The real problem with education

XPViking · Post by **XPViking** » 2006-02-24 08:50pm

I should also add that students with disabilities do not make up the majority of the school population. They definitely fall within the minority. As well, not all the costs of having a child with special needs are always covered by the school or other provincial ministries. Some of the financial costs (that is, beyond what it normally costs to support a normal-developmentally student) is shouldered by the parents.

Aeolus · Post by **Aeolus** » 2006-02-25 12:06pm

His Divine Shadow wrote:I've noted the same kind of situation here with skilled tradesmen. Maybe I should give up coding and computer administration in favor of being a car mechanic or plumber?

My brother is making twice as much now doing roadside assistance than he was after 10 years in tech support. He says he has more job satisfaction as well. Something to think about

Elfdart · Post by **Elfdart** » 2006-02-26 01:09am

XPViking wrote:I should also add that students with disabilities do not make up the majority of the school population. They definitely fall within the minority. As well, not all the costs of having a child with special needs are always covered by the school or other provincial ministries. Some of the financial costs (that is, beyond what it normally costs to support a normal-developmentally student) is shouldered by the parents.

One problem I noticed is that not only do public schools have to deal with their own retards, handicapped and delinquents, they get the rejects from private and religious schools too. Just as the city pound has not only its own strays, but the hard luck cases from the so-called "no-kill" shelters. Public schools thus end up with a disproportionally large number of problem students, but with less time and money for them. The fact that private schools can kick punks out while public schools have to accept them is also a serious problem.

Darth Wong wrote:
RedImperator wrote:We don't even have the shop equipment anymore--it all got sent somewhere else in the district (or sold for scrap).
Why the fuck do people do this? Don't they realize that the traditional route of class advancement for underprivileged people has always been in the skilled trades? Historically, poor people don't become doctors and lawyers, nor do they somehow make a generous income with knowledge of history and English. They learn how to fix plumbing or cars, they get a decent middle-class income with some sort of trade, and then maybe their kids take the next step to become doctors or lawyers.

Vocational training was a joke when I was in high school. I remember the stoners all joined metal shop so they could make bongs and smoke weed on school premises while the shop teacher hid in his office, smoked his cigars, drank beer and jerked off watching the girls' volleyball team practice outside. Wood shop was also a joke, only not as funny.

Some kids are probably better off skipping their last two years of high school and trying to catch on in garages or repair shops where they'll actually get hands on training. Then maybe a junior college level course.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2006-02-26 12:17pm

Elfdart wrote:Some kids are probably better off skipping their last two years of high school and trying to catch on in garages or repair shops where they'll actually get hands on training. Then maybe a junior college level course.

In the thinking I've been doing about school reform, I've considered this idea more than once. There may be something to it, and some charter schools are doing exactly that. I can identify a few students of mine for whom some kind of apprenticeship or on-site vocational training would be great, and they'd enjoy it a lot more than they do school.

My high school actually had a good vocy program, but it did it differently from a lot of schools. There was a single county vocational school--big, well funded, with beautiful facilities and modern equipment--that taught virtually any job you could think of. All the county high schools would send their vocational students there for half-days. The kids who went through that program graduated from high school very employable--see the example of my friend from earlier in the thread, who's been out of high school seven years and is closing in on a six figure salary with nothing but a high school vocy education and some special training for some of the more exotic equipment he uses.

We also had wood shop, metal shop, auto shop, and the rest, but those were basically just electives for kids who liked to work with their hands rather than take an art class or home ec.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2006-02-26 12:26pm

Elfdart wrote:One problem I noticed is that not only do public schools have to deal with their own retards, handicapped and delinquents, they get the rejects from private and religious schools too. Just as the city pound has not only its own strays, but the hard luck cases from the so-called "no-kill" shelters. Public schools thus end up with a disproportionally large number of problem students, but with less time and money for them. The fact that private schools can kick punks out while public schools have to accept them is also a serious problem.

I don't know why I responded to your post out of order, but so be it. I can attest to this problem personally: since I work in a so-called neighborhood high school (comprehensive general high school), we're a dumping ground for not only the miscreants who can't hack it in the charter schools, magnet schools, and Catholic schools, but we play musical chairs with the other neighborhood high schools with the kids who are bad enough to get kicked out of one school but not bad enough to land in alternative (disciplinary) schools. Sometimes changing schools is good for a kid, if the problem at the old one is the friends he's with or he just doesn't fit in that school culture, but too often, a miscreant at one school is a miscreant at all of them.

I'm also led to understand there's also one neighborhood high school, which will remain nameless, which deliberately over-admits (it always starts the year way over capacity), and expels 9th graders who don't make the academic cut. So the place leeches good students from outside its catchment and turns the rest back on the other neighborhood schools.

Edward Yee · Post by **Edward Yee** » 2006-02-26 08:22pm

Stark wrote:many of the units (yeah, I thought Masters work was research too) are what I would consider technical school level (ie, this is the TCP stack) and many of the students are from China (specifically) and while they're all qualified they seem to lack a great deal of skills I'd assume they would have.

Like what?

GODDAMN I'd love to find a technical school if there was one around...