Stephen Shanahan 3:55 pm on April 4, 2016

I feel like I need to play the…

I feel like I need to play the devil’s advocate for a second. When we read about extreme externalities, the positive example was education. I think this could be debated as a negative. K-12 is something everyone pays for through taxes, and yes it helps students. But if also has negative side effects. One is the situation in most high schools involves a lot of young people spreading drugs and alcohol usage to their friends. Another is the rampant plague of bullying that leads to many suicides, self harm incidents, long term self esteem problems, and school shootings. My last negative is the common core and no child left behind systems that are currently in use. This drops the standards and doesn’t properly prepare students for adulthood.

Sam Tran 7:17 pm on April 4, 2016

I believe all of the negative side effects you listed is a direct effect of the society we live in. Sex, drugs, alcohol, bullying, these are not new things being dealt with in schools. However the WAY it is dealt with is far different than even just 12 years ago when I was in school. Our educators cannot take matters into their own hands or properly discipline a child without fear of some parent telling them they are out of line. They are not allowed to use the word “no” in many k-5 schools simply because teachers cannot be “negative.” My sons little league team doesn’t keep score because they don’t want any hurt feelings. We live in a “life is always fair,everyone’s a winner, here’s a trophy for participating,” type of world. So when things such as bullying occur children haven’t been taught how to deal with those emotions, because they’ve never had to. Everyone is so politically correct that I may offend someone because they didn’t like my haircut and it will be in legislation by tomorrow. We are setting our children and future generations up for failure. Don’t get me started on Common Core, I am in college math and I can’t even help my 3rd grader with his math homework because it looks like a foreign language.
- tatef 3:03 pm on April 7, 2016
  
  To Sam:I agree with some of what you said but disagree with some others. I think the littleleague example is the best. Too many parents know how crappy people are to each other and they want to protect their kids from that as long as possible. This is understandable but I agree with you that it isnt very helpful for these kids later in life. I think part of the problem is that schools are the battleground for the “culture war”. Politicians on both sides want to look like they are doing something to help their side “win”. Teachers have very little say in how schools are run. Instead legislatures who have no idea what goes on there get to.
  Republican: “Parents should be the ones who decide what is right for their children. Not some liberal, atheist, so called educator!”
  Democrat: “Parents should be the ones who make rules for their kids. No one should have religion or an alternative culture forced upon them by a fascist system!”
  Common Core math is just another way to think about math. It changed because for the most part the “old way” (I learned differently than my dad and he learned more than his dad did) wasn’t leading to STEM workers so they wanted to present it differently in the hope more kids would like math. Because again education is about what buzzwords politicians like to use rather than whats good for students. Schools should do a better job about communicating that and provide a translation page for old way vs new way. But that would require more time and money and a coherent school system that isnt fractured into dozens of charters and alternatives.
tatef 2:48 pm on April 7, 2016

Drug use, bullying, horrendous boredom, and everything else that is bad about public schools aren’t really because of education but because people are socializing. This is true in a lot of jobs as well: meeting at the bar after work may not be required at a job but if you never go you are seen as not part of the team. In every job ive had there’s been someone who was a bully: we just don’t call them that when we are adults. Generally we go for things that probably arent appropriate to use on this site. School is not just about passing on knowledge of math, science, history etc… It would be a whole lot easier if it was. Instead it is about that and how to navigate in a world that is full of peer pressure, drugs, and bullying. Its far easier to do when youre an adult (and generally around fewer people) but it isn’t that much different.

Econproph[Comp. Systems 2016]

Jim Luke's Comparative Economic Systems Course

I feel like I need to play the…