posted
Well said. I'm always put off by when we go down this road, because it always leads to people talking about the worthlessness of other people's educations.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
To me, it seems an inevitable consequence of saying "*this* is the minimum education that any voter should have", as long as somebody disagrees with that minimum.
I mean, I could say "everybody should be at least 6' tall and play the banjo in order to be an educated person", and you'll rightly question the value of those things.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
There are so many things that are essential to know.
Even more than a liberal arts education, I think a good solid couple of years of finding a place to live, paying all of one's bills without help from Mommy or the government, and saving for long-term, mid-term, and short-term needs all while working at a blue collar job without the gurantee of a different life later would be very educational.
Then, a few years of running a business and being responsible for a couple dozen people's blue collar jobs, who will lose them if you are bad at your job or mishandle money or do not plan for the future in terms of capital investments.
I think those four years would MASSIVELY improve the quality of voting in this country.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Meh, that's a lot of projection in my opinion. Why not insist that people should spend four years navigating the seas and sustaining themselves on fish? Or 4 years in the mountains scavenging for food and running naked through the ethereal mists? The point, I think, is to spend some time pursuing *anything* that interests a person. However, your angle puts people at a very young age, with the energy to study and create and learn new things, in a possible soul crushing and unbearable environment during those formative years. The reason we have this whole university experience thing is so that people *don't* have to think about real world issues until they've had some time to develop intellectually in a supportive environment. I certainly don't expect you to be understanding of that idea- it's not in your nature, but trust me, it can happily coincide with ideas about getting "real world" experience after a person graduates.
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posted
And yours isn't a projection? That's basically the point - there are a lot of great experiences to have, and to declare any set of them better based on personal experience is lame.
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posted
I would have absolutely no objection to restricting the right to vote to landowners again, Kat, for precisely the reasons you've mentioned.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: To me, it seems an inevitable consequence of saying "*this* is the minimum education that any voter should have", as long as somebody disagrees with that minimum.
Indeed.
I'd also note that one person's banjo playing is another person's English. In other words, there really are reasonable and debatable minimum requirements from the viewpoint of one person that really are totally useless to another person. Even eliminating those experiences, I don't think anyone "really" thinks that all "non-useless" experiences are truly equal when preparing one to vote. For example, many people would agree that a practical knowledge of drug use gained from actually using using drugs is precisely equally as important as say taking a course of statistics.
But given finite lifetimes, all we're really arguing about is how to prioritize useful experiences* based on an ill-defined standard of being an educated voter, which is kind of amusing since everyone has different definitions of what an educated voter is anyways.
* (Although I'd note that there are experiences that are arguably harmful if all voters had them, the latest example of home-owning for example could lead to pretty perverse incentives)
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quote:the latest example of home-owning for example could lead to pretty perverse incentives
No more perverse than allowing people to vote who don't actually have a financial stake in their communities.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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I think that the odds of you losing your home are much greater than the odds of me buying a home in the States, so I'll meet you there Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:No more perverse than allowing people to vote who don't actually have a financial stake in their communities.
What about long term renters who simply don't have the money to own their own home? They live, work and shop in a community for years and must deal with it's laws on a daily basis. How do they not have a financial stake in the community?
As for other experiences - those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. Of course, other experiences are valuable in voting. But if voters don't understand history all you get is endless loops of the same ideas repeating and failing.
And for voting on a national level - if voters don't have some basic understanding of the cultures in and motivations of the countries their country is interacting with, then how can they vote on foreign policy?
posted
Not many. Income taxes, maybe, but sales tax, property tax through rents, and payroll taxes bit just aboute everybody.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:No more perverse than allowing people to vote who don't actually have a financial stake in their communities.
What about long term renters who simply don't have the money to own their own home? They live, work and shop in a community for years and must deal with it's laws on a daily basis. How do they not have a financial stake in the community?
This. In many parts of this country, long-term renters make up the bulk of the community.
Then again, I imagine Tom has no problem disenfranchising much of New York and California. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: It seems you guys are stretching the meanings of those words a bit.
I'm not sure how the food one fits in myself. I often make a point of buying food from a different community partly in order to encourage particular developments.
That said, for examples of financial stakes, I had more traditional things in mind like a (non pay-go) pension affiliated with one's country or a business in one's community, investments in local businesses, or savings bonds, etc.
Edit to add: Not that I think that a financial stake is a particularly good (or bad) requirement for voting, I just don't particularly see the point in encouraging one kind of financial stake over another
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posted
Everyone who exists in a society has a stake in it; I'm not inclined to support anything that tries to define "citizen" with more rigor than it's already defined.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
While a think a lot of things would make better voters, my plan for people working and being on their own without handouts at the top of the list, I wouldn't support any kind of enforcement of it.
As crummy as it is when people vote from ignorance, disenfranchisement of voters is much worse.
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: I'll amend that. No one who is not doing graduate level work in linguistics needs to know how to diagram sentences.
I'm also curious Jon Boy, do you really need to know how to diagram sentences for the work you are doing or could some other method work as well?
I'm not sure if you're talking about my research or my employment as an editor. Strictly speaking, you don't need to know how to draw sentence trees in order to be an editor, though knowing how to parse a sentence is pretty much essential. And I'm not working with syntax in my research, so that question is moot, though it's obviously essential for people in that field.
Actually, I had no idea why you needed to diagram sentences and presumed it must be part of your research. It sounds like you are now saying you don't actually need to be able to diagram sentences, you only need to be able to parse them. You will note that in my original post, I said
quote: No one needs to know how to diagram sentences and very few people need to know more than the basic grammar structures. You need to know how to write a good sentence and you need to know how to properly parse a sentence you read. Learning formal grammar can help with that, but that isn't the only way to learn good reading and writing skills.
You, like many people here, seem to have misinterpreted my intent both on this specific issue and in the general discussion. I wasn't arguing that diagramming sentences wasn't useful. I've been arguing that it wasn't necessary. There is a big difference there. It doesn't concern me in the least if high school students can't diagram sentences as long as they can properly parse sentences and write good sentences.
Likewise, I have never said that the liberal arts weren't valuable or useful. My only question is whether or not they are essential for good citizenship in our society. I don't think they are and no one has given me a good example of how they are essential -- which isn't the same as an example of how they are valuable.
That's a distinction I think anyone with a proper liberal education should appreciate. I'm kind of shocked that so many of you don't seem to.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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I'm trying to imagine how somebody could properly parse a sentence and yet be unable to diagram it (once they were taught how, which should be easy for somebody who already knows how to properly parse sentences).
There might be a few people who are severely spatially impaired who would find the actual diagramming difficult, but certainly not an entire classroom.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:I'm not sure how the food one fits in myself. I often make a point of buying food from a different community partly in order to encourage particular developments.
I guess that depends in part on how you define community. I would consider any establishment that is easily accessible from your home as part of your community.
For many people, in fact most people in the world, buying food is one of their major financial obligation. The price and availability of food in their community has a significant impact on their total financial situation including their ability to save money or buy property. The price of food in their community in turn reflects property values, wages and salaries, taxes,transportation infrastructure, crime rates and so on. Since changes in those things will impact on the price of food in the community, they have a financial stake in all those things.
Even if they are getting food from food stamps or a food bank rather than actually paying for it, the overall health of the community will affect the availability of those services and therefor have a financial impact on them.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: I'm trying to imagine how somebody could properly parse a sentence and yet be unable to diagram it (once they were taught how, which should be easy for somebody who already knows how to properly parse sentences).
There might be a few people who are severely spatially impaired who would find the actual diagramming difficult, but certainly not an entire classroom.
The key point there is "once they were taught how". If someone can already parse a sentence , why would it be necessary to teach them how to diagram it? Furthermore, if a person can already parse complex sentences, what value would there be in learning to diagram them?
The entire point of teaching people to diagram sentences, is to help them learn how to parse a sentence. But it isn't the only way to learn how to parse a sentence, it may not even be the best way to learn how to parse a sentence. Its entirely imaginable that there are many people out there who have no problem parsing sentences and yet have never diagrammed one. Are they missing an important skill? I'd say no.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
If you have a high school classroom full of people who are struggling to diagram a simple sentence, then they're missing an important skill.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: If you have a high school classroom full of people who are struggling to diagram a simple sentence, then they're missing an important skill.
What skill?
Its entirely possible, that they can parse a sentence with no difficult but simply haven't been taught to diagram. If that's the case, they aren't missing an important skill.
Being able to diagram a sentence and being able to parse a sentence are not the same thing.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
If you can parse a sentence, you can be taught to diagram it in a minimal amount of time.
If you have a class full of people who are struggling to diagram sentences, you have a class full of people who can't parse them.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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I guess the "landowner requirement" as initially defined brought to my mind things that are more financial assets rather than financial obligations.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
Actually, that makes a nice segue: I would define "stake" in this case as an asset to which you owe obligations.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:As far as I can tell, although a few librarians with this level of education would be beneficial, especially to big libraries, there is nothing about a smaller library that wouldn't be able to hire people holding B.A.s who simply love books, love libraries and are capable of learning a few intellectually basic skills.
I'll go one further: there is nothing a librarian does that requires a college degree.
It sounds as if your understanding is that librarians check books out and reshelve them, something that a librarian with a master's degree is unlikely to do except in very small libraries in rural areas with low numbers of employees, or school libraries, where librarians are usually required to do double duty. Never mind the fact that many librarians don't work in what you would consider a library. Many work in museums or in archival science (which is a part of the library science curriculum). Librarians working in specialty libraries often have to have two masters degrees, one in library sciences, and one in medicine, music history, law, criminal science, or a host of other specialties.
Here is just a small list of positions held by librarians around the world:
Curriculum Specialist Conservator Metadata Specialist Professor Training Resources Manager Editor Public Access Coordinator, Film Archive Information Resource Director, U.S. Embassy
**The partial list of careers for librarians comes from A Day in the Life: Career Options in Library and Information Science edited by Priscilla K. Shontz and Richard A. Murray
Posts: 1214 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I think the point is not that people with degrees in library science can't do many things, but that what most libraries need their librarians to do does not require a master's degree in library science.
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quote:Librarians working in specialty libraries often have to have two masters degrees, one in library sciences, and one in medicine, music history, law, criminal science, or a host of other specialties.
Yes, I'm aware of that. And I maintain that nothing they do requires a degree of any kind, much less an advanced one.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:I would have absolutely no objection to restricting the right to vote to landowners again, Kat, for precisely the reasons you've mentioned.
Local elections, like mayor, I can maybe this being a reasonable position to hold. Possibly even state, since you can always just get up and leave your state (as I have done a couple times so far in my life). I still disagree, strongly, but I can see some justification.
If you are including presidential elections, I think this idea is extraordinarily dumb.
I rent an apartment though, so I guess my opinion isn't valid.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Actually, that makes a nice segue: I would define "stake" in this case as an asset to which you owe obligations.
I'm not sure I understand that definition. Would that include homeowners with an underwater mortgage? (or homeowners with a paid off mortgage?)
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Librarians working in specialty libraries often have to have two masters degrees, one in library sciences, and one in medicine, music history, law, criminal science, or a host of other specialties.
Yes, I'm aware of that. And I maintain that nothing they do requires a degree of any kind, much less an advanced one.
Really? You don't think college professors need to have at least a master's degree?
I maintain that you don't truly understand what librarians and people with MLIS degrees do. I also think that we are at an impasse, so I'm going to leave this line of discussion.
Posts: 1214 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:If you are including presidential elections, I think this idea is extraordinarily dumb.
Heh. In my ideal world, in which voting rights are restricted to landowners, we also elect local representatives and no longer vote directly for Senators or Presidents. *laugh*
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quote:Is there any job you think requires a degree of any kind?
Not many. In fact, depending on how you define "require," possibly not any. There are a few for which a degree system of some kind -- as opposed to a vocational certification system -- might still be useful, maybe. But even then I'm left thinking that the degree winds up being a measure of self-important fluffery instead of actual qualification.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Librarians working in specialty libraries often have to have two masters degrees, one in library sciences, and one in medicine, music history, law, criminal science, or a host of other specialties.
Yes, I'm aware of that. And I maintain that nothing they do requires a degree of any kind, much less an advanced one.
And I maintain that Noah Wyle needed extensive training in survival skills to be a Librarian.
Posts: 1295 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
Tom, just because you have gotten so far without a degree doesn't mean that other people don't need them. I actually wonder how you can bear to work for a college, feeling as you do.
And just because you have found that owning a house changed your commitment to your community, doesn't mean that is true for other people.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Not many. In fact, depending on how you define "require," possibly not any. There are a few for which a degree system of some kind -- as opposed to a vocational certification system -- might still be useful, maybe. But even then I'm left thinking that the degree winds up being a measure of self-important fluffery instead of actual qualification.
Let's be careful with definitions, shall we? Which part of the degree do you feel is un-necessary: The piece of paper, the coursework, or the (claimed) benefits in learning how to think?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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