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Do you support educational vouchers in schools?



 
 
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  #21  
Old March 31st 05, 12:05 AM
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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.

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.

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.


Nonsense, nonsense, and yet more nonsense.
  #22  
Old March 31st 05, 12:09 AM
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Guys (and gals?), my apologies for mistakenly cross-posting replies to
your newsgroup. The original message was crossposted, and I didn't
notice when I replied. Sorry!
  #23  
Old March 31st 05, 07:44 PM
Herman Rubin
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In article , Rumpty wrote:
The ones who need the better schools need to be removed from

the public schools and taught sound subject matter by those
who understand this, and not warehoused with their "peers".


That's an issue that needs to be addressed to the local school board who has
control over the students.


The local school board has much less control than most
seem to think. Its members are "extra time", which means
that they are full-time otherwise, and they have all their
meetings taken up with the current administration of the
schools. Matters such as parking, allocation of the budget,
and others like that are all they can manage.

In addition, few of the school administrators in the country
are at all sympathetic to teaching subject matter instead of
their theories of socializing, and not too many of the teachers
understand their subjects.

..................
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
  #24  
Old March 31st 05, 07:57 PM
Herman Rubin
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In article ,
Banty wrote:
In article , Herman Rubin says...


In article ,
enigma wrote:
"Bob Coleslaw" wrote in
:


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?


vouchers are a really bad idea. i do NOT want my tax dollars
used to fund any type of private school, especially not any
flavor of parochial school.
i have no issues with private schools, my kid attends one,
but i want my taxes to fix the public schools for the kids who
can't go to private school for whatever reason.
vouchers may help the elite, but they'll hurt the kids who
need better schools the most.
lee


At this time, NO student who is capable of getting a good
degree in mathematics or science or engineering or
agriculture or economics is getting even a fair high school
education corresponding to his abilities.


The ones who need the better schools need to be removed from
the public schools and taught sound subject matter by those
who understand this, and not warehoused with their "peers".


And vouchers will do - what - - exactly - to fix this?


Vouchers will enable the establishment of academic
private educational opportunities, which are extremely
rare at this time. Vouchers will not remove the money
from the public schools for those who continue, and
most will continue.

The public schools are not REQUIRED to place students
by age, or to have them in the same grade in every
subject. But they are not really prepared for any
alternative, both academically and sociologically.
Charter schools, in general, are restricted to the
"grade" system, and in fact even the size of desks
and chairs is state regulated for them.

I am sure that there will be a large need for students
to attend classes electronically; I would not be
surprised if this is where we will have to go for
most academic subjects. One size, or even a few
sizes, do not fit all.


--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
  #25  
Old March 31st 05, 08:04 PM
Herman Rubin
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In article ,
Hillary Israeli wrote:
In ,
Jill wrote:


(Hillary Israeli) wrote in
:


* As the parent of a private school kid (and ultimately, I expect,
* three private school kids) I completely agree. I don't want to
* take away my support of the public school system.



*Don't forget that vouchers will kill the private schools by forcing too
*many unqualified minority kids into their classrooms. Just like
*"bussing" in the '70s.


Huh? First of all, I don't believe bussing killed public schools or
private schools or anything at all (i'm not sure what you're trying to say
bussing did, actually). Second, vouchers will not kill private schools by
forcing anyone anywhere. Just because a voucher makes someone able to pay
the tuition, that does not make the holder of the voucher otherwise
eligible to attend the school. Most of the private schools I looked at
have other types of requirements as well - the kid has to have a certain
IQ and/or test score on some kind of screening test, and has to pass
interviews or observations, or whatever.


We have to watch out for the hyperegalitarians trying to
block this. I have read that there is a voucher program
for handicapped children in Florida, but a student going
to an academic school could not use this unless the school
would take all children with that handicap, no matter how
weak their mentalities were.

And don't downplay the minority quota problem. Indianapolis
has a magnet school with academic requirements. A girl was
turned down because this would have meant too small a
proportion of minority students; if there was a minority
student who qualified and wanted to attend, they could both
have been admitted.

The educationists and hyperegalitarians cannot admit that
there is a large range of mental abilities, and even if
they changed now, the public schools could not do what is
needed in a generation, alas.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
  #26  
Old March 31st 05, 08:28 PM
Herman Rubin
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In article ,
toto wrote:
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.


There are now few academic private schools. What is needed
is not just independent study classes, although this is
what I did outside of class, and what my son essentially
did in mathematics below the strong college classes, which
he audited when he was in elementary school. He was home
taught, which was mostly self-study with some guidance.

I do not recall exactly when, but we have had one posting
by a school which did not have students by grades, let
alone by age. If this is expected, I doubt it will be
that much of a problem.
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.


There is much more than that. I am not exaggerating about
the "new math" problems; they were well discussed in the
mathematics meetings of the time. I was present, but not
involved, in an attempt to teach better than average
high school teachers of mathematics the basic abstract
courses; these are what my son audited. One of my colleagues
claimed that at most 10% of them could learn the material
under any circumstances. My colleagues here have the same
complaints about the prospective teachers; they were not at
all surprised with what happened in my class.

BTW, at this time, FEW who get BA's in mathematics have
an opportunity to take these basic abstract courses. It
is hard to find out what they have, and they have great
difficulty in overcoming this, if they can.

My late wife taught a lot of prospective teachers, and was
often quite ill after the struggles to get them to understand.
She was a popular teacher, as well as someone who worked in
the foundations of mathematics.

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.


If you interpret "peers" as intellectual peers, I can
agree. My son definitely profited from the contact with
college students in those abstract undergraduate courses,
and subsequently with graduate students in mathematics.
I do not know how effective electronic classes will be;
by those I mean regular classes, with the class run
electronically, not by physical presence. But they will
be at least as good as keeping the students dumbed down.

Home schooled students do not seem to have that great
a problem in later interactions.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
  #27  
Old March 31st 05, 08:35 PM
Herman Rubin
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Posts: n/a
Default

In article ,
wrote:
On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 02:13:52 +0000 (UTC), "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?


Bob Coleslaw


The latter.


As I have stated often, if you gave me an unlimited amount
of money and an unlimited amount of power, I could not fix
up the public schools in less than a generation.

This is a time when we do not need a central plan. The
main problem of the public schools is the idea that all
children should learn essentially the same; this was
introduced about 70 years ago, and is now
institutionalized. Most parents who do not have gifted
children would want anything else, and we have had cases of
parents objecting to their children not getting in honors
classes, often with disastrous results.

Unless we can make it very expensive for teachers and
administrators to ever hold a child back because of age,
and make "No child left behind" to mean "no child left
behind what that child can accomplish", there is no
hope for the public schools. The differences in mental
abilities dwarfs those in physical abilities.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
 




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