Quote:
|
There is no corellation between the amount of money spent per pupil and test results.
|
I wasnt really talking about an improvement in test results, I just meant that schools need as a foundation better funding than public schools in America seem to be given....I dont really consider that we in the UK got the balance right either. I think we spend way too little on our state schooling system.
Nor do I think that money and money alone will make schools do better by their children. Teacher's need to be better supported and children need to feel they are valued as pupils and young citizens. If Kids see that very little is spent on their schools and the paint is peeling off the walls, or they dont have enough books to go around ( which is a little like the state school I went to) It compounds the notion that education is not valued. Difficult for a teacher to get a child to value their education if at a meta level they are getting a conflicting picture on that.
Theres also the sociologist's answer to this which is to look at the social conditions of the children who make up the State school intake. Are they more or less likely than the children at the feepaying school to be living in conditions conducive to study? Are they more or less likely to be from homes where parents are working more than one job and are therefore less likely to be able to spend time helping their child with homework ? Are they more likely than the children in the fee paying school to have pressing issues at home that might distract them from their education or are they more likely to engage in a subculture which denies education as valid or desirable or simply discounts it as something for other people ?
Is it possible that having been exposed to a culture which seeks to mythologise the athlete and the soldier but which places the historian or the poet into the fool's role many children of today have learned to disregard learning for learning's sake? If thats the case and children are being taught to see their education in terms of what exams they can pass in order to get a good job, is it also possible that there are children who take on an identity of failure at a young age and therefore begin to see success in life as something which simply doesnt apply to them and exclude themselves from the learning process accordingly?