Sharon Marcus asked 7 years ago
What it might not be hyperbolic to call a war on public education in the United States has some role to play in current political situation. “I love the uneducated,” Trump declared at one of his rallies, and his first nomination for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, champions options that siphon money away from public schools. The success of U.S. immigrants has often depended on strong public schools, which have also been an important engine of social mobility for those born in the U.S. Other flashpoints in the recent election, including hostility to science, derision of anything resembling high culture, and a low level of discourse about issues relating to sex, gender, and race, have also created a haze around public education in the United States for the last several decades.
I’d be very interested in hearing experts who study interactions among public education, class, and politics compare the state of education around the world. I have no expertise in this area myself, which is precisely why I’d like to hear other people discuss it. I’m especially interested in primary education but there is also much to discuss about college education, whose availability and costs vary a great deal from one nation to another.
Questions would include:
–what is the state of public primary education in your region? how has it changed over the last several decades? what have been key areas of debate, vectors of change, major shifts in policy?
–how inclusive would you describe public primary education as being in your region?
–can you describe the status of primary school teachers in your region? how well are they paid, are they primarily male or female, are they unionized?
–who determines the primary school curriculum in your region?
–in what ways has public primary education in your region been politicized? what is its relationship to religion?
–describe the exam structure of the public primary schools in your region
–how does public primary school education in your region rank according to various metrics?
–what percentage of those receiving a public primary school education go to college/university, and what mechanisms exist to determine who gains entry to college/university?
–how common are private primary schools in your region, and who attends them?