Geoffrey W. Sutton PhD, Psychology and Culture

  Strengthening the Fabric of Our Society I have good memories of my High School teachers. After earning my PhD in School Psychology, I worked in public and private schools and gained an appreciation for how stressful their careers could be. We usually interacted in meetings with parents when I would share the results of assessment or receive a referral for psychotherapy. Sometimes I sat in classes to collect information in an effort to collaborate with a teacher on classroom management issues. At one point, I had studied the literature with my friend and colleague, Thomas J. Huberty, who is Emeritus Professor at University of Indiana. At the time, Christopher Wilson had developed a measure of teacher stress. He did not find any differences among groups in his teacher sample and neither did we. We compared teachers in regular education with those who taught teens with severe disabilities in a residential school. According to Wilson’s measure, our teachers scored in the modera...

  Socialism is evident in American Education. Recently, socialist policies have come under attack. I got a good education at the public High School in Millville, NJ. Millions of Americans attend public schools between Kindergarten and Grade 12. And many of us go on to state universities for additional studies. All of these schools are funded by taxpayers. K-12 are free except for the cost of personal supplies. State universities get funds from taxpayers, student tuition, grants, and investments. In addition to public schools, wealthy people who send their children to private schools also get socialist tax-breaks. Nonprofit institutions do not may taxes, which places a burden on workers and businesses to cover all the things our taxes pay for. I think it is a good thing for all members of a democratic society to have a basic education. I might disagree on the components of a basic education and how many years a person should get at tax-payer expense, but I believe public ed...