Comments on: The Women’s Liberation Movement and Public Schools

By: PENolan

PENolan — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 12:01:42 +0000

Jonathan Kozol writes compellingly about the purposeful socio-economic inequities in America’s public schools as well as the curriculum deficiencies that lead to an inability to recognize connections. If high school students graduated with the ability to question and critically analyze what they heard from the government, no one would ever go to war. High Stakes Testing is one example of this trend which some argue can be traced back to our founding fathers.

By: ts

ts — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 23:56:47 +0000

I wonder if the U.S. even has a drive or need to care about providing better quality public school education system. Having been educated in both domestic and oversea public schools, I feel the current system may be serving well enough; the pace is just slower in general compared to other industrialized countries.

What constantly shocks me in the U.S. is that the gross visible disparities in the living standards between haves and have-nots, and the quality of public education that kids receive reflects their parents’ living standards (perhaps because the school funding comes from local taxes as a comment above mentioned).

If the value of public education is mostly in maintaining some sort of “universal” standards, it is odd that kids need to be given advantage or punished depending on where they are born. We know, however, that’s basically how the U.S. is structured. Haves in this country do benefit from having less educated population around, and the social momentum is to keep things that way.

Low salaries in public education make it a rather unattractive career option in the U.S. for many domestic talents. If things come down to money and how that flows in society (as is often the case), then maybe the U.S. can start hiring cheap(er) English-speaking educators from third-world countries with very well educated populations, maybe like India. It’s been happening in private education industry, such as in online tutoring. Many sectors in the U.S., from the sweat-shop type to the highly technical, already depend on foreign labor, so why not public education?

That seems very American way of solving the “problem”… for now…

By: Sean M.

Sean M. — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 16:46:35 +0000

If the old donor’s theory were true, then why is public education in Canada working just fine? The same for European countries which are even more succesful in treating women fairly.

Does anyone have data on the decline of US public education? Literacy rates for the last 100 years, and so on? I expect the decline exists, but its not my country so I’ve never looked into it

By: Catherine Johnson

Catherine Johnson — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 13:34:55 +0000

I suspect that this is actually far more important than the quality of the schools in predicting the future success of students.

Right.

Exactly.

That is the case because parents and tutors have assumed responsibility for making sure their students are learning the content being “discovered” in class.

By: Catherine Johnson

Catherine Johnson — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 12:21:07 +0000

But the most important [reason the schools are worse] is the parents.

Yes, indeed.

Parent involvement!

Try Googling that phrase.

Then try Googling Siegfried Engelmannn and Direct Instruction: “If the student hasn’t learned, the teacher hasn’t taught.”

By: Catherine Johnson

Catherine Johnson — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 12:15:45 +0000

On the subject of teacher pay, it varies considerably state to state. The New York state school board association has just released a study showing that teacher pay in New York is equivalent to that of other professions. In my own affluent suburban town, teachers earn far more than many tenured college professors.

It’s high time someone took a good, hard look at the test scores of black and Hispanic students in these “high performing” public school districts.

In my own district, last year, every single black and Hispanic student in the 8th grade failed the state tests in math and English. Every single one.

Why do the white students pass?

Parents and tutors are doing a vast amount of teaching.

By: Neil B.

Neil B. — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:26:10 +0000

Any woman who can do the job should find no barriers to doing whatever isn’t clearly limited by gender-interaction issues (play football alongside men) etc. However, the entry of women into the workforce in large numbers surely depressed wages, due to flood of labor supply. Now, the combined income of a couple who both work is hardly more (CPI adjusted) that what a given man could make decades ago. I don’t think that’s a coincidence, it is the dilution of available money to pay labor across the larger supply to a large extent. Yes, “more productivity” but now much of that is soaked up in competitive games and the empowered upper brackets.

By: tmoney

tmoney — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 03:46:39 +0000

This has occurred in other minority groups such as African Americans as well. There was a time when university’s had a policy against hiring African American professors, so what occurred is often post docs would end up teaching in High Schools providing an excellent education, by extremely overqualified teachers. Currently teachers don’t even have to major in the field they teach, and even I with a degree in Biology and physics cant go teach in a highschool without a teachers certificate. I think what is needed is more competition in schools, just as universities compete so should k-12 schools. And the only way to do that would be through privatization, attaching the money to the students not the school, and allowing parents to decide what school to enroll their children, forcing schools to compete requiring better qualified and more effective teachers in their perspective subjects.

By: John

John — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 06:32:46 +0000

Here is a good read. It is *slightly* off-topic, but certainly related to education and women.

By: Peter Shor

Peter Shor — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:10:40 +0000

Googling gives the profession of #2 as an actress.