Can we get rid of public schools

[Keganswar]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20080310/ts_csm/ahomeschool;_ylt=AkGkvNt56h27ex6PaIzxOwJQXs8F


The above article got me thinking. What about creating a virtual public school system. Utilizing web cams and existing computer and network technology I think it would be feasible to pull off.

So in a virtual class room tax dollars could be spent supporting the network, rather then an actual building or site, and no more transportation costs/insurance. More classes could be offered. There would be no more safety issues, or peer distractions, witch could help to improve learning. Students could easily still experience the social aspect of school by being in virtual class rooms and outside extra circular activities. As a parent you could be more involved in how your child develops his/her education. What do you guys think could that be the way of the future?

[Expatmedic]

I think in certain households this could work.

However there is a huge population that uses school as a babysitting service. The adults in this population most likely would be pissed as it would hamper their efforts to do nothing all day.

Also kids need to socialize face to face. Actually get out on a playground and skin their knee up. Learn conflict resolution skills at a young age. That way when shit doesn't go their way they don't sue or grab a gun and kill people.

Another part of the problem is truancy. Kids are getting farther and farther away from the classroom and this is just another opportunity.

[M18ClaymoreHeadbanger]

It may reduce the physical problems and cut cost, but until they actually want to start revising the public education system, it will not make a difference. With this system they would however be able to shift the blame to the home for kids not receiving an education.

A problem could also be lack of internet and computers in many households, something many of us take for granted now. Who is going to pay for having the computer/webcams into the homes of those that do not have it? Is that computer and equipment going to go to some crack addicts home where they adults would not even blink at the though of pawning the equipment for a hit?

[Longrifle]

However there is a huge population that uses school as a babysitting service. The adults in this population most likely would be pissed as it would hamper their efforts to do nothing all day.
Not only that, but they've also become de facto surrogate parents. I have kids who have both parents in the pen and are being raised by aunts or cousins.

The home schooled child is blessed to have a home in which to be schooled . . .

[Keganswar]

I think in certain households this could work.

However there is a huge population that uses school as a babysitting service. The adults in this population most likely would be pissed as it would hamper their efforts to do nothing all day.

Also kids need to socialize face to face. Actually get out on a playground and skin their knee up. Learn conflict resolution skills at a young age. That way when shit doesn't go their way they don't sue or grab a gun and kill people.

Another part of the problem is truancy. Kids are getting farther and farther away from the classroom and this is just another opportunity.


I agree with socialization being a problem. Maybe with outside community sports programs or other types of hobby groups that could be off set some.

I don’t see the truancy as being a huge issue. If it’s a live broadcast and the teacher can see you there. So if there someone that bails/ or is disruptive, maybe the parents could be notified via email/ text or whatever and then they can deal with it right away.

School should not be a babysitting service. I have had to take more days off this past month because parents keep sending there kids to school sick , then they get my daughter sick.

[Keganswar]

It may reduce the physical problems and cut cost, but until they actually want to start revising the public education system, it will not make a difference. With this system they would however be able to shift the blame to the home for kids not receiving an education.

A problem could also be lack of internet and computers in many households, something many of us take for granted now. Who is going to pay for having the computer/webcams into the homes of those that do not have it? Is that computer and equipment going to go to some crack addicts home where they adults would not even blink at the though of pawning the equipment for a hit?


That might be easy to over come as well, with some access specific software maybe even biometrics. As the coast comes down on that type of technology that could be more feasible. As for the “crack head” issue. Make the computers hot pink and say property of education something or other all over them so they can’t be pawned easy.

There will always be that 10% but would something like this work for the majority?

[SOTB]

I'm a fan and proponent of virtual learning, including for degrees.

I do NOT support virtual learning taking the place of a child's elementary and middle school learning, although I am less opinionated once the discussion turns to grades 10 and above -- lots of schools are already offering college-level classroom work for HS students....

[Expatmedic]

I agree with socialization being a problem. Maybe with outside community sports programs or other types of hobby groups that could be off set some.

I don’t see the truancy as being a huge issue. If it’s a live broadcast and the teacher can see you there. So if there someone that bails/ or is disruptive, maybe the parents could be notified via email/ text or whatever and then they can deal with it right away.

School should not be a babysitting service. I have had to take more days off this past month because parents keep sending there kids to school sick , then they get my daughter sick.

I am not an educator so I have very limited knowledge on this subject.

I see truancy as a huge problem. Consider ALL of the cities in which this program would be used. Some parents don't give a shit if there kids are alive. Why would they take the time to discipline their kids?

Speaking of which. There is the added cost of having one parent or a babysitter staying with the kids at all times.

School MUST not be a babysitting service. SOME parents just won't get involved in their childs life as it interupts theirs.

On a Socioeconmic issue. Kids cost money. If you cannot afford them, then don't have them. Live a life that allows one parent to stay home with the kids. Having children is not a right that allows people to have them come hell or high water.

[Expatmedic]

I'm a fan and proponent of virtual learning, including for degrees.

I do NOT support virtual learning taking the place of a child's elementary and middle school learning, although I am less opinionated once the discussion turns to grades 10 and above -- lots of schools are already offering college-level classroom work for HS students....


Agreed. Distance learning is being utilized more and more at the college level. I think it can be an excellent way to learn/earn a degree.

But it should not be used for elementary education.

[Hot Mess]

Agreed. Distance learning is being utilized more and more at the college level. I think it can be an excellent way to learn/earn a degree.



If you work it can be a good way to earn a degree, but there is something missing in distance learning. One of the most important things in a college class room is the discussion that happens between students and the professor. Anybody can read a book, or lecture notes, and take a test. I think that the real learning is in the classroom with frank and open discussion. Although I am not one for homeschooling due to the lack of socialization, as previously stated, what a child gets, or can get, is a more advanced approach tailored to their strengths and weaknesses, thus helping them excel. Plus how the hell are you going to find 21 y/o females to beat up via distance learning:confused: :D

[RGR.Montcalm]

Earned my BA online with eArmyU- I have been to 'traditional college and much prefer it but my schedule drove the choice. I missed the interaction not only with the prof but with the other students (besides you can't check out the hot girls/women in class if you're at home :D )

IMHO, kids need to be around other kids for all the reasons cited above.

Oh yeah, although not an argument for or against distance schooling, the breakfast and lunch a LOT of kids eat at school is the ONLY gaurranteed meals they get. A real shame but I've seen it first hand as a student and as a parent.

I agree that school shouldn't be a babysitting service but at least its a relatively SAFE environment for 6 hours a day for a lot of kids....

just sayin...

[Expatmedic]

Plus how the hell are you going to find 21 y/o females to beat up via distance learning:confused: :D


Snaplink...shakes head. You may need COMM 321 Interpersonal Communication. Lots of Psych/Soc in that class.:)

[Dumpsterchair]

We just started home schooling our 7 year old son. I never thought I would be doing this as I always believed home school would cripple a child’s social development. We are off-setting the socialization with a lot of other activities and he actually goes to the local school twice a week for P.E. and computers with recess in there somewhere. He is also actively engaged in motocross (no, that is not why we pulled him out of public school), church activities, football, and when he turns eight will join the cub scouts. We are giving it a shot and seeing how it works out. The system is actually through Washington State and it is an online program. His mom teaches him 3-4 hours a day and then he takes online assessments that measure his progress. A teacher calls him once a week to see how he is doing.

So far we really like the program and he is easily a year ahead of his contemporaries in math and reading. We have to submit his attendance and inform the school when he is sick and unable to perform. He will also be responsible for taking state wide assessments as well, unlike traditional home school or private school kids. It seems to be a good compromise for parents wanting a better education than public school but not wanting to develop and buy expensive curriculum at their own expense. We did the math and the state is basically sending about $6,000 worth of training aids and curriculum every year my son is enrolled (decent private schools around here go for about 4-5K a year per child). It’s almost as good as a voucher.

Bottom line is that public schools are daycare centers that cater to the lowest common denominator. Frankly I think my sons would do fine and be well adjusted and intelligent young men if they stayed in public schools, but since we are in a position to give them something better, we want to give them the best education possible. I am concerned about their socialization but like I said, we are tracking it and exposing them to a variety of social scenes and atmospheres. Ultimately we want to put them in a private school with sports programs and other extracurricular activities but that will have to wait until I finish school and get a full time job.

Edited: Typo

[Linear]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20080310/ts_csm/ahomeschool;_ylt=AkGkvNt56h27ex6PaIzxOwJQXs8F


... What about creating a virtual public school system. Utilizing web cams and existing computer and network technology I think it would be feasible to pull off. ..Students could easily still experience the social aspect of school by being in virtual class rooms and outside extra circular activities. As a parent you could be more involved in how your child develops his/her education. What do you guys think could that be the way of the future?

Already being done. Lots of homeschoolers out there. See K12 online school. Used their math. Kid did very well when moved to regular school. A Beka provides video teachers, Calvert provides school in a box, is big in sail around the world circles. Cities have entire soccer leagues of homeschoolers who get together to provide tutorial classes, math, and so on. In enlightened states kids can enroll in public school just for lab sciences, or drama, or sports.

Of course heavily unionized state have teachers unions that hate this kind of thing. In Michigan last time I checked have to be certified teacher to homeschool which means you are likely brain dead from having to take the education courses. California is going there with last week's court decision. That ought to be fun. I know aerospace engineers in LA who make over $100,000 who homeschool because the schools are so bad.

Some kids do well in homeschool, others don't. Parents need to be able to pick and choose, not school system bureaucrats or, heaven forbid, teachers unions.

[SheJAG]

All three of my cousin's children were home schooled. They had a co-op sharing agreement with other home schooling parents for areas they could not teach like algebra, geometry, physics and calculus. The three kids also belonged to several other programs that supported home schooling parents such as band and orchestra.

All three girls graduated w/ high marks and scored incredibly well on their SAT/ACTs. All three are in good colleges and the oldest will graduate this year after only three years. All of them have traveled extensively and are incredibly well read for young people in the 21st century.

If the Army didn't make me work the hours I work, I'd seriously consider the homeschooling option.

[Remington Raider]

You cold-blooded, heartless curs. You don't give a moments thought to what all the education majors would do with thier lives. WHERE is the love?

[SheJAG]

They can teach the co-op classes for my kid.

[The Fat Guy]

ALCON,

My father in law gave me some good advice about 11 years ago when my youngest (and my wife's only) child was born. He said that no matter what school, how good or how bad, you always have to temper what your child learns in school. Since then, she went to Day care at FT Polk, which was a very good facility. They had rules there that didnt always make sense, like potty training age. My young'un just went over and sat in the toilet on her own. They made an excpetion for her. Then she went to christian school for 3 years. I wanted her to get a good religious base there. The last year she was there, I paid $6k a year for her to be in the largets 3rd grade class in the county. When her teacher said she was "Evil" because she didnt meet her fund raising objectives by selling enough pizzas (My chickens wont even eat these lousy pizzas) I pulled her out of parochial school. Now she is in 5th grade in public school and doing well.

The point is, no matter where they go, you have to inject your own moral, educational and ethical code into what they learn, regardless of the medium in which it is delivered.

fast eddie sends

Jesus, Someone stop me before I pull a muscle...

[Hot Mess]

Snaplink...shakes head. You may need COMM 321 Interpersonal Communication. Lots of Psych/Soc in that class.:)


I was a Soc major and took more than my fair share of Psy classes (two classes short of a minor);) . I-n-t-e-r-p-e-r-s-o-n-a-l c-o-m-m-u-n-i-c-a-t-i-o-n:confused: They should be lucky I'm not clubbing them over the head and dragging them back to my cave (Ranger SOP):D

[Chubs]

I suppose I'll toss in my two cents as I'm one of the younger members on this board and have recently (somewhat) been through a lot of the crap that is being referenced. With my dad in the Navy, we moved quite a bit. I've been in private schools, public schools and I've also been homeschooled. While I agree that our public school system is going down the shitter, I feel like it has brought me some valuable experiences.

I was homeschooled and attended private schools at a young age. I started public schooling when I hit the 2nd grade, even though we moved up until the 5th grade. I see a lot of students come out of some of the private highschools back home, and they don't have near the experiences I do. They don't know how to converse with people outside of their social group, and quite frankly the majority lack any street sense. I'm not saying I went to a tough school, but being around many different ethnic groups, you learn to read people a bit better (IMO). I'm glad I was homeschooled early on and had the opportunity to attend a private school, but I'm most thankful that I went to a public school which forced me to think for myself.

IMO some people can get away with attending private schools all their life. I think these people are few and far between and most likely already have the rest of their existence planned out for them. For the rest of us that must learn to interact with people on a constant basis public school offers a lot, even though it has its drawbacks.

[Greenhat]

"Distance-learning" has some real weaknesses from a learning point of view.

The way that adults (and most teens) learn is through experience. Distance learning is extraordinarily poor at providing practical experience.

In fact, if assessed in relation to the experiential learning cyle:

Observation
Experimentation
Practical Application
Conceptialization

distance learning generally only addresses conceptialization and some observation. It is much harder for it to address experimentation and practical application. And that is just addressing the academic part of school (which is arguably the less important aspect of school at all levels up to post-graduate).

At elementary levels, distance learning may assist in addressing the academic needs of the students, however, with less interaction with other students, the opportunity to benefit from peer behavior (for example, wanting to read better because a classmate reads better), learn to socialize via experimentation and correction, etc. are lost opportunities. Of course, the negative potential consequences of a poor teacher or bad peers are also avoided.

At secondary levels, the reduction in directed experiments, etc. (are the students going to dissect a frog at home? Or distill wood alcohol at home?) as well as the natural change from the child learning via repitition and imitation to learning via experience are severely limited by distance-learning.

At graduate levels, the key skills that are what most of us actually learn at university (dealing with more diverse people, living on our own, doing our own research, critical thinking, time-management) are greatly limited (not a problem if other life experiences are providing those lessons). The academic knowledge at graduate level is not really that important (any of you that are out of college more than 5 years actually remember much of what your professors said? I certainly don't.). The skills learned in getting the degree are.

I wouldn't favor the transformation of public-schools to virtual institutions.

[Azure]

Meh....the most important part of high school for me was my friends.

Of course, I'm the type of person that would have played sports either way....but there are lots of kids who if they didn't have to go to school, they'd sit around on their fat asses even more.

Plus, physical education class would be moot.

Not much fun playing baseball by yourself, eh. ;)

[Linear]

They can teach the co-op classes for my kid.

Uh, no they can't. That's the problem. Most people don't learn anything in education classes except to downgrade actually learning anything in favor of skills--you don't learn to multiply, you learn math skills. You don't learn to write, you learn writing skills. You don't learn to identify academic BS, you learn critical thinking skills. People who go in with their brains intact have to be awfully well integrated not to come out four years later with their brains damaged by all the pap.

It's like high school. The U.S. has the most school ready kids in the world in grades K-3. The longer they go to school after that, the stupider they get. We go from best performing in international comparisons in grade 3 to among the worst by grade 12.

[grog18b]

It would drastically cut down on illness, and bullying too, plus you'd know where your kid was all day. Not to mention not being susceptible to things like school shootings, drug dealers, abductions and so on. I'm all for it.

Plus, if the little jerks act out, the teach can always just put them on an ignore list. :)

[ET1/ss nuke]

I am a public high school teacher, but when my oldest daughter hit 9th grade and my youngest hit 8th, I pulled them out to homeschool the rest of the way. My wife taught English for 7 years, and I have degrees in history, physics, chemistry, and electronics, in addition to education, as well as enough credit hours to minor in Geology and French, so we figured that between the two of us we couldn't screw things up any worse than the school system already had. My oldest is now employed full time as an emergency room registrar at our local hospital, with better health insurance than I have, and my youngest is finishing her senior year early next month so she can start taking classes at a local community college in May. Both have social lives, and my oldest is dating a law enforcement officer. I mention all that only to show that a successful home-based education is feasible if the parents are involved, capable, and motivated.

The virtual high school scenario described in the original post would likely work for students with a stable home life, no physical or mental handicaps, and concerned parents who would see that the students actually applied themselves to their work. Those are the same students who already succeed in spite of their surroundings in public schools. The same factors which mitigate against success in public schools for the majority of students are the very factors which would make success in a virtual environment even less likely. Virtual high schools could be a legitimate option to enable the cream of the crop to learn without being distracted by the mass of students whose focus is definitely not on education, but for the rest of the school population virtual learning would be merely a way for the board of education to cut payroll and overheard while simultaneously washing their hands of responsibility for student failure.

Comparisons of US public schools to foreign school systems and private/parochial schools almost always leave out one huge fact - we are the only place that is required by law to serve every student regardless of their baggage. Just got out of prison again? Welcome to class. Reading on a 2nd grade level? Welcome to 10th grade World History. You are blind/deaf/paraplegic/shizophrenic? We'll make accomodations. You are 19 and haven't passed 8th grade yet? It's OK, we'll promote you to high school and you can hang out until you turn 21. You ran away from home and missed three months of school? Welcome to class, we'll find a way to work around it. You don't speak any English? No problemo. You haven't turned in a single assignment all semester because you slept through all the classes, but your parents want you to get a fresh start in someone else's class? Meet your new teacher. No other school system on earth does those kind of things to the extent that we do. We invite failure, encourage irresponsibility, then wonder why nearly 40% of our high school freshmen don't earn diplomas on time or never finish high school at all. Regardless of the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the teachers, will the parents of those 40% suddenly become upstanding individuals who take responsibility for their children's actions in a virtual high school curriculum? Good luck with that.

[ET1/ss nuke]

Uh, no they can't. That's the problem. Most people don't learn anything in education classes except to downgrade actually learning anything in favor of skills--you don't learn to multiply, you learn math skills. You don't learn to write, you learn writing skills. You don't learn to identify academic BS, you learn critical thinking skills. People who go in with their brains intact have to be awfully well integrated not to come out four years later with their brains damaged by all the pap.

It's like high school. The U.S. has the most school ready kids in the world in grades K-3. The longer they go to school after that, the stupider they get. We go from best performing in international comparisons in grade 3 to among the worst by grade 12.

Amen to all of the above, and I have an education degree. Getting it was one of the more tedious things I've ever had to put up with. The people who evaluate you for recertification expect you to put on the dog and pony show of being an "educator" and use edubabble jargon, but all that crap just gets in the way of effective teaching, which is done best when it is done the old fashioned way, which is what happens every day the evaluators are away.

[Longrifle]

Amen to all of the above, and I have an education degree. Getting it was one of the more tedious things I've ever had to put up with. The people who evaluate you for recertification expect you to put on the dog and pony show of being an "educator" and use edubabble jargon, but all that crap just gets in the way of effective teaching, which is done best when it is done the old fashioned way, which is what happens every day the evaluators are away.
Oh, hell yeah! You , too? :D :D