies), and because teachers'
unions do such a good job of resisting attempts to judge how good a job
individual teachers are doing, a relative handful of bad teachers are able
to drag the entire profession's reputation through the mud. And the harder
the unions try to protect the substandard teachers, the more of the mud gets
splattered across the entire profession.

Can you explain how standardized testing will compensate for this?

What I want - and am writing a book to promote - is a well-funded voucher
system.

The "everything is screwed up" approach applies to all schemes. Your's
might go the same way.

That wouldn't ensure equality in the communist sense of
deliberately limiting people's opportunities in order to keep anyone from
having more than anyone else. But it would guarantee that government power
couldn't be used to artificially and unnecessarily limit families'
opportunities to get good education for their children.

You'd have to show me how such a voucher system (I'm more than passing
familiar) would not be tagged with limitations that once again line the
pockets of the fat cats.

But then, you may have a scheme I haven't heard of.

HAVE YOU READ THE DAMN TEST QUESTIONS? Why did you NOT answer that
question?

No, I haven't read the questions. And I resent your tone of acting like you
have some kind of magical right to demand that I waste my time answering
every question you care to write.

You just go right ahead and resent then. And ask yourself, while you are
all caught up in your indignation if I asked you to answer every
question I write. That's ONE question. Notice?

Standardized tests do have some value as long as we don't place too much
emphasis on them.
You just paraphrased my comment as though YOU created it, thus
attempting to argue against my argument with my own argument.

" Nothing wrong with testing. The problem is now they are teaching to
the test, and these tests are predetermined, NOT created by teachers
to fit the setting and children he or she is in."

The fact that you did not include the word "standardized" in your first
sentence, coupled with your later emphasis on the idea that tests should be
created by teachers, led me to interpret your position as being inherently
against standardized testing. Thanks for clarifying your position. As for
what I wrote, I've felt that way for several years. It's more or less my
standard response when the issue comes up.

That is the same thing. TOO much emphasis on the test, instead of the
teachers judgement...the part YOU left out and then fall into the
"don't trust the teacher" trap and bull****.

Let me clue you in on something. I'm the son of a former teacher and a
college professor. Two of my aunts are retired schoolteachers. One of my
cousins is a schoolteacher, and another is a teacher's aide studying to
become a teacher. So I am NOT the sort of person who has any kind of
sweeping distrust for the entire teaching profession.

The question here is about the new testing nonsense...with not only the
strangely tailored social class specific questions that lower the scores
in the ... ahem "other" schools.

There is, however, a difference between reasonable trust and blind faith.
There is NO profession that I have so much faith in that I'd be satisfied
with having government assign me a professional more or less at random, and
trust that the person government picks will necessarily make the best
choices. Nor, as a professional myself, would I expect a person I work for
to put blind faith in me to always make the best choices without paying any
attention to how good a job I am doing.

That's not a good argument for the kind of testing scheme we are
currently caught up in.

Standardized testing used to make some sense. It was badly class
specific but not this blatantly. And MONEY, federal monies, did not
depend on test scores.

Too much trust can be just as dangerous as too little, and sometimes even
more dangerous. Professionals need enough trust that they can get on with
their work without being continually second-guessed or micromanaged. But
there needs to be enough oversight to make sure they are doing a good job,
and to replace them if they aren't.

Yep...and the current standardized testing with heavy penalties for the
schools do NOT serve in this way.

Unfortunately, my impression is that our current public education system has
too much micromanagement where it isn't necessary, while at the same time
often not having nearly as much capacity as it should to actually replace
teachers who are doing a substandard job. Thus, to a large extent, we get
the worst of both worlds.

Yep. And standardized testing will fix this how?

But it would be nice if we could come up with an
information-gathering process that goes beyond the limits of the kinds of
standardized testing we currently use.
We can, could, and did. They are called "teachers."

Are you so young you don't remember that? I'd say if you are 45 or
younger you are victim of the scam to take education away from
teachers.

In any profession, some workers are able to do an excellent job with very
little supervision and oversight, while others are more prone to make
mistakes and therefore need greater supervision and oversight.
Unfortunately, our current system seems to be so geared toward trying to
make sure the worst teachers don't make mistakes that it doesn't give good
teachers anywhere near the autonomy they need and deserve.

That's never been much different over time. The problem is the federal
government and the trick testing they have worked out to steer money TO
the people in power, and money away from the schools that so badly need it.

There is a huge difference between spanking children for all kinds of
mistakes,
Really?

and spanking them only when their "mistakes" are either clearly
deliberate or a result of gross negligence in trying to control their
behavior.
Now how, that didn't believe that children are born evil, and are in
battle for control with the parents, could possibly argue with you on
that.

I mean, there are so many grossly negligent toddlers, after all...and
that is the most spanked population, so surely we have uncovered the
enemy, we beliguered parents, poor souls.

And those damn grossly negligent 9 year olds. Let me tell you, their
constant yammering things like "it's not fair," certainly doesn't have
anything to do with Mother Nature plonking them on the head to become
little classification engines (WHICH IS THE BUSINESS OF THIS AGE
RANGE).

So they whine. And they are seen as being "clearly deliberate." You
might as well kick a pot of flowers for not blooming in December.

Nice examples of how dangerous it can be when parents' expectations are
unrealistic relative to their children's ages.

Yep. And there is a lot of that going around.

Parents need to recognize that there are limits to how long and how reliably
toddlers can be expected to remember what they aren't supposed to do, and to
understand that expecting toddlers to control their behavior more reliably
than those limits allow is unfair and unrealistic.

And spanking is a fix for this how?

Parents need to
recognize the difference between children's disagreeing with them about
whether something is fair, and children's deliberately defying them.

There you go with that "deliberately defying," again. Kids raised with
non-punitive methods rarely ARE defiant. No need. And on those rare
occasions when they are, it's usually organic. Tired, cold, afraid, etc.
like other human beings.

Or, if not, if they are just making a decision to defy, they have the
valuable relationship with their parent to consider. Something spanked
kids routinely demonstrate they don't give a **** about and it will get
worse as they age into teens.

And
when there is a gray area, children should generally be given the benefit of
reasonable doubts - although there can be exceptions when one child's
benefit of the doubt risks becoming a license to harm another.

And that is the time to spank them? Even little kids get the hypocrisy
in that.

But the fact that you can give examples where children's behavior is beyond
their reasonable ability to control doesn't mean that there are not also
situations where children do have the ability to control their behavior if
they make a reasonable effort to do so.

Why should they do so?

And do you understand how very rare that might be, except in children
that have learned to power struggle with parents?

For **** sakes, did you NOT look at a single developmental reference I
posted links to?

There is a huge difference between posting links to specific references and
posting links to Google searches.

Mmmm...the links to the specific references pop up if you go to the link
that did the searching. That's how that works.

With a link to a specific reference, I
could take a few minutes to read it and know I'm looking at something that
you regard as offering good quality information. Google searches are more
of a hit-or-miss proposition in terms of how quickly good-quality
information can be found, and thus far, I haven't been in a mood to mess
with them.

Naw, there were easily recognizable links on development there. I gave a
selection, that's all. It's a matter of a second or two to click a link.

Children are "grossly negligent," or make mistakes that are "clearly
deliberate."

Those are properly called ignorance, and the drive to DO IT to learn.

Believe it or not, children have other motives besides learning. A lot of
the time, their most immediate motive is to have fun or to get something
they want.

That's what I said. "Learning."

What makes you think the process of 'getting something they want,' or
'having fun' isn't about learning?

Right AT the age when children are spanked most often...toddler to 5.


Even make mistakes.

You wallop a kid for making mistakes and there is no telling what you
just trained that child NOT to do that could have benefited him or her,
or humankind, or even YOU in your old age, when they decide that YOU
are being deliberately mistaken.

That's why it is important for children to have a clear understanding of
what is expected, and to keep the expectations reasonable.

That's why it's important to understand that you argued for spanking
children because they are too young to be reasoned with. Now we are
going to expect them to have a "clear understanding?" In the toddler to
5 years?

Gimmee a break.

If children
understand what the rules are and why they are being punished, the risk of
accidental side effects of scaring them away from other types of behavior is
reduced enormously.

Thus is demonstrated the very thing that makes me urge you to study
more, think more, let go of some of those trite and worn out beliefs
about what kids are doing and what purpose spanking is supposed to serve.

You use the word "understand" yet you earlier used the reasoning that
children can't "understand" and we would be wasting our time when a
spank would get the job done.

Do you understand yourself how many times I've have seen this
incongruous argument from spankers?

Were do YOU get off claiming children are deliberatly ANYTHING. They
are happening, and most of the time totally unconscious to their
actions and to cause and effect.

Hell, half the time we adults aren't either.

And as adults we cut each other slack for that..unless we are a raving
maniac.

Here, again, I think you're takiing a very reasonable concept to an
unreasonable extreme.

That is because the "reasonable concept" you think you are arguing is
jargon from out of the annals of "spanking advocacy." They have hair a
foot long on them.

I agree that children deserve to be cut a reasonable
amount of slack, usually more than adults would expect to receive in similar
situations (and for the youngest children, often a whole lot more). But
there are limits to how much slack I think it is fair or reasonable to
expect parents to cut their children, and to how much slack I think it is
good for the children to have cut for them.

Compare those two long sentences to each other.
Notice you had to link them with 'but?'

But, is a way to slid away from the truth.

You either give them the slack or you don't. NO BUTTS about it, (pun
intended).

There is no "limit" involved in the real world. Parents that raise
children without pain and humiliation don't have these crises that you
seem to think is normal.

The challenges from children take on a completely different light for us.

Those become, are, an opportunity for learning. Doing it even for a few
months provides fast, easy, sure methods and results.

The 'struggle' just melts away. And your blood pressure goes down too.
Honest.

Try it, you'll like it.

Really.

Let go of the fight.

Kane