Stupid in America
I came across this nice 20/20 piece in a friend's profile. I already sent it to Jake and Jeff (that's Hammy). What John Stossel says in it makes sense, and I always hate monopolies (unless they're run by Rockefeller). What does everyone else think though? I don't want my thoughts to be clouded by Mr. Stossel's manly moustache and excellent interviewing skills.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkUjRGnFUe8
Let's not let this turn into a USA VS Everyone Else thread, please.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkUjRGnFUe8
Let's not let this turn into a USA VS Everyone Else thread, please.
Comments
Also, I think American kids just kinda don't care. I know I didn't.
Fact.
EDIT: Fremont high school is near my house. Parents totally do try to sneak into the public schools nearby. That is a real problem. In fact, the reason we live in the house we live in is because of the public school nearby.
It's state by state. There is no national education system. For NY, your property taxes pay for your local school. If you live in NY city or Yonkers, you pay a separate tax that is (mostly) for schools. (I'm not sure what it's called). There is no such thing as excess money in a public school in NY. I'm pretty sure this holds true for up north as well. hlavco?
I'm not even half-way through the video yet, but I already have several problems. For one, they're comparing the grades for High-school students form the US to countries that don't have a compulsory education system past 6th grade. They dump all of their dumb kids early on, so all they have left are the smart ones, naturally their average grades will be higher. Plus, I'm not even sure if I can trust that video of him asking simple questions in the classroom. It wasn't a continuous recording between him asking the simple questions and the kids saying, "I don't know". Now, I'm not trying to say the average kid in the US is smart, there are major issues with education in the US. But this story is majorly biased.
John Stossel is horribly biased. I've seen his reports before in government class. All of his arguments come down to stripping government powers and giving them to private parties.
edit: hehe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C35wyVQxXUA
NOW! The problem. Sports and money. It's not enough students to have any actual teams and building a seperate facility for every 350-500 kids will cost a pretty penny. My solution is to share several of the facilities such as gyms, science labs, cafeterias and land. The way we now seperate grades into elementary, middle, jr high, and sr high schools is how we should seperate the kids into these ideal blocks. You could even have them all within the same building, just in different wings. The students would be seperate enough to maintain their special sense of community and familiarity with each other (this helps everybody stay together. The kids all help each other when they are part of a small community), but you get the benefit of a larger school's resources. the kids would only mix for extra-curricular sports, and maybe during lunch if the scheduling calls for it. The only major money issue is that you still need to hire about 3 times as many teachers.
My God. I know so many teachers that love to teach and are good at what they do, but the old saying holds true. Power corrupts, and it seems the teacher unions have WAY too much clout to be concerned about student success rates! In the last two years only 2 teachers out of 80,000 were fired for incompetence? “Look at the smiles. In exchange for a 15 percent raise, the union made concessions. For example, they agreed to work ten minutes a day longer.” Absolutely amazing.
Sometimes governments, or in this case monopolies, should be stripped of some power.
I feel left out =(