Churches the last hope? "Paul Vallas has been spending Sunday mornings in the pulpit recently, but he's no preacher. As CEO of the 210,000-student School District of Philadelphia, he's been speaking at weekend services in houses of worship across Philadelphia, extolling the potential of the school-faith partnership, and asking congregants for help with everything from tutoring and mentoring to hallway patrols and discipline. Vallas's goal is to have each of the district's 276 schools adopted by at least one nearby church, synagogue, mosque, or temple, which he expects will bring moral heft, human capital, and familiarity with the streets to the job of educating the city's children. Embraced by such faith communities, Vallas believes, students will better navigate the often-volatile home and neighborhood environments that threaten learning and imperil character development. But, as is often the case in politics, the reality is more complicated than that."




THE IRRELEVANCE OF TEACHING SCIENCE IN SCHOOLS

It would be a mistake to treat seriously everything said by that that whimsical Welshman, Prof. Christie Davies. He is, after all, an authority on humour. But amid the comic exaggerations there are some good points. I have tried to excerpt them below. If he ever reads this, I wonder will he forgive me for using "excerpt" as a verb?

"Science we are told is something that every child should and must study. Most children hate it, fail to master it and never use it or think about it again after they have left school. It is forced upon unwilling and inept pupils because it is supposed to be good for them. Science is the twenty-first century's version of Latin.

A knowledge of science we are assured is essential for a proper understanding of the modern world. It is not. Very few English people whether adults or teenagers have any serious knowledge of the sciences but this does not hinder them in any way when it comes to earning, buying and selling, taking care of their children, playing elaborate games on their computers, tinkering with their car engines, giving up smoking or choosing between one fool and another at election time.....

Faced with science even pupils who sparkle during History or English retreat into dull carelessness. A youngster may have something, if only an inane opinion, to contribute in these subjects but science is text book truth. Who can contradict the laws of motion or challenge the coloured beads that make up a molecule of glycol? Worse still there is the tedium of lab work with its twiddling of pipettes, peering down polarizing microscopes or at warped mirrors and dissecting of frogs. Worst of all are field trips in search of the lesser spotted flitter mouse, the fragments of a Silurian trilobite or some vile sludge from a long dead moraine. Both lab work and field trips are an expensive and useless fetish whose main purpose is to force out of existence small private academies that can not afford the capital outlays and high premium insurance policies they require.

Elementary science can be taught more cheaply and effectively using videos shown to small classes, but that is heresy to the big science, big comprehensive minds that control the curriculum. For most pupils field trips are the equivalent of day trips to Bologne pour le shoplifting et le questioning par les flics, a pointless and unappreciated frill that pushes up unit costs and produces no extra revenue.....

In the Soviet Union where great emphasis was placed on science education scientists were respected and relatively well paid and the economy collapsed from an inability to innovate. For most scientists there is no money in science nor in big team science is there any fame. Who wants to be third named author out of seventeen in a specialist journal that few people read let alone understand? What social standing does the phrase 'northern chemist' convey? A tedious life and an ill-paid one, Pennyfeather".

More here.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

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