I’ve also seen US teachers spending hundreds of dollars out of their own pockets to stock classrooms.
I spent a lot of time in European schools and I’ve never heard of teachers having to stock their own classrooms or fundraise for things like playgrounds, etc.
Our schools are generally underfunded and hardly anyone with any real power gives two shits.
Our schools are
generallypurposefully underfunded and hardlyanyoneany Conservative with any real power gives two shits, because indoctrination is more important than education to Conservatives.There, now that’s a much more correct statement rather than that both-sides bullcrap.
They’re usually not underfunded. The funds just go to sports and admin salaries.
For universities, sure. But not for US public elementary and high schools. They’re just poor.
as if they even give one shit
Conservatives, mostly.
Conservatives believe in neither education nor government. It’s no surprise that when they have power, they fuck up both of those things.
Also racism. A common facet of conservatism. It’s part of why conservatives don’t like public programs- the wrong sort of people might benefit.
the conservative point ive been hearing is that government shouldn’t spend money on education, because the real problem is fatherless households. im not really sure what to do with it
“Fatherless households” is just racist code for black families.
Oh, I thought they were going after lesbians
Black people, gay people, trans people. You know, cool folks.
Oh and poor people. Definitely poor people.
That’s a smoke screen. Another is the “liberal brainwashing machine” school system scare. What they fear is the statistic that higher educated individuals trend towards populism and progressivism. They see higher education of youths as a threat to their political base, which turns into “spineless parents sending kids to liberul brainwashing camps funded by the gubmnt.”
Find out what they believe causes a household to be fatherless. Follow their logic string by asking follow-up questions based on their most recent response. Either they’ll run out of justification quickly, or they’ll back themselves into a corner. From here you can leave it be as they’ve essentially ended up causing them to question their own understanding.
One way of many.
they believe it is neo-marxism, atheism, liberalism, black culture, the lgbt movement and its sex positivity. godlessness, basically. “the left” are sodom and gomorroah. no idea how to argue with that because there’s not a lot of objective fact in any of it.
Also find out what consequences they expect a child being “fatherless” to bring, and compare that to what actually happens when a child has a healthy household without a father in it.
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that could be true but it isn’t helpful
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I mean, if someone is saying that they’re probably coming from an afactual, emotional, space, so you’d have to engage with those rules. Try to make them trust you and see you as part of their in-group, because if they see you as an outsider they’re extremely unlikely to listen. This is true of everyone, but especially true if someone’s emotionally invested in a topic.
Or they’re a troll who knows what they’re doing. Online trolls you can’t really do much about. Real life trolls you can apply social pressure.
If you were going to try to engage that point on facts, which is probably a waste of time, I don’t even know where to start. Are there statistics backing their claim or is it just made up entirely? Is it a dog whistle for racism? Have they read “The New Jim Crow”? Why does this problem preclude spending money on education? If fatherless households were a problem, should the government address that? How so? Would investing more in education be a long term solution to this problem, too?
There are so many questions. Most of which are likely to be wasted because the person holding this position is likely uninterested in facts, but has some feelings they’re justifying with words.
if you asked ben shapiro he would probably suggest subsidies for religious private schools, religious leaders in government, policy based on religion, changes to family law, enforced marriage upon pregnancy and that sort of thing
Those are all terrible ideas. Shapiro is some combination of stupid and evil though, so this would be on brand.
welcome to about half of americans
Education is way undervalued. Teacher pay is horrible and the schools don’t have enough funding for the number of students. So years ago they started putting more and more of the obligation on the parents (and, actually, on the teachers) to supply their own materials.
Schools in well funded states literally need like double what they’re getting, and they need it yesterday.
Let alone worse funded states. Can’t imagine what public education is like in rural Idaho.
As someone from Central Pennsylvania with only 300 total students from K-12th grade, we are simultaneously drowning and shooting ourselves in the foot with the local R’s we put on school boards
Eh… i wouldn’t use the wording shooting anywhere near the words schools.
Because education in the US is a fucking joke, just like everything else in this shithole country.
Edid: sorry i was in a shitty mood earlier lol
Don’t apologize. This America isn’t the same image our grandparents had of America. What we are seeing now are the deep rooted problems and the true America. Our country is a fucking joke.
It’s the land of the fee
Tf happened in 1999?
Charter schools and public funding for private education started to be pushed heavily. And then Columbine happened, which made education a very public issue, so more money started getting shoveled at public ed.
The ghost of Reagan?
Many people here are talking about under-funding of education in the US. If you look at expenditure per student vs GDP per capita, the US is actually doing fairly well when compared to the rest of the world. Our problems aren’t funding related (though I wouldn’t argue against more funding). Our problems are allocation and priority related.
See here for data: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country
I do construction. My company is building a new $40,000,000 school in a town with a population of 143.
Wow, how many students are they expecting? I assume they’ll be pulling from a lot of the surrounding area.
That I really don’t know online it says 97 kids in k-12. It’s in a very rural area and the second phase of construction not in the original bid for the school is housing so when they hire more teachers they have a place to live.
While I don’t think it’s bad they are getting a new school but going with the op it is kind of crazy when they can do that but my kids teachers ask us to supply the classroom with all kinds of stuff.
I wonder if there are some holes in their methodology with regards to how people are paid in the US vs Europe. Like are they factoring in government benefits of teachers and staff that aren’t part of work like they are in the US. Salary and Benefits is a huge part of the cost, as well as land and construction costs.
That’s true. They may not be factoring in government benefits. Things like universal health care.
Well, healthcare and other benefits aren’t likely to account for the discrepancy, as pretty much all teachers get benefits (with the exception of adjuncts at the university level, who are absolutely fucked).
My understanding is salaries are higher in the US in part because of the lack of universal healthcare, and other things that end up coming out of people’s pockets when compared to Europe. I did a little digging on the site, and it does look like salary and benefits are up to 80% of the cost.
I suspect it has more to do with the stark wealth differences in the US which are vastly higher than in Europe, especially because the above includes both public and private education. The US may spend a lot on the mean student, but not much on the median student.
I went to a really well-funded public school, and a lot of the rich parents in the area still sent their kids to private school, meaning they’re basically paying for education twice. Rich American parents spend tons of money on their kids’ education. It would be interesting to see a map of spending per student and see how it is in poor areas.
a lot of the rich parents in the area still sent their kids to private school, meaning they’re basically paying for education twice
Not any more thanks to the Republican pushed school voucher system!
I think your last sentence touched on the real problem. Schools are funded based on local property taxes. So if you’re in a poor area your schools are poor. It’s like Jim Crow and segregaron but legal
The problem is multiplied by the fact that the people who are supposed to figure out how to be efficient with the money are either elected or paid way below market rate. So either way, they don’t have the skills for it.
Because schools are underfunded as shit, thanks GOP, and not only do teachers spend a ton of their own time and money just to be underpaid, they’re not given adequate supplies for students. It’s especially bad for low income families that can’t afford to also pony up for supplies and activities.
Schools are sabotaged. They underfund the actual school so they can’t afford common supplies like this, or repair their AC or building upkeep, etc. They vastly underpay teachers so there are fewer of them, increasing workload per teacher so there’s more burnout and less effective teaching. They make wedge issues like the book bans, sex ed and anti-trans bills that prevent teachers teaching the obvious reality in order to increase anger at teachers to burn more out. They pass bills that allow people to take their taxes out of schools to move to other schools in richer areas or to keep if they homeschool (to indoctrinate).
They are the US republicans and the purpose of this is to ensure the most amount of poorer people are uneducated, don’t get a chance to get higher education. Which leads to ensuring fewer have well-paying jobs, and more people live desperately and can’t quit their jobs, move or exercise their right to assembly. This ensures a life-long near-slave caste of workers so billionaires have cheap labor and who are easily manipulated emotionally through fear keeping Republicans in power.
or to keep if they homeschool (to indoctrinate
I think you’ve got it mixed up. Public school is indoctrination. Homeschooling allows teachers/parents to teach kids how to think, not just regurgitate facts (and opinions masquerading as facts).
And I find it ironic that you blame Republicans for the poor public education in the country when California, one of the bluest states, has some of the worst public education in the country.
It’s not a left vs right thing; it’s a rich vs poor thing.
Edit: My humblest apologies, oh downvoters, for acknowledging reality. Just because you don’t like a fact doesn’t make it any less true.
I don’t like it myself; I wish I could just blame it on Republicans and fight back by voting against them, but it isn’t that simple. Rich people can afford private schools, so they don’t care about public education, or they don’t have kids, so they don’t care about public education, and they have the money/power, so they decide the rules.
Them’s the breaks, I’m afraid.
That’s an … Interesting methodology and take.
It wasn’t always the case. Back when I was a kid, the school provided most things. Textbooks, crayons, paper, scissors, glue, etc. I had to bring myself, a pencil and eraser, and a notebook.
Somewhere along the line they figured out they could be pocketing that money instead of spending it on the kids, let the parents deal with the expenditures. Now you’ve got superintendents with quarter of a million dollar salary, over-budgeted construction projects that aren’t always necessary (and they arent allowed to reallocate those funds elsewhere, so they just construct more bullshit), and they still find the time to screw over the teachers (who are making as much as a highly paid retail employee).
In Australia, for a public school student, the school provides a list of pencils, pens, glue etc the child will need for the year. You can choose to buy it from wherever but there are school suppliers that will provide everything in a pack for a fee and deliver it to your door.
There is no expectation that the teacher would pay for anything out of their pocket.
Because Jeff Bezos would rather buy a few more yachts.
This has been going on long before Bezos sold books out of his garage.
I’m in the US and we just provide a small fee and they provide the supplies. US every state and county is different.
Basically it is a way to provide unfair education. By forcing the student’s parents to pay for as much as possible you are ensuring that only wealthy neighborhoods get good education.
In italy we bought everything outselves including books. Teachers never paid for anything.
Because Americans don’t want to pay taxes. A great majority think these things just magically appear, or that if you can’t afford it you don’t deserve it. “Socialism” is a dirty word in some circles and “the cruelty is the point” is their motto.
