I don’t entirely agree but this is not that far from why I believe in homeschooling. Mostly I think the author is a bit rabid, but generally right. It’s all complicated.
And yeah, I keep my mouth shut about Libertarianism.
I don’t entirely agree but this is not that far from why I believe in homeschooling. Mostly I think the author is a bit rabid, but generally right. It’s all complicated.
And yeah, I keep my mouth shut about Libertarianism.
The list of libertarian statements would make good debate or impromptu/extemporaneous speech topics.
I’m sure I saw stuff like some of them (stated less rabidly) when I was competing in speech during high school & college.
And here I thought government schooling was so that poor kids from the homes of parents who didn’t graduate highschool, could still get a good eductation. ;-P
I knew you liked that libertarian thing. Never bothered me a bit.
Two things….first….here’s what my “natural mother” newsletter just sent on the topic of homeschooling…
“Happily home-schooled
An all too common myth about home-schooled kids is that they don’t get a chance to develop adequate social skills because they are isolated in the home. This couldn’t be further from the truth, as current research has proven. In fact, home-schooled kids have been found to be more mature and better socialized and to have a higher self-concepts than their conventionally schooled peers. A big reason for this is that home-schooled kids simply have more time to socialize. Homeschoolers finish their lessons in no time in the absence of busywork and distractions common in the conventional school setting, leaving far more time for social activities. Some common social outlets for homeschoolers include:
• Dance and martial arts classes
• Orchestras
• Sports teams
• Events and outings with other homeschooled kids
• More high quality interactions with family members”
Second…
While I admire, respect, and support one’s choice to homeschool, I do not see it as a large scale solution, any more than I see private school vouchers, free market education, or corporate-style hiring/firing practices applied to teachers, as solutions. I do believe there are a lot of flaws in the system of education we have, both public and private. But I don’t believe that pulling kids out of the system and turning our back on it is a responsible decision on the whole. Yes, we want the best for our children individually, and there are children who really DON’T belong in a “traditional” school, but I think those parents who have the resources and ability to provide a home school education, should think about applying those resources and abilities to making the schools a better place for MORE kids. Good education is something that needs to be provided to ALL, and we need to work hard to find ways to make the system work. Otherwise we sink deeper into a class divide where the educated gain privilege exclusively, and those with less education and resources are left further and further behind, with little or no opportunity for advancement.
Ok. 🙂
I think those parents who have the resources and ability to provide a home school education, should think about applying those resources and abilities to making the schools a better place for MORE kids. Good education is something that needs to be provided to ALL, and we need to work hard to find ways to make the system work. Otherwise we sink deeper into a class divide where the educated gain privilege exclusively, and those with less education and resources are left further and further behind, with little or no opportunity for advancement.
If one substitutes the idea of education (in this excerpt) for the idea of money, one gets a fairly concise overview of the intended benefits of socialism.
While education can beget more education (and money), money can also beget more money (and education), so it’s a pretty close parallel.
Of course, a big problem the rabid twit who wrote that original article of fetid gibberish chooses to ignore is… what’s wrong with socialism?
Sure, it may not actually WORK, but anyone who thinks big-L Libertarianism would actually work on a national scale is delusional, for many reasons including those that are usually encapsulated by terms like the Tragedy of the Commons.
For any supposed benefit of Libertarianism, I can point out the downside and/or the fiction underlying it. The same can, of course, be done for socialism.
Oh, and while I’m at it, I’ll observe that the reason militaries have things like basic training is not to instil unquestioning obedience, but similar reactions to stimuli. And the reason that’s useful is that all military would prefer that their troops NOT get killed.
The parallel with society at large (which does exist, regardless of claims to the contrary by Libertarian “I’m alrigh Jack” zealots) should be obvious…
Society at large needs to have uniform/similar reactions in order not to get killed? The parallel with society at large is obvious, but I’m not sure it’s accurate.
Having large herds of people who all behave the same way is very convenient for statisticians and their various close relatives (economists, behavioral psychologists, et al). And that’s fine. But I’m not sure what that has to do with the survivability of the people being studied.
I mean, you don’t need similar reactions from all concerned for the government to guarantee basic protection from most criminal behavior (at around the same level of certainty they guarantee now, anyway). You don’t need similar *civilian* responses to guarantee most forms of civil defense, though obviously your soldiers will still need military training.
What threat are you seeing these uniform responses to stimuli being a defense against?
First, there’s an obvious difference in degree between military basic training and a school, which the rabid twit conveniently ignores: the number and variety of “right answers” to a given stimulus. The military will (as an oversimplification) tolerate just one response, which is just not the case with K-12 education. Even in “hard science” curricula, there is value in the wrong answer with the right process, while in (so-called) “softer” subjects the process is whole point: there is NO singular “right answer”.
But the value of a standardized knowledge and experience base (which is what the K-12 system tries to instill, regardless of whether it’s through public, private or individual “institutions”) should be obvious: from the simplistic (like how to spell “simplistic”) to the arbitrary (like how our political system is supposed to work), to the practical (such as basic algebra and physics).
It doesn’t really matter how one spells a word, or how one organizes one’s political systems, or whether the freezing point of water is 0 or 32 degrees. But it IS important for the success and stability of society in general that there should be a common reference point, a set of shared baselines, from which (of course) people are free to diverge (just as in the military: independent thought is valued, but the time and place may be constrained a bit).
And, please, don’t buy that crap that military basic training and the public school system are equivalent. The military is trying to keep its troops alive; that’s what it does. The overall school system has different goals, and I never implied that the goals were equivalent to the military’s. To the extent that there are similarities in the techniques used to achieve the goals, the parallels are useful, but no-one (with the possible exception of that idiot author) should assume that 12 years of schooling is equivalent to 12 weeks of basic!
However, that’s all abstract. The tangible reality is that PRIVATE schools produce kids that are equally as “indoctrinated” as the public or homeschooled (silly word: what it means is home educated), and does anyone seriously believe that public schools couldn’t “compete” (however that’s defined) with private ones if the former weren’t better funded? [ That’s limiting the scope of what I mean by “private schools” to those that don’t admit based on aptitude; if you cherry-pick the best kids, you sure as shit should get better results. ]
The core issue is that some half-baked “I’m alright Jack” big-L Libertarian whining and thrashing around trying to justify his unwillingness to finance public education cannot be taken seriously absent a considered alternative idea. And the facile notion that education (and health care, and defense, and market regulation) can somehow be safely left to the private sector and “market forces” is PROVEN to utter garbage: the consequences of that wheeze is encapsulated by the Tragedy of the Commons: IT WILL NOT HAPPEN.
Which leads to the bottom line: no matter how poor K-12 publicly-funded education is, it’s better than the alternative, which is (for a significant number of kids) no education at all.
But as is typical with most big-L Libertarians, there’s a confusion between choices one may make as an individual (e.g. public, private or home education), and choices society faces (i.e. public or no education).
There are a couple of places where your grammar seems ambiguous to me, and so I’m not 100% sure I’m getting your meaning. Let me grab one and ask about it, and I’ll also begin responding. I want to limit my response somewhat until I’m fairly sure what I’m responding *to*, which seems prudent to me 🙂
does anyone seriously believe that public schools couldn’t “compete” (however that’s defined) with private ones if the former weren’t better funded?
Let me rephrase this. If what I get when rephrasing is *not* what you meant by the above, then please tell me. If what I get is not equivalent then I’m simply misunderstanding your words. Rephrase: does anyone seriously believe that public schools can’t compete with private schools if the public schools weren’t better funded? The implication I’m getting here is that public schools need significantly more money (better funded) to compete with private schools, which seems at odds with the rest of your argument. Am I misunderstanding how you mean “weren’t” above, and getting a negative where you meant a positive? Or did you mean “latter” rather than “former”?
Now, on to actual response…
I agree that the kind and amount of indoctrination that schools do is very different from the military. I would argue that the kind and amount of indoctrination also varies between public schools and private schools, and that private schools vary between themselves (example: Montessori is not the same as a public school, nor is it likely to be the same as randomly selected Catholic high school, in terms of its conditioning for a given quality of student). So I would say that some private school students are equally indoctrinated, but it depends a great deal on which private school.
Obviously I agree that cherry-picking the best students gives better results. I’ll try to make all my arguments for any given quality of student, so for some of these arguments a school will take itself out of consideration. For instance, a school that won’t take problem children simply won’t be judgeable against problem children in a public school.
[T]he facile notion that education (and health care, and defense, and market regulation) can somehow be safely left to the private sector and “market forces” is PROVEN to utter garbage: the consequences of that wheeze is encapsulated by the Tragedy of the Commons: IT WILL NOT HAPPEN.
You’re talking a lot about the Tragedy of the Commons and about private schools cherry-picking students. Let me see if I’m understanding your argument. Are you saying that private schools will take only the wealthiest, smartest and hardest-working students, leaving the rest without education at all?
I’d agree about defense, incidentally. It has the fairly uncommon property that the amount you individually contribute to it has very little to do with how much benefit you derive from it — benefits are derived only in aggregate. I can’t think of many economically similar things. It’s a little like liability insurance, but even that has a lot more individual repercussions for ignoring it.
I think it’s worth noting in passing that the original article’s author, while he has some pretty wacky ideas, is basically saying that it’s annoying that he can’t really present them in the forum he’s given. I’m a big fan of the idea that anybody, regardless of how wrong or stupid their idea is, is welcome to present it. I think that socialists, for instance, are a fine thing in academia because otherwise you’ll wonder why academia was unwilling to show you what they had to say earlier. Best, of course, would be a reasoned dissection of socialist recommendations along with why it hasn’t worked out in the past (with the implication that it doesn’t look especially promising for the future, but hey, they could still surprise us).
Then again, I think pretty much anybody should have precisely that right — the right to present things and have them evaluated on their history and merits. If you try hard to shield children from seductive wrong ideas, you’re raising adults with no real defense against seductive wrong ideas.
Yes, I am stating that the difference between the level of success (however defined) between public and private is a primarily one of funding. IF the public sector schools were funded at the same level as the private ones, then you wouldn’t see differences in the level of success, for (nearly) whatever values you use to measure “success”. Well, alright, not quite “whatever values”, but “whatever measures of scholastic achievement” you choose, be it college admissions, GPA, or more nebulous life-success measures.
However, that’s not to say that an arbitrary public school could outperform an arbitrary private school, because that’s a matter of specifics, not generalities. (And would depend on many things, including who the staff were, who the pupils were, etc.) And, at least in part, the private schools tend to stack the deck: kids admitted to private schools tend to have had better levels of care and pre-schooling. But with sufficient funding, I think reasonable that a public school could provide remedial support to compensate.
Oh, and there’s wide variation among public schools, too. I’ll offer a couple of extreme examples: Virginia Military Institute and the LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, but would add Redwood City’s High Tech High for local flavor.
[ Re cherry picking: I mentioned it exactly once, and that point remains: a school that admits pupils based on aptitude bloody well should produce better results than one that doesn’t. ]
Now, as to the core point: the assumption held by big-L Libertarians is that government shouldn’t be involved in things like education, health care, transportation and infrastructure-type programs, because “market forces” and the private sector will, somehow, magically take care of those things. And by any rights, defense should be on the list, too, but it doesn’t suit them to include it, and so they pretend it’s somehow different.
That core assumption is crap. The private sector and market forces DON’T magically take care of things. This isn’t a hypothesis, it’s easily demonstrated by looking at our history and the situation in other countries: the wealthy rarely feel inclined to provide schooling and healthcare for the poor, even though the “market forces” argument holds that they would, because that expands their market. It doesn’t happen.
You make a point about defense, but from a social point of view, that same argument applies to education and health care and infrastructure. I mean, if I don’t plan on having kids, there’s no direct benefit to me from my paying for education. But in my dotage, it’s the kids in school today that will be running the place, so it really does behoove me to invest for the future.
Lastly, I’m not sure what you’re saying is annoying that author. Because it’s perfectly possible to teach _more than_ the mandated curriculum. And it’s perfectly possible to change the mandated curriculum (as Kansas et al seem to do with depressing regularity to include religious whoo-hah as science).
I believe that prat of an author is simply doing the typical Libertarian whine: “why should I have to pay for stuff I don’t like? I’m all right, Jack!”.
But with sufficient funding, I think reasonable that a public school could provide remedial support to compensate.
Here, we differ. But has much more cogent (and experience-based) arguments on this topic than I do, so I’ll let her reply.
One reason we differ is this: I believe that government jobs, performed by government employees, simply aren’t going to reach the efficiency of those employed by companies. I submit, for instance, the United States Postal Service, which does a tremendously large and difficult job, but doesn’t do it particularly efficiently. Employees that are extremely difficult to fire for incompetence do not collectively produce a highly competent workforce. It could be argued that if government employees were held to different standards this would not be a problem — but that’s a hypothetical that’s no more relevant than the more ridiculous Libertarian hypotheticals. It’s simply not going to be put into practice in the short-term.
the assumption held by big-L Libertarians is that government shouldn’t be involved in things like education, health care, transportation and infrastructure-type programs, because “market forces” and the private sector will, somehow, magically take care of those things
I would argue that to a large extent, market forces *do* magically take care of these things. Not education so much — private schools do not serve a large percentage of our current schooling needs, no more than private mailing services serve a high percentage of our mailing needs. Private schools and FedEx both exist, but neither is high-volume. In both cases, unprofitable and highly-subsidized government programs make it unreasonable for a private company to compete. This is expensive, but provides a reliable service in both cases, which one or more companies cannot easily do — if it’s done by companies to make a profit, the reliability of the service depends on unpredictable market forces in many cases. When the underlying goods or services or expensive, the service (sending a letter, educating a child) would become expensive. For example, America’s colleges, or various private express package delivery services, both of which have this property. The government programs (USPS, US public education system) are more expensive, but more reliable, because they don’t depend nearly as much on the underlying costs.
Re: transportation, I would argue essentially the same thing. The government pre-empted private solutions to the problem (which take time to develop and are simply not as reliable) with a very expensive government program equivalent. On the plus side, it got us a lovely system of publicly-maintained highways, which we continue to keep up at great expense, but they serve us very consistently.
What was the other one you mentioned? Oh, right, health care. Health care shares the common capitalist problem of very poorly serving those who can pay very little. It has the further problem that people are tremendously irrational about health care, in the sense that most people will pay an enormous amount of money in hopes of living the slightest bit longer, assuming they’re just about to die. They won’t skip a pack of cigarettes (which actually *saves* them money) while they’re still young. So maybe that’s irrational. Who knows, maybe they’re doing exactly the right thing. But regardless, it’s simply more profitable for companies to spend time serving/bilking the super-rich to keep old ones alive slightly longer at this point. So the service is very good in some senses — the American health care system is far and away the best in the world if and only if you have a lot of money to pay for it. Good, but not reliable in terms of costs or timing. Thus, it’s rather like private schooling, private postage and private transportation.
I agree — if you have no children, the defense argument applies to public schooling as well. I think that in practice enough people have children or want to that it mostly gets them grumblingly in line to pay taxes for education to prevent the complete ascendency of stupid people.
You’ve misread what I wrote. I stated that with sufficient funding public schools could… (etc.). You’re assuming that that’s equivalent to saying “with the same funding as the private school gets”, which it obviously isn’t.
Next, I submit your analysis of the USPS is flawed by popular perception, rather than objective analysis. Compare USPS Priority Mail and Express Mail with offering from the private sector, and on every metric (reliability, cost, convenience) they are competitive with UPS, DHL, and FedEx. Sure, there are differences in services, but that’s normal market variations.
Now, transportation. The government didn’t preempt anything, as a quick reflection about railroads will demonstrate. The railroads were built because the government handed the land and rights to the private corporations; the same has happened with the airline business (when did any airline build an airport?). With every toll-road built, huge assets (and legal pressure) are donated by governments. The only sector that even begins to have a level playing field is sea transportation, and even then the ports are almost exclusively publicly owned (there are exceptions, frequently in the oil and gas business).
Heathcare is, as you say, complicated. It seems to me that the only rational analysis is one in which access to health care is averaged across the entire population, because that’s the only moral way of looking at it from a national perspective. And when you do that, it becomes clear that the problem can be divided into two: those who can afford to pay, and those who can’t. And for those who can’t afford it, where, exactly, are the magic solutions which market forces apparently provide?
In conclusion: there are a significant number of things that people generally don’t want to pay for, but want to exist. You’ll acknowledge defense, and in some circumstances education, and we haven’t touched on matters such as regulation (environmental, market, etc.) or policing (maybe that’s a variant of defense). The Tragedy of the Commons demonstrates that these cannot simply be left to the interested parties to sort out. It doesn’t work. It would be nice if it did, but then again it would be nice if we could cure diseases by waving a magic wand.
Next, I submit your analysis of the USPS is flawed by popular perception […] they are competitive with UPS, DHL, and FedEx. Sure, there are differences in services, but that’s normal market variations.
Well, yes, but they’re also very heavily subsidized by the US gov’t and extremely unprofitable. With sufficient money thrown away, the service can cost whatever you feel like…
Now, transportation. The government didn’t preempt anything… when did any airline build an airport? … ports are almost exclusively publicly owned
So your argument is that because the government has donated, forced or cajoled everything, it pre-empted nothing? I disagree, as my summary in the previous sentence suggests.
In several of the points above, including education and the postal service, your arguments assume throwing large amounts of money at the problem — specifically, you’re assuming that the public solution can throw any amount of money at the problem (your restating of “sufficient funding” above).
You then argue that the most moral, and only acceptable, healthcare solution, is the one that gives the best healthcare when averaged across the population, regardless of what it costs. In other words, the only acceptable health care solution is the one that gives the best average health care, no matter how much it diverts in the way of resources from everything else the country does, public or private. I disagree again.
Ummm, the USPS is not heavily subsidized by the US government. Check out their blasted accounts (as I did before I wrote that; they’re on the web). Last year they made an operating profit of $900M on revenue of $72B. The year before, it was an operating profit of $1.4B on revenue of $70B. Etc.
OK, except in as much as they acquire billions of assets when the thing was reorginized between 1971 and 1988, and in as much as they are underwritten by the government. But they do specifically account for those assets as USG property, which the 19th century transportation networks never did.
Beyond that, please have the decency to not misquote me. I never “restated” anything. You simply misread what I wrote. And I suspect (from your later comments) that you assume that I am advocating throwing unlimited amounts of money at the problem. I am not. I am simply pointing out that (in education, the context of this observation) the amount of money spent skews the comparison.
Further, I never made any value judgements about healthcare. That’s a fabrication on your part: I did not say, nor do I believe, that the “most moral, and only acceptable” solution is what you claim. I stated that pretending that market forces will magically solve that problem is demonstrably false. Because it hasn’t.
If you choose to believe that, in discussing healthcare, you can ignore the poor, then, well “go, you”. It makes most issues pretty bloody easy if you leave out all the hard parts!
But that’s the guts of the Libertarians: ignore the difficult stuff, and everything sounds fine. Because, you see, they’re alright, Jack.
The hard part lies in looking across the board, at _both_ the affluent and the poor, and asking the question “is the status quo just?”, and that’s only the beginning. But if something isn’t just (and I’ll grant you a lot of leeway in deciding that), then it behooves society to do something about it. Particularly a society premised on justice, as a quick read of the Declaration of Independence will show this to be…
Still, at the end of the day, you’re now just fabricating interpretations of my positions to support your dissent. Enjoy yourself, but please don’t attribute your fictions to me.
Ummm, the USPS is not heavily subsidized by the US government. Check out their blasted accounts
I have, though not for this year. Does the “operating profit” appropriately count the fact that a large budget is handed to them by the federal government, and that spending it counts against the bottom line? Last I checked, any “profit” they made did not do so. Perhaps they’ve become enormously more profitable in the last few years, but I’ll have to have a close look to believe it.
I never “restated” anything. You simply misread what I wrote.
You rephrased to make your meaning clearer. I don’t feel that your first statement was clear, and I feel my initial impression was reasonable, given your phrasing. I don’t mean “no, you meant that first thing”, but I do mean “that first thing was a reasonable impression of the words you put on the page.” I don’t mean “restating, coming up with something completely different” but I do mean “restating — stating again using slightly different words.”
You, earlier: But with sufficient funding, I think reasonable that a public school could provide remedial support to compensate.
(I then said earlier that I didn’t think government employees could match the performance per dollar of employees of private companies)
You, earlier: You’ve misread what I wrote. I stated that with sufficient funding public schools could… (etc.). You’re assuming that that’s equivalent to saying “with the same funding as the private school gets”, which it obviously isn’t.
Okay… So what I read above is, “with *sufficient* funding” does no mean “with the *same* amount of money”. The obvious interpretation (to me) is, “with *enough* money, however much that may be.” I claim this is a reasonable interpretation of your words. You can be as hostile as necessary in disagreeing, I suppose, but I’ll still hold that mine is a reasonable interpretation of the words I just excerpted as they appear on the page.
As far as you saying it was the moral solution, I’ll just excerpt from you again: It seems to me that the only rational analysis is one in which access to health care is averaged across the entire population, because that’s the only moral way of looking at it from a national perspective. You use the phrase “only rational analysis is (solution here) … that’s the only moral way of looking at it.” Does “most moral, and only acceptable” seem like a completely unreasonable fabrication of what that sentence says?
Also, you move from “my argument isn’t about morality” (yes, that’s a paraphrase) to “is the status quo just?”. The word “just” is, again, a moral judgement there. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I *do* wish you’d own up to it.
Re: the USPS: a large budget is not handed to them by the federal government. So, no, it doesn’t count that.
Re: school funding. Go back and read what I wrote. You’ll see two paragraphs. One paragraph talks, in fact, about comparable (the same) level of funding. The other paragraph, the one you keep quoting, talks about the private sector stacking the deck, and it’s THAT paragraph in which I make an observation which includes the word “could”, which you choose to interpret bizarrely.
Ain’t my fault if you won’t read what’s written.
Re: healthcare. You’re confused about the difference between “the only moral way of looking at” and “the only moral way of implemening”. I wrote the former. You distorted that into the latter. Or to rephrase (but not restate, as those two words mean different things), I observer that when analysing the health care system, doing anything but analyse the entire health care “system” instead of just the part of it that caters to the affluent is neither rational nor moral.
That’s in direct response to your observation that the health care system works well if you have the money.
And no, I don’t move from “my argument isn’t about morality”. Because my argument isn’t about moraliy in implementation, but in analysis. If you want to employ deceptive and dishonest analysis when looking at health care, knock yourself out. But it makes you incapable of addressing the real situation instead of the fictional one you’ve invented by your flawed analysis.
Lastly, get off you bloody high horse as in your last sentence. What the fuck do you think “and I’ll grant you a lot of leeway in deciding that” means? Could it possibly be an overt acknowledgement that what “just” means is a judgement call? Oh, yes. It could. And it is.
Lastly, get off you bloody high horse as in your last sentence.
Pot. Kettle. Black. You are spending a *lot* of time saying things very poorly and then taking tremendous offense any time anybody makes such horrific mistakes in interpretation as the difference between “the only moral way of looking at it” and “the only moral way of implementing it” (in this case – so you’re saying if you implement it immorally and then look at it morally you’re okay? I really don’t get what your distinction is here. No, seriously, I honestly don’t).
You are also saying that if I analyze at a different scope (for instance, looking at high-end health care and whether it’s possible to try to cure uncommon or difficult ailments, rather than “averaging” that to basically be worthless) that I am “employ[ing] deceptive and dishonest analysis when looking at health care”. Does it strike you that characterizing what I’m doing that way is at least as unfair as what you claim I’m doing to you? If not, I suggest you re-examine.
Also, from m-w.com:
Restate
Pronunciation: (“)rE-‘stAt
Function: transitive verb
: to state again or in another way
No part of that definition of “restate” states or implies that one’s point of view has changed. In fact, it usually means you’ve just said the same thing again. You did, however, say it again. Your response (I never “restated” anything. You simply misread what I wrote.) is factually inaccurate, and your belief that “restate” cannot mean rephrasing the same thing again is also factually inaccurate. You persist in being rude throughout this thread, and ignoring your own specific mistakes (see “factually inaccurate” in this paragraph).
My “high horse” is very much a reflection of chilling my tone in conversation. You show every sign of meriting it. I try to start out with a reasonably pleasant tone and reasonably permissive interpretations of what someone has to say, on the assumption that an exchange of views and information may ensue, and that can be useful. It appears that you’re far more interested in exchanging rudeness and invective than in any actual exchange of information. I’m merely matching my tone to the change in activity that you’ve requested.
You know, at this stage, I’ve concluded that one of two things must be true:
Either: you genuinely don’t understand what is written, in which case I’m afraid I’m unwilling to futz around explaining things at an elementary level. E.g. your apparently ignorance that “restate” is routinely used to mean “state again with different specifics”, as in the most common usage in recent years, where the word “earnings” follows the word “restate”.
Or: you’re pulling my leg, and are simply trying to have fun at my expense.
In either case, game over.
But I will note in closing that if you don’t understand the difference between the analysis of a problem and the solution to that problem, and the relationship between the two, you really should NOT be working in software.
Fun cheap personal shot. Always a fine thing.
Despite that, I’ll stand by the Merriam-Webster definition of “restate” over “the obvious back-formation from ‘restate earnings’ to things other than earnings.”
It’s possible that my inability to read what is written has some vague relationship to your unwillingness to accept dictionary definitions over whatever you feel is ‘routinely used to mean … in recent years”.
Anyway, since the game’s over, g’night.
Fun cheap personal shot. Always a fine thing.
Despite that, I’ll stand by the Merriam-Webster definition of “restate” over “the obvious back-formation from ‘restate earnings’ to things other than earnings.”
It’s possible that my inability to read what is written has some vague relationship to your unwillingness to accept dictionary definitions over whatever you feel is ‘routinely used to mean … in recent years”.
Anyway, since the game’s over, g’night.
You know, at this stage, I’ve concluded that one of two things must be true:
Either: you genuinely don’t understand what is written, in which case I’m afraid I’m unwilling to futz around explaining things at an elementary level. E.g. your apparently ignorance that “restate” is routinely used to mean “state again with different specifics”, as in the most common usage in recent years, where the word “earnings” follows the word “restate”.
Or: you’re pulling my leg, and are simply trying to have fun at my expense.
In either case, game over.
But I will note in closing that if you don’t understand the difference between the analysis of a problem and the solution to that problem, and the relationship between the two, you really should NOT be working in software.
Lastly, get off you bloody high horse as in your last sentence.
Pot. Kettle. Black. You are spending a *lot* of time saying things very poorly and then taking tremendous offense any time anybody makes such horrific mistakes in interpretation as the difference between “the only moral way of looking at it” and “the only moral way of implementing it” (in this case – so you’re saying if you implement it immorally and then look at it morally you’re okay? I really don’t get what your distinction is here. No, seriously, I honestly don’t).
You are also saying that if I analyze at a different scope (for instance, looking at high-end health care and whether it’s possible to try to cure uncommon or difficult ailments, rather than “averaging” that to basically be worthless) that I am “employ[ing] deceptive and dishonest analysis when looking at health care”. Does it strike you that characterizing what I’m doing that way is at least as unfair as what you claim I’m doing to you? If not, I suggest you re-examine.
Also, from m-w.com:
Restate
Pronunciation: (“)rE-‘stAt
Function: transitive verb
: to state again or in another way
No part of that definition of “restate” states or implies that one’s point of view has changed. In fact, it usually means you’ve just said the same thing again. You did, however, say it again. Your response (I never “restated” anything. You simply misread what I wrote.) is factually inaccurate, and your belief that “restate” cannot mean rephrasing the same thing again is also factually inaccurate. You persist in being rude throughout this thread, and ignoring your own specific mistakes (see “factually inaccurate” in this paragraph).
My “high horse” is very much a reflection of chilling my tone in conversation. You show every sign of meriting it. I try to start out with a reasonably pleasant tone and reasonably permissive interpretations of what someone has to say, on the assumption that an exchange of views and information may ensue, and that can be useful. It appears that you’re far more interested in exchanging rudeness and invective than in any actual exchange of information. I’m merely matching my tone to the change in activity that you’ve requested.
Re: the USPS: a large budget is not handed to them by the federal government. So, no, it doesn’t count that.
Re: school funding. Go back and read what I wrote. You’ll see two paragraphs. One paragraph talks, in fact, about comparable (the same) level of funding. The other paragraph, the one you keep quoting, talks about the private sector stacking the deck, and it’s THAT paragraph in which I make an observation which includes the word “could”, which you choose to interpret bizarrely.
Ain’t my fault if you won’t read what’s written.
Re: healthcare. You’re confused about the difference between “the only moral way of looking at” and “the only moral way of implemening”. I wrote the former. You distorted that into the latter. Or to rephrase (but not restate, as those two words mean different things), I observer that when analysing the health care system, doing anything but analyse the entire health care “system” instead of just the part of it that caters to the affluent is neither rational nor moral.
That’s in direct response to your observation that the health care system works well if you have the money.
And no, I don’t move from “my argument isn’t about morality”. Because my argument isn’t about moraliy in implementation, but in analysis. If you want to employ deceptive and dishonest analysis when looking at health care, knock yourself out. But it makes you incapable of addressing the real situation instead of the fictional one you’ve invented by your flawed analysis.
Lastly, get off you bloody high horse as in your last sentence. What the fuck do you think “and I’ll grant you a lot of leeway in deciding that” means? Could it possibly be an overt acknowledgement that what “just” means is a judgement call? Oh, yes. It could. And it is.
Ummm, the USPS is not heavily subsidized by the US government. Check out their blasted accounts
I have, though not for this year. Does the “operating profit” appropriately count the fact that a large budget is handed to them by the federal government, and that spending it counts against the bottom line? Last I checked, any “profit” they made did not do so. Perhaps they’ve become enormously more profitable in the last few years, but I’ll have to have a close look to believe it.
I never “restated” anything. You simply misread what I wrote.
You rephrased to make your meaning clearer. I don’t feel that your first statement was clear, and I feel my initial impression was reasonable, given your phrasing. I don’t mean “no, you meant that first thing”, but I do mean “that first thing was a reasonable impression of the words you put on the page.” I don’t mean “restating, coming up with something completely different” but I do mean “restating — stating again using slightly different words.”
You, earlier: But with sufficient funding, I think reasonable that a public school could provide remedial support to compensate.
(I then said earlier that I didn’t think government employees could match the performance per dollar of employees of private companies)
You, earlier: You’ve misread what I wrote. I stated that with sufficient funding public schools could… (etc.). You’re assuming that that’s equivalent to saying “with the same funding as the private school gets”, which it obviously isn’t.
Okay… So what I read above is, “with *sufficient* funding” does no mean “with the *same* amount of money”. The obvious interpretation (to me) is, “with *enough* money, however much that may be.” I claim this is a reasonable interpretation of your words. You can be as hostile as necessary in disagreeing, I suppose, but I’ll still hold that mine is a reasonable interpretation of the words I just excerpted as they appear on the page.
As far as you saying it was the moral solution, I’ll just excerpt from you again: It seems to me that the only rational analysis is one in which access to health care is averaged across the entire population, because that’s the only moral way of looking at it from a national perspective. You use the phrase “only rational analysis is (solution here) … that’s the only moral way of looking at it.” Does “most moral, and only acceptable” seem like a completely unreasonable fabrication of what that sentence says?
Also, you move from “my argument isn’t about morality” (yes, that’s a paraphrase) to “is the status quo just?”. The word “just” is, again, a moral judgement there. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I *do* wish you’d own up to it.
Ummm, the USPS is not heavily subsidized by the US government. Check out their blasted accounts (as I did before I wrote that; they’re on the web). Last year they made an operating profit of $900M on revenue of $72B. The year before, it was an operating profit of $1.4B on revenue of $70B. Etc.
OK, except in as much as they acquire billions of assets when the thing was reorginized between 1971 and 1988, and in as much as they are underwritten by the government. But they do specifically account for those assets as USG property, which the 19th century transportation networks never did.
Beyond that, please have the decency to not misquote me. I never “restated” anything. You simply misread what I wrote. And I suspect (from your later comments) that you assume that I am advocating throwing unlimited amounts of money at the problem. I am not. I am simply pointing out that (in education, the context of this observation) the amount of money spent skews the comparison.
Further, I never made any value judgements about healthcare. That’s a fabrication on your part: I did not say, nor do I believe, that the “most moral, and only acceptable” solution is what you claim. I stated that pretending that market forces will magically solve that problem is demonstrably false. Because it hasn’t.
If you choose to believe that, in discussing healthcare, you can ignore the poor, then, well “go, you”. It makes most issues pretty bloody easy if you leave out all the hard parts!
But that’s the guts of the Libertarians: ignore the difficult stuff, and everything sounds fine. Because, you see, they’re alright, Jack.
The hard part lies in looking across the board, at _both_ the affluent and the poor, and asking the question “is the status quo just?”, and that’s only the beginning. But if something isn’t just (and I’ll grant you a lot of leeway in deciding that), then it behooves society to do something about it. Particularly a society premised on justice, as a quick read of the Declaration of Independence will show this to be…
Still, at the end of the day, you’re now just fabricating interpretations of my positions to support your dissent. Enjoy yourself, but please don’t attribute your fictions to me.
Next, I submit your analysis of the USPS is flawed by popular perception […] they are competitive with UPS, DHL, and FedEx. Sure, there are differences in services, but that’s normal market variations.
Well, yes, but they’re also very heavily subsidized by the US gov’t and extremely unprofitable. With sufficient money thrown away, the service can cost whatever you feel like…
Now, transportation. The government didn’t preempt anything… when did any airline build an airport? … ports are almost exclusively publicly owned
So your argument is that because the government has donated, forced or cajoled everything, it pre-empted nothing? I disagree, as my summary in the previous sentence suggests.
In several of the points above, including education and the postal service, your arguments assume throwing large amounts of money at the problem — specifically, you’re assuming that the public solution can throw any amount of money at the problem (your restating of “sufficient funding” above).
You then argue that the most moral, and only acceptable, healthcare solution, is the one that gives the best healthcare when averaged across the population, regardless of what it costs. In other words, the only acceptable health care solution is the one that gives the best average health care, no matter how much it diverts in the way of resources from everything else the country does, public or private. I disagree again.
You’ve misread what I wrote. I stated that with sufficient funding public schools could… (etc.). You’re assuming that that’s equivalent to saying “with the same funding as the private school gets”, which it obviously isn’t.
Next, I submit your analysis of the USPS is flawed by popular perception, rather than objective analysis. Compare USPS Priority Mail and Express Mail with offering from the private sector, and on every metric (reliability, cost, convenience) they are competitive with UPS, DHL, and FedEx. Sure, there are differences in services, but that’s normal market variations.
Now, transportation. The government didn’t preempt anything, as a quick reflection about railroads will demonstrate. The railroads were built because the government handed the land and rights to the private corporations; the same has happened with the airline business (when did any airline build an airport?). With every toll-road built, huge assets (and legal pressure) are donated by governments. The only sector that even begins to have a level playing field is sea transportation, and even then the ports are almost exclusively publicly owned (there are exceptions, frequently in the oil and gas business).
Heathcare is, as you say, complicated. It seems to me that the only rational analysis is one in which access to health care is averaged across the entire population, because that’s the only moral way of looking at it from a national perspective. And when you do that, it becomes clear that the problem can be divided into two: those who can afford to pay, and those who can’t. And for those who can’t afford it, where, exactly, are the magic solutions which market forces apparently provide?
In conclusion: there are a significant number of things that people generally don’t want to pay for, but want to exist. You’ll acknowledge defense, and in some circumstances education, and we haven’t touched on matters such as regulation (environmental, market, etc.) or policing (maybe that’s a variant of defense). The Tragedy of the Commons demonstrates that these cannot simply be left to the interested parties to sort out. It doesn’t work. It would be nice if it did, but then again it would be nice if we could cure diseases by waving a magic wand.
But with sufficient funding, I think reasonable that a public school could provide remedial support to compensate.
Here, we differ. But has much more cogent (and experience-based) arguments on this topic than I do, so I’ll let her reply.
One reason we differ is this: I believe that government jobs, performed by government employees, simply aren’t going to reach the efficiency of those employed by companies. I submit, for instance, the United States Postal Service, which does a tremendously large and difficult job, but doesn’t do it particularly efficiently. Employees that are extremely difficult to fire for incompetence do not collectively produce a highly competent workforce. It could be argued that if government employees were held to different standards this would not be a problem — but that’s a hypothetical that’s no more relevant than the more ridiculous Libertarian hypotheticals. It’s simply not going to be put into practice in the short-term.
the assumption held by big-L Libertarians is that government shouldn’t be involved in things like education, health care, transportation and infrastructure-type programs, because “market forces” and the private sector will, somehow, magically take care of those things
I would argue that to a large extent, market forces *do* magically take care of these things. Not education so much — private schools do not serve a large percentage of our current schooling needs, no more than private mailing services serve a high percentage of our mailing needs. Private schools and FedEx both exist, but neither is high-volume. In both cases, unprofitable and highly-subsidized government programs make it unreasonable for a private company to compete. This is expensive, but provides a reliable service in both cases, which one or more companies cannot easily do — if it’s done by companies to make a profit, the reliability of the service depends on unpredictable market forces in many cases. When the underlying goods or services or expensive, the service (sending a letter, educating a child) would become expensive. For example, America’s colleges, or various private express package delivery services, both of which have this property. The government programs (USPS, US public education system) are more expensive, but more reliable, because they don’t depend nearly as much on the underlying costs.
Re: transportation, I would argue essentially the same thing. The government pre-empted private solutions to the problem (which take time to develop and are simply not as reliable) with a very expensive government program equivalent. On the plus side, it got us a lovely system of publicly-maintained highways, which we continue to keep up at great expense, but they serve us very consistently.
What was the other one you mentioned? Oh, right, health care. Health care shares the common capitalist problem of very poorly serving those who can pay very little. It has the further problem that people are tremendously irrational about health care, in the sense that most people will pay an enormous amount of money in hopes of living the slightest bit longer, assuming they’re just about to die. They won’t skip a pack of cigarettes (which actually *saves* them money) while they’re still young. So maybe that’s irrational. Who knows, maybe they’re doing exactly the right thing. But regardless, it’s simply more profitable for companies to spend time serving/bilking the super-rich to keep old ones alive slightly longer at this point. So the service is very good in some senses — the American health care system is far and away the best in the world if and only if you have a lot of money to pay for it. Good, but not reliable in terms of costs or timing. Thus, it’s rather like private schooling, private postage and private transportation.
I agree — if you have no children, the defense argument applies to public schooling as well. I think that in practice enough people have children or want to that it mostly gets them grumblingly in line to pay taxes for education to prevent the complete ascendency of stupid people.
I’m not sure what you’re saying is annoying that author.
The author seems to say that his ideas aren’t teachable in school. Specifically, he says: “Well, imagine a public-school teacher openly announcing at the beginning of the semester that he would be teaching the following things in his government class… What do you think would happen to that teacher?” Thus, presumably he feels silenced, whether he is correct or no.
What would you think would happen to a teacher who openly announced that he’d be teaching that the universe was sneezed out of some unknown being’s nose?
Or more to the point, who openly refused to announce that?
Oh, wait, we don’t have to think about it, we can simply refer to public records. Say, in Dover, Pa.
Public syllabi can be, and routinely are, changed. So that whole line of argument is balderdash, too.
As I’m suggesting with “whether he is correct or no”, I don’t believe he’s correct. I believe he’s timid. I can say it three or four more times, but after the first few I’m getting the impression that you’re just going to keep ignoring me when I do.
As I’m suggesting with “whether he is correct or no”, I don’t believe he’s correct. I believe he’s timid. I can say it three or four more times, but after the first few I’m getting the impression that you’re just going to keep ignoring me when I do.
What would you think would happen to a teacher who openly announced that he’d be teaching that the universe was sneezed out of some unknown being’s nose?
Or more to the point, who openly refused to announce that?
Oh, wait, we don’t have to think about it, we can simply refer to public records. Say, in Dover, Pa.
Public syllabi can be, and routinely are, changed. So that whole line of argument is balderdash, too.
I’m not sure what you’re saying is annoying that author.
The author seems to say that his ideas aren’t teachable in school. Specifically, he says: “Well, imagine a public-school teacher openly announcing at the beginning of the semester that he would be teaching the following things in his government class… What do you think would happen to that teacher?” Thus, presumably he feels silenced, whether he is correct or no.
Yes, I am stating that the difference between the level of success (however defined) between public and private is a primarily one of funding. IF the public sector schools were funded at the same level as the private ones, then you wouldn’t see differences in the level of success, for (nearly) whatever values you use to measure “success”. Well, alright, not quite “whatever values”, but “whatever measures of scholastic achievement” you choose, be it college admissions, GPA, or more nebulous life-success measures.
However, that’s not to say that an arbitrary public school could outperform an arbitrary private school, because that’s a matter of specifics, not generalities. (And would depend on many things, including who the staff were, who the pupils were, etc.) And, at least in part, the private schools tend to stack the deck: kids admitted to private schools tend to have had better levels of care and pre-schooling. But with sufficient funding, I think reasonable that a public school could provide remedial support to compensate.
Oh, and there’s wide variation among public schools, too. I’ll offer a couple of extreme examples: Virginia Military Institute and the LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, but would add Redwood City’s High Tech High for local flavor.
[ Re cherry picking: I mentioned it exactly once, and that point remains: a school that admits pupils based on aptitude bloody well should produce better results than one that doesn’t. ]
Now, as to the core point: the assumption held by big-L Libertarians is that government shouldn’t be involved in things like education, health care, transportation and infrastructure-type programs, because “market forces” and the private sector will, somehow, magically take care of those things. And by any rights, defense should be on the list, too, but it doesn’t suit them to include it, and so they pretend it’s somehow different.
That core assumption is crap. The private sector and market forces DON’T magically take care of things. This isn’t a hypothesis, it’s easily demonstrated by looking at our history and the situation in other countries: the wealthy rarely feel inclined to provide schooling and healthcare for the poor, even though the “market forces” argument holds that they would, because that expands their market. It doesn’t happen.
You make a point about defense, but from a social point of view, that same argument applies to education and health care and infrastructure. I mean, if I don’t plan on having kids, there’s no direct benefit to me from my paying for education. But in my dotage, it’s the kids in school today that will be running the place, so it really does behoove me to invest for the future.
Lastly, I’m not sure what you’re saying is annoying that author. Because it’s perfectly possible to teach _more than_ the mandated curriculum. And it’s perfectly possible to change the mandated curriculum (as Kansas et al seem to do with depressing regularity to include religious whoo-hah as science).
I believe that prat of an author is simply doing the typical Libertarian whine: “why should I have to pay for stuff I don’t like? I’m all right, Jack!”.
There are a couple of places where your grammar seems ambiguous to me, and so I’m not 100% sure I’m getting your meaning. Let me grab one and ask about it, and I’ll also begin responding. I want to limit my response somewhat until I’m fairly sure what I’m responding *to*, which seems prudent to me 🙂
does anyone seriously believe that public schools couldn’t “compete” (however that’s defined) with private ones if the former weren’t better funded?
Let me rephrase this. If what I get when rephrasing is *not* what you meant by the above, then please tell me. If what I get is not equivalent then I’m simply misunderstanding your words. Rephrase: does anyone seriously believe that public schools can’t compete with private schools if the public schools weren’t better funded? The implication I’m getting here is that public schools need significantly more money (better funded) to compete with private schools, which seems at odds with the rest of your argument. Am I misunderstanding how you mean “weren’t” above, and getting a negative where you meant a positive? Or did you mean “latter” rather than “former”?
Now, on to actual response…
I agree that the kind and amount of indoctrination that schools do is very different from the military. I would argue that the kind and amount of indoctrination also varies between public schools and private schools, and that private schools vary between themselves (example: Montessori is not the same as a public school, nor is it likely to be the same as randomly selected Catholic high school, in terms of its conditioning for a given quality of student). So I would say that some private school students are equally indoctrinated, but it depends a great deal on which private school.
Obviously I agree that cherry-picking the best students gives better results. I’ll try to make all my arguments for any given quality of student, so for some of these arguments a school will take itself out of consideration. For instance, a school that won’t take problem children simply won’t be judgeable against problem children in a public school.
[T]he facile notion that education (and health care, and defense, and market regulation) can somehow be safely left to the private sector and “market forces” is PROVEN to utter garbage: the consequences of that wheeze is encapsulated by the Tragedy of the Commons: IT WILL NOT HAPPEN.
You’re talking a lot about the Tragedy of the Commons and about private schools cherry-picking students. Let me see if I’m understanding your argument. Are you saying that private schools will take only the wealthiest, smartest and hardest-working students, leaving the rest without education at all?
I’d agree about defense, incidentally. It has the fairly uncommon property that the amount you individually contribute to it has very little to do with how much benefit you derive from it — benefits are derived only in aggregate. I can’t think of many economically similar things. It’s a little like liability insurance, but even that has a lot more individual repercussions for ignoring it.
I think it’s worth noting in passing that the original article’s author, while he has some pretty wacky ideas, is basically saying that it’s annoying that he can’t really present them in the forum he’s given. I’m a big fan of the idea that anybody, regardless of how wrong or stupid their idea is, is welcome to present it. I think that socialists, for instance, are a fine thing in academia because otherwise you’ll wonder why academia was unwilling to show you what they had to say earlier. Best, of course, would be a reasoned dissection of socialist recommendations along with why it hasn’t worked out in the past (with the implication that it doesn’t look especially promising for the future, but hey, they could still surprise us).
Then again, I think pretty much anybody should have precisely that right — the right to present things and have them evaluated on their history and merits. If you try hard to shield children from seductive wrong ideas, you’re raising adults with no real defense against seductive wrong ideas.
Incidentally: while the original article is poorly written and intentionally inflammatory, his (few) examples of conformity-inducing behavior aren’t things like the spelling of a word or the melting point of water. To excerpt from the original article:
When the bell rings at the end of one class, the student is expected to immediately proceed to the next class. If he fails to arrive on time, he is punished. Never mind that he might not be interested in the subject matter of the next class or that he might want to stay and talk with other students or the teacher about a subject that he is genuinely interested in.
I’d have to say that, in his small and questionably-thought-out way, he has a point on this one. That’s not really a survival skill for most of us, and is actively counter to useful and productive skills for many of us.
I’m biased, though — I’m one of these “knowledge workers” you hear about, since I’m a computer programmer in a small software startup.
I suppose you could argue that if he has his way and students were permitted to spend all their time on what they liked (say, piano playing) you might produce a large number of students who simply had no ability whatsoever at things like spelling words, knowing the boiling point of water and basic geography. Presumably if you had schools that were as freely structured as our article’s author (apparently) favors your most important teaching would be in explaining why these various skills are valuable. That’s definitely utopian nonsense, given that we currently fall down so thoroughly on the point — if we *do* teach them how to do math and it still seems useless, presumably the situation would be worse if they could just refuse to learn math at all.
I would argue that there’s significant value to the free-form approach espoused in the article, given a situation like home education where it’s logistically viable. You can’t use it 100% of the time, but you could still use it, say, 25% of the time, which would still be about 20% more than in public schools.
As far as the author’s actual “unacceptable” ideas that he mentions — that is, teaching Libertarianism as “government” in school — I don’t see how it would be producing adults who were any less equipped to deal with the world than the current public school system does. Teaching a thing in government class in high school doesn’t make it so. Many existing teachers of history and government disagree with a lot of current public policy, and make that very clear. That doesn’t change accepted public policy very much, and I don’t think that a Libertarian doing the same would have any more effect. I assume there are already Libertarians doing so, so the article’s author isn’t unique, he’s just timid.
The bit about Cuba at the end is completely irrelevant. I mean, he’s right about a lot of that, but it’s irrelevant. “Look, you have exactly as much freedom in your educational system as Cuba” is a scare tactic, but it’s not a very good one.
Umm, responding to authority signals categorically is a social survival skill. When April 15th comes around, deciding that you don’t want to file your tax return is really not a socially appropriate response. Likewise almost all employers have issues with employees working random hours and blowing off meetings because it doesn’t suit them…
And the second point is that “not being interested” in a subject is a fucking awful justification for not learning it, at least in a K-12 setting. As a blatantly obvious example, English may be something that non-native-English speakers may choose to avoid. Are you _seriously_ suggesting that is a good thing?
Now, as a matter of fact, there do exist schools where students are allowed to do whatever they like; one such example is the Frobel Institute. One walk-in-closet sized snag is that it’s too bloody easy for the staff to miss little things like dyslexia, which does the kid no good at all. For all the vitriol you’d like on what a bloody stupid idea that is, I can put you in touch with my sister, who is (mildly) dyslexic, and went to a Frobel school…
Now, as to the whole notion of free-form education: it’s entirely reasonable, but the snag is that it costs more. If we can agree that the existing syllabus is pared pretty thin (possibly too thin), the only way one can add time for additional exploration is by adding school hours (which is perfectly possible: in my high school analogue, from age 13 to 17 I was at school between 9am and 4pm five days a week, plus 9am to 1pm on Saturdays, 40 weeks a year. The only reason that couldn’t work is that the staff would (quite reasonably) object, so you need additional staff to cover more teaching hours.
And finally: is there any prohibition on teaching Libertarianism in public schools? Assuming, of course, you don’t detract from anything in the required syllabus…
Of course there isn’t. There’s also no prohibition in modifying the required syllabus to include it. As long as you garner support for your proposal…
Which is the point. Lacking the ability to persuade, big-L Libertarians rail against the mean and nasty government who somehow prevent them from using the democratic process to achieve their goals!
As a blatantly obvious example, English may be something that non-native-English speakers may choose to avoid. Are you _seriously_ suggesting that is a good thing?
I’m suggesting that if the student in question seriously understood the value of same, that they should be allowed not to. As an example, somebody who had just come to the US from Saudi Arabia and was going back, permanently, in three years, probably wouldn’t value English as highly, and for good and well-thought-out reasons. I think that it’s unreasonable to assume our schools could teach them the actual value of such things — in fact, if you reference my post, I use the phrase “utopian nonsense” for the idea that the schools *could* impart that. If they could, though, then I think that students would be reasonably allowed to decide, yes.
I’m not at all familiar with Frobel schools. In fact, I believe this is the first I’ve heard of them.
I’d agree, mostly, that free-form education takes longer. More specifically, I think it requires a lot more individual attention from teachers, so the total number of hours per student would go way up. Again, I think it’s a lot more practical in homeschooling, where customizing the curriculum is just generally easier.
You and I agree (I think) that the article’s author is simply too timid to mention his beliefs, not that the government actually forbids him mentioning them in any way. I don’t think he’s actually trying to change the curriculum, but perhaps I misunderstand him. I don’t actually know to what extent the curriculum of a high school government course dictates what is taught. Presumably he’d still have to teach the existing processes of government, but presumably he also agrees what the existing processes of government *are* — he just disagrees about their value.
I doubt your hypothetical Saudi would stand a hope in hell of justifying his reasons. Too much of the world’s knowledge is intimately associated with English, whether it’s in our field or any technical or business arena. Even if the Saudi’s sole ambition was to become an Iman, knowledge of English is unarguably a useful skill because of its role as a lingua franca.
I doubt your hypothetical Saudi would stand a hope in hell of justifying his reasons
To whom?
I would say that your point of view, while it works quite well for you, is simply not universal. I believe that many people have perfectly good reasons not to spend their time studying English. You are arguing that, worldwide, nobody has a good reason to not study English. You understand that that’s a pretty foolish and provincial viewpoint, right?
You’re ignoring the context, because it suits your bias.
Now, do you REALLY want to pretend that someone spending three years in an English-speaking environment, attending a public school in an English-speaking country, can seriously justify not learning English?
To put your “provincial” crap where it belongs, if someone were to spend 3 years going to a (local, not for foreigners) high school in Riyadh, I’d say the same thing, with Arabic in lieu of English.
And, yeah, maybe they’ll never have occasion to use it after their three years. But so what? Can you seriously suggest that a kid can know that at the time?
Can you seriously suggest that a kid can know that at the time?
Actually, I’ll say for a third time this thread: I don’t seriously think a kid can know the odds of this, but I think if he could reasonably estimate the odds, he should be allowed to decide. I think schools will be completely unable to help with this estimate.
You’re ignoring the context, because it suits your bias.
Your argument was phrased entirely in terms of him using English after returning to Saudi Arabia. So no, I don’t think I was.
if someone were to spend 3 years going to a (local, not for foreigners) high school
I’ll note that the “local, not for foreigners” above would be another unstated assumption that you’ve been using and I haven’t. Not that either of us is right or wrong, just that we’re arguing subtly different things.
Your argument was phrased entirely in terms of him using English after returning to Saudi Arabia. So no, I don’t think I was.
I did rather assume you’d appreciate that in a US public school, speaking English is generally considered a useful skill. The reason I mentioned the period after he returned waas simply to point out that the value prevails after the immediate need.
I’ll note that the “local, not for foreigners” above would be another unstated assumption that you’ve been using and I haven’t. Not that either of us is right or wrong, just that we’re arguing subtly different things.
So are there a lot of public schools in the USA that are for foreigners (and specifically, for Arabic speakers)?
Of course not! It’s risible to even pretend so!
But I am aware that in the middle east such things do exist, which is why I made an explicit point of mentioning it, so quite how you get “unstated” out of that is a bit of a mystery!
which is why I made an explicit point of mentioning it, so quite how you get “unstated” out of that is a bit of a mystery!
You stated it as of the point where I excerpted it above. In our initial exchange (where I gave the example and you responded to it the first time), it was not stated. You then proceeded to argue in the post above (specifically: if someone were to spend 3 years going to a (local, not for foreigners) high school) as though that were the expected case. Since it violated the assumptions I had been (quietly, unstatedly) using, but it agreed with the assumptions you had been (quietly, unstatedly) using, it was an example of assumptions that you and I had made without stating that contradicted each other.
So, no mystery. It was unstated in the exchange before you stated it. “Unstated” does not mean “never stated” or “eternally unstated”. Merely that in our initial exchange, we had contradictory assumptions which neither of us had stated. Yes?
So are there a lot of public schools in the USA that are for foreigners (and specifically, for Arabic speakers)?
Of course not! It’s risible to even pretend so!
I wasn’t necessarily referring to public schools. So there’s another difference in assumptions. We had talked about (specifically, I had mentioned and you repeatedly challenged me while ignoring the context) the idea of a school with a greater component of self-determination in what the student studies. I had said that I felt it was impractical in public schools, but more practical in cases like homeschooling where the curriculum could be more tailored to the individual student, and that while it couldn’t reasonably be done 100%, it might make sense to do it around 25% (in a homeschool situation), as opposed to the 5% or less that current public schools do.
This argument has nothing to do with:
1) what public schools can teach in this capacity
2) what public schools currently *do* teach in this capacity
3) whether there are public schools that teach in Arabic in the US
4) current public schools at all, in any way, in any capacity
You’re spending a lot of time telling me what I’ve said, in direct contradiction to what I’ve written, and then pretending I said something contemptible. Don’t get me wrong, I may have said something contemptible, but what you’re calling “risible” isn’t it.
Good word, though. Nice tone. “Risible”. I like it.
which is why I made an explicit point of mentioning it, so quite how you get “unstated” out of that is a bit of a mystery!
You stated it as of the point where I excerpted it above. In our initial exchange (where I gave the example and you responded to it the first time), it was not stated. You then proceeded to argue in the post above (specifically: if someone were to spend 3 years going to a (local, not for foreigners) high school) as though that were the expected case. Since it violated the assumptions I had been (quietly, unstatedly) using, but it agreed with the assumptions you had been (quietly, unstatedly) using, it was an example of assumptions that you and I had made without stating that contradicted each other.
So, no mystery. It was unstated in the exchange before you stated it. “Unstated” does not mean “never stated” or “eternally unstated”. Merely that in our initial exchange, we had contradictory assumptions which neither of us had stated. Yes?
So are there a lot of public schools in the USA that are for foreigners (and specifically, for Arabic speakers)?
Of course not! It’s risible to even pretend so!
I wasn’t necessarily referring to public schools. So there’s another difference in assumptions. We had talked about (specifically, I had mentioned and you repeatedly challenged me while ignoring the context) the idea of a school with a greater component of self-determination in what the student studies. I had said that I felt it was impractical in public schools, but more practical in cases like homeschooling where the curriculum could be more tailored to the individual student, and that while it couldn’t reasonably be done 100%, it might make sense to do it around 25% (in a homeschool situation), as opposed to the 5% or less that current public schools do.
This argument has nothing to do with:
1) what public schools can teach in this capacity
2) what public schools currently *do* teach in this capacity
3) whether there are public schools that teach in Arabic in the US
4) current public schools at all, in any way, in any capacity
You’re spending a lot of time telling me what I’ve said, in direct contradiction to what I’ve written, and then pretending I said something contemptible. Don’t get me wrong, I may have said something contemptible, but what you’re calling “risible” isn’t it.
Good word, though. Nice tone. “Risible”. I like it.
Your argument was phrased entirely in terms of him using English after returning to Saudi Arabia. So no, I don’t think I was.
I did rather assume you’d appreciate that in a US public school, speaking English is generally considered a useful skill. The reason I mentioned the period after he returned waas simply to point out that the value prevails after the immediate need.
I’ll note that the “local, not for foreigners” above would be another unstated assumption that you’ve been using and I haven’t. Not that either of us is right or wrong, just that we’re arguing subtly different things.
So are there a lot of public schools in the USA that are for foreigners (and specifically, for Arabic speakers)?
Of course not! It’s risible to even pretend so!
But I am aware that in the middle east such things do exist, which is why I made an explicit point of mentioning it, so quite how you get “unstated” out of that is a bit of a mystery!
Can you seriously suggest that a kid can know that at the time?
Actually, I’ll say for a third time this thread: I don’t seriously think a kid can know the odds of this, but I think if he could reasonably estimate the odds, he should be allowed to decide. I think schools will be completely unable to help with this estimate.
You’re ignoring the context, because it suits your bias.
Your argument was phrased entirely in terms of him using English after returning to Saudi Arabia. So no, I don’t think I was.
if someone were to spend 3 years going to a (local, not for foreigners) high school
I’ll note that the “local, not for foreigners” above would be another unstated assumption that you’ve been using and I haven’t. Not that either of us is right or wrong, just that we’re arguing subtly different things.
You’re ignoring the context, because it suits your bias.
Now, do you REALLY want to pretend that someone spending three years in an English-speaking environment, attending a public school in an English-speaking country, can seriously justify not learning English?
To put your “provincial” crap where it belongs, if someone were to spend 3 years going to a (local, not for foreigners) high school in Riyadh, I’d say the same thing, with Arabic in lieu of English.
And, yeah, maybe they’ll never have occasion to use it after their three years. But so what? Can you seriously suggest that a kid can know that at the time?
I doubt your hypothetical Saudi would stand a hope in hell of justifying his reasons
To whom?
I would say that your point of view, while it works quite well for you, is simply not universal. I believe that many people have perfectly good reasons not to spend their time studying English. You are arguing that, worldwide, nobody has a good reason to not study English. You understand that that’s a pretty foolish and provincial viewpoint, right?
I doubt your hypothetical Saudi would stand a hope in hell of justifying his reasons. Too much of the world’s knowledge is intimately associated with English, whether it’s in our field or any technical or business arena. Even if the Saudi’s sole ambition was to become an Iman, knowledge of English is unarguably a useful skill because of its role as a lingua franca.
As a blatantly obvious example, English may be something that non-native-English speakers may choose to avoid. Are you _seriously_ suggesting that is a good thing?
I’m suggesting that if the student in question seriously understood the value of same, that they should be allowed not to. As an example, somebody who had just come to the US from Saudi Arabia and was going back, permanently, in three years, probably wouldn’t value English as highly, and for good and well-thought-out reasons. I think that it’s unreasonable to assume our schools could teach them the actual value of such things — in fact, if you reference my post, I use the phrase “utopian nonsense” for the idea that the schools *could* impart that. If they could, though, then I think that students would be reasonably allowed to decide, yes.
I’m not at all familiar with Frobel schools. In fact, I believe this is the first I’ve heard of them.
I’d agree, mostly, that free-form education takes longer. More specifically, I think it requires a lot more individual attention from teachers, so the total number of hours per student would go way up. Again, I think it’s a lot more practical in homeschooling, where customizing the curriculum is just generally easier.
You and I agree (I think) that the article’s author is simply too timid to mention his beliefs, not that the government actually forbids him mentioning them in any way. I don’t think he’s actually trying to change the curriculum, but perhaps I misunderstand him. I don’t actually know to what extent the curriculum of a high school government course dictates what is taught. Presumably he’d still have to teach the existing processes of government, but presumably he also agrees what the existing processes of government *are* — he just disagrees about their value.
Umm, responding to authority signals categorically is a social survival skill. When April 15th comes around, deciding that you don’t want to file your tax return is really not a socially appropriate response. Likewise almost all employers have issues with employees working random hours and blowing off meetings because it doesn’t suit them…
And the second point is that “not being interested” in a subject is a fucking awful justification for not learning it, at least in a K-12 setting. As a blatantly obvious example, English may be something that non-native-English speakers may choose to avoid. Are you _seriously_ suggesting that is a good thing?
Now, as a matter of fact, there do exist schools where students are allowed to do whatever they like; one such example is the Frobel Institute. One walk-in-closet sized snag is that it’s too bloody easy for the staff to miss little things like dyslexia, which does the kid no good at all. For all the vitriol you’d like on what a bloody stupid idea that is, I can put you in touch with my sister, who is (mildly) dyslexic, and went to a Frobel school…
Now, as to the whole notion of free-form education: it’s entirely reasonable, but the snag is that it costs more. If we can agree that the existing syllabus is pared pretty thin (possibly too thin), the only way one can add time for additional exploration is by adding school hours (which is perfectly possible: in my high school analogue, from age 13 to 17 I was at school between 9am and 4pm five days a week, plus 9am to 1pm on Saturdays, 40 weeks a year. The only reason that couldn’t work is that the staff would (quite reasonably) object, so you need additional staff to cover more teaching hours.
And finally: is there any prohibition on teaching Libertarianism in public schools? Assuming, of course, you don’t detract from anything in the required syllabus…
Of course there isn’t. There’s also no prohibition in modifying the required syllabus to include it. As long as you garner support for your proposal…
Which is the point. Lacking the ability to persuade, big-L Libertarians rail against the mean and nasty government who somehow prevent them from using the democratic process to achieve their goals!
Incidentally: while the original article is poorly written and intentionally inflammatory, his (few) examples of conformity-inducing behavior aren’t things like the spelling of a word or the melting point of water. To excerpt from the original article:
When the bell rings at the end of one class, the student is expected to immediately proceed to the next class. If he fails to arrive on time, he is punished. Never mind that he might not be interested in the subject matter of the next class or that he might want to stay and talk with other students or the teacher about a subject that he is genuinely interested in.
I’d have to say that, in his small and questionably-thought-out way, he has a point on this one. That’s not really a survival skill for most of us, and is actively counter to useful and productive skills for many of us.
I’m biased, though — I’m one of these “knowledge workers” you hear about, since I’m a computer programmer in a small software startup.
I suppose you could argue that if he has his way and students were permitted to spend all their time on what they liked (say, piano playing) you might produce a large number of students who simply had no ability whatsoever at things like spelling words, knowing the boiling point of water and basic geography. Presumably if you had schools that were as freely structured as our article’s author (apparently) favors your most important teaching would be in explaining why these various skills are valuable. That’s definitely utopian nonsense, given that we currently fall down so thoroughly on the point — if we *do* teach them how to do math and it still seems useless, presumably the situation would be worse if they could just refuse to learn math at all.
I would argue that there’s significant value to the free-form approach espoused in the article, given a situation like home education where it’s logistically viable. You can’t use it 100% of the time, but you could still use it, say, 25% of the time, which would still be about 20% more than in public schools.
As far as the author’s actual “unacceptable” ideas that he mentions — that is, teaching Libertarianism as “government” in school — I don’t see how it would be producing adults who were any less equipped to deal with the world than the current public school system does. Teaching a thing in government class in high school doesn’t make it so. Many existing teachers of history and government disagree with a lot of current public policy, and make that very clear. That doesn’t change accepted public policy very much, and I don’t think that a Libertarian doing the same would have any more effect. I assume there are already Libertarians doing so, so the article’s author isn’t unique, he’s just timid.
The bit about Cuba at the end is completely irrelevant. I mean, he’s right about a lot of that, but it’s irrelevant. “Look, you have exactly as much freedom in your educational system as Cuba” is a scare tactic, but it’s not a very good one.
First, there’s an obvious difference in degree between military basic training and a school, which the rabid twit conveniently ignores: the number and variety of “right answers” to a given stimulus. The military will (as an oversimplification) tolerate just one response, which is just not the case with K-12 education. Even in “hard science” curricula, there is value in the wrong answer with the right process, while in (so-called) “softer” subjects the process is whole point: there is NO singular “right answer”.
But the value of a standardized knowledge and experience base (which is what the K-12 system tries to instill, regardless of whether it’s through public, private or individual “institutions”) should be obvious: from the simplistic (like how to spell “simplistic”) to the arbitrary (like how our political system is supposed to work), to the practical (such as basic algebra and physics).
It doesn’t really matter how one spells a word, or how one organizes one’s political systems, or whether the freezing point of water is 0 or 32 degrees. But it IS important for the success and stability of society in general that there should be a common reference point, a set of shared baselines, from which (of course) people are free to diverge (just as in the military: independent thought is valued, but the time and place may be constrained a bit).
And, please, don’t buy that crap that military basic training and the public school system are equivalent. The military is trying to keep its troops alive; that’s what it does. The overall school system has different goals, and I never implied that the goals were equivalent to the military’s. To the extent that there are similarities in the techniques used to achieve the goals, the parallels are useful, but no-one (with the possible exception of that idiot author) should assume that 12 years of schooling is equivalent to 12 weeks of basic!
However, that’s all abstract. The tangible reality is that PRIVATE schools produce kids that are equally as “indoctrinated” as the public or homeschooled (silly word: what it means is home educated), and does anyone seriously believe that public schools couldn’t “compete” (however that’s defined) with private ones if the former weren’t better funded? [ That’s limiting the scope of what I mean by “private schools” to those that don’t admit based on aptitude; if you cherry-pick the best kids, you sure as shit should get better results. ]
The core issue is that some half-baked “I’m alright Jack” big-L Libertarian whining and thrashing around trying to justify his unwillingness to finance public education cannot be taken seriously absent a considered alternative idea. And the facile notion that education (and health care, and defense, and market regulation) can somehow be safely left to the private sector and “market forces” is PROVEN to utter garbage: the consequences of that wheeze is encapsulated by the Tragedy of the Commons: IT WILL NOT HAPPEN.
Which leads to the bottom line: no matter how poor K-12 publicly-funded education is, it’s better than the alternative, which is (for a significant number of kids) no education at all.
But as is typical with most big-L Libertarians, there’s a confusion between choices one may make as an individual (e.g. public, private or home education), and choices society faces (i.e. public or no education).
Society at large needs to have uniform/similar reactions in order not to get killed? The parallel with society at large is obvious, but I’m not sure it’s accurate.
Having large herds of people who all behave the same way is very convenient for statisticians and their various close relatives (economists, behavioral psychologists, et al). And that’s fine. But I’m not sure what that has to do with the survivability of the people being studied.
I mean, you don’t need similar reactions from all concerned for the government to guarantee basic protection from most criminal behavior (at around the same level of certainty they guarantee now, anyway). You don’t need similar *civilian* responses to guarantee most forms of civil defense, though obviously your soldiers will still need military training.
What threat are you seeing these uniform responses to stimuli being a defense against?
Of course, a big problem the rabid twit who wrote that original article of fetid gibberish chooses to ignore is… what’s wrong with socialism?
Sure, it may not actually WORK, but anyone who thinks big-L Libertarianism would actually work on a national scale is delusional, for many reasons including those that are usually encapsulated by terms like the Tragedy of the Commons.
For any supposed benefit of Libertarianism, I can point out the downside and/or the fiction underlying it. The same can, of course, be done for socialism.
Oh, and while I’m at it, I’ll observe that the reason militaries have things like basic training is not to instil unquestioning obedience, but similar reactions to stimuli. And the reason that’s useful is that all military would prefer that their troops NOT get killed.
The parallel with society at large (which does exist, regardless of claims to the contrary by Libertarian “I’m alrigh Jack” zealots) should be obvious…