#119 Vivian — “You’re right, no one talked about them. And the right got slaughtered.”
And the right would have been deservedly slaughtered in spectacular fashion if they tried to make an issue of them. Other issues are actually important. Vouchers are a non-issue. They are not a solution to a problem you claim exists. That’s because the problem you claim doesn’t exist.
Some claim that vouchers allow you to take your child from “bad” districts to “good” districts. Better education, they claim. Ummm, no. At best the “good” district is simply more effective at teaching whatever is on the standardized test. We’ve already seen this very thing many times. Being able to take a test is meaningless. Being able to think is not. Vouchers don’t address this.
Vouchers don’t address the actual problem in education, which is that kids on the right side of the bell curve require a completely different education in style and substance than kids on the left side. Kids on the right learn how to learn. They manipulate abstract symbols. Kids on the left side aren’t capable of manipulation of abstract symbols, and they can’t really learn how to learn. The kids on the right are the engineers and scientists and stockbrokers; the ones on the left are the plumbers and machinists and insurance agents and such.
In the current system smart kids learn something useful on their own despite the efforts of the system to stymie them. Smart kids are smart kids. They’re going to learn no matter what. The kids on the left need rote learning. They can’t learn any other way. For kids on the right side of the curve rote learning is punishment. The kids on the left need trades. Good paying ones. Not college. How you learn a trade is different than how you learn how to be a scientist.
This is the sort of problem that needs to be addressed in national policy from the top levels on down. Local school boards simply aren’t capable of dealing with this. School boards are adept at picking out football uniforms, deciding if the new music program ought to have 4 concerts or 3. They are not equipped for anything more. Deciding how to teach bright kids is far beyond their abilities (due in part to the simple fact that many of the bright kids are brighter than the board members in the first place.) The argument for local school board control is therefore laughable.
Schools need to have classes using the appropriate teaching methods for the kids in that class and the kids need to discovered and segregated early. Vouchers don’t even begin to address this, much less solve it. IQ tests would do the trick. Not vouchers.
The problem isn’t teacher unions. It isn’t the Dept of Education, either. The problem is that kids aren’t equal, and not all kids are college material. Some don’t have the requisite brainpower. Some kids are smarter than the other kids. Not all kids need a world class education. And just in case you’re having your own math trouble, I’m saying that college is a waste of time for at least HALF of the population.
What you are in favour of is that which sounds good, makes you feel good, and that which seems like it makes a difference. It doesn’t. Bright kids will succeed because they’re bright. Always. The school system won’t matter. Johnny can’t read because, by definition, half of us are below average, and Johnny isn’t going to ever read until he gets classes designed for his capacity. That’s simply a mathematical fact. Vouchers don’t solve this, and they don’t help the bright kids, either. The result is that vouchers would be just as ineffective and poorly implemented as what we have now.
