An exit ramp from compulsory education
John Wilder raised the following point in his recent essay Is the Bottom 20% Killing America?
Eliminating those disruptive “students” would allow the rest of the students to learn....and if the kid is booted from school, lift child labor laws and allow them to work 40 hours.
But what would we have them DO????
It doesn't matter what they do! One crew could be digging holes and a different crew could be filling them in the next day and it would still be a net-gain over the current system.
It doesn't matter if equipment could do it cheaper. The benefit comes from getting them off the railroad tracks so the trains can run.
The educational detour doesn't need to be permanent. There can be a "losers bracket" similar to what is seen in double-elimination tournaments.
If nothing else, they can be put onto exercise bikes and used to generate electricity or pump water.
Let them wash parts and help out at a mechanic shop, work with a welder, plumber, clean up a machine shop ,
ReplyDeleteAnd that used to be the method of finding employment for folks that were just not able to do other jobs. Dishwashers, broom pushers, etc. Every shop floor had a guy like that.
DeleteBut then some do-gooders decided that businesses were "Exploiting" these people for low pay and benefits, and put a stop to that.
I went to China in 2008 for a work trip, and saw this in action. There was a diagonal line of at least a dozen men with push brooms sweeping the street, each man pushing the dirt a little closer to the curb than the man to his left got.
ReplyDeleteEven after we send all the not-Americans back, we’ll still have plenty of, shall we say, “welfare-inclined” folks who should have a task to keep them busy.
Agree whole heartedly. Its STUPID to expend vast resources to bring the bottom 5% up a small amount (that still amounts to useless at a societal level), at the expense of not funding the top 5% to the same degree. Look at all the drooling wheelchairs running around in specialized vans, and 5 aides per 3 'clients' (as if Corky or his parents are footing the bill!)
ReplyDeleteThe idea that those resources are better spent making a few peoples lives better was born when females started dominating schools and HR. Its a very maternalistic notion to focus on the bottom, whereas males tend to focus on the top.
Mr Wilder's point is more along the lines of the average +/- 0.7 STDev being cheated out of an education because the problem-kids are slam-dancing in class and it is hard to do a titration when you have Cletus smashing into you.
DeleteAverage +/- 0.7STDev (IQs 90-110) are 50% of the population and are the meat-and-potatoes of the work-force.
My bride did a stint as an 'emergency-certified' math teacher, providing supplemental math instruction to 8th graders. It did not take her long to begin fantasizing about pulling a .44 and blowing away miscreants in her class. She was adamant that if they would just let the teachers refer about 10% (I think she was low on her assessment) of the students to an 'idiot class', that she could have made some significant strides in advancing the others, but... 'muh diversity', and all that.
ReplyDeleteWhy reward them with sand-boxes and cuddle toys? More than half of their problems are behavior.
DeleteHave them tossing bales of hay, picking cucumbers, picking potato bugs.
I went to catholic school and we didnt have much in the way of disruption by students, but that was the 50's and 60's. If you were being a jerk, your folks got told to straighten him out, we've got a
ReplyDeletewaiting list to fill that place. That society doesnt exist anymore. Very few of the kids I knew came from single parent homes, maybe 5%. I whole heartedly agree taking the unteachable out of the schools would make a better environment for those who remained but its politically unobtainable. Additionally, I dont think a large percentage of the kids that need to be excluded will ever be productive members of society but leaving the door open for return has merit. Some kids will settle down at a later date.
We saw this along with bad teachers way back in the '90's-2000's. We pulled our kids from public indoctrination and home schooled them. And for the naysayers, yeah, it turned out terrible. One became a firefighter, the other a pediatric oncology nurse. (sarc off)
ReplyDeleteMy son was sitting at a table in his classroom when the "class animal" decided to jump up onto the table and start pulling my son's hair, as in, trying to pull my son out of his chair and up onto the table. This shaved ape was KNOWN to ALL for this kind of behavior. And NO, he WASN'T black! The class animal was literally that; an animal. He was also on my son's Little League team. He would pick up handfuls of gravel in the dugout, put it them in his mouth, and then blow them out all over the other kids sitting on the bench. Then he would climb the backstop, start shaking the thing back and forth, screaming his head off. That kind of thing. Anyhow, back at the classroom, a fight ensued, after which both the animal and my son were suspended for two weeks. My son had a STELLAR behavior record and STELLAR grades. Suspension was not going to happen if I had anything to say about it. My wife and I went 'round and 'round with the teacher, to the point where she called in the principal. The teacher's final... and fatal... volley was "All the kids in the class have the right to learn!" I retorted with "Yeah. ALL the kids have the right to learn, but it seems like this one lunatic kid is the only one who gets to choose whether or not he, or anyone else, gets to exercise that right. What about the REST of the class??? What about MY son???" ...Crickets... My son was back in class the next day.
ReplyDeleteThe class animal didn't belong in "special ed." He belonged in an INSTITUTION! I wouldn't doubt that he ended up on death row...
Pretty sure (not positive) it's still not OK to euthanize those "special" critters.
DeleteAfter I got out of the military in '73, I wanted to be King and square shit away. Gonna have to put several thousand on trial, then public executions.
As I got older and wiser, I figured out, I didn't want that job after all. I don't LIKE people enough to have that much interaction with them. Incidentally, that's God's job, so, above my pay level.
Maybe the pendulum with bring back public shaming, if that doesn't work, shunning. Yeah, I mellowed out. Live and let die...with love.
The problem with "labor-saving" solutions is it leaves those laborers nothing to do except collect welfare. Eliminate "minimum wage" and provide more labor-intensive jobs. Go "green"; use people with shovels instead of bulldozers ...
ReplyDeleteThe Conservation Corps did some good work. That could be 'reintroduced' as a place for those disrupters.
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ReplyDeleteHey, man. Glad to see you are still alive.
DeleteOut of curiosity, does the comment x 261 refer to the post, the comments, mosquitoes or to the problem-students?
ERJ, only you would count that. What would the psychologists say.
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