Thread for my friend @PaulCottlePhys related to his deeply honest and helpful essay here. https://twitter.com/BillyTownsendEd/status/1253666677197283328

Premise is three categories of education goals: 1) Democratic efficiency 2) Social efficiency 3) Social mobility. First, I think Pam Stewart is clearly "social efficiency", not #1. She just doesn't include physics in her vision of 2. But it describes her and the Florida model. 2

(Sorry @PaulCottlePhys missed tagging you on tweet before) As somebody with a strong emotional attachment to #1, I experienced her as an enemy of implementing those values in basically every way. 3

Enough about Pam. I suspect @PaulCottlePhys would place me in #1. And I certainly have an emotional/moral attachment to it, as I've said. But I also have emotional attachments to the other two. So the easy thing to say, "No it's all three. They should all three be goals." 4

But I think it's more fundamental than that. Drill down into the definitions of the terms and you see that none of the three can exist without the other in meaningful way. Whatever you goal category is, the other two affect it profoundly. None exist in a vacuum. 5

What none of three does, on their own or in your essay, is reckon with the fact they are "positive" goals built into a system that operates on punishment. What is the role of punishment in restraining the success of each of the goals? 6

How quickly in a society built to restrain the mobility/well-being of people without ready access to capital does #2 become a form of eugenics? 7

I think your answer is that you are trying to provide kids with ability to create some capital to protect themselves from the punishments that American society rains down on people without access to capital. But I think that makes you more #3 than #2. 8

I think this "economic value of diploma" relates to first job, right. The immediate value. Isn't that correct? The studies I see, consistent with own experience, say that non-STEM degrees, esp. humanities, catch up over time. But If you have no capital, you can't afford to wait.9

Credentials are short-term capital of a sort-- a key designed to get you into a locked house. They say nothing, really, about your ability to function once you're in the house. A diploma is the same way. Downside of not having is much bigger than upside of having one. 10

It's a punishment disguised as a reward. Adults working w/ kids care about them. They're not inclined to lock them out of a life that's already built to punish them at 18. Thus gamed/meaningless grades/metrics allow us to tell ourselves we're not punishing masses of children. 11

And in the narrowest sense, that is true. I'd rather you have a credential you didn't really earn as a kid that gives you a chance to learn on the job what you need than make you an unproductive, miserable ward of the state and family forever because there's no ready path out.12

But as you can see, the mass punishment-based structure works to undermine mass competency and individual competency. And destroys lives for the sin of not having enough capital to allow for patience and development. 13

What is the opposite of "goal"? Is it "fear?" I think so. "I have a goal; I have a fear." It don't really think you can talk about "goals" when fear is the actual motivation at work. These aren't goal categories; they're catastrophe-avoidance strategies. 14

None of this academic at all. Florida has the most punishment-based model of education in America. It also has the worst performance in development/growth on its own metrics. And literally everyone in power is to afraid to say it. They all know it. 15 https://billytownsend.com/2019/09/floridas-perpetual-naep-collapse-is-americas-most-important-education-story-thats-why-no-one-including-the-naep-will-tell-it/

What's fascinating about this particular moment is the K-12 system in Florida, for first time since 1998, is functioning outside the reach of the @JebBush punishment model. For the first time, there are no punishments in store for what's happening. It's quite the experiment. 16

You said once @PaulCottlePhys: kids benefit from taking physics even if they fail the course. Kids with capital do; because they can absorb the punishment. Kids without capital don't because "failing" doesn't produce any capital (credential, etc.) All risk, no reward. 17

In a punishment-based society and mass education model, the yawning gap between "credential" and useful experience that enhances meaningful capability and competency is massive. 18

We have to understand the goal categories in that context. This crazy moment sees @EducationFL functioning as human resource for once, not a punishing authority. It offers once-lifetime chance to actually make the 3 goals into goals. & make them support each other. Done. 19/19