Here’s yet another example of why the current edumacation system needs to be wiped out and rebuilt from scratch:
http://www.azcentral.com/community/gilbert/articles/2010/06/06/20100606boy-autism-gilbert.html
Ok, it turns out that “Luke” here has autism, which makes him act like a jackass. OK, fine, he has a valid excuse. But his behavior is clearly disruptive, and compromises the ability of the teacher to teach the *other* kiddies. And so:
A week later, Luke’s teacher wrote to Bruno, “I don’t even want him in my classroom to be honest with you.”
OK, sounds like a reasonable position for the teacher to take. if one student is a nightmare in the classroom for reasons that *won’t* get better, why should he be in that classroom… especially when he’s unlikely to benefit all that much from the experience himself?
So, Luke’s mom did the only reasonable thing:
Bruno filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to investigate discrimination. The teacher was placed on temporary leave as punishment.
Ummm… no.
There are two obvious problems here:
1) Not all students are going to benefit equally from 12+ years of government education. Some will spend years consuming (teachers time, school resources, other students chances, etc.) while in the end failing to become anything of worth. For many, a much shorter term in school, followed by being put to work on farms or in factorties, would make everything better for *everybody.*
2) Sometimes your precious little snowflake is a horrible little bastard. If he’s taking a dump in the classroom, chances are pretty good that that’s the case. Deal with it.
One needed first step to rectifying this: get rid of the US Department of Education. It’s been a failure.
36 Responses to “Public Education: Straight to Hell”
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So who gets to decide who the Ubermensch are who get to be fully educated while the lowly Untermensch end up pumping gas?
That’s always the fly in the ointment for plans like this, as by stopping the education of some at say 6th grade you have effectively limited their lives to eternal poverty, and never will figure out if they had more ability to do something than you judged they did.
The proportion of jobs that can be performed by the semi-educated is dropping year by year as our technology steadily advances.
And despite all the talk about people being “overeducated” there is no job so unimportant that it should be entrusted to a ignoramus.
The sad part is, many schools are doing away with vocational education programs. Many students don’t intend to go to college, but we (meaning the voting public) have determined that everyone must be prepared to go to college. A bachelor’s degree is quickly becoming the equivalent of what a high school diploma used to be.
Pat,
You and Scott both have good points. A person invested with power will invariably abuse it when it suits their needs. If the school (gov’t, private, hard knocks) gets sick of you for what ever reason, those in power will abuse it to your detriment.
But Scott has a good point too, if you are a disruptive student, it hurts everyone in that classroom/school. My kid or my wife the teacher shouldn’t have to deal with an intentionally disruptive student who is forced to be there by law.
Parents that refuse to see that their little precious jewel is a problem are just another part of the stupidity.
Scott is correct, an agency like DOE will never be at the forefront of a solution here and in many cases exacerbate the problem. Making education compulsory (and paying for it compulsory at a level outside of your community/neighborhood) removes a layer of control and responsibility that are at the heart of the problem. Cultural mores that cue us to not take responsibility for our lives and the lives of our families make it worse. Wide availability of the dole (also run outside the bounds of the community/neighborhood) facilitate this and frustrate the efforts of those that get that control and generosity need to be local. Our current sysem make our local problems “someone else’s problem” or “the government’s problem” to fix. The farther removed you are from a problem, the less likely you are to see the situation as a problem or feel compeled to provide a fix.
Bottomline, most problems that we care about, most public good that we care about happens in our own backyards and we need to have the power and the cash to effect the change that will improve it. If you don’t like how your little Johnny got treated in the process, move to somewhere else that might treat your little Johnny better. Or take responsibility for your little Johnny and determine if the system doesn’t serve him well and find one that does.
I can see putting a disruptive student in some sort of special class for troublemakers, what doesn’t appeal to me is someone arbitrarily deciding which students are going to be allowed to continue their education because they have the intelligence to make it worthwhile to fully educate them, while others get their education curtailed early on and are condemned to be manual laborers.
For starters, that immediately divides the population into two groups that are going to dislike each other a great deal; a educated class who looks down on the laborers as second class beings, and the laborers who hate the educated class because of the opportunity they were given that the laborers never had.
That situation already exists as a side effect of different income levels, but to officially entrench it via a dual-tier approach to education levels would make the situation far worse than it is today.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_n35_v11/ai_17290379/
http://www.highlightsteachers.com/archives/featured_article
/integrating_the_child_with_autism_into_the_classroom_by_caroline_wyman.html
http://autismcrisis.blogspot.com/2010/05/circadian-prison.html
If I had seen any of this in the classrooms of my children, I’d have demanded my child be removed. I learned a long time ago that “damaged and deficient” (d&d) kids get a lat of breaks not extended to normal kids. I have a teacher friend who, when asked what the normal kids did while she was dealing with the special kids, said that they’re not supposed to think that anyone is normal. Everyone, she told me, is formally considered to have some sort of damage. The woman who told me this doesn’t analyze stuff the way we do, so I assume she’s telling me what she was taught.
Of course, we may be totally failing to comprehend the meaning of education at any level as it is understood by professional educators. When I said that I viewed by college degree as a tool, the PhDs in the room huffed and frowned, and told me that it was for my “personal enrichment and satisfaction.” Education in grade school is to enhance self-esteem, they told me.
Some days it feels like I woke up in a parallel universe.
The solution is simple…put the kids that have a problem with autism special education classes. I know someone who is currently pursuing
a degree to teach those classes.
> So who gets to decide …
1) A series of standardized tests.
2) The students themselves. By sixth grade, you are already well on your way to being whatever kind olf person you are going to be. Let’s face it, if you are a dirtbag, by sixth grade you don’t *want* to be in school anymore. Let ’em leave.
> you have effectively limited their lives to eternal poverty
Bullcrap, and very obvious bullcrap. In fact…. what you’ve said is so incredibly wrong as to be difficult to see as anythign other than a bald-faced *lie.*
1) Many kids today go all the way through grade 12 and don;t even aquire so much as a 6th grade education because they just can’t bring themselves to give a damn. *They* have thus “limited their lives.”
2) Getting a start on a real job at Grade 6 means they’ve got six years worth of on-the-job training by when they would have ended Grade 12. If they’ve squandered that, then *they* have limited their lives. Factory work, for example, is hardly a “life of poverty,” event hough we have a lot less of that in the US these days.
3) History is replete with the college dropouts who make billions and the high school dropouts who make millions.
> The proportion of jobs that can be performed by the semi-educated is dropping year by year as our technology steadily advances.
And yet we have up to 30 million illegal immigrants in the country. If factories and farms and whatnot were suddenly faced with both a massive crackdown *and* a fresh new supply of cheap, legal labor… these two issues would tend to cancel each other out.
I also ammend my idea: any dumbass who gets booted out, or leaves voluntarily, at sixth grade gets a one-year trial period in the real world. At the end of that year, they get a chance to go back to school. If they go back and maintain both grades and behavioral standards, good for them. They just graduate a year late. If they go back and screw around, they get booted out permanent and back into the work pool.
> what doesn’t appeal to me is someone arbitrarily deciding which students…
How about this: eliminate pub lic education altogether. Go to a completely privatized system, coupled with a myriad of homeschooling forms. Then this problem goes away. Private schools don’t *need* to put up with disruptive or worthless students. Sure they want the students (parents) money, but they’d be more worried about losing the moeny from the *other* parents.
This would be the Darwinist system. The current system is quite analogous to the Intelligent Design myth.
As to the issue of stratifying society: where the student ends up is… UP TO THE STUDENT. But in my proposal, while the end results are similar, the cost would be far less.
A further amendment to my original proposal: if the student leaves at Grade 6 and enters the workforce, and *again* fails to perform, fine. He can leave that, too. He is, however, permanently stricken from the welfare records. No unemployment, no medicaid/medicare, no housing assistance, no food stamps, no *anything* at taxpayer expense. The only taxpayer money to be spent on him in the future is his eventual incarceration. But that was probably going to be inevitable anyway.
I would like to see completely private education except for perhaps some public schools in places where there are not enough children to have more than one or two schools, which in that case I would not mind the schools being funded by local taxes. But I will settle for killing the Department of Education and returning education completely to state/local control.
Pat, the stratifiction of education haves and have nots has existed for a long time and continues to. Micheal Holt’s comment above is just one example of it A gov’t policy acceping it would at least be honest for a change.
The existing one size fits none system strives to achive similar outcomes by demanding similar access. The fictional story of Harrison Bergeron describes where this system ends up.
A funny thing is that our schools have no problems with a winner gets the spoils system when it comes to sports (except for Title 9 of course).
> The existing one size fits none system …
I heartily suggest that everyone attempt to find themselves a math, history or science textbook for high schoolers from a hundred years ago. You’ll feel like a *moron* after reading ti for a bit. because Way Back When, it was recognized that schoolin’ weren’t fer everbody, and thus the schools were for imparting education to those who could actually use it.
Seeing situations like this only further cements my resolve that if or when I even have offspring of my own I’m going to home school the little punks myself.
The LAST thing I would ever force upon a child is the public education system.
Herein we see the basic problem: A lot of people have trouble with the idea that making everyone equal means playing down to the lowest common denominator, which is blatantly and heinously unfair to those who excel by ability or motivation.
Jim
You do realize you are heading right down the Nazi eugenics road, don’t you?
First you break them down into groups worth educating and not worth educating; then you decide that the ones that are not worth educating are a drain on society and should be steralized to prevent them from having children that also might be a drain on society.
Finally, you get to the concept that to stop them being a drain on society at all, the best way would be to simple euthanize them.
I don’t mention this often, but your spelling _sucks_ Scott, despite the fact that all you would have to do is run what you write through a spell-check program before you stick it up on your blog. You might want to consider where exactly you would come out on one of those standardized tests you want for everyone. IIRC, you once said that you suffered from dyslexia, and I’m afraid a problem like that might not make you be a good candidate for reproduction…for the good of all.
Jackboot looks a little different when it’s on the other foot, doesn’t it?
> You do realize you are heading right down the Nazi eugenics road, don’t you?
You do realize that you have just demonstrated that you are entirely full of shit, don’t you?
You think you’re witty, but the fact is… you’re a joke.
I wasn’t trying to be witty with that posting, simply pointing out that before you go around arbitrarily deciding other people’s futures, you might want to consider what would happen if someone applied your own ideas to you yourself.
BTW, you didn’t catch my spelling mistake, did you?
Instead of “Finally, you get to the concept that to stop them being a drain on society at all, the best way would be to simple euthanize them.’
It should have been:
“Finally, you get to the concept that to stop them being a drain on society at all, the best way would be to _simply_ euthanize them.”
This is called “Karma”. 😀
> arbitrarily deciding other people’s futures
What, you mean like what’s done *now?* Right now the government decides to affect *your* future by taking your hard earned money to force kids to stay in shitty, dangerous schools with other kids wqho don’t want to be there, won’t benefit from being there, and damage the futures of those who *do.*
What I’m proposing is to simply stop *funding* those that aren’t benefitting from being there. But like any good collectivist extremist, you cannot see anything but the extremes: either a massive government program to force standardization on everyone (i.e. lowest common denominator), or a massive government program of murder. You are incapable of seeing anything in between.
As to applying the ideas to myself: why… I’d stop getting these lavish piles of money from the government simply for existing, I suppose. What a *massive* change that would be. How would I cope?
C’mon Scott…You’re better than that. I have an autistic son and frankly what I’ve just read eminating from your computer really upsets me. It’s not what my Grandpappys fought in the Big One for.
Probably the school and teacher mentioned in your story have no clue at all on how to educate kids with Autism. It’s something I’ve run into during my son’s educational career. Often times I have to teach the teacher how to educate my son. Usually using things like weighted blankets, study carols, giving the kid a chance to take a break or a teacher’s assistant prevented most of what was described in the storyline.
My son is now in the eighth grade. He is in an Autism specific classroom setting. There are nine kids, two teachers and three assistants. My son is thriving and learning. He wants to go on to college. Our local community college has programs for mildly autistic people like my son and that’s where he’ll go. He likes drawing on the computer, so my thought is to get him into a CAD program.
My autistic son is educated in the public school system and yes not all of the public system is good, most of it is rather mediocre in our town. My older, more typical son attends private school. There really is a difference in accountability and communication between private school and public school employees. My oldest son’s private school is much easier to get in touch with.
Much of the behavior that my youngest son exhibited early on would not be tolerated in a private school. They would have simply thrown him out.
> It’s not what my Grandpappys fought in the Big One for.
Your grandpappys fought so that classrooms would devolve to the lowest common denominator?
> Probably the school and teacher mentioned in your story have no clue at all on how to educate kids with Autism
Quite possible. But then… so what? If someone has autism, or ADD, or schizophrenia, or Tourettes, or what-the-hell-ever, such that they would be a constant disruption in a conventional classroom, and would monopolize the teachers attention… they shouldn’t be *in* that classroom. They should be somewhere where:
1) They can get whatever education is best for them
2) They are not ruining it for the others.
> He is in an Autism specific classroom setting.
Good for him, and for whoever decided that he’d be better there than in a conventional classroom. Given the extremely low student/teacher ratio you describe (9:5, arguably meaning each student consumes more than half of each teachers time), it seems clear that if he were in a regular classroom, he would be a serious detriment to the other students getting appropriate attention from the teacher.
I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is. Some kids, through no fault of their own (and of course, some *are* at fault, the delinquent little bastards), just require far too much attention, and will drag down everyone else.
> Much of the behavior that my youngest son exhibited early on would not be tolerated in a private school. They would have simply thrown him out.
And would you “blame” the private school for that? If not, why blame the public school teacher that wants to not have a serious disruption in her classroom?
Yes, yes, it’s all terribly horrible of me. I’m a bad man, unfeeling, incapable of empathizing with the plight of others, Asperger’s, blah, blah, blah. But education budgets and teachers skills and time are not infinite resources. Priorities need to be set and held to. Those who can be given excellent educations at minimum headache should recieve said excellent educations. Those who cannot be educated should not be lavished with public treasure to no good end. Those in between should be dealt with appropriately.
So are you advocating a return to the days of mental institutions? It sounds to me like you are. What you’re saying sounds like this to me:
“Let’s just throw these kids in a warehouse away from the rest of the “normal” kids. Those autistics will never amount to anything anyway. We’ll lavish all our resources on the best and brightest, to hell with all the other kids.”
I surely hope I am misunderstanding you.
What you’re saying sounds like this to me:
“I don’t care that some kids are disruptive, or violent, or incapable of behaving in a classroom setting, they are all precious little snowflakes and every student should be shoehorned into exactly identical classes. if that means that 90% need to suffer so that 10% also get to suffer, so be it.”
“All men are created equal” is a lovely fiction. Should every kid get to play on the football team? Should every kid be *made* to play on the football team? if not, then why should the same hold for the classroom?
I don’t think you can compare football to education. Football is a leisure activity, education is vital to a human’s existence.
I am not advocating that every disabled child be placed in the mainstream. In fact, as I have stated, my own son benefits from being in an Apserger specific setting. Many of the parents that I know that have autistic children have resisted placing (or shall I say dumping) our children into typical classroom settings with little or no support.
It works both ways, Scott. Your “worthy” children often take advantage and bully guys like my son. They can make life living hell for people less gifted. It’s happened to my boy.
My son’s setting is the only one of its kind in our county. Many parents would love to get their autistic kid into the same classroom. It’s rather expensive to run a classroom like I described, but it’s what works for kids like my boy. As I have stated, he has expressed interest in becoming a CAD operator, hardly a worthless career wouldn’t you say?
If he had not be able to attend school and learn, his future would be very, very bleak. In your world he would have been discarded, out of view, out of mind.
My son is a human being Scott, not a cog in a machine to be cast aside when deemed defective.
Recently, I have purchased PDF’s from you and have always been interested in your work. One of your sources of information, Stan Piet, is a good friend of mine.
Based on our conversation here, I don’t think I’ll be doing anymore business with you and I will urge Stan not to as well. I am deeply disappointed.
I ran across the “special” kids for the first time when my daughter was in third grade. She asked why they were permitted to disrupt the classroom.
Gene, your son is getting the education he needs without placing him so that he causes problems for others. That’s very good. You and he are very lucky.
> education is vital to a human’s existence
But some humans can only be educated “just so much.” And some humans only *want* to be educated “just so much.” Expending resources to cram them full of an education they either don’t want or can’t use, at the expense of those who can and do, is grade-A stupid.
> I am not advocating that every disabled child be placed in the mainstream.
Then you should have no arguement with my stance. If some kid is disabled because his legs got blown off in a drive-by, then by all means put him in a normal classroom. An advanced placement classroom if his interests and abilities merit. If some kid is disabled because he barks like a dog every fifteen seconds and hurls feces at anyone with blue eyes, then by all means do *not* put him in a normal classroom, and *do* bitchslap the kids parents if they cannot understand that their precious snowflake is a major disturbance and *shouldn’t” be in a normal classroom.
> Your “worthy” children often take advantage and bully guys like my son.
Define “worthy.” Kids that are consumate bulliers and thugs should also be removed from the normal education setting. The minimal education they’ll get out of it is probably not worth the major damage they’ll do to the educations of others.
One need not have a minimal IQ to be minimally worthy of taxpayer support. I’d much rather teachers try to teach a dumb kid who honestly wants to learn than a smart kid who doesn’t, and who wants to be a jackass.
> In your world he would have been discarded
Bullshit. You, like Pat, seem unable to grasp anything other than fascist worldviews. Assume that every public school decided that your son would not be allowed to attend, and the judicial system backed them up. Apparently (according to the way in which you persist in twisting my suggestions), people like you and Pat would then dump your child out into the street… rather than *you* figuring out a way to educate the kid as best you can.
> Based on our conversation here, I don’t think I’ll be doing anymore business with you and I will urge Stan not to as well.
You are free to do as you like. I will be sure to remove your email address from all future updates.
This is why I don’t like public education… or for that matter, public much of anything besides defense and the courts. It forces people to agree on courses of actions where agreement is literally impossible to acheve amongst a large majority of people, instead of allowing people to come up with private solutions amongst themselves in which those who disagree have no ability to interfere.
> It forces people to agree on courses of actions where agreement is literally impossible …
or at least, forces people to *pay* for actions which are demonstratably cost-ineffective. People bitch about how education isn’t what it once was. people bitch that there’s not enough spending on education. But spendiong on education on a per-pupil basis is higher than it’s ever been, and the results are about as poor as they’ve ever been. You’d think someone would be able to figure out that maybe, just maybe, increased spending ain’t the answer.
Additionally entertaining is the notion that one commenter raised that if you want to *reduce* governmental influence, expense and meddling, that makes you akin to the Nazis. The education system has indeed failed, in at least his case…
Things have devolved so far that a great many people are now of the belief that if the government doesn’t provide it, it doesn’t exist.
Mr. Lowther,
How dare you question my parenting skills! You do not know half of the battles I’ve had, both with my son and his school. My wife and I pushed like hell to get him into the setting he’s in. I had him independently evaluated by several experts in autism at my own personal expense, costing nearly two thousand dollars. I couldn’t ell you how many times I left work early to run to his shcool because the teahcer said he had a meltdown, which in his case, he was NOT a threat to other kids, but was crying inconsolably. Even at age 13 this happens.
I indicated earlier that my oldest son attends private school. This costs me out of pocket, $10,000 each year. His school is considered one the least expensive private high schools in our area.In each situation my wife and I have determined the best educational setting for our sons. I am an engineering technician, I cannot afford the $40-60,00 a year that it would cost to educate my autistic son in a private school. However, our local public shool has taught my son to speak when he had a two-three word vocabulary and to write when he could not even draw a stick figure. Our public school has provided the therapist and special intructors to make that happen. This is the best setting for him. I have been and will continue to proactive in both my children’s education.
When you asked me to describe worthy you stated that it’s better for a teacher “to teach a dumb kid who wants to learn than a smart kid who doesn’t”. Many of the children that you wanted removed from the typical classroom eventually become good productive students given the right resources and attention.
In the adult world, people with mental disabilities are all around us. This was not the case even just a few years ago. I am guessing that you and I are probably fairly close in age. I am in my mid-40s. Even I was guilty of calling disabled kids SPEDS and retards. Why? My ineraction with mentally disable kids was few and far between. I lacked the compassion that comes from familiarity. I bet your educational experience was alot like mine.
My own son has kids that bully him yes, but he also has classmates that accept him and try to help him. He has an older student that is his mentor and she helps him study afterschool. His mentor is from the mainstream part of his school. Let me state again, that my son was mostly in the mainstream during his elementary school years. There were times in the day when he left the classroom to work with his therapists and special instructors, then he would return to his regular classroom. For middle school he was placed in an Asperger specific classroom. He will attend an Asperger specific high school setting as well.
Now perhaps I am misunderstanding you. If you were in charge, precisely what you do? How would you as a public school official or even as a parent educate peole like my son? Now if you answer that you would triage kids like someone would at a disaster scene, with the most worthy kids receiving all of the resources then I must say that seems rather fascist to me.
> How dare you question my parenting skills!
It is *you* who question them. Re-read what you’ve written. You come across as someone who demands that other people take care of your kids. While I suppose it’s a reasonable enough idea that “my kids should get the best,” it nevertheless remains the case that *your* kids are *YOUR* responsibility. It is up to *you* to do best by them. But if your kids are a detriment to others, it is not your *right* to force them or their care on those who do not want the responsibility.
> I couldn’t ell you how many times I left work early to run to his shcool because the teahcer said he had a meltdown
Put yourself in the position of the 60 *other* parents involved in a conventional classroom. Your kid comes home from school and you asked “so, what did you learn today,” and the answer is “nothing much, little Jimmy spent the whole day screaming and carrying on, and the teacher had to devote all her attention to him. Maye tomorrow we’ll find out what 2 plus 2 equals.”
Yeah, it sucks for you. But it also sucks for *them.* Once you have accepted collectism (even to the extent of public schooling), “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.”
Additionally, just because someone “needs” doesn’t obligate others to provide for that need. Take me, for example. I’m ugly *and* weird (don’t cry to me too much about Aspergers). The result of this is that I’m chick repellant. Does that obligate the hotties in any way? No, it does not.
> I cannot afford the $40-60,00 a year that it would cost to educate my autistic son in a private school.
Certainly understandable. Consider home-schooling.
> Many of the children that you wanted removed from the typical classroom eventually become good productive students given the right resources and attention.
Sure. And many hardened criminals reform themselves and become decent enough people. But do you put hardened criminals automatically with the regular folks? Or do you find a place that’s best of ’em?
> Now perhaps I am misunderstanding you.
I suspect you are. I suggest you re-read what I’ve written, and how you’ve irrationally responded to it.
> Now if you answer that you would triage kids like someone would at a disaster scene, with the most worthy kids receiving all of the resources then I must say that seems rather fascist to me.
So you see triage as fascist? Another failure of the education system, it seems.
Tell, me… how exactly can I have a rational discussion with you when you see any suggestion that “disruptive students should be removed from classrooms” as a fascist concept?
I have re-read your previous postings. My opinions have not changed. I’ve been a long time lurker on your blogsite and have admired your work for almost ten years. This is a dark side that I would not have expected from you. Scott, you may be a good aerospace historian, but your compassion for people who are less gifted than you is truly lacking. Please remove me from your updates list. I shall have no further communication.
An interesting excercise. Here we have an example of someone who has actually determined that removing disruptive kids from a regular classroom is “fascist” and “dark” and “disturbing.” And that somehow it’s greater compassion to inflict ruination on whole generations than to embrace the concept of personal responsibility.
It would be a fascinating excercise in sociology or psychiatry to try to figure out what would cause a person to have such views.
This is a favorite topic of mine, actually, because I have an autistic nephew and one of my favorite women has a son who was incredibly disruptive even at home. I hate discussing it because everyone has an opinion and the way society has evolved it is evil to have discord.
Gene’s son has been fortunate enough to have Gene as his father. Gene has done all the right things: to work with the school system to get his son in a classroom that works for the boy. This is exactly what Scott has been proposing as the best of all possible worlds. Why is there disagreement here?
The contention here concerns classroom operation. Why do we permit the disruptive to control a classroom? If this is accepted as normal, perhaps what we seem to think is education really isn’t education at all. Perhaps it’s a re-run of a mid-60s love-in where everyone gets happy and no one really does a damn thing that doesn’t make them feel good about themselves. In that case, the children aren’t learning much that’s going to make them employable. Or is public education not directed toward creating citizens who will be economically and socially successful?
> Gene has done all the right things: to work with the school system to get his son in a classroom that works for the boy. This is exactly what Scott has been proposing as the best of all possible worlds. Why is there disagreement here?
Buggered if I know. My guess would be over-sensitivity, leading to a lack of reading comprehension. Someone who is willing and capable of being educated should be educated. it’s those who are not or will not, who should be shown the door. I’ve made this quite clear. If a kid has a medically valid condition which causes him to act the jackass, but is neither a moron nor evil, then educate him in a separate venue. But even if the kid is smart, and wants an education, and honestly tries his damnedest to behave, but nevertheless cannot help himself from acting the jackass (hypothetical: Super Cartman Tourettes), then he should *still* be removed from the normal classroom. And educated in some other venue. if that’s at home by tutors or concerned parents, then that’s all for the best.
How this is “fascist” and “dark,” I’ve no fricken’ clue.
>Why do we permit the disruptive to control a classroom?
Consider: we do not let the disruptive disrupt a *movie.* The usher kick his ass out. We do not let someone disrupt a political speech; they taser him, bro, and kick his ass out. And yet we’re being told that an unwillingness to allow someone to disrupt a *classroom* is tantamount to fascism, and should be met with lawsuits.
Colorado is doing something about excellence in the classroom:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100612/ap_on_re_us/us_grading_teachers
Some of the comments are disturbing in their inability to comprehend a classroom.
[…] I’ve mentioned before, in my view compulsory education should not be through 12th grade, but only through 6th grade or […]
[…] An idea I mentioned a while back: a standardized test in the 6th grade. Those who fail, or otherwise demonstrate an utter lack of interest or ability in getting an education, would be presented with the opportunity to Get A Damned Job. Let’s face it, lots of kids are wasting their time and your tax dollars screwing off in high school classrooms. So if we can take these students out of the picture and put them into some useful role in the economy, schools can get smaller (not to mention safer) and cheaper, and the economy will get a slight boost. […]