Template talk:School types

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This is the continuation of a discussion started here.

Here is another version that I think will be a little more concise. It is fairly complete. There may be a small number of additional English-speaking countries to add (South Africa?). I also suspect that a small number of these may eventually be combined as well, as they are very similar, i.e., Australia/New Zealand, England/Wales. The AltEd section may grow some as well as we learn/add more regarding other-than-US systems. I think that a sidebar like this may be used in only the uppermost articles in a hierarchy. Other, more narrowly focused articles can use the relevent section of it, perhaps. I know it's fairly long, but I'm struggling to cut it down while not losing its purpose. Thanks, Master Scott Hall | Talk 23:39, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Seeing as in most cases, the names are shared across a few countries under the same category (most countries call state-run schools "State school", most countries call privately-run education "Independant school") the list could be grouped by name instead of listing every single country. On the left sub-column you'd have the different names used for that type of school (would not be an internal link) and on the right sub-column you'd have stuff like "AUS, ENG, NZ, NI...". Basically you get almost all the old info (except for the link to each country's main article) and it would take up significantly less space. Michael%Sappir 09:52, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think you can standardize terms that much, as there to many special cases. For instance, in Alberta and Ontario we have:

• Public English (just called "Public")
• Separate Catholic English (just called "Catholic" or "Separate")
• Public French
• Separate Catholic French

All are technically "state run" in the sense they are run by publicly elected school districts, created by the provincial government, paid for by tax dollars not tuition. In the American sense of the word, all are "public" for this reason. But only the "Public English" is ever called just "Public", and nobody seems to use the terms "state run" or "state school". So, if we labelled an Alberta school a "state school", nobody could tell what that means.

Finally, you've got charter schools which are public and independent. However Template:School types seems to falsely suggest being independent and being private go together. A private school might not be independent (it might be one of many run by a large private organization). --Rob 11:34, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Here is a third version, which I believe addresses all concerns so far, but relies vastly on dab pages (which, BTW, I don't have a problem with, personally). It is considerably shorter, if a little wider. I just noticed, per Rob's post, that Separate school needs to move up to the Public-run section—sorry 'bout that. Also, things like Charter school and Magnet school are inside Public choice under the Alternative school section of the sidebar—they will not be listed individually. Are we getting any closer? Let me know what you think. Thanks, Master Scott | Talk 17:46, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

We're definitely open to other suggestions, Rob, but I hate to give up. Here's the situation we're in: some subsidiary article (such as Homeschooling) will tangentially refer to "public schools" (for purposes of contrast), but that won't mean the same thing to British readers as it does to American (or québecois) readers. Probably no country uses a term like "state-run", but at least that won't be ambiguous. I'm not convinced that we're very close to the answer, but it's worth looking for.

A case in point is your use of the word "independent". Charter schools aren't as independent as they pretend; the government has graviously offered to relax some aspects of the education laws on their behalf, but at the bottom, he who pays the piper calls the tune; if some charter school started teaching Wahabbist theology, they'd find out real fast how independent they really were. And to me, "independent" means only "independent from government" so I'd consider a corporation-run school to be independent, but I can easily imagine others would use the term your way. —Wahoofive (talk) 17:00, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comments on 3rd version

I don't see quite where you're going on this. The intent is to provide a quick vocabulary lesson, n'est-ce pas? So if there's a link to public school under "State-run education" and a link to public school under "Privately-run education", even though there's a list of countries, it's pretty confusing. Why is everything a link? It makes the table harder to read. And most of these links will stay redlinks for a long time — who's going to write articles on different types of schools in Wales or Ireland when we can't even get content in the school article? A sidebar shouldn't have redlinks, and if many of the blue links go to dab pages, we've pretty much defeated the explanatory purpose.

I guess what I'm saying is that there's a conflict between our original purpose for creating this template, to be a glossary, and what it's morphed into, a navigation template for education articles. I don't think it can be both.

Also, "English education types" to me means "in England". —Wahoofive (talk) 16:49, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Cool, glad to move the conversation here. I am trying to design this sidebar with an end product in mind. I am trying to account for the majority of info that will eventually be on it. We can cut down on the redlinks until we have content for those pages, if so desired. The list of links on the left will all be dab pages, which are easy enough to build. Some of the ones on the right can be deleted for the time being. I just added them so we could get a feel for just how big this sidebar was going to need to be. The right-hand links would go directly to country-specific articles, while the left link point to dabs for those who desire a little more info about which article to choose. I am trying to provide for an end scenario before abridging it to suit immediate needs and reduce the redlinks and confusion. Again, I am very open to suggestions, or a better idea entirely. Thanks, Master Scott | Talk 18:50, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Any more discussion on this, or other proposals? Thanks, Master Scott | Talk 00:09, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Nice work! :) As far as layout goes, it's still too wide. You could add subheadings to get rid of the first column. Take a look at {{Educational research}} for an example. Rfrisbie^talk 18:20, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Structurally, I wouldn't try to make a "glossary" out of a "navigational template." If you want to group articles with something in common, I would focus in on that here. If you want to clarify meanings for similar terms across countries, I would start an article and/or add terms to the Glossary of education-related terms. Rfrisbie^talk 19:43, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

For the fun of it, I added a Version 4, based on {{Educational research}}. If you don't like it, just go ahead and delete it. Rfrisbie^talk 19:23, 23 February 2006 (UTC)