Kat (whoops, forgot to link to her the first time I posted this) posted a pretty good entry about schools and education in general and testing specifically. It's called the FCAT down in Florida, and damned if I can remember what it is up here right at the present time. We disagreed to agree I believe. I think we both pretty much feel the same way about it, but just in slightly different ways.

I've posted about public school and my feelings about it in the past here, here, here, a tiny bit here, here, and here. It's interesting how some of my opinions have changed over the last few years, at least it is to me.

My son spent his entire school "career" up until the 11th grade in private school. My daughter started at 18 months and went until kindergarten, and my youngest spent one year in Montessori. I can't say 100% that I don't regret pulling them out and putting them into public school, but there are some pros and cons to it.

Private school is where it's at for the kids social environment. There's just no other way to put it, but they are worlds apart as far as how the kids act and what is expected of them. In private school they are expected to behave and do so. Why? Because it is expected of them and they know that there are consequences of they don't. It's not quite as simple as all that, but that is the easiest way to explain it. In public school, at least high school, it is also expected of them. And the kids expect that if they break the rules there might be a slap on the wrist (maybe) but no consequences of real value.

Educationally public school is where it's at, but this can vary county by county, state by state. The problem is that you have to deal with all the fucktards to get to it, and miles of bullshit. You have to be dedicated to ass whipping the administrators to let your children get to it. Why? Because such a large portion of the student body are fucking morons and they lower to bar to the least common denominator. I think it really starts in Elementary school where they should be learning the basics that they need in order to get through high school and college successfully. One of the things that Kat brought up had to do with the standardized testing. Elementary kids spend so much time studying and memorizing exactly what is going to be on the TEST that they don't learn things. You know, stupid shit like reading, writing, and arithmetic... Why?

The federal government requires it. I do agree with the fact that there should be some sort of bar, or standard that our kids should meet in order to succeed. I don't agree with forcing everyone to spend so much of their time trying to get the scores on these standardized tests improved so that school systems can get more money. I don't guess there is any easy solution, but it needs to be found. The federal government needs to get out of the business of education and govern. Leave education to educators. Give them the damn money and let them teach.

Let's say that my daughter is in a class with 30 kids and two or three of them are have the potential to end up going to graduate school and brilliant careers. Two or three more of them are dumb as rocks and will end up being burger flippers, and manual laborers. The rest of them will end up like most of us. Working regular old jobs and trying to make ends meet. Not that there is anything wrong with manual labor, some of the jobs pay pretty damn good, more than I make in a lot of cases. Do you think they are going to tailor the class to meet the high performing kids? Hell no, they are going to slow things down so that bill jo bob drooling in the back of the class can make a good score on the CRCT (yeah, that's the name of the damned thing) and get the school system more money to spend on socialist agendas.

Here's some stats for you that I picked up here:

Out of 101 countries, the United States leads the entire world in the average number of years of schooling with 12 years average, however we are number 12 in the duration of compulsory education. The top six require 13 years of education, even though their average is in some cases much less.

We are number two out of 18 countries for tertiary education (college). Canada is in first place with 42% of the population attending college, we have 37%.

We are #96 out of 191 in geographical aptitude, based on the Geography Challenge, which is an online geography test. I've taken it, did OK. I can see that. I would have to say to out of the 28 people that work for me, maybe one of them could find North Korea or Iraq on a globe.

We are #31 out of 209 for the percentage of the population that is literate. That sucks. 99% of the population is literate, which sounds great until you think about how many people that 1% makes up. 49% of adults in the United States are rated as having a low level of literacy. That's not our children, that's us. Adults. Does that mean that 49% of us don't read our kids bedtime stories? How do we expect our children to learn when we can't even read?

I don't know what I expect. When Wife Swap and Desperate Housewives and crap like that are what we spend our entertainment hours enjoying, rather than getting into a good book or god forbid talking. Reality shows and MTV and VH1 have taken over our mentality. Our kids are turning in tests with T9 text all over it because they think it's acceptable and nobody gives enough of a fuck to fix it. It's the teachers fault. It's the administrators fault. It's the parents fault. blah blah blah. Fuck that. It starts AND ends with the parents. All of the other fuckers in between are just filler. Yes, they have a huge effect on the entire process and sometimes you can't avoid letting your children deal with the asshats, but how our children are raised is up to you and I.

When the Federal government gets out of the business of dictating what they can and can't learn, and what tests to take, and what scores they make on them, and how much money they are going to deny poorly performing schools we will see a change, but not until them.