The Political Compass

[Occhidiangela]

Hi,
I think you are falling into the modern trap of thinking that all we learn, we learn in school.  This raises an impossible expectation of the school system, especially in that there are so many conflicting points in moral codes.
==snip==
But, back to your point of teaching morality in school.  Even if we, as a society, decided to attempt to do so, it would involve starting school much sooner.  Apparently, we absorb morality as we absorb language, at a young age, and to a large extent, our fundamental moral structure is very much in place by age seven or so.  If the parents have failed, working as they were with a malleable medium, can we reasonably expect the schools to repair the damage once it has calcified?

--Pete
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I'll offer that the problem of morality and school runs afoul of rational standards of behavior being forced to contend with widely varying social assumptions, assumptions induced by kowtowing to multiculturalism and the fallacy that all opinions and POV are equal. Schools run afoul, from the behavioral assumption standpoint, of:

-- "it's all about me" (an attitude indulgent parents enable)
-- falsely identifying school with "the man"
-- deep pockets lawsuits against schools driven by egotism
-- short of lawsuits, adversarial relationships between some parents and some school systems (It works when the adults are a team, not on opposing teams.)
-- confusing making people feel good about themselves with the learning and educating process.

Self confidence grows from mastery. Mastery takes work and practice, albeit at different rates for many folks. We can't presume equality in rates of learning, nor of talent and natural gifts, (my singing voice being a brilliant case in point :o ).

So, while grasping for a neutral common assumption, we seem to have confused the presumption of a rough equality under the law and a rough equality of access to education (via public schools) with an entitlement to equality of outcome and opportunity to excel . . . irrespective of foundational input. (Ages 1-6) Not to mention dumb luck (DNA.) Nature AND nurture apply. One can't resolve all "inequalities" via nurture unless, like the lumberjack with his saw, you create equality by cutting all down to the same LOW level. So much for forests and trees.

A goal of education, which starts with the first breath, is to inculcate a sense of a lifetime journey through a series of masteries of X, Y, Z, ad infinitum (mastery of simple tasks, such as correctly tying shoes, is a mastery nonetheless) Mastery at gradually more complex levels. This sort of focus in education and child rearing harmonizes with your ideal, Pete. It logically follows, perhaps, that one not have children until one has considered how to raise them in toto, which includes their education.

This leads to insisting on earning a parenting license before having children. Why? Raising children is at least as important as driving, and badly raised children are a risk for societal disruption and waste. Check our prisons for some evidence. Of course, I don't see that licensing coming any time soon. Considered from a cradle to grave development cycle, the child being what is under development, the system as it exists is built on sand of variable density and quality.

The progressive approach has been tried, but not perfected. Like most clearly analytical approaches, it ignores the human element. A slightly exaggerated course of action is to adopt the Statist approach in a purer form: make every child a ward of the State at birth, consign women to the role of brood mares for the state, and men to DNA disseminators. That appears to be the condition that some of our children are in, albeit somewhat unintentionally.

Such a social engineering model allows any and every parent/sire/dam to abdicate the role of mentor, stick to the specialized role of passing genetic code along to the next generation, and then . . . let the State educate. (Johnny Cochrane, my sound bytes are better than yours. And you're dead.) Such a Brave New World. Oh, check our prisons, again, for some evidence of how well that works, see that disconnect from my opener on agreed behavioral standards and what they run afoul of.

The reaction? In some places, people who can are home schooling more often. Talk about retro, that is a log cabin society approach to rearing children, since public education was not available to that society. A system that meets the needs of none of, or many of, the children seems to be as useful as no system at all. Well, that's overstated, but that is the perception. My neighbors who home school have no faith in their fellow man, "the system" to reform itself, and will not risk their children to that sort of misplaced faith. (My kids go to public school)

The growing homeschool population are people who care deeply about their kids, and their development, from the day they are born. They care in a way the State never can. The State is not Flesh and Blood. It is a non corporeal icon, something that represents our shared common condition and experience as a society. I'll get cynical and call it a graven image, represented by a flag. This inhuman (though run by humans) system is not responding to them, so they are opting out. So are the kids who drop out. They too are opting out. I think we all lose when you add the two effects together.

Home school is a different approach from turn on, tune in, drop out of the 60's, eh? More along the lines of "Teach, your children well." Which gets us back to

Who is qualified to teach your children?

Obviously not everyone. But I know where it starts. Same place as Charity. You have to make that commitment before you have them.

Occhi