Topic: Collectivists at it again. (Read 3233 times)

taken with a grain of salt.

what do you expect from a communist and marxist rag like the atlantic ?

go take a look at their leadership and their affiliations in the atlantic media company.

its typical establishment controlled media masquerading as alternative and/or independent.

here is their press release for the company:

down is up, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.

I was raised on traditional Montessori principles, so everything was practical, hands on, etc. You can equate to having been in a trade school-- learn only the minimum required to get the trade done. Due to most college entry requirements consisting of graduating a high school accredited by a US Dept of Education recognized accreditation body (mine was middle states accredited), I had to do a correspondence high school. I wasn't really into it though and only did it because I figured it would help me later on in life. To tell you the truth, it hasn't yet! Neither has college, university, or anything else. You know what has helped me though is being an opportunist, dynamic, and talented. Those seem to carry me pretty far.

So you've never had the experience of having to ask permission to use the bathroom. Very nice.

About what percentage of your studies were "general purpose" or "universally desirable" beyond basic arithmetic and reading? I'm imagining classic literature or a book or two on logic. Or were reading, writing, and arithmetic it?

Of the remaining % of your studies that were aimed at specific end goals (metallurgic studies, as an example) was there a great deal of learning/studying/researching before you actually started getting involved in those areas... the "doing," as it were. I'm guessing some things you simply dropped and moved past.

(I understand I'm still using "schooling-oriented" terms that may not be accurate... it's quite possible you rarely spent a day just reading and focusing on "studies." It's the best I can do not having a firm understanding of it though, so my apologies.)

It's all pretty much public information. I've been talking about it openly across the internet ever since I came to Korea.

I have signed up and completed a few online programs for higher education but I've never attended a brick and mortar school though no.

I find that if done right, it's perfect for people like me who already knew what they wanted to do since 11 years old (I don't need college at ALL, I need graduate school), but that my parents didn't do it right and unlike Zhou who learned mostly from Wikipedia, all I had was IRC. ;_;

I consider myself 10 years late/behind on most traditional subjects yet 100 years ahead on most of the real world applicable skills (because I wasn't brainwashed).

I take it you never went to traditional schools then, either public or private? Just curious, feel free to ignore if you don't want to dig too far into your educational background.

For the record, I was homeschooled from birth and ironically, I also ran several different schools in South Korea that were all Montessori curriculum, certified by the Montessori society. It's pretty fun stuff but in the US, I think it's almost the same thing as homeschooling.

That's like forcing everyone to buy one type of car, the government car and when I say stop forcing us to use the government car you ask me to redesign the government car. I don't want a system, systems suck, and using a government system brings all kinds of perverse incentives.

In the future (I'm optimistic that we've hit peak government) there will be as many educations as there are people.

Homeschooling is already an exception, so I doubt the question means anything.  But within the (self-selecting) homeschooling community itself, success as measured relative to the 'average' is quite high regardless of social class, parental income or racial background.  There have only been a few major studies done upon adult homeschoolers, but they all seem to imply that the differences between those catagories are below the margin of error.  Said another way, the odds of success in college (and life in general, if measured by income or final educational level attained) for a homeschooled student are both higher and indistingishable regardless of classification or group identity.


Although I can agree that the mom's time is precious, I don't agree that those kids are screwed.


Not anyone, but some.  And yes, for free to the parents.  It's called charity, and those who accept it know damn well that they are not entitled to it.  I attended a private school that was wholely owned and operated by the local Catholic archdiociese.  It was the kind of school that when founded, students there were more likely than not to be children of first generation Irish immigrants.  These days, about one in five of the students are children of first generation hispanic immigrants.  There is still a convent on the property, although they don't teach anymore and didn't teach when I was there; I did have one class taught by a monk.


Lucky few, correct.  And they know it and are thankful for it.  Some grow up to become truely successful, and repay in kind by donating back to the school even if they are not (or never were) Catholic.


If you had actually bothered to read what I wrote, I mentioned that I had no idea what the outcome of widespread use of virtual schools would be.  I'm sure that if they prove to be wildly successful, it wouldn't be terriblely long before the Finns replicated that success in their own way.


School lunch & breakfast programs are widely common here in the US as well, even if they might not be universal.  I've never seen a grade school that didn't provide both, and that includes the one that I attended when I attended it back in the 80's.  I'm sure that the details vary from state to state, but Finland is pretty small so choose any state program you like and feel free to make comparisons.


Only because you are seeing what they want you to see.  It's the unseen that is most troublesome.

"Free" for the person receiving the education. I'm well aware of how education is funded. As for the poor doing well with homeschooling, would you say that that is the norm, or the exception? Single moms with three kids genreally don't have time to homeschool their kids. Should we just consider those kids screwed and move on?
So your school will admit anyone who shows up at their doorstep, for free? Doesn't sound plausable. That's not a system that will help everyone, just a lucky few.
You have no idea how well virtual schools work, you just assume that it would scale up to any number of participants and somehow be better than how Finland does things? And did you also see how they manage not only to educate their kids, but also make sure that everyone got properly fed so that they could benefit from the education as well?
I'm not saying that this is the best way that will ever be when it comes to education, but compared to everything else right now it looks pretty awsome.

The education is not free, someone has to pay for it.  Regardless, I have personally seen relatively poor families do very well while homeschooling, and I personally attended a private school that did and does accept students whose parents cannot pay for tuition.  Homeschooling, generally speaking, is a much cheaper option than any other method; including taxpayer supported education.  And with much better results.  Furthermore, one can literally homeschool via an online 'distance learning' program associated with a state funded university for zero personal cost, and the results are similar.  They are often called 'virtual schools'.  So from a certain perspective, the US could literally homeschool every child willing to participate in that manner with a quality and free-to-them education.  Whether or not the results would be competitive to Finland under such circumstances, I would not hazard a guess.

Of course the subjects, group and age are arbitrary. How else would you conduct a study if you don't select what you want to study, and who?
So the schools you named, they are attainable to anyone? Without cost to the individual family? Same with homeschooling? I would agree with you that a personal tutor would probably yield better results, but that's not a realistic option. 
Here you have a school that provides education for everyone, on par with the best countries in the world, with less time spent.

Let's see a better system that enables all kids from a low income families to have the same chance as anybody else if they're just willing to work for it, not a system that favours the rich and stacks the deck against the poor.
Unless you're actually suggesting sending all kids in the US to those private schools that "would crush Finland's numbers" for a good and free education.

Best? No, that would be China according to the sources your article uses. What's your point?

Well, I tend to agree, the methodology used is probably more important than the school system, since any given school system can use any given methodology (or take whichever parts it wants.) I could see some difficulty with going from a fairly unstructured setup straight to college/university without some prepping. But if the degree isn't that important for the intended occupation or field, I don't see why there should ever be a need to enter those institutions (and pay that $$$, or have someone else do so.)

I'm interested in your experience with Montessori.  Did you learn under that methodology yourself, or aid in a school using it? Or have you been close to a family that dealt with it? I've only heard secondhand accounts, albeit positive ones; I'd love to hear an actual testimony.

That was what I had gathered. If it works as it should, I wouldn't think any formalized schooling would be necessary beyond 6th grade with that system, except perhaps spending a year or so prepping for a college that provides a mandated degree (such as for law, medicine, engineering, etc.)

I've had mixed experience with Montessori methodology. And that's what it is, a methodology, not a school system. You could use Montessori methods in the school system, and I think the Finns do that to some extent. If you read the article you'll see that they focus on educating while playing, something Montessori recognized the importance of very early.
My experience with Montessori is mixed like I said. They do teach some things very well, but they lack others, so moving from Montessori to higher education isn't always trouble free since there's often certain skills missing.

Montessori style education is just unschooling in a well equipt day-care style environment while parents work.  It does tend to work out well, since most children are self-motivated if the love of learning isn't crushed by formal schooling first.  However, I have yet to see a single Montessori school extend beyond 6th grade.

This is a useless study.  It compares government school systems to each other, based on arbitrary metrics comparing scores between groups of 15 year olds (an arbitrary age) in testing for arbitrarily chosen subjects.  It would be trivial for any number of different private school systems in the US to crush Finland's numbers.  Average scores for US students in government sponsored schools in the US suck, in part, because everyone knows that they suck so many parents with means don't send their children to government schools, so those government schools suck more.  Compare Finland's scores to say, Covington Latin in Covington, Kentucky or St Francis High School in Downtown Louisville, Kentucky or Highlands Latin School in the Highlands district of Louisville, Kentucky and these scores would be embarressing.  And those three are just a few that I could think of off the top of my head.  For that matter, just comparing Finland's average scoring to the average American homeschooled high school aged student would make a lot of Finnish schoolteachers question the effectiveness of their careers considering what the average, untrained parent educator can do.

I've heard really good things about Montessori schools, but I'm not sure what benefits you're looking for beyond "the children learn what they need to." What more should a school be obligated to provide?

Let's hear a better system then? One that has all the benefits of the Finnish system, and then some.

Groups all over the world force bad systems into place. One of them is the best. Not surprising.