Magnet Schools, Consolidation, and Workforce Ed
School Magnet attracts nuts and gets screwy.*****************************************
Have you noticed that the same influences that push for school consolidation, that is forcing small schools to combine into larger ones, are also the ones pushing hard for Magnet Schools? Magnet schools of course take large schools and make them smaller.
What's that you say? You say it makes no sense to spend money forcing small schools to get bigger so that you can then make them smaller? Ahh, but magnet schools are divided up by special subject areas. Ok, so why so do they need seperate little schools for that? Why can't they just leave the consolidated school big, with seperate classes?
I know some people with a lot of evidence on what the real reasons are. I am not going to bother giving you the evidence. I am just going to tell you what I see happening and you can accept it or not.
This is all about "workforce education". That is, changing the mission of the public schools from a general and flexible common education into a narrowly focused "education" limited to the specific skills needed to work at a designated trade. Under the new system, most students would not be generally educated persons, just worker bees in the Global Corporate Hive.
Who would want this? Well, industry for one. They spend a lot of money training workers every year. They would prefer that you the taxpayers foot the bill for their job training costs. Besides, all that history and civics and stuff is lost on you average peons. Why spend a lot of taxpayer money telling you about the founding of this country and the constitution when we just ignore it anyway? I mean, what is more important, being able to explain the concept of "Natural Rights" to your children or Brittney getting her head shaved? Why, the people might start getting some funny ideas if they read all that stuff from the Founding Fathers!
Magnet schools are corporate tools. Or at least they will morph into them when the time is right. I urge us to maintain a high view of humanity that provides all children the opportunity for a general broad-based education that trains them for the blessings of self-rule.
posted by Mark Moore (Moderator) at Monday, February 19, 2007
2 Comments:
Oh, and about the need for separate locations instead of just leaving them as big schools- different industries will control the different locations. One magnet school might be controlled by medical health professionals, another by manufacturing interests.
If they were all one facility, which of them would be in charge? They might step on each others' toes as one industry would want set-up X and the other would prefer set-up Y. By breaking them up into magnet schools, each of them can run the campus that trains worker-bees for their respective field. They would tell the schools what "skills" to teach and how to teach it.
And some of you thought that the taxpayers were the ones who were ultimately in charge of public schools! You are only in charge of paying the bills!
Actually, not all magnets are focused in a specific subject area. There are also "traditional" magnet schools that focus on core knowledge.
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