re: What public education has done for our country

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Since Republicans control all three branches of government and numerous state houses and legislators how can you claim public education from grade school to college has indoctrinated students to become liberals?

What is your proof? If they have been indoctrinating all these years then why have they failed so miserably?

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Definitely a good point.

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Secondly, intelligence does not equal common sense

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Common sense is an aspect of intelligence.

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Secondly, intelligence does not equal common sense
Common sense is an aspect of intelligence.

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When sticking your hand in fire:
Intelligence.... fire is hot
Common sense.... don't do it, you will get burned!

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Very few people on this board really understand the Constitution and what the original founders of this country had in mind

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This board has a way higher incidence of such understanding.

There is a cogent argument that the greatest indictment of public education was the last election.

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When sticking your hand in fire:
Intelligence.... fire is hot
Common sense.... don't do it, you will get burned!

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So it seems you don't understand education nor the underlying cognitive processes of intelligence.

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I must have somehow managed to draw a large number of professors from the remaining 1%.

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I think you're just over estimating the average intelligence in the general population.

Obviously there is variability--especially from discipline to discipline and institution to institute (liberal arts vs. research University)--but the academic rigor to obtain the level of education and other requirements to become a professor, also demands a higher level of intelligence IN GENERAL.

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kingbob

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Follow the money.

/thread

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The farther you go, the less likely you are to cling to "old fashioned" values. It's the entire reason places like Liberty college exist.

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Or, perhaps, those who go farthest are those that already were pretty liberal and atheistic. Most people who decide at 17 that they want to become a physics or biology professor are likely already very atheist.

Actually, they still are. Even the best school districts are graduating huge percentages of students who are not going to college and who possess zero hard skills. Those districts still waste millions on redundant infrastructure, unnecessary administrators, and poor budgeting practices. Those districts still have mediocre curriculums that fail to teach real life skills. They are just better at teaching towards the test that determines the "good" schools from the "bad".

What determines a "good" district from a "bad" district typically has only 2 important variables which are both inextricably linked: percentage of students who were the product of out of wedlock births and reside with only one parent, and percentage of students whom neither parent works more than 20 hours/week, and are on public assistance.

Many of those students simply do not want to be educated because education produces no cognizable return on investment for them. They don't need to work, they don't want to work, and they won't work. If they're not going to work for a living, they don't need a good job. If they don't need a good job, they don't need advanced education. If they don't need to get into advanced education, they don't need to do well in high school. If they don't need to do well in high school, then they don't need to pay attention at all. If our high schools are only preparing kids for college and not for regular life, then those students have no reason for being there other than they are required to be there by law. Since there are no consequences for failure (they just get socially promoted anyways) and little consequences for disrupting class (at worst they send them home, which is what they want), they just ruin the entire scholastic environment.

Maybe, if we taught skills that were usefull to them, they would pay attention. Maybe if we focused our education system on what kids want and need to know to survive and thrive rather than some inane decades old curriculum, they would want to learn.

Go to any second grade classroom anywhere, and the kids have nothing but questions. They want to know everything. Why the sky is blue, why fish can breath underwater, why Billy is allergic to peanuts, ect. By the time they are in 8th grade, they don't want to learn anything. Teaching them is like putting them in an electric chair. They have no more questions beyond "Are we done yet? When can I go home?" Why is that? It's because we don't teach them what they want to learn, we discourage them from questioning their world, we treat learning like a job or a chore, and we teach everything in abstract rather than from a utility standpoint.

This is a problem in EVERY school, not just the bad ones. We have to change how we teach, what we teach, when we teach, who we teach, EVERYTHING!