The programme called Seal (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) encourages pupils to discuss their feelings and manage their emotions. But a study of the group work phase of the project indicates that it is not having the desired effect on classroom or home behaviour.Parents, teachers and pupils saw no impact on behavior, empathy and self-awareness. Still, the program is slated to be taught in all British schools by 2011. Some educators think teaching about emotions makes children over-sensitive and wastes time that could be spent on academic learning.
You can’t teach niceness
December 7, 2008 By
Lessons designed to help children learn social and emotional skills show no results, a British study has concluded.
Once a San Jose Mercury News op-ed columnist, I left mainstream media in 2001 to write a book on a start-up charter school, "Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea and the Charter School That Beat the Odds." I blog on education and work as a freelance writer and speaker.
Dear Mom,
When you say:
, do you equate “public education” to:
1) tax support of school
2) compulsory attendance staturtes
3) State (i.e., government, generally)-operation of schools
4) State-defined curricula and
5) policies which restrict parentss’ options for the use of the taxpayers’ pre-college education subsidy to schools operated by government employees
…
?
…
The government of a locality is the largest dealer in interpersonal violence in that locality (definition). I also value public education, and that is why I oppose the government’s role in the education industry. Taxpayers get nothing from a State (i.e., government) presence in the education industry that they wouldn’t get from an unsubsidized, uncoerced market in education services, except for drug abuse, vandalism, and violence.
MK:
Yes.
MK,
Well the current education funding regime redistributes money. This at least appears to be valuable to the people getting more money than they put in. What is your take on that?
MK,
To clarify, I’m assuming there is the possibility that some people might be better off now than with no redistribution of money because otherwise they couldn’t afford anything. Also that even though what they are getting now may not be what they would like best they at least consider it better than nothing.
(malcolm): “…do you equate “public education” to:
1) tax support of school
2) compulsory attendance staturtes
3) State (i.e., government, generally)-operation of schools
4) State-defined curricula and
5) policies which restrict parentss’ options for the use of the taxpayers’ pre-college education subsidy to schools operated by government employees?
(Mom): “Yes.”
…
The case for tax support of school (or education) is weak. This article:
…
http://wbro.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/12/1/83
…
was at one time available for free. I recommend the introduction for an abstract welfare-economic overview of education subsidies. In addition to the author’s caveats, the case for subsidization on “public goods” grounds suffers a further defect: corporate oversight is a public good, and oversight of State functions is a public good which the State itself cannot provide. State assupmtion of responsibility for the subsidization (or direct production) of public goods transforms the “free rider” problem at the root of public goods analysis but does not eliminate it.
Except for #1 and #4 (which go together, since the State cannot subsidize education without a definition of “education”) there is contemporary empirical evidence that educated populations exist in States which do not feature #2, #3, and #5.
2) Up into the early 1990s, the government of Singapore did not compel attendance at school.
3) Compulsory attendance statutes do not mean much unless the State compels some school to accept students rejected everywhere else. Call these default-option schools “the public schools”. Depending on what policy makers hoped to achieve with the students in these schools, likely these schools would cost more, per pupil, to operate than schools which assemble their clientelle by mutual agreement. I do not see why the State could not put the contract to operate these default-option schools out to bid periodically (like private prisons).
5) In Hong Kong and Ireland, 90% of students take tax subsidies to independent and/or parochial schools. In the Netherlands, close to 70% of students take tax subsidies to independent schools. In Belgium, about 65%. Close to 40% of schools in Singapore are independent or Church-operated (they tend to be smaller than government schools, so less than 40% of Singapore students attend independent schools).
pm,
The case for subsidization is weak, and the case for State (government, generally) operation of schools is non-existent. It’s a very large argument, but I believe that tax subsidies to the education industry benefit system employees and other contractors to the system and harm students, families, and taxpayers generally. Corvee labor is a tax, which falls most heavily on children of the least politically adept parents. Poor and minority children labor unpaid as window-dressing in a massive make-work program for dues-paying mambers of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel. Compulsory attendance laws and child labor laws put on-yhe-job training off limits.
…
Consider the last paragraph of this article (pardon the shameless plug for my blog)
…
http://harriettubmanagenda.blogspot.com/2008/08/whats-linear-differential-operator.html
It’s unlikely that anyone would get “nothing” in an un(tax)subsidized market in education services. Private charity would provide some schooling. Employers would provide on-the-job training. I suppose there are some who gain from the current system (relative to where they would be in an unsubsidized, unregulated market in education services), but losers outember winners.
…
Eduardo Zambrano
Formal Models of Authority
Rationality and Society, V.11, #2. May, 1999
Hey Malcom–you’re only talking to yourself. Everybody else is gone.
Actually I’m still listening.