The senseless ramblings from a veteran teacher that wants to create dialogue that leads to real, significant change.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Private For-Profit Schools... Thoughts?
There has been a dramatic increase in for-profit private schools in higher education. Will we see this same trend in secondary education? What are some pros and cons? Thoughts? Opinions? Please share!
thanks for making this blog - just discovered it today (through the barefoot running stuff) and am enjoying it (i teach in NYC at a little progressive public school).
i wonder how much your boldness of thinking relates to the RV plans? is there an element of burning the boats here? or just a pure opening of the mind now thinking about the open road?
the critiques i've read so far, tonight, all make sense (overwork, hw, grades) but seem sort of like telling people to run better by changing how they land on their foot. but how they land on their foot relates to the whole culture of running (their shoes, their diminished propioception, etc.)
similarly, i think, grades, hw, disengagement relate to the larger issue with schools as institutions separated from the rest of the world and without clear purpose or rationale. dumbing us down by gatto makes a good, if overly-populist, analysis of this.
but that issue, of the absurdity of schools, also seems to be a symptom of a larger issue - the absurdity of our culture. tv, interstates, youtube, semi-automatics, invasions, genocide, slavery, domination by the wealthy, ipods - and no real idea of what the heck we're trying to do. of how our lives fit into the bigger pictures of the planet, the human condition, etc. we're all just floundering here. its all fractals - the grades are absurd, the schools are absurd, the society is absurd.
our root stories have been uprooted (and a lot of them were toxic stories, so there's a lot to celebrate about that). but we've got no myth to guide us - and thus, for instance, no way of making an effective argument about how classes should be set up, so that schools can like x, so that we can have graduates capable of y, and a society of z. we seem lost.
A pro that I've seen in my time teaching at a private institution is their ability to make changes quickly based on students' needs.
ReplyDeletehi jason,
ReplyDeletethanks for making this blog - just discovered it today (through the barefoot running stuff) and am enjoying it (i teach in NYC at a little progressive public school).
i wonder how much your boldness of thinking relates to the RV plans? is there an element of burning the boats here? or just a pure opening of the mind now thinking about the open road?
the critiques i've read so far, tonight, all make sense (overwork, hw, grades) but seem sort of like telling people to run better by changing how they land on their foot. but how they land on their foot relates to the whole culture of running (their shoes, their diminished propioception, etc.)
similarly, i think, grades, hw, disengagement relate to the larger issue with schools as institutions separated from the rest of the world and without clear purpose or rationale. dumbing us down by gatto makes a good, if overly-populist, analysis of this.
but that issue, of the absurdity of schools, also seems to be a symptom of a larger issue - the absurdity of our culture. tv, interstates, youtube, semi-automatics, invasions, genocide, slavery, domination by the wealthy, ipods - and no real idea of what the heck we're trying to do. of how our lives fit into the bigger pictures of the planet, the human condition, etc. we're all just floundering here. its all fractals - the grades are absurd, the schools are absurd, the society is absurd.
our root stories have been uprooted (and a lot of them were toxic stories, so there's a lot to celebrate about that). but we've got no myth to guide us - and thus, for instance, no way of making an effective argument about how classes should be set up, so that schools can like x, so that we can have graduates capable of y, and a society of z. we seem lost.
but yes, i'm thinking about joining the NNhwW.
:)
thanks for the blogs!