c0d3h4x0r's Journal: Public Education

The real problem with public education in the U.S. is that the students are given free reign to define their own culture within the school, and that culture rarely (if ever) naturally values education.

The most effective educational reform I have seen is the recent implementation of anti-bullying programs around the nation, but even this is just an attack on a symptom rather than the root cause.

We need to dismantle the cultures naturally formed by students within our public schools, and replace them with an enforced social structure that causes the students themselves to value education.

This means positively rewarding students for academic performance with rewards that are not only meaningful to the achievers but desirable to the underachievers. One such obvious reward would be paying students cash for achievement, funded by public tax dollars.

It also means improved enforcement of school rules by hiring people whose exclusive job is to police the students, rather than expecting teachers to police the students when they already have their hands full just trying to teach.

This is why private (typically religious) schools tend to produce more better-educated students. It's not the fact that these schools are religiously-based that makes them better; it's the fact that they are typically run with a high level of discipline and enforcement (strict school dress codes or uniforms, assigned seating, etc) relative to public schools.