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There's a fair bit of talk both in person and in the news about downsizing the Department of Education, possibly moving student loan servicing to another department, and federal requirements around students with special accommodations.
I'm interested if anything will happen with the (massive! extremely expensive!) special education edifice.
Some articles from the past couple days:
I've been personally hearing a lot more (hushed, furtive) negative talk among teachers about IEPs and small groups (children who aren't able to be in a regular classroom due to their conditions) lately, though that could just be my own work environment. Like many controversial things, there are usually a few children who are essentially black holes in the context of large systems, such that while most children will need and be given, say, 1/10 of an adult's attention (and learn the material), two or three will end up with five full adult's attention (and it's entirely unclear whether or if they're learning anything). There are some children in the middle, who may need the attention of one adult, but will then clearly learn things and become productive members of society, and they are generally not talked about negatively, even though it's rather expensive. It might still be less expensive in the long run, anyway.
I have mixed feelings about it. Kids with various conditions should have as good a life as reasonably possible. Their parents and siblings shouldn't necessarily be expected to stop everything to support them full time for the rest of their lives. But at what cost? It's not reasonable to deprive their classmates, who might have a condition but be able to learn curricular things of an education. It's not reasonable to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on interventions to obtain a tiny improvement in the utility of one person.
Apropos Zvi's recent post on education, it's probably not even reasonable to keep dragging a child who's clearly miserable with an enormous school and is trying to run away most days through a daily cycle of "transitions" the they hate every 40 minutes or so (sometimes every five or ten, in the classrooms that use "rotations" with bells and special behaviorist noises).
Perhaps nothing will come of it. Should the edifice change? in what way?
I think honestly that the biggest reason for school failure is the lack of honesty about the students. Because every kid is attending public school unless their parents specifically opt out, they are forced to be a microcosm of what we think society is like. And for lots of reasons, this means that we can’t admit to ourselves that differences in talent exist in education.
Part of it is that education in modern society largely determines where a kid ends up in society. If your kid isn’t learning at the same speed as his peers, he’s going to have much worse jobs later on, and thus make less money, and live objectively worse lives. Obviously, no parent wants this for their own kids, so they will resist anything that seems to suggest that their child isn’t capable of doing what the other kids are. Teachers, being generally optimistic about the potential of a child, are also reluctant to tell them that they’re simply not good at a given skill. The result is that nobody is actually getting an appropriate education in a public school. Everyone is learning at the same speed: too fast for the stupid ones, and too slow for the smart ones. But everyone is learning the “college bound” curriculum, even if an objective look at some kids’ test scores makes it obvious that they cannot actually do well enough in college to get any sort of job that pays them enough to pay back the loans.
Of course, Theres the political part as well. A school system that does tracking like Asian and European schools do is going to find itself in arrears of the Civil Rights Act in fairly short order as the lower tiers of the school will be full of black, Hispanic, and MENA students, and the upper tiers will be full of white and East Asian students. Whether this is biology, culture, or poverty is unimportant to the problem here — getting the results that would happen if you put kids in classrooms that fit their actual education needs would be racist and probably sexist as well. Reality is illegal.
All of which hurts everyone but the most average kids. The smart kids, unless their parents put them in an expensive private school or teach them after school are limited. Sorry, kid, you have more potential than average, so you’ll be made bored at school, probably hate it, and never reach your full potential. The dumb kids are sent through a system that shunts them toward college-bound studies and away from the kinds of life skills that they can learn that would give them reasonably attainable job skills so they can earn a living wage. A college bound kid who can’t actually do college has no marketable skills and thus has a bright future in stores, restaurants, warehouses, and professional driving whether uber, taxi, or delivery. But we didn’t hurt his precious feelings, so all good, right?
And so I think if I were in charge I’d track kids, and if you’re below average, I’d put the kids in a skilled labor track as appropriate to the child. If you are not suited to college, you still need a skill, and that means pushing things like shop classes, cooking, repair, and so on so when those kids graduate, they have something they can do to support themselves and thus earn a living. For the above average kid, I’d put him in the most advanced classes he could handle — and see just how far his brain can take him. I think there are a lot of geniuses stuck, bored with a pace meant for future clerical workers who would shock the world given the chance.
I don't know that this can be addressed without a revolutionary change in how prestige is divvied out in society.
And in fact it may not be desirable for Americans in particular. You could have a system with less de jure social mobility if you make it noble to be on the lower rungs of society and create other games one can play to get prestige.
In Japan, age owes respect to the degree that there's negotiation to be had on who is owed deference if you are the young boss of an old employee. This and other such norms that reward mastery of even the lowest jobs makes all out elitism acceptable when it comes to schooling. But can Americans muster the discipline and ethno-cultural loyalty that such a system requires?
I'm here reminded of a pair of documentaries I saw about Japanese prisons. Prison is yet another solution to ugly reality that one's society must cope with justifying. The Japanese system is setup under the idea that criminals are deviant antisocial elements that must be reeducated into society, and it takes the form of a work camp where every minute of your time is dedicated to hammering pro-social habits into your mind like a soldier's drill. Complete with slogans you have to recite and beatings if you don't do what you're told properly.
The first documentary I saw was made by French television about such prisons, and it depicted a system that is opaque and produced some abuses, but engaged positively with the general idea of the prisoner's life being regimented to a totalitarian degree if that allowed successful reinsertion in society.
The second one was made by American television, and pictured the very concept of this reeducation as an insult to one's human dignity.
My point is then this: is America's infatuation with individual freedom, self made men and the "American dream" not categorically incompatible with dealing with the reality of such problems pragmatically? Is it not morally preferable to the American that everyone is given the same chances and elitism is nominally crushed even if that allows elites to deny a sense of noblesse oblige? Can American nationhood imply enough collective loyalty to shun the need for handouts in the name of Civil Rights?
Other than the beatings, some of the “social communication” classrooms for severely autistic kids are already rather like those prisons.
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