RE: Social Promotion

["Ry Jones" <rjones@airgap.net>]

Tom Hansen writes:
> Being a product of public education (culminating with a
> degree from a public
> university here in Moscow), I find these comments to be
> extremely offensive and
> prejudicial.

But you don't attack my position factually, my remarks just make you feel
bad. Sorry for making you feel bad, Tom. I didn't realize feeling had much
to do with a debate of the facts. The facts are, the schools in Moscow are
not supported very well. They are supported just well enough to get the kids
who attend (my two school age kids attend public school, full disclosure
here) out of the hair of the parents so they don't have to hire babysitters
all day while they work.

Are private schools better? No, at least not because they're private. There
are good public schools and bad private schools. The difference is, if a
private school is failing, the parents take the money elsewhere. It becomes
a feedback loop. There is no feedback loop for public schools other than the
levy process. You can go complain about a teacher, but there is no detriment
to them. You can go praise a teacher, but there is no reward for them.

This started out as a debate on social promotion. Social promotion is an
artifact of the school not being willing to flunk kids who can't perform. It
does no service to the child to graduate them if they can't perform, but who
are we kidding? The short term result of the 12 years of "education" is that
the parents (that's me!) didn't have to directly pay for 12 years of
babysitting, and were therefore able to earn some money.

Do you suppose that parents who are directly paying out of pocket for
private schooling would tolerate social promotion? To see a child who can't
perform get the same benefit as a child who can? I doubt such a concept (or
the school advancing it) would last long in the private world. But here we
are, pretending to debate if it makes and sense in public schools.

Hope that doesn't hurt your feelings, Tom.