Friday, June 02, 2006

Selections from reddit.com - 2 June 2006

The following were found via reddit.com:

Yahoo! News reports Educators promote weighing students. Two years ago public schools in Arkansas started sending letters home to some parents telling them their children were overweight. The article is pretty positive, this is such a great thing. Doctors all over Arkansas are reporting that more parents are coming to see them about reducing the weight of their children. But I think this shows part of fundamental problem with public schools. Over the last couple decades literacy has been dropping. Today almost a third of young adults can't find the Pacific Ocean on a world map. But instead of focusing on their responsibility to teach children to read and write, public schools try to fix other people's problems.

In a column at the New York Daily News is a reminder that as a group public school teachers have one of the lowest levels of literacy in America. But rather than ask for a fundamental change in public schools the column ends with a plead for more money. I've read a number of reports that often highly qualified people will enter the teaching profession, only to be driven out a couple years later by things like mindless classes they have to take.

Jacob Hornberger, founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation, has a great column on The Separation of Education and State. He points out that public education is run via central planning, and is thus the perfect model of socialism. He asks "Nearly everyone knows that socialism produces shoddy products and services. So why should anyone be surprised that public schooling does so as well?" It is a good column, well worth reading.


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