Urban charter school has 100% graduation in first class

[Simon_Jester]

It's true that bad students can get kicked out, although people often get the impression that they can't be kicked out because administrators are extraordinarily reluctant to actually do this.

In my way of thinking, you want to keep the kids who are there to learn (or who are at least capable of behaving), and dump the rest. Ideally, put them on an island somewhere, like Australia. Or perhaps some kind of northern gulag, which we could set up in the frozen tundra and use as a base for mining operations in the area (the only kind of job you would want these retards doing anyway). But most teachers and administrators think they're there to "rescue" kids from themselves, not just nurture the good ones and get rid of the rest as I would tend to do if I had my way.

I have heard it said by people more qualified than me* that one of the reasons we wound up with a public school system at all was to make sure we had a general public educated to the minimum standards needed for a modern economy. Just teaching the gifted students is not going to cut it; you've got to reach the bulk of the kids who are in the middle of the bell curve. The ones who are not "good ones," or at least not unusually good.

To make matters worse, how much is someone whose education stopped in elementary school becaue they're a terrible student going to be worth even as menial labor? The amount of work it takes to keep them from destroying themselves** might very well overwhelm the work you can get out of them. So there's still a reason to educate people who are on the low end of the curve. Otherwise, we get a higher percentage of people whose lives just fail because they're pig-ignorant. Which imposes costs on the entire system, because smarter and more competent people will have to take time to fix the problems they create (like crime waves).

*I say this so that I'll be presenting the argument honestly. I am not an education expert, and I know it, but I try to listen to people who are.
**By not understanding forms, by making pathetically naive mistakes in their lifestyle, that sort of thing.

[Lusankya]

Well, a fair proportion of the population would probably be better served by a schooling system that focussed primarily on vocational training, with academics being secondary, as opposed to the current system which focuses mainly on academics, with vocational training forced to one side. If, rather than being kicked out entirely, they were just kicked to a technical school, you wouldn't have the issue of ignorant, unskilled people (well, you would, but not as much).

Of course, that means you have to have a decent number of technical schools to kick these kids to.

[Broomstick]

As someone who has had to deal with morons on construction sites with power tools, simply dumping the idiots into "vocational" categories still presents problems. You want an illiterate stoner wiring your house, fixing your plumbing, repairing your car, or fixing a meal in a restaurant? I don't. There is a certain minimum level of competence even for those jobs.

People should be pushed to the limits of their learning capability while in pre-collegiate school. Then they should be encouraged to seek either academic or vocational training appropriate to their interests and abilities. If that means the offspring of two people with multiple doctorates turns up not so intelligent the parents may have to deal with junior going into something less intellectually demanding (I saw that situation with a former boss, actually). But there should be no shame in honest work. Yes, we'd all rather see our children be brain surgeons than garbage men, but garbage men are an essential part of modern society, too, and one that the average person is more likely to need services from.

Mr. Wong has many fine qualities, but I think he'd suck as a teacher except under very, very specific circumstances (like military flight school or SEAL training, where the point is to weed out all but the very, very best in the group). Well, that's the way he is, and he should be encouraged to seek employment as something other than a primary school teacher.

I also think there should be an opportunity for people who didn't do well as children to go back and resume their education because sometimes people do eventually get their shit together, and sometimes it's a problem of an individual taking longer to mature than average or some serious issue (illness or accident, for example) derailing them or neglect on the part of parents. We have some of that already, with GED's and community colleges that can act as a entry track for higher learning.

A big problem, though, is most of the vocational schools in the US have closed. It was a stupid move. But this post is long enough.

[[R_H]]

Of course, that means you have to have a decent number of technical schools to kick these kids to.

Or you can just do the technical training part of the vocational education at individual companies as apprenticeships. That's the way it's done here.

[Broomstick]

In the US, of course, the businesses will whine "We don't want the expense...." Then they will bitch that that can't hire qualified people.

[Darth Wong]

It's true that bad students can get kicked out, although people often get the impression that they can't be kicked out because administrators are extraordinarily reluctant to actually do this.

In my way of thinking, you want to keep the kids who are there to learn (or who are at least capable of behaving), and dump the rest. Ideally, put them on an island somewhere, like Australia. Or perhaps some kind of northern gulag, which we could set up in the frozen tundra and use as a base for mining operations in the area (the only kind of job you would want these retards doing anyway). But most teachers and administrators think they're there to "rescue" kids from themselves, not just nurture the good ones and get rid of the rest as I would tend to do if I had my way.

I have heard it said by people more qualified than me* that one of the reasons we wound up with a public school system at all was to make sure we had a general public educated to the minimum standards needed for a modern economy. Just teaching the gifted students is not going to cut it; you've got to reach the bulk of the kids who are in the middle of the bell curve. The ones who are not "good ones," or at least not unusually good.

Who said anything about "gifted"? I'm not talking about making a public school system which only educates the top 2% of the population. That's the gilded age again. I'm talking about getting rid of the bottom 5%: the troublemakers, the assholes, the bullies, the kids who are not there to learn and whose parents don't even give a shit. I've spent enough time dealing with schools, volunteering at schools, etc. to know that in every class, you have a bottom 5% which drags down the rest of the group with their consistently shitty behaviour. They should be removed from the learning environment, permanently. They will never amount to anything, they will only harm the other students in the class.

[Thanas]

This is also why the German 3-way school system produces pretty good and very horrifying results. Because we have got one school (Gymnasium) where the best go to, a middle school level for the medium and the bottom school (Hauptschule) for the worst 10% or so. So this is already in practice in Germany.

[Surlethe]

This is also why the German 3-way school system produces pretty good and very horrifying results. Because we have got one school (Gymnasium) where the best go to, a middle school level for the medium and the bottom school (Hauptschule) for the worst 10% or so. So this is already in practice in Germany.

What's horrifying about it? It sounds like it works, doesn't it?

[JointStrikeFighter]

In my way of thinking, you want to keep the kids who are there to learn (or who are at least capable of behaving), and dump the rest. Ideally, put them on an island somewhere, like Australia. Or perhaps some kind of northern gulag, which we could set up in the frozen tundra and use as a base for mining operations in the area (the only kind of job you would want these retards doing anyway). But most teachers and administrators think they're there to "rescue" kids from themselves, not just nurture the good ones and get rid of the rest as I would tend to do if I had my way.

Man it's not like mining is a highly technical field requiring skilled labor and billions of dollars of capital *I'm a smarmy asshole*?

Or were you just being an internet tough guy? HUR HUR

[ArmorPierce]

Who said anything about "gifted"? I'm not talking about making a public school system which only educates the top 2% of the population. That's the gilded age again. I'm talking about getting rid of the bottom 5%: the troublemakers, the assholes, the bullies, the kids who are not there to learn and whose parents don't even give a shit. I've spent enough time dealing with schools, volunteering at schools, etc. to know that in every class, you have a bottom 5% which drags down the rest of the group with their consistently shitty behaviour. They should be removed from the learning environment, permanently. They will never amount to anything, they will only harm the other students in the class.

I agree witht he troublemakers, assholes and bullies but not witht the kids that parent's don't give a shit necessarily. I think they should be reached out to as long as they are not a troublemaker in other ways. Not their fault that they were raised by shit family.

[Lonestar]

What's horrifying about it? It sounds like it works, doesn't it?

On my deployment we had a professor onboard who taught college courses who spent some years in Germany. He said that comparing American school systems to European ones was difficult because American school systems, in theory, are intended to elevate everyone and provide as much a level playing field as possible. German school systems are a bit more overt in helping the best and tossing away the worst. So if you're into egalitarianism the German process(or Japanese as well, I guess) is horrifying.

[Darth Wong]

In my way of thinking, you want to keep the kids who are there to learn (or who are at least capable of behaving), and dump the rest. Ideally, put them on an island somewhere, like Australia. Or perhaps some kind of northern gulag, which we could set up in the frozen tundra and use as a base for mining operations in the area (the only kind of job you would want these retards doing anyway). But most teachers and administrators think they're there to "rescue" kids from themselves, not just nurture the good ones and get rid of the rest as I would tend to do if I had my way.

Man it's not like mining is a highly technical field requiring skilled labor and billions of dollars of capital *I'm a smarmy asshole*?

Or were you just being an internet tough guy? HUR HUR

You're a fucking moron. On-site, mining, like most resource extraction, is 99% grunts and 1% highly skilled technical people. The billions of dollars of capital are tied up in equipment which is designed and built elsewhere.

For that matter, almost all heavy industry is like that. The punishment aspect of this is not that they're working in a mine, but that it's a mine in the middle of nowhere. Do you understand now, or do you need me to use smaller words?

[JointStrikeFighter]

I only have iPhone net acess tonght but I will be compiling a proper reply tomorrow.

[JointStrikeFighter]

You're a fucking moron. On-site, mining, like most resource extraction, is 99% grunts and 1% highly skilled technical people. The billions of dollars of capital are tied up in equipment which is designed and built elsewhere.

For that matter, almost all heavy industry is like that. The punishment aspect of this is not that they're working in a mine, but that it's a mine in the middle of nowhere. Do you understand now, or do you need me to use smaller words?

Have you even BEEN to a fucking mine Mike? It's not a fucking bunch of burly men with shovels digging a pit; its highly skilled, highly paid technical professionals. Turns out Surveyors, explosives technicians, shop fitters, electricians, plumbers, onsite auditors, OHS officers, control room technicians ARE highly skilled technical people, and they don't even have to be engineers to meet that definition

Even the "unskilled labour" on a mine are far more skilled than their counterparts in retail and food service; turns out 2-3 day safety training courses are par for the course for a mine site; thats ALREADY more specialist training than people receive in service industries even before specialist job training you receive onsite. Protip getting a certification for an excavator or mine scale dump truck is hundreds of hours of training.

I could argue that miners are more mentally stable too; in Australia at least to even get a job on a mine your looking at full psych workup. Turns out you don't want people with trouble focusing and anger management issues [ie your bottom 5%] in control of a 200ton spinning blade that costs millions of dollars. That will be especially hilarious because you've literally imprisoned them in the wilderness against their will [the connotation of the word 'gulag' is exactly that you classist fuck] HOW COULD THIS CAUSE WORKER ISSUES.

And don't even try to argue that they dont need capital equipment rarar THEY CAN USE SHOVELS TO DIG. Turns out all the reserves that can actually be exploited that way were used up 200 years ago.

Good luck even getting venture capital for this mine, let alone making it profitably without massive government subsidies; turns out no investor with any mind will risk their capital around the individuals you want to imprison and your yields will be so low otherwise that you wont even be able to make enough money to feed your labor. Congratulations you've made a forced labor camp for jews unskilled labour.

This isn't even touching the far more disturbing issue of denying people their rights simply because they aren't suited for the academic environment [protip chances are this is beyond their control; if you are raised with illiterate fucks for parents you probably will be too]. We arent just talking about vague rights like "RIGHT TO GUNS and RIGHT TO OWN A CAR" and shit here; your talking about genuine enslavement of the nigger poor non-engineers uneducated here. No jimmy you can't get a job in retail; your too black jewish so it's off to the salt mines.

You fucking disgust me you POS classist scum.

-nb; forgive any typos, posted from netbook, forgive rambling prose; bad at debating

[lazerus]

Have you even BEEN to a fucking mine Mike? It's not a fucking bunch of burly men with shovels digging a pit; its highly skilled, highly paid technical professionals. Turns out Surveyors, explosives technicians, shop fitters, electricians, plumbers, onsite auditors, OHS officers, control room technicians ARE highly skilled technical people, and they don't even have to be engineers to meet that definition

Even the "unskilled labour" on a mine are far more skilled than their counterparts in retail and food service; turns out 2-3 day safety training courses are par for the course for a mine site; thats ALREADY more specialist training than people receive in service industries even before specialist job training you receive onsite. Protip getting a certification for an excavator or mine scale dump truck is hundreds of hours of training.

Oh no. Hundreds of hours! Why, working an 8 hour shift each day, that means it could take up too a month to complete that training. As compared to the 4+ years it takes to become a technician, or the 5+ years it takes to become an engineer. It's not manual labor, and not totally unskilled labor, but it's a hell of a lot closer to unskilled labor then genuine technical work. Furthermore, while hard work, dedication, and moderate talent will get you a hell of a lot further then laziness and great talent -- you need that talent. It is harsh, but not inaccurate, to describe a job as "Unskilled" if anyone can master it, and reasonable to describe a job as skilled if talent is required. Put simply, that bottom 5% might, might, make crappy technicians one day. They could never be engineers or other really skilled labor.

I could argue that miners are more mentally stable too; in Australia at least to even get a job on a mine your looking at full psych workup. Turns out you don't want people with trouble focusing and anger management issues [ie your bottom 5%] in control of a 200ton spinning blade that costs millions of dollars. That will be especially hilarious because you've literally imprisoned them in the wilderness against their will [the connotation of the word 'gulag' is exactly that you classist fuck] HOW COULD THIS CAUSE WORKER ISSUES.

Because you want people with anger management issues working in retail, where they can...er...no. Or the medical field, where they can...er...no, definitely not. Oh, grunt work in the chemical industry, where they'll be surrounded by deadly substances that can cause major accidents if people arn't care...mmm...no.

There is no real work that's safe for stupid, bitter people with anger management problems. None. So unless you want them to permanently form a dangerous underclass (like we have now), it's only adventagous to put them in an environment that can be designed with this problem specifically in mind.

And don't even try to argue that they dont need capital equipment rarar THEY CAN USE SHOVELS TO DIG. Turns out all the reserves that can actually be exploited that way were used up 200 years ago.

You are either strawmanning or have misunderstood his argument. He was stating that the infrastructure and technical skills used to produce this capital equipment is largely located far from the mining site itself.

This isn't even touching the far more disturbing issue of denying people their rights simply because they aren't suited for the academic environment [protip chances are this is beyond their control; if you are raised with illiterate fucks for parents you probably will be too]. We arent just talking about vague rights like "RIGHT TO GUNS and RIGHT TO OWN A CAR" and shit here; your talking about genuine enslavement of the nigger poor non-engineers uneducated here. No jimmy you can't get a job in retail; your too black jewish so it's off to the salt mines.

You fucking disgust me you POS classist scum.

What was that jimmy? Life aint fair? Say it aint so!

Propose any program designed to help the talented poor out of their poor luck in life, and I'll almost certainly support it. The fact that much of the human race's talent languishes because those who have it had the misfortune to be born in a bad environment is and has always been one of the greatest tragedies of civilization. Public schooling with the ability to pull up the talented in an area regardless of their means to pay is important for so many reasons, both pragmatic and issues of social justice.

But in the end, when all those efforts have been expended, you'll be left with some people who are just stupid, nasty, bitter troublemakers -- more of them in poor neighborhoods, yes, but you get them all around. These people do no one any good.

[Darth Wong]

You're a fucking moron. On-site, mining, like most resource extraction, is 99% grunts and 1% highly skilled technical people. The billions of dollars of capital are tied up in equipment which is designed and built elsewhere.

For that matter, almost all heavy industry is like that. The punishment aspect of this is not that they're working in a mine, but that it's a mine in the middle of nowhere. Do you understand now, or do you need me to use smaller words?

Have you even BEEN to a fucking mine Mike? It's not a fucking bunch of burly men with shovels digging a pit; its highly skilled, highly paid technical professionals. Turns out Surveyors, explosives technicians, shop fitters, electricians, plumbers, onsite auditors, OHS officers, control room technicians ARE highly skilled technical people, and they don't even have to be engineers to meet that definition

Yet again you demonstrate your stupidity. Skilled tradesmen are found in every branch of heavy industry. And yes, they are nowhere near scientists or engineers, and yes, they are decidedly low-class grunts as a rule.

Even the "unskilled labour" on a mine are far more skilled than their counterparts in retail and food service; turns out 2-3 day safety training courses are par for the course for a mine site; thats ALREADY more specialist training than people receive in service industries even before specialist job training you receive onsite. Protip getting a certification for an excavator or mine scale dump truck is hundreds of hours of training.

Are you honestly this stupid? An ordinary welder requires much more qualification than that.

I could argue that miners are more mentally stable too; in Australia at least to even get a job on a mine your looking at full psych workup. Turns out you don't want people with trouble focusing and anger management issues [ie your bottom 5%] in control of a 200ton spinning blade that costs millions of dollars. That will be especially hilarious because you've literally imprisoned them in the wilderness against their will [the connotation of the word 'gulag' is exactly that you classist fuck] HOW COULD THIS CAUSE WORKER ISSUES.

Yet again you demonstrate your stupidity. The people running the largest machinery are always the most qualified in any given group. This does not mean there is no need for grunts. Do you honestly think a mine is some kind of super-automated facility where nobody is present except for one guy running a huge machine?

And don't even try to argue that they dont need capital equipment rarar THEY CAN USE SHOVELS TO DIG. Turns out all the reserves that can actually be exploited that way were used up 200 years ago.

Good luck even getting venture capital for this mine, let alone making it profitably without massive government subsidies; turns out no investor with any mind will risk their capital around the individuals you want to imprison and your yields will be so low otherwise that you wont even be able to make enough money to feed your labor. Congratulations you've made a forced labor camp for jews unskilled labour.

They already have these isolated mines, you fucking idiot. And people who don't fit too well in society already tend to go work places like that, or logging, or other kinds of undesirable hard-labour occupation. This is just fast-tracking the process.

This isn't even touching the far more disturbing issue of denying people their rights simply because they aren't suited for the academic environment [protip chances are this is beyond their control; if you are raised with illiterate fucks for parents you probably will be too]. We arent just talking about vague rights like "RIGHT TO GUNS and RIGHT TO OWN A CAR" and shit here; your talking about genuine enslavement of the nigger poor non-engineers uneducated here. No jimmy you can't get a job in retail; your too black jewish so it's off to the salt mines.

Oh right, so if you discriminate against people for their own behaviour, that's the same thing as discriminating against them for their race, right? You're obviously desperate for an excuse to wax self-righteous, but it won't fool anyone.

You fucking disgust me you POS classist scum.

-nb; forgive any typos, posted from netbook, forgive rambling prose; bad at debating

You fucking disgust me, you dishonest strawman-happy shithead.

[MKSheppard]

Even the "unskilled labour" on a mine are far more skilled than their counterparts in retail and food service; turns out 2-3 day safety training courses are par for the course for a mine site

You mean courses where you sit around for days and do nothing but read aloud power point slides and watch safety training videos? Cause that's what the 2-3 days of safety training I got that qualified me to drive a FFV and LLV was.

If anything else, the main problems in driving a 200 ton mining truck also exist on a postal truck -- limited as shit visibility -- but there's a lot less problems, since nobody's on the road except you; e.g. you don't have to worry about some asshole in a SUV suddenly swerving in front of your vehicle since you're on a dedicated mining road. About the only real problem faced by trainees learning how to drive mining trucks would be getting certified on the heavy duty braking systems on the truck.

[Phantasee]

Are you kidding me? You seriously think driving a fucking postal truck is in the same league as driving this?

It's not limited as shit visibility, fuckface, it's no visibility. And they share the mining roads with pick-up trucks. Have you ever seen those? With the orange flags and beacon lights? You know, on the 15 ft pole? On account of not seeing anything in front of you for about 30-40 feet in front of you? Almost nothing on the side of you?

Don't think too highly of yourself, Shep. You drive a little postal truck, you are nowhere near qualified to drive anything larger. I wouldn't trust you on a semi, and if you think that all it takes is a course on the air brakes, you're a retard.

And I'm sorry if your safety training by the hallowed US Government wasn't as thorough as it should have been, but real businesses in the mining sector any actual industry do real training before they let any random SOB near their job sites. Their training is a little more comprehensive than, "This is how you avoid paper cuts!"

[Darth Wong]

Are you kidding me? You seriously think driving a fucking postal truck is in the same league as driving this?

Who gives a shit? It's still driving a truck; it is hardly something you need extensive education for. You can be a high-school dropout and still have more than enough knowledge of math, science, and liberal arts to enroll in that training course (obviously, since you would basically require none).

Don't you get it? Yes, dumb-shit training courses do take up hours, but they do not require much of an education beforehand. A dropout can take such a course just as easily as a high school graduate, so why make the morons go all the way through high school?

If they changed that policy, maybe they could actually toughen up high school so that graduation would actually mean something again.

[JointStrikeFighter]

hey hey hey mike.

I have a protip for you:

skilled labour doesn't mean university degree you fucking dipshit.

Ps it means "has been trained to do a job that nobody else can do without training." maybe you should try reading a dictionary sometime. Hell maybe you can try escaping your crippling groupthink and think about things from the perspective of people who aren't fucking gods engineers.

[Formless]

hey hey hey mike.

I have a protip for you:

skilled labour doesn't mean university degree you fucking dipshit.

Protip: no one gives a fuck because there is still a BIG difference between years of training and mere hours of training to do a job. You don't have to be an engineer to realize that. I should know, I'm not an engineer. I'm just not totally braindead like you are.

[JointStrikeFighter]

hey hey hey mike.

I have a protip for you:

skilled labour doesn't mean university degree you fucking dipshit.

Protip: no one gives a fuck because there is still a BIG difference between years of training and mere hours of training to do a job. You don't have to be an engineer to realize that. I should know, I'm not an engineer. I'm just not totally braindead like you are.

Yeah and that's completely whoopdy fucking do irelevent to both the word "skilled labour" and to the ridiculous notion that the only solution to mike's lumpenproletariant is to send them to the fucking slave labour camps. Mining is arguably THE MOST challenging and demanding working environment and it requires SPECIAL FUCKING SKILLS.

[Formless]

Yeah and that's completely whoopdy fucking do irelevent to both the word "skilled labour" and to the ridiculous notion that the only solution to mike's lumpenproletariant is to send them to the fucking slave labour camps. Mining is arguably THE MOST challenging and demanding working environment and it requires SPECIAL FUCKING SKILLS.

Wow, I'd have expected debating this shitty from a n00b, but I guess even old timers can get high off their own prejudices once in a while. Your semantick nitpicking isn't fooling anyone, and your inability to grasp the difference between slavery and meritocracy is just plain insulting to the eye. I wonder where most of these kinds of people Wong describes would end up anyway? Hmmm... the word "wage slave" comes to mind, but for some reason I doubt I'd get through your self righteous indignation. It hasn't worked so far.

[JointStrikeFighter]

Sorry form but the defenition of 'Gulag' [mike's words not mine] is "A forced labor camp or prison, especially for political dissidents" sounds like slavery to me.
.
Here is the root issue; mike made two retarded statments;

1. A gulag [remember FORCED LABOUR] is the solution to troublesome youth

2. Mining is an area of labour where this unskilled labour would be useful. The simple fact is the mining industry employs the best of the best, be it graduates like engineers and geologists, skilled tradespeople like shopfitters and welders or "unskilled" people like truck drivers. Any suggestion otherwise is deeply mired in the world of fiction.

[Bakustra]

Yeah and that's completely whoopdy fucking do irelevent to both the word "skilled labour" and to the ridiculous notion that the only solution to mike's lumpenproletariant is to send them to the fucking slave labour camps. Mining is arguably THE MOST challenging and demanding working environment and it requires SPECIAL FUCKING SKILLS.

Wow, I'd have expected debating this shitty from a n00b, but I guess even old timers can get high off their own prejudices once in a while. Your semantick nitpicking isn't fooling anyone, and your inability to grasp the difference between slavery and meritocracy is just plain insulting to the eye. I wonder where most of these kinds of people Wong describes would end up anyway? Hmmm... the word "wage slave" comes to mind, but for some reason I doubt I'd get through your self righteous indignation. It hasn't worked so far.

Does that justify forcing them to work? Seriously, deciding somebody's career and life path based solely on them acting "undesirably" in school (particularly high school) ignores any rehabilitative efforts that could be done, especially by the student him- or herself, purely in favor of imprisoning them and making them work in a mine. I suppose that this is marginally more humanitarian than just imprisoning them outright, but still based on the assumption that people's non-criminal actions should be the basis for deciding their life for them. This ignores anybody that was an idiot in high school and then becomes a responsible adult, but then again, it doesn't seem like either of you consider that to be a possibility, so let's look at this the other way around; consider a youth who performs well in high school but drops out of college and becomes a bit of a layabout. Would a hypothetical Americanadian NKVD come along, in your world, to drag him to the gulags for his laxness? How would these youths be deemed "irredeemable" and suitable for the gulag nouveau? Would it be a criminal trial, and we simply criminalize slackness in school? Would we simply create a secret police that can throw kids in the gulags if they think they're too uncaring or aren't taking hard enough classes? What about trying to correct this problem in elementary or middle school?

In other words, this idea is stupid and poorly-thought-out, more suitable as a joke than as an argument, and I admit that I thought it to be a joke upon first reading it, and so I am confused why you and Darth Wong are seriously defending it.