[Richard]

Originally Posted by Sigaba

An educational psychologist at USC's School of Education has offered a competing definition of education. He defined an education as a set of tools and skills that empower a student to reach goals that the student sets for himself. To me, this definition establishes a distinct difference between education and indoctrination.

My own experiences have led me to conclude that the educational system is tilted too far towards indoctrination. Educators, especially in the humanities and social sciences, already have an incredible opportunity to privilege their views over those of their students through the selection of course materials. Educators should (dare I say 'must'?) do a better job at letting students make up their own minds. While I do think a certain degree of indoctrination is needed to establish ground rules and expectations given the limited length of an academic term, it is simply not an educator's prerogative to attempt to rewrite the values of his or her students.

My own preference would be for young people to be taught the critical thinking skills and communication skills they need to evaluate rigorously the utility all information they encounter in regards how that information helps them meet their goals. I have less of a problem with a person who has read widely and thought deeply and disagrees with me than an indoctrinated person who may appear to share the same core beliefs.

Any information that has lasting merit will survive intense scrutiny; information that does not have merit will not. Faith in God endures because the faithful scrutinize and wrestle with their beliefs on a daily basis, not because they're indoctrinated. I am confident that such an approach will result in a citizenry that won't agree on every issue but, at least, would be able to give Senator Obama what he's thus far avoided: a thorough vetting.

You've hit upon a number of points which would make a good thread unto itself and, maybe, should be so. As a high school principal for some 13 years, let me hit just a couple of points which could be expanded under a dedicated thread to this topic.

• There are as many types of schools in this country as there are shoes...and parents should find the type of school that "fits" their family/child.
  
• Any major urban area will have a broad offering of public, private, and parochial schools. This is also becoming a trend in smaller communities, and remember, there is always the 'home school' option...which many do here in Texas. For the most rural areas, there are also 'distance learning' options where a student can attend high school in an interactive virtual classroom on-line through a university; Texas Tech and the University of Texas offer such programs here in Texas, as does the University of Nebraska.
  
• "Core Curriculum" programs--which are mostly found in so-called 'inner city' environments--offer more of the type program defined by your professor.
  
• Public and most traditional parochial (e.g., Catholic) schools offer very broad curriculums designed for a wide range of student needs and abilities.
  
• Large numbers of private and more non-traditional parochial schools offer a more selective and challenging curriculum; such schools also usually require selective admission testing and application.
  
• Any 'good' school today, high schools especially, do offer a challenging variety of choices in meeting curriculum objectives...much like good colleges...and do seek to teach their students 'how' to think as opposed to 'what' to think.
  
• IMO, the national push to 'quantify' one's education through 'standardized' testing (as pushed by NCLB) is an educational disaster and is contrary to what scientific brain research has shown over the last two decades. In Texas, for example, students in kindergarten must take and pass a standardized skills test to enter 1st grade...which is wholly developmentally inappropriate practice. Texas has the TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) at specified grade levels, and public schools spend a lot of time teaching students to specifically take that one test vice just teaching them to think and process.
• A good book on this subject and college is titled "The Big Lie," the history of the SAT, which tested what was being taught in East Coast prep schools to keep 'westerners' out of the Ivy League and the resultant ACT to counter it. However, neither has proven to be a true indicator of how a student will perform in college.
  
• Another problem with schools today is the national obsession with 'ranking' our schools. One of the worst offenders is the US News national ranking of high schools--which most private college-prep schools refuse to participate in. And how do they determine the ranking? They take the total number of AP classes being taken by the school's entire student body and divide that by the number of seniors in the school. Yep...and the stats are provided by the schools themselves...and have nothing to do with how well the students perform on their AP exams, how many students begin AP classes and then drop them, etc. Can you see a problem here?
  
• The 'business' of educational assistive resources--as well as lobbying--has become HUGE and perpetuates the false idea that all it takes is $$$ vice 'teaching' to 'fix' our educational system...which, based on my experiences and in my opinion, is not nearly as broken as the MSM seeks to make us believe.

I could go on...and probably will if we get this thread started. Bottom line--this is America and America, as it always has, offers choice and opportunity, not guarantees.

FWIW, I, my wife, and my 3 sons are all products of a public school education because we believe in it and always sought to live where there were very good public schools...something we took seriously as being a part of our parental responsibility towards our childern.

Richard's $.025