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#21
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#22
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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 |
#28
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In article ,
Herman Rubin wrote: In article , toto wrote: On 30 Mar 2005 11:21:57 -0500, (Herman Rubin) wrote: I would like to correct a misconception in my posting. .................... 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. This home teaching was in algebra and logic, and in science, after he was taught to read. He was not home taught in the other 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 |
#29
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#30
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