So this run-with-your-false-belief-about-people is Harvard-educated ANTHROPOLOGY in action? Huh. Brings out the snark in me, probably there’s a biological explanation for that . . .

I guess defining anthropologists as all the same wouldn’t be very scientific, would it? There are apparently many subtypes with both similarities and differences, and presumably unique individuals within each sub group? Gee, I wonder if the same is true for HOMESCHOOLERS??; we’d have to ask an expert, if we could find one . . (we wouldn’t want to dismiss out of hand ALL biological anthropologists as hopeless)

OTOH, I tried to represent the HS community as dispassionately as possible and play nice at his place — here’s my last comment (which has several hotlinks if you read it there instead of here):

Thinking Homeschoolers have responded with restraint, research, self-examination and great compassion for the possibility of any abused child anywhere, see for example NHEN’s “Thoughts on Protecting Children in Homeschooling Families” — and I note that we’ve done this even when the “topic” is thrown out as the worst kinds of prejudice and sophistry, or when it turns out the “topic” really isn’t abused kids but stealth-attacking home education by public school apologists, with whatever explosives they can wrap their ideology in and toss out into the public zeitgeist. See Mssrs. Rob Reich of Stanford’s philosophy department and the globetrotting former teacher union mercenary Michael Apple for example, if this point needs support.

It gets old though — I give you Nance as Exhibit A.

COD - no need to gamble; the annual PDK-Gallup Poll (see several years worth reviewed here) demonstrates that the majority of parents do believe (mere belief) that the nation’s public schools generally are terrible BUT the school their own child attends is just ducky. Something like 80% of all respondents –memory only, but I worked with these data for many years before I retired from school administration to home educate my own kids– give their own oldest child’s school an A or B grade.

When I worked for the schools, I said (naturally!) that this meant schools were great. These days, I take it more as a reminder that it’s human nature to believe what you need to believe, to get through the day and feel like a good-enough parent. And that it’s human nature to be affected by whatever the mainstream targets to thump up on (not just schools, how about homeschooling?) when you have no evidence to the contrary and don’t perceive it will affect you personally either way. Also, just because a belief doesn’t come with evidence, doesn’t make it automatically false . . .
But it is still all about belief, not facts and analysis and valid conclusions for making sound public policy.

Of course I’m no biological anthropologist, think we could get one to take a more incisive look?

Greg - those poll data apply to all parents, elementary school too.

I am not hopeful of anything worthwhile coming out of this exchange.

Nance

I hope you posted your thoughtful comments there too, JJ. Wherever his “there” is now. I’m not clear if this is in response to his creationist science thread or his what do hsers do thread.

Nance

Greg:
As some here, including you, acknowledged earlier, home education isn’t what makes creationist beliefs or child abuse or general illiteracy, prejudice and hate speech, nor is public schooling the solution to any of them.

Because you are so much smarter than the average bear, you may naturally think of all sorts of things to improve other people and their behavior, beliefs, health and productivity, etc. Sometimes “those people” whoever they are seem stupid to you for not doing things your way? Heck, I feel that way every day in traffic; I reroute school buses and redesign intersections in my mind, landscapes too. And don’t even get me started on other people’s children in public places! I used to be an elementary school principal and I still have that VOICE and the urge to use it. It’s a constant struggle not to act on my many ideas to fix things and people, or at least contain them, limit their deviance from my standards.

So yeah, I’ve got the I-can-fix-everybody bug. But I was raised on the lightbulb joke about psychologists (my mother was a university guidance counselor) — how many psychologists does it take to change a lightbulb? Only one, but the lightbulb has to really WANT to change.

On NPR yesterday a learned critic of the corporate self-help industry from some university (I was in the car talking with kids, sorry) pronounced self-help training immoral and ineffective if it didn’t wait for people to *want* to change, and forced the improvement lessons and policies on them by the edict of well-meaning highers-up. How smart do we need to be to know that doesn’t work, and to realize the same truth applies to kids, families and humans generally?

Our schools, nosy neighbors, our science, churches, government and even our movie stars seem not to care any more whether a person WANTS all the changes they think up for our own good. I don’t force lessons on my kids, and I surely don’t want lessons forced on free citizens, not in the name of THEIR kids and not even in the name of my own. It doesn’t work so why bother?

The world still revolves around the FCAT and absolutely nothing of substance is changed.

Nance

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Senate passes replacement for ‘flawed’ teacher merit pay plan
By BILL KACZOR
Associated Press Writer

Confrontation and acrimony over performance pay for teachers that has distracted school districts for more than a year neared an end Wednesday when the Senate passed a bill to repeal and replace Florida’s existing program.

The bill (SB 1226) would do away with the Special Teachers are Rewarded, or STAR, program the Legislature passed last year. Instead, it would create the Merit Awards Program that will give local unions and school districts more flexibility in developing performance pay plans tailored to their needs.

“This gets closer to what we believe would be a true workable compensation reward system,” said Florida Education Association president Andy Ford, whose union includes locals across the state. “The STAR program has really torn school districts apart.”

Critics complained STAR has been too rigid, puts too much reliance on standardized student tests to determine which teachers would get bonuses and gave districts too little time to develop local plans. Teachers and their unions filed administrative and legal challenges, and some districts refused to participate even thought it would cost them millions of state dollars allocated for the bonuses.

A 39-0 roll call sent the compromise legislation to the House for a final vote scheduled Thursday. It is supported by House leaders, the statewide teachers union and associations representing school boards and superintendents.

Ford said bill should remove a wedge that STAR has placed between school boards and unions. That could have been avoided if lawmakers and other state officials, including former Gov. Jeb Bush, had seriously considered what teachers and their unions were saying before STAR passed, Ford said…