I went to a private school until halfway through 8th grade (the plan was for me to head to public high school anyway). I was floored at how far and away I was above everyone else. The next year, 3/4ths of the way through honors algebra at high school, I finally encountered something I hadn’t learned before. By that time it was too late for me, and I had given up even trying. There was no point, there were no consequences for not trying and I could learn better and faster on my own. Most of the other students that were skipping or just not paying attention, well I have no idea what drove them, though I know quite a few joined me in getting the CHSPE and heading to junior college early. But the majority of people I’ve run into from HS, after they graduated the ‘real’ way? “Hi would you like fries with that? O hey we went to *** together!” Me, smiling weakly, agreed and got the fuck out. Or they were security guards or the like. That’s a combination of poor schooling and lack of any real sort of jobs above the ‘would you like fries with that’ level locally.
California schools are, if I’m remembering correctly, the laughing stock of the nation. And we have the highest prison population as well, if I recall correctly. And probably the highest bill for both of those. AND the largest hi-tech workforce in the nation. And we’re the richest state in the nation, with some of the poorest in the nation. How do we fix this? Well, just throwing more money at things isn’t really going to help, unless we know how to throw money at these problems. Now, California private schools have their shit together. This is pretty obvious, most private schools do because they’re paid to have it that way. Public schools are paid quite well, especially at the college level (in Stockton, you teach at UOP for the prestige and Delta for the money. You’ll be making barely above the poverty level if you teach at the private college.) Now, I’m not saying the teachers shouldn’t be paid well, in fact, they should be among the most well-paid in our society. They are responsible for making our futures great or shitty through the minds of our children. Of course, parents share in this responsibility, and many would rather do drugs (alcohol among them) than pay attention to the real world in any way, shape, or form.
How do we fix this? Fuck all if I know. Although, the politicians who are making WAY WAY more money than our teachers should maybe have their salaries tied to the prevailing median income – they’d certainly look out for the bottom more. Maybe we should have scientific studies conducted on California’s classrooms and prisons to see if maybe there’s a better way to do things than the same way we’ve been doin it forever? MIT seems to think there’s a better way to teach. I dunno, but we really need to be thinking about the way forward as we watch our civilization collapse in slow-motion.
What you say, our society is too strong to collapse? I bet you could go back in time and ask any ancient Roman how long it will take their empire to collapse, and they will say such things are impossible.
Update
Wow I totally didn’t read that right. The bill is for school construction. We are spending 1.2 billion dollars so far this year building new parts of schools that suck. These new parts of schools aren’t going to make them suck less. Happier teachers (i.e. higher paid) and smaller class sizes are going to make our schools better, not fancy new athletic fields – or as in the case of my school, 4 gigantic electronic billboards that waste HUUUUUUGE amounts of power advertising things people could give less of a shit about like the junior college’s althetic games, new athletic fields for those games no one cares about, and a gigantic new administration building where parking lots used to be. All this while the school doesn’t have reserved parking for the teachers and not enough parking to keep up with current enrollment. A friend of mine had to give his wife (a teacher) a ride to school because she tried to go, couldn’t park, then had to go home in tears to get a ride to show up late for school. Oh, and recently one of the board of trustees had to resign over some sort of embezzlement scandal. Yeah, our schools are in an awesome state.