by Johnathan Masters
Nearly 50% of Frankfort's budget goes
towards K-12 spending, and college. 50%. And yet, 2 outta 5
Kentuckians read at a Kindergarten level.
All of the Republican candidates are
talking about austerity measures; they are talking about cutting
government spending, which will go after Medicaid, K-12, and College
spending.
My policy would be to keep all spending
levels for K-12 and college, and Medicaid as well, the exact same. We
must protect our educational and healthcare institutions.
While public education can be better, I
believe in universal education. It's the 100% compliance principle
that needs to change. And if Vouchers and Charter Schools can force
general Public Education to up their game, I do not see a problem
with that.
Also, by allowing a pathway for Charter
Schools to develop, we would get more funds from the federal
government's Race to the Top competition. To get millions more, all
Kentucky is just a pathway for charter schools. And vouchers is where
the parents get the check directly from the government, and they can
choose to spend that voucher at any educational institution they
please.
Right now, poor schools, like
Barbourville, get $8-9,000 per pupil, and rich schools, like
Anchorage, get $18-19,000 in spending. Many private schools operate
only on $1-2,000, and even democratic schools, like Sudbury Model
Schools, only cost about $5,000. The state would save money, and
vouchers would increase parental choice for their children. This
increased competition would force public schools to up their game, or
else, lose students, and therefore, state money.
SO... Education was historically
considered a great equalizer in American society, capable of lifting
less advantaged children and improving their chances for success as
adults.
But many studies are showing how
American public education doesn't help the poor, at all.
This is class warfare.
The best indication of your success in
life is primarily based on how rich your parents are, and how strong
of a family you have, and not the education you get.
A massive study publish in the Summer
2014 by John Hopkins University shows that the kids who got a better
start — because their parents were married and working — ended up
better off. Most of the poor kids from single-parent families stayed
poor.
The John Hopkins University study was a
massive study. They followed nearly 800 kids in Baltimore — from
first grade until their late-20s. Just 33 children — out of nearly
800 — moved from the low-income to high-income bracket. And a
similarly small number born into low-income families had college
degrees by the time they turned 28
Now, in analyses of long-term data
published in recent months, researchers are finding that while the
achievement gap between white and black students has narrowed
significantly over the past few decades, the gap between rich and
poor students has grown substantially during the same period.
Another study that found that the gap
in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income students
had grown by about 40 percent since the 1960s, and is now double the
testing gap between blacks and whites. In another study, by
researchers from the University of Michigan, the imbalance between
rich and poor children in college completion — the single most
important predictor of success in the work force — has grown by
about 50 percent since the late 1980s.
The data from most of these studies end
in 2007 and 2008, before the recession’s full impact was felt.
Researchers said that based on experiences during past recessions,
the recent downturn was likely to have aggravated the trend.
Links
about parents wealth and family being a better indicator of success
than educational attainment:
According
to the 2007 "American Dream Report" study, "by some
measurements"—relative mobility between generations -- "we
are actually a less mobile society than many other nations, including
Canada, France, Germany and most Scandinavian countries. This
challenges the notion of America as the land of opportunity."
Other research places the U.S. among the least economically mobile
countries.
The children of the rich perform better
in school, on average, than children from middle-class or poor
families. Students growing up in richer families have better grades
and higher standardized test scores, on average, than poorer
students; they also have higher rates of participation in
extracurricular activities and school leadership positions, higher
graduation rates and higher rates of college enrollment and
completion.
One way to see this is to look at the
scores of rich and poor students on standardized math and reading
tests over the last 50 years. When an author of an article I found
online did this using information from a dozen large national studies
conducted between 1960 and 2010, they found out that the rich-poor
gap in test scores is about 40 percent larger now than it was 30
years ago.
That is twice the gap between black and
white students.
To make this trend concrete, consider
two children, one from a family with income of $165,000 and one from
a family with income of $15,000. These incomes are at the 90th and
10th percentiles of the income distribution nationally, meaning that
10 percent of children today grow up in families with incomes below
$15,000 and 10 percent grow up in families with incomes above
$165,000.
In the 1980s, on an 800-point SAT-type
test scale, the average difference in test scores between two such
children would have been about 90 points; today it is 125 points.
This is almost twice as large as the 70-point test score gap between
white and black children.
Family income is now, in 2015, a better
predictor of children’s success in school than race.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/27/no-rich-child-left-behind/
The children of the wealthy are pulling
away from their lower-class peers -- the same way their parents are
pulling away from their peers' parents. When it comes to college
completion rates, the rich-poor gulf has grown by 50% since the
1980s. Upper income families are also spending vastly more on their
children compared to the poor than they did 40 years ago, and
spending more time as parents cultivating their intellectual
development.
The differences start early in a
child's life, then linger. Reardon notes another study which found
that the rich-poor achievement gap between students is already big
when they start kindergarten, and doesn't change much over time.
An American child's fate is in many
ways fixed at birth — determined by family strength and the
parents' financial status. The children of the rich end up better
educated, and more likely to succeed, simply because they're children
of the rich.
What the studies have figured out... is
why?
xxx
Maslow's Hierarchy:
Maslow's Hierarchy shows everything
that a human being needs in order to survive and do well. It starts
out with...
[explain Maslow's Hierarchy]
Many poor kids aren't in a position to
learn, because they don't have their essential human needs.
A homeless 12 year old kid in
Louisville was killed in late 2014. His name was Ray Allen Etheridge.
http://www.wave3.com/story/26677476/lmpd-family-not-suspected-in-murder-of-boy-found-hurt-in-cherokee-park
The School expected Ray Allen Etheridge
to be obedient, to raise his hand all of the way up, and to all the
things they required of him. But they didn't care about him. He was
living on the streets, and after doing what his teachers told him to
do, Algebra, American History, English grammar, and Science, he went
back to living unbearable squalor.
JCPS was expecting him to be
Self-Actualized before he had all of his base needs, which are
required prequisities before learning the material.
Schools, since they are usually in the
center of the community, should be responsible for helping lifting
that entire community up, and they should be held accountable for the
success of their students after they leave the school. If education
isn't helping us, then why waste 19 years on it.
Just scrolling through my facebook feed
in a few minutes, I get a better education than anything Spalding
University ever taught me.
And that's how Graduate schools are
treating full grown adults, who already know themselves, and have
some kind of agency. If they're treating the adults like that,
children don't have a chance in hell to break free.
Education should be for liberation, not
oppression.
There's currently 10,000 homeless
children in Louisville. 1 out of every 4 children in Kentucky are
poor. Kentucky is one of the poorest states in the nation. Poverty
has plagued Kentucky since it's inception.
xxx
Young people have the capability of
being leaders today, starting right now, and when a young person has
been practicing being independent, and being in leadership roles,
they have been prepared perfectly for when they become adults. They
are ready for the real world.
Right now, we ask our students to raise
their hands all of the way up, just in order to go to the bathroom.
Their humanity is being micromanaged out of existence, and then we
expect them to sign large college loans, or to go off, and die in
wars for Empire, Conquest, and Oil.
Jack
Andraka, who is now 18 years old, is an
American inventor, scientist and cancer
researcher. He is known for his work in developing a new, rapid,
inexpensive, and patent pending[1] method to detect an increase
of a protein that indicates the presence of
pancreatic, ovarian, and lung cancer during their
early stages. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Andraka
11 year old Boffin Ramarni Wilfred
scored higher on his IQ exam than Professor Stephen Hawking and
Microsoft's Bill Gates, and Albert Einstein in August 2014.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/britains-smartest-schoolboy-11-year-old-boy-4056609
xxx
Another reason, is because education
isn't designed to strengthen one to be the best they can be. It was
designed in order for citizens to be compliant to the state.
Currently, America has a 3 tiered
Prussian Industrial Educational System, which was started by Horace
Mann, the Father of American Education, the Father of American Common
Schools.
Horace Mann went to Prussia, and
adopted all of the education system for America.
Right now, America's education is based
on the Prussian model.
The Prussian model of education is that
all students of Prussia must love Prussia, and they must be obedient
to civil servants, and to the King, as soldiers or as servants. 80%
of the population will learn a rudimentary education, just reading,
writing, arithmetic, and that's it. And obedience. And that's all
will be expected of them. That's Volkschulen.
For 19% of them, we need engineers,
doctors, scientists, etc, which is awarded to the very bright, and
the obedient.
For 99.5% of the population, school in
Prussia was designed strictly for patriotism: Prussia is the mother
country, and we all love her.
But for the top 1/2%, they actually
need to know what is going on. They will be the captains of industry,
and the Kings, and rulers of all the rest. For the top 1/2%, they
will read much, debate, argue points, and will discover knowledge,
and what interests them the most. They will be educated with the best
of the best, in order to become the best Oppressors the world has
ever seen. For the top 1/2%, they are educated for real.
And then when one adds the influence of
the industrial model, where schools are highly regimented by bells,
time constraints, and obedience, the point of schools were to prepare
young Americans to work in the factories. With America's industrial
base slipping, we're in need of something better...
xxxx
Today's American public schools have
been indoctrinated with the 3-tiered Prussian Industrial Educational
model, and one of the most important principles that newly minted
teachers learn in Normal Schools, aka Teacher Training Schools, is
Classroom Management, and the sacred Principle of 100% Compliance.
In order to “Teach Like a Champion”,
a popular textbook for current and soon-to-be teachers in American
teacher training schools, Doug Lemov advocates 100% compliance
(Lemov, 2010).
[video clip]
Even Lemov himself writes in his book
that his own 100% compliance as the “draconian” “power-hungry
plan” of a “battle of wills” against the students for precisely
what it is. Nothing else will be tolerated in a properly classroom
managed American classroom but an “obedience-obsessed” classroom
with a “grinding discipline” that's expected for all. Lemov
barely qualifies these expectations by saying that the “culture of
compliance” should be a “positive” one, and “most
importantly, invisible” (Lemov, 2010). Not only does Lemov demand a
sneaky and somehow “positive” 100% compliance, but Doug Lemov's
micromanaging tyranny includes that all students to never have even
their elbows on their desks, and Lemov
will even get the teachers of America to complain if an educator's
students
only raise their hands up halfway
(Lemov, 2010). For Doug Lemov, only 100% compliance is acceptable
behavior.
Not even Adolf Hitler got 100%
compliance, and thank god for that. If August Landmesser was my
relation, I'd be a proud man. He did right, when everybody else was
doing wrong. Conforming to a sick society is not a sign of progress.
[August Landmesser picture]
To oppress somebody dehumanizes the
Oppressed, and taking away one's freedom is taking away their
humanity. For slaves with their humanity foregone, also gone are
their consciences, morals and ethics, ability to empathize,
democratic virtues, spirit and soul, ability to make autonomous
decisions, sense of justice and wonder, curiosity, ambition,
experiences, history, thoughts, heart, body, and brain. What was once
a man or woman is now a beast, an ox to be used to plow the fields,
not a person with consciousness, to be respected and reconciled with,
to have conversations with, to build culture with. Frederick Douglass
says: “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you
have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be
imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted
with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are
prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light
of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North and held and
flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish
outrages and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may
not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay
for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs
heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by
labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and
the lives of others.”
xxx
So what's the solution?
It's simple. Freedom and Democracy.
Civics.
By recognizing that children have
rights, American rights, not adult rights, but children's rights, we
then have to chose a format to educate them. In a room the respects
the freedom of the individual, the only form of government that makes
logical sense, is a democracy. Instead of having autocratic
dictators, and the slave masses obeying, we can try democracy. By
teaching children to stake a claim in their own education, and by
teaching democratic forms and functions, in a democratic society, we
learn to tolerate opinions we disagree with, as well as how to
debate, argue, and defend our points. We learn that the minority get
their say, and the majority get their way.
If our schools do not teach democratic
practices and forms, where do Americans learn about how to behave in
a democracy? At a fast food corporation? In the military, where they
are required to not ask why, but to do and die?
Schools are the proper place to learn
democracy, and if the administration and the teachers are practicing
democratic values themselves, that virtue can easier be transferable.
Sugata Mitra's Hole in the Wall
experiment shows us that learning is self-organizing and
self-emergent. Sugata Mitra put a computer in a wall in a poor area
of New Delhi, India, and a dropout kid, a huckleberry finn type of
young man, was curious, and started to figure out how to use the
computer. Then other kids became interested. In a weeks' time, poor
children who didn't know English, never seen a computer, or
understand the Internet, all had email accounts, had learned enough
English words to figure out how to google, and other rudimentary ways
of using the Internet. They were self-taught novices in computers,
and they learned it all themselves.
This implies that education is
self-organizing and self-emergent and that the teachers just need to
get out of the way.
[The Learning Pyramid]
Explain the Learning Pyramid.
Lastly, this brings us to John Green
and Salmon Khan.
John Green's Crash Course:
With John Green, a US History teacher
could just make the students watch all of his videos, and they'd get
the same education in a traditional sit and get lecture classroom. By
putting his lectures online, never again will John Green have to
lecture those same points. It's there for the world to see. Instead
of saving notes, and repeating oneself over and over again, now folks
can educate themselves, and self-education is the most powerful form
of education.
Salmon Khan of Khan's Academy uses the
same principle as John Green, only Salmon Khan covers so much more.
Khan dabbles in history, but mostly, engineering, and mathematical
principles. STEM, Science Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics in
America are slipping. We're no longer #1 in the world. We're like 37.
But with Khan's Academy, anybody at anytime, can master Engineering
or Calculus, or any other thing they are curious about. With the
Internet, we have the capacity for completely changing education, to
where one can learn the concepts prior to a classroom, and while in
the classroom, use those other forms of educational tactics on the
bottom of the Learning Pyramid. They can argue, debate, and present
their argument for their ideas.
Jean Jacques Rousseau says that by
making our children strong, they will be good.
By doing this, we'll be teaching our
children like the Prussians taught the top 1/2%, and what a great
lesson. We're all Kings and Queens. We're all Princes and Princesses.
Now we have common poverty, but we should have common wealth. We're
all Kentuckians. We're all Americans. So let's start acting like it.
It turns out, Pink Floyd was right.
[Pink Floyd clip]
xxx
A Literature Review on Popular
Education in America:
http://thefreedomskool.blogspot.com/2014/11/democracy-in-america-where-literature.html
My Manifesto on Education, Life, and
Morality:
http://thefreedomskool.blogspot.com/2014/10/a-dissertation-for-liberation-and.html
A video primer for My Manifesto:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN2nqYOua9s
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