Comment by anarticle

3 days ago

Join the military! :D

I'm a product of department of defense school system. My parents were lower class, I received a world class education. My mom taught me to read and count before kindergarten, mostly via playing card games with her. I was in NC at that time, and they thought I was a savant!

Overall, my experience was good, some bullying of course, but at that time administrators held the ultimate key which was we will first tell your parents, and then subsequently your parents commanding officer, which would result in work disciplinary action. When I lived in Japan, there were a couple kids that were bad enough to get that to trigger. Stupid stuff like huffing air freshener, or just beating the hell out of people.

My short stint in NJ public school was ok, but it lacked the rigor/structure of the DoDDs school. I ended up at a good engineering university, but had a good amount of debt.

In Philadelphia, public schools are essentially DMZs, with private schools for kids that want to do things with their lives. This sounds harsh, but our tax system reflects this, as well as our disrepair of public school buildings (lead, abestos).

My Dad gave up his best years to the military and his body suffered, but it was certainly not for nothing. He retired at 42, with a pension after 20y in USMC. Healthcare is taken care of.

It's hard to say whether it is the escalating cost of schools which are commodifying it "It's so expensive I shouldn't have to xyz", leading to low parental involvement (maybe that is normal?), or continuous concierge service for helicopter parents as well. My friend who is a teacher has an entire class of students exploiting the IEP system to get extra time on exams, less choices in multiple choice, less reading, landscape rather than portrait tests (yes this is real), and other things that absolutely blow up her ability to be efficient at anything in the class room. I'm sure there is an argument to be made in favor of this, but it cannot operate in this way. At her school (Allentown, PA) the inmates are running the asylum due to administrators treating parents as "customers" and the parents as "the service provider". It is a sad state of affairs. In my world, parents ALWAYS sided with the teacher no matter what, which meant you had no chance at causing a problem in that way.

I don't know if there is a good solution on the horizon. I think the overwork of parents, combined with the exploitation of the school for better marks is a sick system. Only private systems seem to be able to surf this in a meaningful way because they can remove bad actors.