As a nation, we've decided that every child should be educated. I think that's a good goal to have, although there may be a more efficient way to do it. We kind of have a system in place with magnet schools and selective enrollment, but that's for high school.
>allow schools to suspend/expel students who are repeatedly disruptive or violent in class
I think education and patience are helpful in teaching kids to vent their frustrations in more productive ways, so depriving them of those things seems likely to make it a vicious cycle.
>As a nation, we've decided that every child should be educated.
The key point is that the current approach is failing at this. It's possible that by giving up on the really hard cases and focusing more on the average cases, it would be possible to educate more children than the current approach achieves. Better to reach for a good outcome and succeed than to reach for a perfect outcome and fail, so to speak.
>I think education and patience are helpful in teaching kids to vent their frustrations in more productive ways, so depriving them of those things seems likely to make it a vicious cycle.
The problem is that spending time in school doesn't necessarily equal education, especially for the most difficult students. As a hypothetical, if it could be known that a particular student is 99% likely not to gain anything from being forced to spend the next 3 years in a classroom, and it's also known that this student harasses other students, reducing their ability to benefit from learning, would the benefit of keeping this student in class on the 1% chance they'd gain something outweigh the downsides?
No one is very well served by the current system, I would agree. But if you start thrusting out the bottom end of students without even the increasingly value-less credential of a high school diploma, you're effectively consigning them to the prison system for life. With so many under-employed liberal arts college grads and aged-out boomers sucking up the low-end jobs, it's becoming increasingly difficult to find jobs for those who have only high school diploma, let alone those who don't have even that thin sheet of paper to their name.
>But if you start thrusting out the bottom end of students without even the increasingly value-less credential of a high school diploma, you're effectively consigning them to the prison system for life.
This wouldn't be a case with something like a basic income system. Or, the alternative more politically palatable to conservatives: make-work programs. Where people are paid to do work that, while not necessarily economically productive, nevertheless gives them the psychological satisfaction of feeling like they're working and contributing to society, and possibly helps them develop the discipline required to pursue further education in future.
Every kid needs to study and learn. But not every kid needs to study and learn the same things the same way. I believe until we figure that out we are going to have the same problems.
>allow schools to suspend/expel students who are repeatedly disruptive or violent in class
I think education and patience are helpful in teaching kids to vent their frustrations in more productive ways, so depriving them of those things seems likely to make it a vicious cycle.