Pharyngula

I've said it before: the heart of the problem here is that there is a de facto monopoly on primary schooling, and it's under government control. As long as this is the case, different factions will try to use it to push their agenda, with little if any regard for the purported mission of the schools, which is to educate children.

Separate school and state, and let the fundies send their kids to their own academies of ignorance, while smarter people send their kids to schools that teach science. Think of it as evolution in action.

-jcr

Posted by: John C. Randolph | May 19, 2007 5:30 PM

Think of it as evolution in action.

It's not as though people are supposed to worship "evolution", you know. Some things are better than evolution. Real "Intelligent Design" could be better than evolution.

Posted by: 386sx | May 19, 2007 5:45 PM

I've said it before: the heart of the problem here is that there is a de facto monopoly on primary schooling, and it's under government control. As long as this is the case, different factions will try to use it to push their agenda, with little if any regard for the purported mission of the schools, which is to educate children.

I'd suggest a short look at one or two other countries. Having parliamentary control on what people learn might turn out to be a good thing.

Posted by: David Marjanović | May 19, 2007 6:14 PM

Why should there be any organization controlling what people can learn? Aside from being ethically unjustifiable, it just creates a target for special interests to control - whoever controls the organization can influence the minds of hundreds of millions.

Centralization of power and authority is generally a bad idea - a principle our primate-hierarchial minds seem to have trouble grasping.

Posted by: Caledonian | May 19, 2007 6:27 PM

JohnnieCanuck: Still, if the introduction of exotic species into new environments is any indication, there will be unforeseen consequences to be dealt with before we get very far along. We only have the one test tube to experiment in.

I would caution you from resorting to metamagical thinking (a la 'unforeseen consequences' whooOOoOOo!) regarding farming and GMO crops. Not to be harsh, but just because Behe doesnt *get* evolution and just because you dont *get* farming doesnt mean the people studying those subjects dont.

Posted by: ERV | May 19, 2007 6:54 PM

For those of you outside the US, do you have problems with your school boards (if you have them) or is this primarily an American issue?

Posted by: Paguroidea | May 19, 2007 7:19 PM

Perfectly mundane transportation of exotic organisms has already wreaked inestimable damage upon our artificial agricultural ecosystems.

See the European corn borer, the Chinese chestnut, and the Australian rabbit for examples of the sorts of harm that can be done.

Personally, I'm all in favor of GMO crops - if they're altered to produce no viable pollen or seeds. Keep any alterations out of the gene pool proper, and everything's fine. One more thing, though: label them.

Posted by: Caledonian | May 19, 2007 7:57 PM

I see the crazy free marketers have shown up. The major benefit of public schools is they attempt (imperfectly, but better than the invisible handjob which attempts the opposite) to break down class barriers.

In short, if the Libertarians get their way, poor kids will have poor educations which get them low paying service and labor jobs, and rich kids will have the best educations that give them the best salaries, and such a system will transform America into an impenetrable aristocracy in less than a generation. When we guarantee that everyone has an average (and always striving to be better) education, we break the positively reinforcing caste structure inherent in capitalist systems.

Posted by: Stogoe | May 19, 2007 8:03 PM

Ugh, 'carotenoid biosynthetic pathway', not 'biocaratenoid synthetic pathway'. I wish we could edit typos on ScienceBlogs.

And to Caledonian-- Do you honestly think that the scientists working on GMOs have never heard of an invasive species? Do you understand how an invasive species and creating a crop with a completed metabolic pathway are completely different things?

Posted by: ERV | May 19, 2007 8:07 PM

We don't need no education.

Posted by: Michael Behe | May 19, 2007 8:39 PM

For those of you outside the US, do you have problems with your school boards (if you have them) or is this primarily an American issue?

On a day to day basis, at the moment, no it doesn't bother me.

When I see the likelihood of inculcated gross arrogance in the next generation of movers and shakers, hell yes - that bothers me.

Posted by: Lee Harrison | May 19, 2007 8:49 PM

The alternative seems to be as follows: tax everyone to pay for shoddy schools that have watered-down standards, can't remove troublesome children because everyone's entitled to attend, and are a laughingstock compared to schools in other, more civilized countries, and then the rich will pay to send their kids to quality educational establishments, while everyone who can't afford to pay both the tax and the price of a private school is stuck with the public system.

(emphasis added) Caledonian, are you aware that those schools in other countries are public tax-dollar funded state run schools? If a straight comparison is what you're looking for then this would indicate that the problem with the schooling system in America is too little intervention from trained regulated professionals, and too much from John Q "let's-vote-ourselves-bread-and-circuses" Public.

The experience in Australia has been that State regulation makes it harder for special interest groups to gain control, not easier. You want to fix a rotten sytem, that's commendable - but you're fixing the wrong bit and throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

My 2 cents...

Posted by: Lee Harrison | May 19, 2007 8:59 PM

However, in rural small town America (or at least where I live) a person who doesn't attend church would never get elected no matter how well-qualified they were. They wouldn't be trusted by the Christians who make up almost the entire community. Hopefully, that will change in the future. In other places I've lived in the US, the topic of the church you attend would never be brought up in election for school board members.

Posted by: Tessa | May 19, 2007 08:59 PM

In Lancaster, Minnesota, about 5 or 6 years ago some creationists gained control of the school board and fired a teacher for teaching evolution as science. The students rallied for him, but the vote was against him no matter what they said.

Without eternal vigilance it can happen here.

5 stars. Joe Bob says "check it out."

Posted by: Mike Haubrich | May 19, 2007 9:14 PM

Solutions which have worked in other places don't work here.

I'm not sure that they have actually been tried the same way, but I truly do sympathise. I appreciate the difficulty well enough to at least be damn glad I live in Australia, anyway :-)

I think this just means that there is a discussion yet to be had in America. As I said, I do sympathise, but I think a little antidisestablishmentarianism might be in order.

As you said, though - I don't live there.

Posted by: Lee Harrison | May 19, 2007 9:26 PM

Remember Brester's Millions?

Vote "None of the above."

Posted by: John Marley | May 19, 2007 9:57 PM

ERV @#14:
The reproductive cycle of rice? Seriously? How about I give you the genetic makeup of wheat, instead? Durum wheat (where your pasta comes from) it tetraploid, a hybrid formed from two distinct species or strains of grasses. Bread wheat is hexaploid -- it has three copies of the basic wheat genome. Grasses are notable as a family for producing large volumes of pollen and seed, and for reproducing both rapidly and widely. The properties that have allowed them to become the staple crops of much of the world are also properties that make them extremely weedy and difficult to wipe out, as well as making them among the species most likely to share genetic material with wild strains.

As Caldonian and I have noted, of course, it doesn't even require genetic modification for the introduction of exotic strains of plant, animal or microbiotic life to wreck an ecosystem and have substantial ecological (and, indeed, economic) fallout. Phragmites, for example, is a reed (actually, its common name is "common reed") which over the last 50 years or so has gone from being an innocuous wetland plant to a major invasive across the eastern United States. The reason? Introduced strains (of the same species!), probably from Europe, are for some reason drastically more agressive than the preexisting strains. It's now turning wetlands (as well as less important places like the sides of highways) into monocultures, posing a serious risk to the specialist species which rely on other reeds and grasses, and has even been implicated in wildfires in New York City.

Finally, you've at least twice raised this canard about "the [unnamed] scientists who study GMOs." The scientists who are responsible for producing GMOs are not tasked with, and have no specialty in, assessing the potential damage to the ecosystem from their creations, and the companies with the rights to their product have a strong profit incentive against proper testing. While I have no particular interest in banning GMOs or forbidding their creation, I do have a very strong interest in seeing that a damn good effort is put into making sure we're not just screwing ourselves so Monsanto's shareholders can make a profit.

(No Wiki use involved. :-p)

Posted by: JBL | May 19, 2007 10:41 PM

Well then there's only one thing for you to do, PZ...

Run against him and win.

Posted by: Josh | May 19, 2007 11:42 PM

Michael Behe #19: "We don't need no education."

That thoughtful double-negative...which explicitly means WE NEED EDUCATION. Desperately. Right?

Posted by: Arnosium Upinarum | May 20, 2007 12:06 AM

@Caledonian

The reason German-style schools wouldn't work here is because we have centuries-long history of racism and oppression such that race and social class are inextricably linked. Because IQ and school performance are most heavily determined by what social class you're born into (yes, class determines IQ, not the other way around) means that we'd end up with all the darker skinned people in the lower and trade school tracks and a nice fair-skinned elite level with a smattering of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean kids mixed in for diversity. Notice I didn't say Asian because the Vietnamese, Filipino, and pretty much all of the rest of Asia would be with the rest of the brown-skinned kids.

Posted by: JYB | May 20, 2007 1:03 AM

Whenever creationists run for some office, we should expose them as Communist allies, as they share ideas and goals with Stalin and Mao.

Posted by: bullfighter | May 20, 2007 2:12 AM

Disgusting.

Posted by: Steven | May 20, 2007 3:47 AM

for #35

We don't need no education
We dont need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

We don't need no education
We dont need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

"Wrong, Do it again!"
"If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding. How can you
have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?"
"You! Yes, you behind the bikesheds, stand still laddy!"

Posted by: MarkH | May 20, 2007 6:20 AM

"if the Libertarians get their way, poor kids will have poor educations "

Oh, for crying out loud. A lot of poor kids in America don't get an education AT ALL today, they get incompetent babysitting at a cost to the taxpayers that's considerably above a typical private school tuition. If you're going to trot out your class warfare rhetoric as an argument in favor of our public school system, you're going to have to do far better than that.

If you honestly cared about poor children, you wouldn't be satisfied with the NEA cartel's "just give us more money and don't ask any questions about performance" BS that they've been selling us since the 1970's.

-jcr

Posted by: John C. Randolph | May 20, 2007 6:32 AM

Posted by: Caledonian

I don't think the communal-leaning people here are ready to implement, say, the German school model, in which there are different schools for students attending college/learning trades. Judging by Stogoe's comments, such a system (in which everyone doesn't receive the same education) would face violent rejection by the "progressive" elements here.

You so don't know what you're talking about. And it's so clear that you're massively distorting the issue to convince people who don't know better that your bankrupt educational philosophy has merit.

We have this here, in most major cities, in America, right now. My daughter, being in the Top 1% in her school system through elementary school, is now going to a feeder middle school (magnet program for Math & Science) for one of the Top-100 (Top-25 actually) high schools in America.

And, we had this in the past. My wife went to one of the Top-40 high schools in America, it was a gifted and talented program. My best friend in college went to a public HS that was, in it's time, one of the best HS in America (Bronx HS of Science). Both of which were, and remain, elite high schools.

OTOH, even in your regular public high schools, the track system exists. You have your college prep track, your general track and your trade-level/blue-collar track.

As for me, I went to a private HS for most of it. Due to a late-year move, my brother and I spent part of one year in a public high school. Tell you the truth, even though out private schools was "supposed" to be a great school, the results were spotty.

First, we used the same books, though the private school books were, in many subjects, a full revision (or two) older (that pesky profit motive there). Second, in most classes, the public school students were within pages of what we'd learned (except Chemistry, where my old school was a full semester ahead, but that was because we didn't do experiments (darn those costly chemicals hurt the profit margin) in my private HS).

A third issue was the teacher turn-over and quality. Fact of the matter is the bottom line profitability meant that teachers were under-paid. We had some great young teachers. All of whom left for public schools. And, ironically, it's still that way, today, at the local private schools in my medium sized American city.

Another issue was the teachers that didn't leave, were usually pathetic. We had a hack creationist biology teacher who refused to teach sex education. Our history teacher was drunk from 8:00AM until he left. Our brutally sadistic coach finally got fired after he got caught having sex with one of the girls on the softball team.

One more problem with your comment is the bullshit strawman. The REAL policy is "everyone is entitled to the same ACCESS to the opportunites of education." Not 'everyone is entitled to the same education.' And while they can't "kick trouble makers out," under the 'access to opportunities' doctrine, they do have warehouse schools for these disciplinarian problems; places where they go to ruin their lives without disturbing the students there to learn.

Posted by: Moses | May 20, 2007 7:37 AM

For some reason this reminds me of those "Purity Balls." Yuk!

Posted by: pablo | May 20, 2007 8:01 AM

OTOH, even in your regular public high schools, the track system exists. You have your college prep track, your general track and your trade-level/blue-collar track.

It's clear that you know virtually nothing about the German system, or you wouldn't be comparing our system with theirs. It is fundamentally different.

Posted by: Caledonian | May 20, 2007 8:04 AM

Perhaps we could encourage more atheists to run for spots on their local school boards. I think it is important that the reality-based community be represented, especially in education.

Posted by: vjack | May 20, 2007 8:28 AM

Stogoe, the pseudo-caste system that you so despise is precisely what the current system is producing. As convenient as I'm sure it must be to label your ideological opponents as class-obsessed elitists, sooner or later you're going to have to acknowledge that the educational system model you favor simply doesn't work very well.

You're also going to have to discard the idea that going to college is a magic ticket to quality jobs and social mobility.

Posted by: Caledonian | May 20, 2007 9:02 AM

Well GMOs are turning into a wonderfully fitting side conversation for a post on Creationism. Arguments from incredulity and arguments from arrogance and magical thinking all over the place. Yay.

JBL--The properties that have allowed them to become the staple crops of much of the world are also properties that make them extremely weedy and difficult to wipe out, as well as making them among the species most likely to share genetic material with wild strains.

JBL--As Caldonian and I have noted, of course, it doesn't even require genetic modification for the introduction of exotic strains of plant, animal or microbiotic life to wreck an ecosystem and have substantial ecological (and, indeed, economic) fallout. Phragmites, for example, is a reed...

JBL--The scientists who are responsible for producing GMOs are not tasked with, and have no specialty in, assessing the potential damage to the ecosystem from their creations...

JBL--I do have a very strong interest in seeing that a damn good effort is put into making sure we're not just screwing ourselves so Monsanto's shareholders can make a profit.

Moses--In my life, I've seldom seen scientists make the effort necessary, or even discuss the long-term consequences, of their mistakes when it comes the environment, food-supply, etc.

Posted by: ERV | May 20, 2007 9:25 AM

GMO = ever-expanding corporatization of agriculture, loss of local control, loss of crop diversity.

That's my understanding.

Do we really want a few giant corporations to have so much control over the world's agriculture?

Posted by: CalGeorge | May 20, 2007 9:48 AM

As the income disparity increases, I certainly see more people with less education getting appointed or elected into educational positions. This is because the relative worth of an well educated individual will grow upwards from the mean that people are used to for tax-payer paid individuals. People are not going to be willing to pay $40-50k for a teacher, even though MS or even BS degree can easily get you that in the marketplace, especially when more than half of all Americans make less than that. While majority of Americans are falling behind in the curve for growth, the well-qualified portion of the population is growing rabidly outside the reach of publicly funded institutions.

Posted by: daenku32 | May 20, 2007 9:56 AM

There's a reason I included the disclaimer that universal public education was imperfect. It's because it is. But it's still the best way to combat the caste system.

Privatization and blind faith in the invisible handjob will do nothing but drive up costs and concentrate wealth, power, and education even moreso into those lineages that already possess it.

Take a look at the current health care industry for just a taste of what education will look like if we privatize. No education at all for tens of millions of people, and prohibitively high costs for even the most basic schooling.

Well, at least we can sue for malpractice. That solves everything.

Posted by: Stogoe | May 20, 2007 10:29 AM

But it's still the best way to combat the caste system.

Point #1: The purpose of education is to educate, not accomplish social-engineering goals.

Point #2: The best way to accomplish the social-engineering goal of avoiding a stratified society is to give people the opportunity to receive a quality education, not trying to force everyone to receive the same low-quality education.

Point #3: Trying to force everyone to receive the same low-quality education is utterly pointless. Those families who have the capacity to ensure their children have other options available will do so, so the most well-off will avoid the public schools if those schools cannot offer a good education. Everyone who can't - particularly those without money / time to arrange for private schooling or do it themselves - will be stuck with a garbage education that doesn't give them the capacity to do much of anything.

Given that the strategy you're embracing leads directly to the outcome you claim to want to prevent, I can only conclude that your position has less to do with observing reality and responding to it then forwarding an ideology that gains in influence when its crazy conclusions are treated as truth.

Posted by: Caledonian | May 20, 2007 10:50 AM

I love it, the creationists want to destroy public schools and turn them in to religious schools, the libertarians want to destroy public schools and turn them in to businesses.

I came from a state that had a very advanced voucher program and moved to one that has a very high number of charter schools. I can tell you that most of those schools, in both categories, suck. With the voucher schools they found that with the exception of the preexisting religious schools (Catholic and Lutheran), who also got to cherry pick their students eliminating any candidates with low scores, special needs, or behavioral issues, they did statistically well ... truly surprising [/end sarcasm]. The others?

Curriculum: downloaded worksheets from the internet.

Field trips to Mcdonalds.

Classrooms with no books, teachers ... oh, and no kids, but they were receiving vouchers for them.

A principal who falsely doubled his enrollement and bought matching Mercedes for his wife and himself.

In my current state? The charter schools are notorious for being diploma mills. Kids 3-4 semesters behind "graduate" in a couple of weeks. Of course they can't pass the state's high stakes testing, and have a hard time spelling "Cat" if you spotted them a "C" and an "A," but they have that deploama that showed they gradumagated.

Caledonia,

It isn't that difficult to remove students from a school or school district. We have a simple point system. If you have so many disciplinary incidents (of a high enough point value) you eventually get a 10 day suspension while the governing board evaluates your case and you go "bye bye." It isn't that difficult. You have a property right to education, that doesn't mean that right cannot be taken away through due process. It all depends on state and local laws and on the district's willingness to go through the process.

It is amusing, generally libertarians favor local control, but then decry how local control has established schools that don't function as well as they might if they had higher standards and centralized guidelines. The response? Privatize schools. Which of course would create even fewer controls and, thus far (as evidenced by my examples above) has produced poorer schools than the kids were attending in the first place. The response? "Competition will make them better." After how many generations? So far the corporate schools have shown a tendency to provide lower standards, lower quality teachers, equipment, and opportunities. They've gone through and weeded out the kids with learning disabilities, behavioral problems, and low test scores, and they've still failed. It's been a while since I've read the journals, but I believe it was San Francisco that turned over a number of their schools to a private business that was going to turn their schools around for them. All of the negative elements I mentioned took place prior to the city kicking the business out of their schools and terminating the contract. The end result? The business failed, both financially, and more importantly, educationally. They ended up with kids that were even less prepared to lead even remotely successful lives.

1) Pay teachers well. Train them well.
2) Reduce school and class sizes (drastically).

Your first two, I agree with whole heartedly, but where is the money going to come from? You'll have plenty of support until you mention that horrific "T" word. If you don't have that "cut" word in front of it, folks will freak out, especially those red state'ers.

3) Eliminate bureacracy. Abolish school boards.

You're going to have a lot of oppositon to this. People love their local control. Also it's been my experience that the boards don't create that much bureaucracy. Large city districts will generally have roughly the same size school boards as small districts, but vastly greater numbers of paper pushers and bureaucrats.

4) Eliminate support for the textbook industry.

You're going to have a major problem with this one. Two states, California and Texas, effectively dominate textbook purchases. I'd love to hear what your solution is though.

5) Stop the practice of teaching to the test.

Depends on what you mean by teaching to the test.

6) Mainstream those with disabilities, fast-track those who are gifted.

I agree with this to a degree, but what about those with disabilities that impact the learning of other students? Also it can be quite challenging to teach a mixed class. You have to balance assisting the disabled students with keeping the non-disabled students engaged. If you shift too far in one direction, you lose the disabled students, if you shift too far in the other direction, the non-disabled students become bored and you lose them. Shake up the mix with a few students with differing disabilities, and you really have fun. ;o)

I have to wonder, not that I disagree with you, but is it fair to include disabled students, but establish special classrooms for gifted students?

Posted by: dogmeatib | May 20, 2007 11:19 AM