> On 1/20/06, John Lacny <jlacny at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> > She especially hated the infantilization of young adults in US
> school
> > settings (having to request permission to go to the restroom, for
> > instance -- utterly ridiculous).
>
> One of the things I hate about being an expat is having to repeatedly
> explain to people how impossible it is to generalise, beyond the
> basics, about the "American education system". It's just far too
> decentralised to make many sweeping statements. This is a perfect
> example. In my high school, any teacher who tried to make a student
> ask permission to go to the bathroom would have been laughed out of
> the building.
True, but one thing that you can probably generalize about the US education system is that it's more decentralized than that of comparable countries. Funding is local (cf. Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities), and so is textbook adoption, and teacher certification systems vary from state to state (cf. <http://www.uky.edu/Education/ TEP/usacert.html>). Add them to class polarization that already exists outside schools, and what you have is a huge education gap between the richest and poorest students.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>