|
This is a problem because our society is built on the welfare program of public education. If people are not passed because of performance, they have little option because being a functional member of society requires passing. It's a catch-22.
Retention is something that works in a private system, because then "the education system" wouldn't be the foundation of the society and wouldn't create the innumerable moral hazards like the one we're talking about right now.
Originally Posted by spoonitnow
1. The schools do not have the resources that would be required to actually teach the abundance of kids that would be held back in the grades if they didn't allow them to progress to the next grade.
They say it but it isn't true. All this is is extracting the role of parents in the lives of their children, and paying lots of tax revenues for a teeny-tiny hypothetical benefit in teachers being able to spend a little more time with students on their own. If we're using the classroom paradigm (which truthfully is mostly an archaic system that doesn't change due to subsidization), then we should move in the opposite direction where we have huge classes and parents are expected to make sure the students are taking notes and learning the material. If a teacher can present to 10, he can also present to a 100. If people think this wouldn't work because young students suck at taking notes or paying attention, then we're fools if we think they're learning the material any other way in the first place.
2. It's not fair to shame the kids who fail their classes by holding them back a year.
It isn't, and everybody should be passed from every class they merely choose to take. Welfare is not a privilege, but an entitlement. If we live in a society that says we can't get anywhere in life without degrees, we are entitled to those degrees. Herein lies one of the consequences of state funding.
Here's an interesting piece of history on the subject that I didn't know about until now. The bold is especially interesting:
Dollars to donuts, this retention happened in private systems without much funding or competition from public.
Personally, I'm of the belief that people in power want to weaken those who aren't in power to be able to control them and profit from them. Social promotion (along with a number of education policies in the United States) seems to do a great job of that.
I disagree. I think almost everybody is trying to do the right thing, but trying your best still leads to dysfunction when the system is innately dysfunctional. We are stuck in an archaic view of education and the state, where we believe it is good to virtually mandate scholasticism for all. No amount of brain power or good intentions can fix this. Only deleting the system and letting a functional one arise can fix it.
|