Badmike wrote:And the level of quality of education is off the charts compared to my local school district (EX the range of languages you can learn in the local private Catholic school ranges from German, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Japanese, Chinese and Russian, while the local school offers only the first three).
Xaxaxe wrote:The post in question can be found at:http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/300096/page/5
mandalaymoon wrote:It's ironic you cite availability of foreign languages as a difference between private Catholic schools and public schools. My private Catholic high school, which was and still is considered one of the best in country, only had four foreign languages (Spanish, French, Italian and German) plus Latin, of course. The local public high school I transfered into for only my senior year had all those plus Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and even American Sign Language if you count that. I jumped at the chance to take Japanese and it changed my life in an extremely positive way. I even got a free trip to Japan provided by an ongoing program between the NYC Board of Education and the Japanese Ministry of Education. If I had stayed in private Catholic high school, I might have ended up with a very mundane existence. I also give D&D credit too..
Xaxaxe wrote:Okay, which one of you guys wee-wee'd in this guys cereal? Or maybe it was me: "wow, you actually found something useful on acaeum. usually it's a bunch loud-mouthed idiots harrassing newbies, standing on soapboxes, and generally being annoying. the guy running the site tries to do a good job with collector info, but the forums are just moronic flame-fests."The post in question can be found at:http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/300096/page/5(scroll down almost all the way to the bottom)But, wait, it gets even better! Whoever this guy is, it's his first day over at BGG. I have no idea what his agenda is, but he's probably going to be gone soon; there's a fairly low tolerance for morons over there. You can be smug, you can be passive-aggressive, you can be argumentative, you can even do some thread-jacking, but they really frown on being a complete asshat over there.My other favorite part is the lack of capital letters. The guy is either 12 or so, or he's a developmentally disabled adult or some sort. Much like here, the audience there tends to be slightly older and generally fairly well-educated ... they use capital letters, in other words. This guy, though, appears to have come directly from a video game forum.+++++Late edit: the guy just had his account suspended. Woot! He'll have to go somewhere else for his Acaeum-bashing.
We went from friendly to unfriendly pretty quickly, and I should have been able to avoid that. I need to get a new boyfriend, maybe then I wouldn't be so uptight.
Look, like you guys and gals I am a gamer. I like games. I'm a big ol gaming dork, and love to play DnD, and board games. But, "this" the selling of games - it is business to me. I either make money at it, or I do something else for money (not much call for leporous hookers, as you can imagine!).
Xaxaxe wrote:Late edit: the guy just had his account suspended. Woot! He'll have to go somewhere else for his Acaeum-bashing.
Xaxaxe wrote:... and now this clown is sending me nasty messages through the BGG system. Big loser.I wish I had Brian's skill with tracking people down, matching up IP addresses, etc. I have my suspicions on who this person is ... and I'm pretty sure I'm right ... but, technically, no way to verify it.Oh, well, no biggie. I should probably let it go; like all other trolls, it's just the attention that he's after. Pathetic.
Badmike wrote:What's worse is that he's not even up to the standards of trolls like Atari, Afrika Corps, etc. I mean, his stuff is pretty weak, not even worthy of being a foe of most of us. It's like one of Batman's villains, except we don't get Riddler, Joker, Penquin, etc. We get Calendar Man or TweedleDee and Tweedle Dum.Mike B.
That old canard... private schools are no better than public schools in many ways.
Sea-to-sky-games wrote:I find it ironic that you mention that teachers -- in a private system -- have to suck up to parents to keep them happy. I think this is unlikely to be true
For instance...watch out for comparisons of public schools with private or charter schools. The differences are so large as to amount to apples and oranges.
most charter schools and private schools do not have special education programs. So, my severe and profoundly disabled kids are not welcome in most of those schools, even if they had the money and/or family support to get into them.
So, comparing testing scores between public, private and charter schools can be like comparing time trials between broken down VW bugs versus race cars. (Sorry, that is very un-American, very un-PC and perilously close to educational heresy....but it is also quite true.)
A simple fact: The single greatest predictor of student success is....*drum roll*....parental involvement.
Private school parents pay good money and they often expect a certain amount of power over the results. How much power they have depends upon the character of administrators and the school's overall financial footing. For instance...the board of directors of many private schools is an equal mix of the wealthiest and most psychotic parents. Piss off a powerful or troublesome parent and you take your professional life in your hands...regardless of who is right. In my old, private school, we had some students with massively inflated gradepoint averages get hammered on the SAT. Astonishingly...many people were unable to guess the reason for the discrepancy. (HINT: You cannot threaten to fire the people who administer the SAT if your child does not get the right score.)
Connected to my comments in the post above this one....often, the entire point of a private school is to get one's children away from other people's children. Public schools do not have the luxury of turning away anyone. Whatever social problems are out there inevitably overflow like sewage into our public schools. Blaming the schools for these problems is illogical and counter-productive.
On the downside...many private school just don't have the finances to offer some of the best programs offered in the public schools Sometimes (and I have two sets of inlaws who fall into this group) parents assume that "private" means "better" and are shocked when their kids transfer to public school and are way behind their grade-level peers.
mandalaymoon wrote:Market-driven education is a disaster as its emphasis will be on student retention and ability to pay in order to pad profit and the bottom line. Students and parents will be flattered and feared to keep the money rolling in. It will be a shift from a teacher-student relationship to a consumer-provider one, and that will be the end of any objective learning outcomes. Public schools are by no means perfect, but they're preferable to the systemic pitfalls of the structure of private schools.
Grug Greyskin wrote:Market driven education is hardly a disaster at the University level. A mix of public and private institutions, with students free to choose where they want to go. Dare I boast that we have the best university system in the world?
Grug Greyskin wrote:Why not the same thing at the secondary level?
Grug Greyskin wrote:Parents can determine which school is best for their child - public or private - and let their tax dollars follow them. States spend around $10K annually per student, which is competitive with the average private school tuition. In fact, private schools that are more expensive may even lower tuition to attract public school students, in order to get that $ (less being better than none).
Grug Greyskin wrote:How do the schools (public and private) compete for students? By providing a world class education, that's how.
Grug Greyskin wrote:Right now, a student in a poor performing public school has no options available to them, except to languish. Why not give them an opportunity to go to a private school or better public school?
FormCritic wrote:It doesn't lend itself to soundbites or snappy answers.