Quo Vadis GOP?

[alfred russel]

Herschel Walker just proved (again) what a massive risk he is for Republicans

Here's what the Georgia Republican Senate candidate said about climate change during a recent campaign event:

"Since we don't control the air, our good air decided to float over to China's bad air. So when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then – now we got we to clean that back up."
[...]

He just finished himself.  Everyone knows you can't rely on a running back to control the air game.

Then – now we got we to clean that back up

The statement is ambiguous but is he implying we need to do something to clean up the air? That will cost him some votes.

[viper37]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/29/republican-lauren-boebert-wins-colorado-primary-church-state

"I'm tired of this separation of church and state junk," she said.

On Sunday, two days before the primary and in comments first reported by the Denver Post, Boebert told a religious service: "The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church. That is not how our founding fathers intended it."

[The Brain]

What about the foundling fathers? Not the fondling fathers though, Catholicism is right out.

[Threviel]

Sweden has had school vouchers for 30 years. NB not valid for home-schooling and similar.

And it is quite controversial, given the considerable decline in the performance of Swedish students on international standardized tests.

As I understand that's because of the insane levels of immigration. Schools are more or less segregated and the ethnic Swedes are doing good, but the average drops due to large numbers of immigrants with very basic education and if older low language skills and no experience in how Swedish schools work.

It's not only because they are immigrants, it's mostly a socio-economic issue. Poors of all kinds are doing bad and we have a lot of poor immigrants.

Looking into this I could only find ( Report in Swedish) reports from the early 2000s about why immigrants were doing bad and since then immigration has sky-rocketed.

One further observation is that Swedish results have been going up lately, as immigration have gone down.

It's quite clear and has been quite clear for decades that immigrants require far more resources than non-immigrants, but they are not getting those resources and as a result the results drop like a stone.

[The Brain]

There are several factors that can conceivably have contributed to the decline in Swedish pupil ability over the past several decades. Not in any special order (my FWIW comments in parentheses):

1. Transfer of government schools from central government to local government carried out in 1991 (fairly weak impact is my guess, but increasing the number of decision makers tends to lower the average quality of decision makers).

2. The system of school vouchers, created in 1992 (I can think of several mechanisms by which this could potentially have had an impact on general results, both positive and negative, but I have a hard time seeing how the negative ones could be more significant than the positive ones)

3. Reduction in status and pay of teachers. In the 1950s being a teacher, especially in secondary education, was a fairly prestigious job comparable to other professionals, with decent pay. For several decades now being a teacher has been a low-status job with fairly poor pay. This has led to top students staying away from a teacher career. School vouchers have had some positive impact when it comes to status is my impression, but teacher is still very far from a high-status career (I think this has contributed, but it also ties in a bit with #4 below).

4. The reduction, through malevolence or otherwise, of the theory and ideology of teaching to harmful pseudoscience, and its application in the school system. This started in the 1960s and has kept going since. A strong move away from teaching knowledge and ability to teaching god-knows-what mumbo-jumbo. This has contributed to intelligent people staying away from a teaching career, and denied generations of children an optimal education (my impression is that this is the core factor, overshadowing all others).

5. Demographic and socio-economic changes in the population (if this has had a negative effect then that negative effect would have been very much reduced without #4 above, so my impression is that this isn't a core factor).

6. The change from the old-style multi-track school system to a unified school system completed in 1972 (I don't see anything inherently bad about the unified system itself that would be significant enough to explain poor results).

7. I'm sure there are more...

When I was in secondary education in the early 90s pupils knew and talked about the obvious reduction in education quality since the 1970s. Centralized tests from the 1970s that we practiced on were on a higher level than our equivalents. All the best teachers were old-timers that had become teachers in the 1950s and were about to retire. They were highly educated and knowledgeable, dedicated, and focused on getting the best out of the students.

To sum up, I don't see any credible reason to suspect that school vouchers have significantly reduced Swedish results. In addition of course there are other positive things about school vouchers. Even during the heyday of Socialism in the 1970s Sweden never banned private schools. But those were of course only available to the rich. School vouchers make school choice available to everyone, even the very poor. And standard schools being worse than they were say in the 1950s, the need for choice is greater now.

[Jacob]

What's the deal with #4?

What's the harmful mumbo-jumbo? And is that something specifically local to Sweden?

[The Brain]

What's the deal with #4?

What's the harmful mumbo-jumbo? And is that something specifically local to Sweden?

Essentially it's the abandonment of 1) evidence-based teaching methods, 2) knowledge and ability as teaching goals, or 3) both. I don't know, I cannot speak for other countries.

[Sheilbh]

Essentially it's the abandonment of 1) evidence-based teaching methods, 2) knowledge and ability as teaching goals, or 3) both. I don't know, I cannot speak for other countries.

England went very big on skills based teaching which my understanding is, isn't really backed by evidence from education research. Gove pushed back (possibly too far) in the other direction on facts/knowledge based teaching.

The skills-based model makes intuitive sense and sounds right - I think especially to liberals v old fashioned learning facts. My understanding was the research showed it reinforced existing social divisions because basically kids from backgrounds with social capital tended to do disproportionately well, while facts/knowledge was more of a level playing field. I also think there was basically an issue with teaching skills without facts to practice them on meant they were less likely to be retained. You need the concrete to demonstrate the skill.

In England at least race and ethnicity aren't huge dividers - all minority groups are more likely to go to university than white kids. For school level attainment there are divisions and different levels of attainment for different ethnic identities, but my understanding is those levels are more explicable by (of course) geography and class.

[The Brain]

Essentially it's the abandonment of 1) evidence-based teaching methods, 2) knowledge and ability as teaching goals, or 3) both. I don't know, I cannot speak for other countries.

England went very big on skills based teaching which my understanding is, isn't really backed by evidence from education research. Gove pushed back (possibly too far) in the other direction on facts/knowledge based teaching.

The skills-based model makes intuitive sense and sounds right - I think especially to liberals v old fashioned learning facts. My understanding was the research showed it reinforced existing social divisions because basically kids from backgrounds with social capital tended to do disproportionately well, while facts/knowledge was more of a level playing field. I also think there was basically an issue with teaching skills without facts to practice them on meant they were less likely to be retained. You need the concrete to demonstrate the skill.

In England at least race and ethnicity aren't huge dividers - all minority groups are more likely to go to university than white kids. For school level attainment there are divisions and different levels of attainment for different ethnic identities, but my understanding is those levels are more explicable by (of course) geography and class.

What is the skills-based model about?

[Duque de Bragança]

What's the deal with #4?

What's the harmful mumbo-jumbo? And is that something specifically local to Sweden?

Essentially it's the abandonment of 1) evidence-based teaching methods, 2) knowledge and ability as teaching goals, or 3) both. I don't know, I cannot speak for other countries.

Long story short, some of it applies to France, namely changes for the worse in pedagogy giving way to pseudo-science mumbo jumbo, mass immigration, multi-tracked to unified (collège unique) but not all : vouchers and transfer to local governments.

Results are comparably bad.

[Sheilbh]

What is the skills-based model about?

So from an education company. Knowledge:

When people talk about a knowledge-based education, they are talking about a formal curriculum which imparts a broad base of general knowledge on traditional subjects. This curriculum is structured in a way which enables students to build on their prior knowledge when learning something new. This approach is very content-focused.
[...]
Proponents of knowledge-based education believe that the more you know, the more you are able to learn. The impact of a content-rich curriculum can reduce the attainment gap between pupils of different socio-economic backgrounds. In this model, learning and research is teacher-led, and students build on their prior knowledge to develop a deeper understanding and mastery of various subjects.

Skills:

A skills-based education is one where the focus is skills development rather than knowledge acquisition. This type of curriculum is structured in a way which prioritises student-led learning and helps students to develop the type of transversal skills which they can apply across subjects and use in every area of their lives.
[...]
Proponents of this system believe that skills-based learning better equips students with the tools they will need to adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing world. In this model, the measure of successful learning is the development of skills which can be used in different situations to solve different types of problems.

Now obviously education is actually both but my understanding is that the studies are that kids need knowledge in order to practice and develop skills. The content is sort of the protein that's essential. Without it they just sort of float in the ether (and get lost quite quickly). But it's counter-intuitive (because skills are good and important) and also sounds more conservative/controlling so gets pushback.

And as I say my understanding is the academic evidence is what it states in terms of attainment. Kids from families with social and cultural capital do disproportionately well in a system tilted to skills, while there's more equal levels of attainment with knowledge/content system.

[The Brain]

What's the deal with #4?

What's the harmful mumbo-jumbo? And is that something specifically local to Sweden?

Essentially it's the abandonment of 1) evidence-based teaching methods, 2) knowledge and ability as teaching goals, or 3) both. I don't know, I cannot speak for other countries.

Long story short, some of it applies to France, namely changes for the worse in pedagogy giving way to pseudo-science mumbo jumbo, mass immigration, multi-traced to unified (collège unique) but not all : vouchers and transfer to local governments.

Results are comparably bad.

Interesting. Thanks.

[The Brain]

What is the skills-based model about?

So from an education company. Knowledge:

When people talk about a knowledge-based education, they are talking about a formal curriculum which imparts a broad base of general knowledge on traditional subjects. This curriculum is structured in a way which enables students to build on their prior knowledge when learning something new. This approach is very content-focused.
[...]
Proponents of knowledge-based education believe that the more you know, the more you are able to learn. The impact of a content-rich curriculum can reduce the attainment gap between pupils of different socio-economic backgrounds. In this model, learning and research is teacher-led, and students build on their prior knowledge to develop a deeper understanding and mastery of various subjects.

Skills:

A skills-based education is one where the focus is skills development rather than knowledge acquisition. This type of curriculum is structured in a way which prioritises student-led learning and helps students to develop the type of transversal skills which they can apply across subjects and use in every area of their lives.
[...]
Proponents of this system believe that skills-based learning better equips students with the tools they will need to adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing world. In this model, the measure of successful learning is the development of skills which can be used in different situations to solve different types of problems.

Now obviously education is actually both but my understanding is that the studies are that kids need knowledge in order to practice and develop skills. The content is sort of the protein that's essential. Without it they just sort of float in the ether (and get lost quite quickly). But it's counter-intuitive (because skills are good and important) and also sounds more conservative/controlling so gets pushback.

And as I say my understanding is the academic evidence is the opposite of what it states in terms of attainment. Kids from families with social and cultural capital do disproportionately well in a system tilted to skills, while there's more equal levels of attainment with knowledge/content system.

Thanks. Yeah, when I (very anecdotally) look at my family's history it's partially a story of students from a very poor, non-academic and ethnic minority background doing very well in an "old-school" school system with a strong focus on what here is called knowledge-based education. My impression is that they would have had a much harder time making their "class journey" with a "skills-based" system.

[Threviel]

Which reinforces the socio-economic differences. I'm not superconvinced that it's the skill-based system that's to blame primarily, since that seems to be an international thing. But it's probably not helping.

I'm more a believer that the primary culprit is the lack of resources and the appropriation of resources due to the absolutely unparalleled mass immigration. But I can't prove it since I haven't really found any data. 

Would be interesting to read some more modern reports on it. The ministry of schools is usually very trustworthy.

[Razgovory]

So the problem is "unparalleled mass immigration" we just need evidence to back it up?