[lug] BVSD Windows vs Mac craziness

[Nate Duehr]

Bear Giles wrote:

> ... and nobody will touch "career-death" struggling students.

Only if their parent's don't care and don't find them an alternative 
school environment that specializes in such students.  It WOULD exist, 
and it WOULD be more expensive for those parents.

> We're all humans here, and nobody can foresee that the C- student will 
> win a Nobel Prize or that the straight-A student will spend most of his 
> life driving a New York taxi.

Nope.  But it's up to the individual student and their family to reach 
up to whatever that student's potential is.  There's no grand wonderful 
thing society can do to make it happen, especially from a school.  The 
quintessential example is Einstein.  Horrible student in traditional 
schools.

It's all about personal drive and motivation.  Parents are far more 
important in that than any teacher can ever be.

> The business model for schools does not work.  Correction -- it does not 
> work unless you are a corporatist who sees people as nothing other than 
> interchangable cogs that are only begrunglingly entitled to the same 
> cash investment.  I'm a humanist -- students have different needs and 
> "one size fits all" solutions will not work.  Bouncing the question to 
> parents is even worse -- how many kids would be denied a minimal science 
> education because of their parent's religious beliefs?  Or an arts-rich 
> education because their parents expect their kids to also be lawyers or 
> MBAs?  (Not that our current schools are particularly arts-rich, sadly.)

Bouncing the question off parents is not worse.  I truly believe that 
some parents WOULD screw their kids over and not send them to 
traditional schools where they'd learn basics instead of religion... 
but... that's the parents and the family's problem.  Other parents would 
use the money wisely and invest only in schools that produced a solid 
education -- it would balance out.

> (N.B., that doesn't mean I think our current system is ideal.  But I've 
> had discussions with teachers and librarians and there is uniform 
> concensus that NCLB has been an unmitigated disaster for everyone 
> involved since it's reduced all education to "teaching to the test" lest 
> draconian penalties be triggered.)

It's only an unmitigated disaster because they're not AHEAD of the 
curve.  If they'd been teaching PAST the testing requirements and not 
just TO them, perhaps it wouldn't be so bad?  If teachers who could get 
their classrooms to test two grade levels ABOVE the requirements for 
their grade were rewarded heavily?

> BTW I think this is a very rich metaphor for the Windows/Mac/Linux 
> debate.  With the corporatist viewpoint there is absolutely no doubt 
> that the students and admins must use Windows and nothing but Windows.  
> Windows, MSIE, Word.  That is what the rest of the world uses and it 
> would waste everyone's time to futz with anything else.

They're both monopolies.  :-)    Just like Linux, it's "time to try 
something different".

Nate