Reactive Nationalism

There is a lot to dig into to there. I guess my question is what would nationalizing the school system entail? I assume that it would mean a specific budget for all school systems that is funded by the federal government. My concern is that, given the nature of bureaucracy, we would still have a disproportionate amount going to the "have"-districts. I mean would the community be responsible up to a certain point, and then the government would make-up the difference if a difference existed?

Here is my other fear regarding nationalization: is there a single national standard that we are holding everyone to? It's not that I don't think there should be a certain standard that we expect everyone to attain, but how do figure out what that standard is? It seems to me that one of the central flaws in No Child Left Behind is that no one knows how to measure what level of comprehension and achievement a student has reached.

I guess my main concern (and this is very conservative/libertarian of me) is that until the government can demonstrate that it can effectively gauge problems and enact policy on a national level, I'm not sure I trust them to take control of our school systems. You know better then anyone how much faith I have in our current president. But what happens in eight years when a less-competent democrat, or (god-forbid) another republican takes office and sees how much a national school system is costing? The problem with nationalization is that it is inherently reactive. We need to come up with a system that is not effected by whims of changing sentiment, yet is still able to be affected by changing eras.

My feeling is that nationalized school systems would be in danger of being impacted by "SUV Syndrome" (whereby gas prices go up and we say "no more gus-guzzlers!" and gas-prices go down and we forget all of our previous resolution). If there was any sign of improvement, or even any sign of failure we would take the opportunity to say either "look we did it!" or "this isn't working!" and scrap the whole thing.

But I'm going to let you flesh out exactly what nationalization would entail. I want to address something different that I feel like might be relatively simple and could make a big difference on an economic level as well as on a student's individual success. I feel like our (and by "our" I mean American) society puts to much emphasis on university after high school to such an extent that when you are in high school it feels like the only option that can lead to successful life. As we all know this utterly wrong-headed. What I would like to see emphasised more is trade-schools. In Quebec, for instance the system is quite different then what we grew up with. You attend the equivalent of grades 9,10, and 11. What happens next is you attend CEGEP. I won't spell it out because who wants to speak french anyways, but the idea is that you get basic learning in high school, and you then attend a two-or-three year program that is either University prep or a trade.

Thus there is an emphasis on the idea that University is not the only answer. Now, ironically if University was as inexpensive in the U.S. as it is here this would be less of a problem. But there is a critical distinction in Canada between a University and a College. A College sets you up for a profession, University is meant to be broader in scope (and in my case ENTIRELY failed to set me up for a profession).

I think because we are such a large country population-wise we can't use other western countries as an example. I'm not sure we'll ever be able to fund university enough to make it available to everyone, so I think we need to open-up more alternatives that could lead to a successful and important life.

There is no doubt that our education system is a hopeless quagmire. I guess what I would ask you is: Is nationalization what you think ideally SHOULD happen? or is it something you think really COULD happen? Because if we're living in an ideal world there are a bunch of things I think SHOULD be a hell of a lot better, that have no chance of happening in our current system. Unfortunately, I think that is a less interesting question. If you have a vision of how this COULD happen, I'm all ears because it is probably the right thing to do.

Finally, if anyone wants proof of why this is such an important debate see this post of kyles from last week and zach's response.