I used to work as a teacher before changing career. Here is a short video from John Stossel to introduce today’s post:
Education in the US and UK is a vexed question. The answer of the Left is to keep private business out of education, to throw more money at the system, and to insist on theoretical models that treat children as objects to be manipulated, rather than human beings with free will. Whenever the Conservative government raises the suggestion of bringing back Grammar Schools, the suggestion is met with opprobrium and charges that such a system hurts the poor – when in fact such schools allow intelligent children from poorer backgrounds to learn skills that will aid their social mobility.
Education, because it involves humans, needs to be understood holistically, not just in economic terms (although they are relevant). One of the reasons why the free market is relevant to this debate is because humans are individuals, with individual needs. Given this fundamental fact, a one-size-fits-all approach is inappropriate. Parents need to be able to find schools that are right for their children’s needs.
A common response to this objection is that the vast majority of parents cannot afford private schools – but this view suffers from a certain myopia. My friend, James Tooley, Professor of Education at Newcastle University, has devoted his life to setting up low-cost private schools in developing nations, following a Damascus Road revelation about this matter in Hyderabad, India.
His research and other interviews are worth exploring in depth: they are eye-opening.
Where education is perceived to be a right, that someone else must pay for, the principle, “familiarity breeds contempt”, will follow. This causes further harm, because it makes many students passive: rather than seeing themselves as collaborating with teachers to learn the material, they expect the teacher to do all the work. This general attitude is a root cause of educational stagnation, and can be attributed to the conceptual decoupling of education from economic and social progress. Teachers who impress upon their students that they must work hard to make it in a competitive, free market world tend to produce better motivation in their students than those who give the impression that “everything will work out in the end”.
This problem is compounded by a corporate culture that insists on university degrees for access to a variety of white collar jobs. This mechanism compels many people to become burdened with debt pursuing degrees in the hope of obtaining those jobs, only to be met with scarcity and competition that neither school nor university has prepared them for. As this pattern becomes common knowledge, it turns into discouragement at school level as students ask themselves, “Why bother? I won’t make it anyway.” Fatalism is corrosive to social and economic progress. Far better to have more flexibility in companies, with students encouraged to consider a variety of options beside university, including low-cost business skill colleges. If I were running, for example, a chain of bakeries, I would rather have a “graduate” on my staff who had been trained in a variety of skills that were pertinent to business: elementary contract and corporate law; writing succinct reports; interpreting budgets; negotiation with third parties; etc. This would make the worker more valuable to me, because I know that I could not only put him into a particular role, but could also use him in other places in the event of restructuring, and bring him up to speed with some additional training.
The length of this post prohibits a full analysis of the problem – I invite readers to place more factors in the comments below – but there is one more point I would like to raise, namely the way in which schools are constrained when dealing with disruptive children. Most people seem to expect state schools to take problematic children, come what may. They think that teachers can work wonders to turn all of these children around. But here is the problem: every minute a teacher spends on one-to-one work with this child is a minute not spent on the rest of the class: what about the rights of the other children?
Philip Augustine said:
The parochial schools in my area, whether Catholic or Protestant, find a away for any child no matter how poor to attend school if their parents want them to have a Christian education. Of course, in Britain there’s limits to how many non-denomination children can go to Catholic schools. My particular state is looking at the same type of laws. However, at the time being, the Bishop of my Diocese has made an effort that if a child’s parents agree to a church attendance agreement that their child may go to any Diocese school free of charge.
One issue though is that many religious schools curriculum are moving closer to the public schools. The trouble is that it at times subtlety undermines Christian values. I wish that more school would move towards the Classical Curriculum.
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Nicholas said:
I’m glad your parochial schools are having success and you have my admiration for your own work in teaching in the past, which I recall you mentioning some time ago. Personally, I think all schools should have an element of Catholic virtue teaching as part of the curriculum as well as critical thinking, which, for advanced students, could involve Aristotelian and Thomistic logic – but I think it would be impractical to push that on students who have the rudiments but don’t wish to go further. It’s a shame you and I don’t live in the same area: sounds like you’d be a good business partner to set up an independent school. If Scoop and NEO were with us, that would be even better. Alas, a man can dream if nothing else. The problem with any start-up is raising the initial capital. Last year, before I left teaching, I was considering a colleague’s business plan to set up an independent school, using government grant money (the current Conservative government is more in favour of independent schools than Labour for obvious reasons). He was thinking of initially renting commercial property and keeping staff numbers down. A no-frills approach to some things is a good cost-saving method, provided the customer understands that before contracting.
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Scoop said:
I remember a man I took the Spiritual Exercises with some 20 years ago up in Pennsylvania. He related that he taught the Classics a small independent college in Connecticut and because of the curricula itself which prompted much conversation in class (all classics seem to have a moral or religious grounding and many of the authors were Catholics) had proven to be an incubator for Catholic conversions. He told me that every year he had questions about the Catholic faith and that many went on to study the faith and eventually convert. Interesting. It is apologetics without trying. No wonder the classics have fallen into disuse in our public schools and most colleges these days. They contain too much about God, morality, ethics and Biblical references; which prompts students to turn to the Bible to flesh out their understanding of what the author was trying to relate.
Another vague memory (which I think was from Dinesh D’Souza’s book Illiberal Education), related a statistic that I can’t remember exactly. The gist was that in reading, writing, mathematics etc. our schools have dropped about a full grade every 10 years. In other words in 40 years time a graduate from high school has the equivalent of an 8th grade education. I know that the new folks can hardly write in cursive anymore and that they are pressed to know the computer keyboard and to study computers etc. that do the math for them. Gone are the long-hand mathematical solutions or the use of ancient contraptions such as the slide rule which helped people actually understand how we got to the answer. Today the only emphasis seems to be to get the right answer and not to learn how to think it through and find a solution as to how to solve a problem. In other words, we memorize mechanical tasks and no longer understand problem solving unless someone shows us how to find the answer on the internet.
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Nicholas said:
As a classicist, I can relate to the first story. Studying Greco-Roman literature, history, philosophy, art, etc, inevitably leads to ethical and metaphysical (and sometimes epistemological) considerations.
Re: the difference between “getting answers” and learning to think, I couldn’t agree more. When I taught philosophy, I had a student who couldn’t read my cursive script and that was rather worrying, because my cursive script is very reader-friendly. Unfortunately, in the pressure of a lot of modern classrooms, it becomes fire-fighting rather than progressive character formation. Too many times I had students who would ask me what page something was on rather than trying to use the contents page or index. One of the root problems is a general disobedience: I told them at the start of the year to get the textbook (which I had vetted; I chose the best one for the course – the college wouldn’t issue textbooks; students were expected to get their own). Very few of them did and, as a result, they suffered for it.
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Scoop said:
As far as I know in the US we still make college students buy their textbooks. There are alternatives; like buying used textbooks and then selling them back to the bookstore when the course is over. I can’t believe that college students would not buy the necessary material to take a class and put into jeopardy what the cost of their education was all about. Seems a bit counter-productive to say the least.
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Nicholas said:
Yes, that was only one of many problems there. I had to get out because I could analyse the situation but couldn’t do anything about it. Since I wasn’t a shareholder or director, I had no real means of influencing things. At one stage I was having a lot of unwanted negative thoughts (I think I probably have some form of OCD), and that told me it was time to go.
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Scoop said:
Whether you have a form of OCD or not you seem to have analyzed the problem correctly. How do you teach people who simply want a passing grade but loathe an education?
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Nicholas said:
Without being too explicit – let’s just say people were worried about me; furthermore, it is common knowledge among UK teachers that new teachers generally suffer some kind of breakdown in their first few years. You’ve hit the nail on the head. For me, that is an important reason why we should be able to expel kids who persistently refuse to work hard and cause disruption to the other kids – it’s not fair on them that they should suffer for someone else’s wilfulness.
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Scoop said:
Its worse than that. They take up a seat in the University that is probably coveted by some who were not admitted. We find that here with programs like Affirmative Action which has a different standard of admission due to race primarily.
Back in the late 70’s or early 80’s I remember reading an article by a professor at Harvard Medical School. He said that he was frightened to flunk black students in his class because they tended to end up in litigation or in being dismissed. The outcome, according to this teacher, was people earning their Doctor’s or (Lawyer’s) license who were not ready or up to the standards of previous graduates. He said it was frightening . . . since most patients simply look at the prestigious school credentials and yet they turn out to be useless. You may have a doctor or lawyer that you pay for their services that have not the ability to even be in the field in the first place. The public is totally oblivious to this fact and it smacks of fraud. Buyer beware!
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Nicholas said:
Yes – that is particularly worrying because most people do not know they can sue lawyers for professional Negligence and that lawyers (if they are smart) have Negligence insurance, so they may end up with a bad lawyer (who may have breached his fiduciary duty in not explaining the customer’s rights) and then feel they can do nothing about it.
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Scoop said:
Its a troubling mess since we are turning down people who performed better in school and in their entrance exams, SAT’s etc. and get turned down from the University simply because they are white. This is social engineering at its worst. You cannot make up for past grievances by perpetrating new grievances against those you hold responsible. Besides the kids it is effecting had nothing to do with the bigotry of the past. It is simply reverse discrimination.
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Philip Augustine said:
Its worse I’m afraid…
I volunteer teach Religion class to public school kids at nights. Kids literally can’t find page numbers anymore when I tell them.
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Nicholas said:
Heaven help us. I’m not a Luddite per se, but I fear that too much technology is turning people into addicts and vegetables, losing their capacity for independence and problem-solving. I taught sociology of religion before I quit teaching and that was eye-opening too. I had to try and un-brainwash the kids so they could critically analyse the material rather than swallow anti-Christian propaganda. We are partly to blame of course: hypocrisy damages our standing in the eyes of non-believers. Nevertheless, there is a deeper problem of relativism and postmodernism. Once you start hacking at the metaphysical roots of our system of knowledge, ethics, and faith, it is very difficult to return.
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NEO said:
That, of course, is one of the main reasons that employers demand a degree. It carries some assurance that the applicant can read and write, at some level.
Small towns are of course, better (or at least, less bad) than cities, mostly because the community monitors more effectively. One of the main causes of the problem is that parents have come to believe, often with encouragement, that learning is what the schools are for, no parental involvement is encouraged (and sometimes mandated). In truth, it is parental involvement that is the critical factor.
here is also the difference when I was young, one had to convince the parents that the teacher was wrong, now (sometimes with, and sometimes without cause) parents tend to always take the child’s side, often ads absurdum.
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Nicholas said:
Indeed. Lack of parental responsibility is a toxic ingredient in this stew of poisons. Were parents involved by virtue of directly paying for their children’s education, they would be more interested in school budgets and seeing the money spent primarily on teaching rather than ancillary stuff. As it is, many students are left with their teachers as the primary role models and their parents playing a secondary role. This is worrying because it blurs relationship lines: a teacher, however good at pastoral work, has a primarily professional relationship with a student: s/he is not the parent, and the parent is not supposed to abrogate his responsibility. Our current set-up is a mess, a far cry from the days when mothers taught children in the early years and then sent them to work with their fathers or kept them at home to learn cottage industry or sent them to schools. The current prevalence of daycare should be a warning sign: undermine your child’s relationship with you at your peril.
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Scoop said:
True. Even if the kid punched the teacher or started throwing desks around. God help the teacher that is anything other than passive during such and altercation.
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Nicholas said:
Yes. “Problem” children are a complex matter, worthy of a post in its own right. Without wishing to sound clinical and inhumane, but that is inevitable given the theoretical discussion we are having, you can think of them in different categories, requiring different responses.
A) Children who want to learn, work hard, but are not as intellectually gifted as their peers. Their virtuous hard work is meritorious.
B) Children who are not gifted intellectually, but could progress if they were willing to work. They are not disruptive – but they are not helpful either. The extent to which they are tolerated (depending on one-to-one interaction to encourage reform) sends a bad message to the rest: you can get away with not working.
C) Children who are capable intellectually-speaking, but are disruptive. These cannot be tolerated after a “grace period” in which reform is attempted because they are harming the other children’s progress. I prefer to analyse this as, in essence, violation of the terms of a contract: break the rule and suffer the penalty of expulsion. In a private school, you can explicitly include this in a contract the parents sign. in the case of these children, expulsion may be necessary in order to teach them the more valuable life lesson that society does not owe you a living.
D) Children with severe learning difficulties: specialist schools are preferable for meeting their needs, rather than mainstream education. No blame should be attached in the cases where free will is compromised, but neither should one naively believe that mainstream education can meet their needs and the needs of other students in equal measure: prioritising invariably occurs with one party losing out. In the event of a conflict of parties, there needs to be discussion about allocation of resources. This is true even in state education because it is still somebody’s money being spent: the state stands in a fiduciary position to spend the money in good faith.
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Scoop said:
I agree wholeheartedly, Nicholas.
I just read the following piece at the Remnant and include it here for reflection. I do so because, much of these social problems has been caused between the rift between classical Christianity, the Christianity we see in the West today, and the cleaving of our Christian heritage from our Governments concerns; and this effects the present subject of education as well, of course. So this is an interesting read that I think both you and NEO will appreciate.
https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/fetzen-fliegen/item/3895-russia-fatima-and-the-future-of-christianity
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Nicholas said:
Thanks for the link, Scoop. I’ll peruse it now.
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Scoop said:
Good. I’d like to get yours and NEO’s reaction to this piece as well.
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Nicholas said:
An interesting article, much of which I agree with. I am still pondering whether I am supposed to go to Catholicism. I have questions and doubts. I suppose I am at risk of being a wicked generation asking for a sign, but if the Russian Orthodox Church healed the schism by acknowledging the Pope as the chief Patriarch, that would be a powerful sign to me.
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Scoop said:
Yes, it would be helpful but I think there are numerous signs that point us there anyway. What is disturbing is the face of the Church at present which makes some think that the Church, as it was, has disappeared. But to me, and others of my ilk, we would expect it to be so for Satan is not prone to leave us alone. If there is a Church more hated by Satan than Catholicism I haven’t seen it. And if it is being constantly attacked by the Evil One then this must be Christ’s Church. It is a powerful sign and to join Her in Her hour of need is like the US joining forces with the UK against Hitler. Of course, we had to nudged by a mighty blow from Japan to do the right thing. But individuals like yourself are needed and the soldiers who fight in this Spiritual Combat may well receive a heroes welcome at the end of their life.
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Nicholas said:
I find the whole thing very confusing, especially the idea that Benedict XVI is the Pope and Francis an anti-pope. It is unfortunate also that I have found some Catholics rather grating and, dare I say it, pharisaical. I feel myself asking, like Peter, “Who, then, can be saved?” Quite frankly, I don’t feel I have the capacity to run the race required by Catholicism. I have a worldview that makes allowances for life’s contingencies – perhaps that makes me too prone to compromise, but I feel the alternative is a set of laws no one can live up to. Recently I have had cause to reflect on this. I went to church last Sunday to support a friend of mine who was preaching in lieu of our pastor. Afterwards, we got to talking, and I agreed with him that after conversion one has a period where God feels close and one is protected, but then one moves into a period of greater self-responsibility.
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Scoop said:
Your friend is right. It is like a honeymoon unless you are already at a high state of holiness when you are called. During this early time, for most, it seems that God miraculously gets rid of all obstacles for you and you move with ease. As time rolls on it becomes more difficult as you gain in the virtues. Each virtue gained is tested over and over again until you can resist. So your fear that there are laws no one can live up to is a valid fear. But fear not, we can, with the help of God overcome these with the right cultivation of virtues. It is not easy and let nobody speak to you as if it is not a journey that requires many falls from Grace; thus the need for the Sacrament of Confession. Slow and steady wins the race and everyday is a chance to take the ‘next best step’ in our lives. That is all that can be expected. You accept the laws as useful for your journey to perfection; for God desires Saints. But not many reach those lofty heights. But we can certainly move in the right direction and keep get better as our lives unfold. The trick is to die in a state of Grace and to persevere in the Truth, with a heart that includes Faith, Hope and Charity. In that state one can hope to hear Christ say to them, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’
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Nicholas said:
I have found something in my practice of intermittent fasting this year (not for religious reasons, I add) that makes me think on something of what you said. When I was reading the Austrian economics stuff, it made the point about how all action is choice-based and therefore transactional. We make choices based on what we value at the time. Ordinarily I have a great love of food (perhaps from my French ancestry), but I have chosen to eat only within certain hours and to generally deny myself certain pleasures – with the odd permitted exception here and there. My ability to make what, for me, is a difficult choice, comes from the fact that I value being thinner more than I value the passing delights of food. But it is still an unpleasant choice. I also do not wish food to be master of me. Something in the path of virtue tells me that one of the aims is to ensure that we have no Master but Christ – the different virtues are effectively Christ having mastery in different areas of our lives.
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Scoop said:
Its amazing what our will is capable of if exercised and strengthened. I too water fasted for 10 days twice in my life. The first few days were agony and after that one finds inner strength to do that which you have willed to do. You do not have to listen to your appetites and when you deny them you gain control of them and not the other way around.
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Nicholas said:
I water fasted for about four days once – as you say awful. If I had gone longer I would have hit the better spot, but my parents were not keen on the idea.
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Scoop said:
That is understandable. They say it isn’t very good for you but then Christ did it for 40 days. I am not so sure that it doesn’t give one control of their senses and that is a valuable lesson and valuable advantage in the spiritual life.
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Scoop said:
Also, there are a variety of opinions about the ’emeritus’ status but I don’t hold that there can be an emeritus Pope. So I am more inclined to go with Barnhardt on this:
https://www.barnhardt.biz/2018/05/08/the-bergoglian-antipapacy-how-it-happened-and-how-to-fix-it/
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Nicholas said:
Isn’t there only one precedent for it in Papal history. Seeing as the Church does not operate on a common law basis, I suppose that you could argue one precedent is not necessarily enough to establish something – it could have been as wrong then as Benedict’s abdication is now.
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Scoop said:
First read the article. There is no precedent for an emeritus but there is for a resignation of office. In the past they moved away from the Vatican, wore their previous clothes and did not speak of having a contemplative part of the present papacy. I think it is a signal to us all that he did not resign of his own will.
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Philip Augustine said:
The one thing I find odd is how unmoved JPII was when the question was presented with him resigning the Papacy. He simply could not do it. It’s odd that Joseph Ratzinger, his more or less brother in arms, who saw this witness would then later do just that.
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Nicholas said:
I’ve read the article. Her logic makes sense, so, if I were a Catholic, I would probably hold her position. As it is, I don’t have a stake in this at the moment.
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Philip Augustine said:
If Pope Benedict dies before Pope Francis, I think it more or less voids any theory of Benedict’s continued papacy. I personally do not believe that the common idea of sedevacantism is possible because of Mt.16:18. If God takes BXVI first, in my opinion, there’s the answer.
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Nicholas said:
I also appreciate your acceptance of my comment because I know I’d be accused of elitism and callousness in many circles for making these suggestions – but I stand by them. Children have free will and therefore they should feel the consequences of their choices: a school should be free to ease out children who actively refuse to play by the rules. I dislike the extent to which many theorists and parents accuse teachers of bad teaching when their kids act up as if they held no responsibility for raising disrespectful, entitled children.
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Scoop said:
When I was in school (many, many moons ago) the disruptive groups were either moved into classes of other disruptive kids (the teacher was always a big, imposing man who wouldn’t take their garbage) and they usually spent their time in detention until they reached the age of 16. At that time they were free to quit (and most of them did) and either went to work or went to vocational school or became criminals.
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NEO said:
Yep, it was better the other way – lots less spoiled snowflakes.
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Scoop said:
I was smacked more than once in school as were my more rowdy friends and it did us good; exactly the opposite of the education gurus of today have told us. We were not scarred by this; we were made to see the inappropriateness of our actions and words. Its called growing up and taking responsibility for what we say or do.
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NEO said:
Yep.
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Citizen Tom said:
Reblogged this on Citizen Tom and commented:
If you need some good arguments for school choice, here is some excellent material. Check out the comments too.
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