John Dewey has to think about his entire life before he gives a symposium.

All the school reform energy I see comes from the right, where the groups that spent 70 years trying to roll back Brown vs. Board of Education are finally getting their way. School choice! And if your local charter school happens to be run by religious fanatics pushing the Hillsdale Colllege curriculum, well, that's just the free market speaking.

I mean, this book came out in 2010. So I think it is dated in terms of where school reform energy is coming from in the past five years.

The trick with education is you need a system with outcomes that are basically "nice things happen to kids of rich people" but it can't look like that and you can't say that's what you're doing.

Can you explain the "most credentials" part? I don't think I understand how that applies to K-12 education. Sorry, maybe it's too early in the morning.

I'm guessing it means "the strongest college application possible" but maybe it means higher ed resume nuggets as well?

Even today, what you do as far as classes/culture in higher education barely matters unless you're going on to a new degree, right? Virtually all employers, what matters for formal processes is did you graduate yes/no, occasionally what your major was, very rarely your GPA. And then obviously the side track of who do you know.

In my experience, you can get away with not having the right credentials if you took the right classes with no degree and can get your foot in the door.

10 yeas ago Obama was still pushing "Race to the Top" which was basically an extension of "No Child Left Behind."

Like the environment, education was another policy area where progressives should do better but Obama actually made things worse.

"For better or worse, the American system of education is truly a marvel."

What makes it more marvelous than any other nation's system of education?

It's American, that makes it exceptional.

Consuming so much money and time for such middling results.

My favorite book on curriculum history argues American schools don't reward learning; they reward the most creative avoidance of learning while acquiring the most credentials

I kind of disagree. Most kids aren't creative enough to do well without learning the material. Those that are creative enough are also learning a valuable skill.

My favorite book on curriculum history argues American schools don't reward learning; they reward the most creative avoidance of learning while acquiring the most credentials

Maybe this is just nitpicking but I can't help thinking this should be "argues modern schools don't reward learning" or "argues that the remarkable thing about American schools is the extent to which they reward things other than learning" or something like that, because despite other problems, I think the actual pedagogy in American schools, when it happens, is pretty good. My experience with other countries' educational systems is limited but I don't think they pursue learning for its own sake much more or prepare kids for adulthood or professional life much better, in general.

On the other hand, I agree that this is right, and interesting:

At the same time, Labaree argues, Americans are unable to shake the conviction that our public schools can--and must--cure a long list of social problems: generational poverty, violent crime, and so on. He calls this conviction our "school syndrome":The American tendency to resort to schooling is less a strategy than a syndrome. We have set up our school system for failure by asking it to fix all of our most pressing social problems, which we are unwilling to address more directly .... When it fails, we fiddle with the system and try again.

When starting from the same baseline, let's say hypothetically middle-class kids with no medical issues, and comparing them from one country to another, American schools do roughly as well as schools in other countries if not better, but the problem is that America has so many kids outside that baseline because our social services are shitty. A bunch of weird educational policies can be explained by the fact that school is the biggest if not the only source of a lot of things, like childcare and food assistance.

My kid goes to a public charter school, we're fairly active in the parents' organizations (not a PTA because teachers can't join as such, but that may change), and there are nonstop discussions of one problem after another. Sometimes it's hard to keep straight what problems are primarily the fault of the school and what problems are primarily the fault of neighborhood traffic or crime the school couldn't possibly do anything about. And this of course is heavily Balkanized because so much in America is. There are a lot of problems with living in DC, but every time I mentioned to my sister in Vermont, or simply friends in Maryland or Virginia, that DC has free childcare starting at age 3 (it's called pre-Kindergarten, i.e. Pre-K 3 and Pre-K 4), they're boggled and jealous.

The real skill is the friends they meet along the way.

I get so irritated at the school grading system (in Texas, but I'm sure everywhere) which drives all these economic consequences. "What's the most convoluted, complicated way to pretend we're not measuring poverty while still actually just measuring poverty? Let's do THAT!" And then blame the schools for not curing poverty.

Utah gave 46 million to a not-at-all religious private school founded and dedicated by some LDS bigwig. It's helped the rich kids a lot.

But public elementary schools can't have music or arts supported by the state, and there's a teacher shortage because of low pay.

As usual, the problem with America is Americans.

Went to Catholic school. Never did this.

Everything in school felt like it measured my worth. So why would I try to avoid since it always felt like it needed measuring.

My kids do it, which I didn't understand but choose to think is healthier

NOW I do it though. With a lot of stuff anyway.

Went to Catholic school. Never did this.

Everything in school felt like it measured my worth. So why would I try to avoid since it always felt like it needed measuring.

My kids do it, which I didn't understand but choose to think is healthier

NOW I do it though. With a lot of stuff anyway.

I sometimes think this is why I failed as a teacher. Because I am such a fucking weirdo that I answered all those questions sincerely.

I sometimes think this is why I failed as a teacher. Because I am such a fucking weirdo that I answered all those questions sincerely.

22: I come from generations of educators, and I was a kid who unquestioningly did everything as perfectly as I could. That has served me well in some cases (patience with bureaucracy and rules and stupid paperwork) and poorly in others (inability to just slack on stuff where level of achievement doesn't matter at all). Many of my family members were successful teachers (AFAICT) with the same sort of rule-following personality, but I was terrible at it.

In grad school, we had a sort-of pedagogy class required for being a TA. The class was pass/fail. They allowed the students to vote on how many absences was acceptable. AJ's class voted to make half of all scheduled classes excused. It turned out that the vote was, in fact, not binding. We had to write journal entries about our teaching experiences (!!) with a minimum word count. One younger friend met the word minimum by appending nonsense to a sentence or two of substance. One included his Whataburger order. He met the letter of every requirement with increasing levels of malicious compliance, which (per an overheard conversation) meant that the prof couldn't fail him, much to her chagrin. He earned a PhD, started a company that seems headed for success, and from all appearances, continues to be ingenious about avoiding silly requirements.

I come from one generation of educators. My mom said the rule they told her was "never smile until after Christmas." I wonder if that was a general rule or one they gave to 20- year old women who were shorter than many elementary students. Anyway, I followed that rule but only taught one class and it was spring semester.

Also, my mom learned teaching as a nun, which is probably different.

My favorite book on curriculum history argues American schools don't reward learning; they reward the most creative avoidance of learning while acquiring the most credentials

As ydnew@23 and peep@13 suggest, professional life often works this way, too.

(I personally have sort of an inverted imposter syndrome. I think: I'm not as talented and dedicated as people believe I am, and that's awesome.)

my mom learned teaching as a nun

Seems like there's a story to be told here.

She was a nun. She taught at a grade school in a pretty poor area of Lincoln. She stopped before final vows and went to teach at a grade school in a pretty poor area of Omaha. She met my dad a few years later, they were married in four months.

That's a nice story!

I think I've mentioned it before. Anyway, they had to get a waiver to get married as quickly as they did.

It's like the policy for federal bureaucrats and employment in the industries they regulate.

Being a nun can be a great career choice if you're not highly sexed. V's aunt, from a poor Dublin background, joined an order which trained her to be a teacher, then made her a school governor, then moved her on to manage a retirement home (for old nuns), and finally sent her to assist the priest on a remote Scottish Island as a first call for people who needed social care. All these assignments were jobs she applied for, and she would have had trouble getting anywhere near if she'd stayed where she started. When she got old they moved her to a retired nuns' home where she's waited on hand and foot. I can think of worse lives.

I'm at another interminable high school track meet (last of the season at least). This one's outside at one of the schools, but it's very windy and still cold enough that there's still a fair bit of snow on the ground in more sheltered spots. Just a few more hours!

And by "a fair bit" I mean three or four feet in some of the banks next to the bleachers. The track itself is clear.

33: That much snow isn't going to melt in a few hours.

Indeed it did not! My obligation to be there did wrap up though.