What Americans (and many westerners) forget about Finland's Successful Schools
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In a bit of hurry, but yes, America has more cultural diversity, but as far as I've understood, there's a single dominant language, English. Are there Spanish (or other language) public schools in US? What is the first language that kids of immigrants learn?
Maybe there's stats of how native English speaking kids learn at school?
It might have been a little bit of hyperbole, but things like
"it's a lottery win to be born in Finland"
"Soviet Union is bad" (or the many versions of it)
"Sit down and listen"
"You have to go to school and keep doing that, or you're a failure"
"Schools in unpleasant but necessary"
"If you're good at maths, you're bad at languages and vice versa"
"Boys are good in maths, and girls are better with language"
My teacher when I was 11 or something like that said that I'd pick up smoking before I'm 15, that I'd lie drunken in gutter when I'm adult, and that I'll end up being trash collecting guy.
One downfall/ indoctrination thing is that if someone doesn't fit well to school system, doesn't like to sit quietly for example, he's taught that learning and stuff isn't his thing, and he should do some physical labour instead.
Then there's peer pressure, not enforced only by pupils, but teachers too. "When we were kids, we beat squealers together between classes", said my former 3-6 grade teacher to the class.
I don't believe this is deliberate at all, but much of it is what teachers and people think is part of educating kids to be part of the society, or things they just excuse or refuse to think about.
Maybe there's stats of how native English speaking kids learn at school?
It might have been a little bit of hyperbole, but things like
"it's a lottery win to be born in Finland"
"Soviet Union is bad" (or the many versions of it)
"Sit down and listen"
"You have to go to school and keep doing that, or you're a failure"
"Schools in unpleasant but necessary"
"If you're good at maths, you're bad at languages and vice versa"
"Boys are good in maths, and girls are better with language"
My teacher when I was 11 or something like that said that I'd pick up smoking before I'm 15, that I'd lie drunken in gutter when I'm adult, and that I'll end up being trash collecting guy.
One downfall/ indoctrination thing is that if someone doesn't fit well to school system, doesn't like to sit quietly for example, he's taught that learning and stuff isn't his thing, and he should do some physical labour instead.
Then there's peer pressure, not enforced only by pupils, but teachers too. "When we were kids, we beat squealers together between classes", said my former 3-6 grade teacher to the class.
I don't believe this is deliberate at all, but much of it is what teachers and people think is part of educating kids to be part of the society, or things they just excuse or refuse to think about.
Just making sure.
I hadn't heard of the company, but those general rankings are pretty similar to what you see in ed circles. Nevada and New Mexico are indeed horrible...Nevada had nearly half of their students drop out when construction work was plentiful.
There is little doubt in my mind that immigration plays a significant role in this, sure. We neglect ESL programs and cultural integration to score cheapo political points in the southwest.
Mise
isle of lucy
Fair enough, but while Finland's relative lack of immigrants means that its model might not work in Nevada or Arizona, I don't see why it can't work in Mississipi or Alabama, where there are even fewer immigrants than in Finland. America as a whole might not be as homogenous as Finland, but surely there are places in America that are just as homogenous as Finland, and can just as easily copy its model.
What, then, allows you to see this indoctrination, and to see it in every school in the world ever (without having to actually visit them), while most everyone else is completely oblivious?
Let me put it to you that, rather than me being blind to the indoctrination (which would be odd, since I'm quite able to see it in other places), this is a case of you extrapolating from your own experiences, and assuming that what is true in some schools must be true in all of them.
If not, then I'd really like to see some evidence.
I cannot say I share your experiences on this matter. Few of the quotes you gave me are true at least to some degree and the others I never heard when I was in school. The only time I was misled or outright lied to was when they told us about drugs, but I imagine that is true for many other countries too.
By the way I was good both at maths and languages (ok English language only)
Mise
isle of lucy
Well, when I was in school, there was very much this attitude that if you were good at Maths you can't also be good at Languages/Art/History and so on. Or more generally, if you were good using your brain, you couldn't also be good at physical things like woodwork or athletics.
For a long time, as a result, I thought that because I was good at Maths and Science, I was bound to be "bad" at sport, "bad" at languages, "bad" at writing, and "bad" at woodwork, so I never really bothered to practice those things. And the teachers encouraged this kind of perception too: "what do you expect from someone on the quiz team?" So because I didn't practice sports, and because teachers never encouraged me to push myself in sport, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy: I was bound to be bad at sport, because I was good at maths. It was only in my mid teens that I realised that, actually, I was kind of okay at most new sports I tried (tennis, badminton, cricket, field hockey, basketball, blah blah blah), so maybe I was "sporty" afterall. Then when I started playing football every day in 6th form and at university, I became better at it through practice -- the kind of practice that I didn't get when I was a younger kid.
And beyond that, there's definitely a popular perception that people who are exceptionally bright must have some crippling flaw to make up for that, as per some kind of weird cosmic justice. It's nonsense, and personally I think schools are at fault for trying to say that "everybody is special" and "everybody is good at something, you just have to find the thing you're good at and stick to it". Some of us are good at everything
For a long time, as a result, I thought that because I was good at Maths and Science, I was bound to be "bad" at sport, "bad" at languages, "bad" at writing, and "bad" at woodwork, so I never really bothered to practice those things. And the teachers encouraged this kind of perception too: "what do you expect from someone on the quiz team?" So because I didn't practice sports, and because teachers never encouraged me to push myself in sport, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy: I was bound to be bad at sport, because I was good at maths. It was only in my mid teens that I realised that, actually, I was kind of okay at most new sports I tried (tennis, badminton, cricket, field hockey, basketball, blah blah blah), so maybe I was "sporty" afterall. Then when I started playing football every day in 6th form and at university, I became better at it through practice -- the kind of practice that I didn't get when I was a younger kid.
And beyond that, there's definitely a popular perception that people who are exceptionally bright must have some crippling flaw to make up for that, as per some kind of weird cosmic justice. It's nonsense, and personally I think schools are at fault for trying to say that "everybody is special" and "everybody is good at something, you just have to find the thing you're good at and stick to it". Some of us are good at everything
What you're talking about, though, is bad schools and bad teaching. It does not have to be that way.
Mise
isle of lucy
Oh, don't get me wrong, I can hardly agree with inno's diagnosis, let alone his prescription.
Verbose
Deity
I'm still pissed off at how math was taught at school, and above alls how the test situations were constructed in grade 7-9 (13-16).
I ended up seriously frustrated by the subject since the standard 30 problems in 80 minutes somehow meant I never managed to finish a math test in 3 years. The bits I finished I calculated correctly, I just ran out of time on every damn test. So I sat there, seething, with my pretty decent grade, but regarded as not having the stuff for the top one. Not that I couldn't do the math, but because somehow I couldn't do the math just quick enough. With 100 minutes at my disposal, or 24 problems or so, I might have been a contender.
(Yes I know, had I been motivated enough I should have put in the extra hours to just work up a better turn of speed. It was just that it seemed bloody counter intuitive at 15. And awfully booooring. It wasn't as if I didn't get the stuff.)
But the real problem was of course that at age 15 or so, I wasn't sufficiently full of myself to yet question the Great Wisdom of how these things were done, and somehow this school, and this teacher, never noticed anything about the situation.
In the end I rotted completely on anything to do with math, or logic, not because they were impossible for me to deal with, but rather more because the people engaged in these things at school seemed such frighful bores, and a bit thick, frankly. So I went to the gymnasium (age 16-19), ditched math and science and went hell for leather towards languages and history (even took Latin, though not Greek).
Of course, at the gymnasium the science program kids, almost all boys brilliant at math, by all and sundry the teacher not least were told 24/7 that they were the brilliant intellectual elite of the country, and would blow all the other kids in the other programs away at languages or whatever. (They were terribly provoked by the fact that my Latin class beat them hands down on all the language national standard tests.) Anyway, it doesn't tally with Mises recollection, so it might be a Swedish thing I guess. The science and math kids were after all supposed to be brilliant at everything, and told so. (And the left-handed kids good at math somehow thought they might all be Leonardo.)
It was kind of a self-defeating situation on a national level. It was widely assumed that you weren't actually clever unless you were clever at maths (and chess and the like), and only if you found yourself in the 5% group bagging the top math grade should you apply to the science program in the gymnasium, otherwise you were too thick to do science, so few did.This despite how people outside of school were seriously worried why so few kids wanted to study math and science, and why thay was, and still is.
I'm bored stiff by chess as well btw.
I ended up seriously frustrated by the subject since the standard 30 problems in 80 minutes somehow meant I never managed to finish a math test in 3 years. The bits I finished I calculated correctly, I just ran out of time on every damn test. So I sat there, seething, with my pretty decent grade, but regarded as not having the stuff for the top one. Not that I couldn't do the math, but because somehow I couldn't do the math just quick enough. With 100 minutes at my disposal, or 24 problems or so, I might have been a contender.
(Yes I know, had I been motivated enough I should have put in the extra hours to just work up a better turn of speed. It was just that it seemed bloody counter intuitive at 15. And awfully booooring. It wasn't as if I didn't get the stuff.)
But the real problem was of course that at age 15 or so, I wasn't sufficiently full of myself to yet question the Great Wisdom of how these things were done, and somehow this school, and this teacher, never noticed anything about the situation.
In the end I rotted completely on anything to do with math, or logic, not because they were impossible for me to deal with, but rather more because the people engaged in these things at school seemed such frighful bores, and a bit thick, frankly. So I went to the gymnasium (age 16-19), ditched math and science and went hell for leather towards languages and history (even took Latin, though not Greek).
Of course, at the gymnasium the science program kids, almost all boys brilliant at math, by all and sundry the teacher not least were told 24/7 that they were the brilliant intellectual elite of the country, and would blow all the other kids in the other programs away at languages or whatever. (They were terribly provoked by the fact that my Latin class beat them hands down on all the language national standard tests.) Anyway, it doesn't tally with Mises recollection, so it might be a Swedish thing I guess. The science and math kids were after all supposed to be brilliant at everything, and told so. (And the left-handed kids good at math somehow thought they might all be Leonardo.)
It was kind of a self-defeating situation on a national level. It was widely assumed that you weren't actually clever unless you were clever at maths (and chess and the like), and only if you found yourself in the 5% group bagging the top math grade should you apply to the science program in the gymnasium, otherwise you were too thick to do science, so few did.This despite how people outside of school were seriously worried why so few kids wanted to study math and science, and why thay was, and still is.
I'm bored stiff by chess as well btw.
warpus
In pork I trust
Really? I was under the impression that in the U.S. the schools in rich neighbourhoods get more funding than those in poor neighbourhoods.
(Yep, this is a pretty late response, but I was on a "break")
Aroddo
Emperor
Strangely enough, an organizanion form that is usually promoting worker protection and equality is one of the main reasons that US public schools suck so much: The teacher's union.
They made it so that teachers are effectively infireable regardless of how badly they perform. And even worse, they make it impossible to reward good and effective teachers (or punish the bad ones) by vetoing every attempt to pay exemplary teachers more money, thus killing the main incentive for self-improvement.
Check out this documentary if you're interested in that kind of stuff:
Link to video.
They made it so that teachers are effectively infireable regardless of how badly they perform. And even worse, they make it impossible to reward good and effective teachers (or punish the bad ones) by vetoing every attempt to pay exemplary teachers more money, thus killing the main incentive for self-improvement.
Check out this documentary if you're interested in that kind of stuff:
Link to video.
aelf
Ashen One
I think people are just disagreeing on what indoctrination means. I would agree that the foundation of our worldview is laid by indoctrination and much of this process happens in schools. That's not saying that what is taught in this process is necessarily bad or that people can't ever question what they were taught.
Pangur Bán
Deconstructed
Yes, the unions must be the problem. We all know unions are more powerful in the US than anywhere else. Those overpaid teachers!
If you want to reduce the meaning of 'indoctrination' to merely 'mild social influence, deployed unintentionally, without reference to or direction from any particular ideology, and with little or no influence on the worldview of those subjected to it', then, sure, it probably takes place in every school.
aelf
Ashen One
I don't think it's just "mild social influence" or that it is unintentional. It certainly goes beyond that in a lot of places, especially where rhetoric about teaching children 'the right values' is prevalent. I think it would be silly to deny that this happens. And to some extent, I think it is fairly important to the formation of mass society.
One difference is that rich area schools can cut out a lot of the social worker stuff and spend more money on actual education of the students.
You're completely missing the point. Indoctrination does happen in some schools. It might even take place in most schools around the world, to some extent. But it is not a necessary and inevitable part of schooling, let alone its defining feature.
aelf
Ashen One
No, I think it happens almost by necessity. Let me illustrate this point. Since I was little, I was taught that education is important to success in later life (and I'm sure the vast majority of the people here share the same experience). Was I convinced through reasoned arguments about why I should wake up to go to school every morning and pay attention in class? No, at most I was presented with a simplistic account of education as a means of getting some kind of prestigious or at least decently-paying job, and through emotionally demonstrative (I'm not sure if that's the right way of describing it, but I think it should be pretty clear what I mean here) means of conditioning I was taught to regard that as a matter of vital importance. All of that is not untrue, but it is simplistic and it was largely presented as a natural fact of human society. And it certainly facilitates the process of education, especially with regard to the latter's function as a means of providing the economy with a skilled workforce.
In fact, the failure to 'teach' kids all of that has often been blamed for the perpetuation of a social and economic underclass in certain societies - heck, IIRC, this has been brought up multiple times in this thread. And I think that is a reasonable point. Why would so many children willingly submit to being educated in schools if they were not told that it was important to them and perhaps to society? And if they don't get with the programme, so to speak, they would actually be at a disadvantage in our social system.
So, yeah, I don't get why you think some kind of indoctrination is not part and parcel of early education. It's not like it's conventional to regard children as rational agents.
In fact, the failure to 'teach' kids all of that has often been blamed for the perpetuation of a social and economic underclass in certain societies - heck, IIRC, this has been brought up multiple times in this thread. And I think that is a reasonable point. Why would so many children willingly submit to being educated in schools if they were not told that it was important to them and perhaps to society? And if they don't get with the programme, so to speak, they would actually be at a disadvantage in our social system.
So, yeah, I don't get why you think some kind of indoctrination is not part and parcel of early education. It's not like it's conventional to regard children as rational agents.
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