posted
Kate, I would love to say that we don't get requests just like that from parents.
I would love to. Too bad I can't.
More seriously, many colleges are adding financial literacy classes. But they cover a whole heck of a lot more than how to balance a checkbook. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Yeah. Honestly, if it is something that "all adults should know" maybe that parent should have been teaching them.
I do think that there is a place for such "life classes" - including things like cooking and laundry - in community colleges. Some parents are not equipped with these skills and there is a gap. But I work at a major research university.
Stone_Wolf, these, btw, were not poor people. The kid is likely just going to turn things over to the family accountant anyway.
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Samp: I don't understand what you are saying...could you restate please?
boots: Cooking is taught, and I never suggested laundry...fyi...I was more talking about "Job Interviews 101" and "Resumes 101" and "Critical thinking 101" and "Taxes 101" and "Caring for an infant" etc.
My main point is that I would like to see much more options presented at the high school level...not major universities.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I do think that there is a place for such "life classes" - including things like cooking and laundry - in community colleges. Some parents are not equipped with these skills and there is a gap.
I agree. And many of them do offer such classes (sometimes for transferable credit, and sometimes not).
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quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: Samp: I don't understand what you are saying...could you restate please?
boots: Cooking is taught, and I never suggested laundry...fyi...I was more talking about "Job Interviews 101" and "Resumes 101" and "Critical thinking 101" and "Taxes 101" and "Caring for an infant" etc.
My main point is that I would like to see much more options presented at the high school level...not major universities.
I know. My anecdote was an aside. I think those classes are appropriate at a high school or even community college level. In fact, I suggested that the kid take a course at a community college. His response was that he was paying upwards of $40K per year in tuition already. My (internal) response was that for that kind of money, you might want your kid to learn stuff that you couldn't teach him yourself.
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There is way too much agreeing and reasonable discussion going on here today! I'd swear this is a conversation taking place -not- on Hatrack.
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quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: There is way too much agreeing and reasonable discussion going on here today! I'd swear this is a conversation taking place -not- on Hatrack.
Oh! Well, then let me see if I can't help you out a bit with that.
In response to me you posted:
quote:
Part of my suggestion is that you would be able to earmark where some/most of your taxes would go...so you would have that option. Likely, I would too choose to allocate my contributions towards education...and roads...etc. The Libertarian view isn't that funding education is bad, but that people should have some choice. I'm not saying that all taxes need to be user allocated, that would tie the hands of the policy makers too harshly, but people should have a say in how their government spends their money.
[...]
Still agreeing. I don't mind paying taxes in and of themselves, and don't think that I'm being robbed. I just wish there was more control and appropriate tax to use implemented. For instance, in a gun control thread I suggested that if you want to own a gun, you should have to pay for the safety and physiological testing. Much like the money that is collected from car registration is used to repair roads, I feel our government should be taxing those who use their services appropriately to a large extent.
So if I'm reading this correctly, you wish that people would pay into the services they use or approve of. I disagree with this line of thought when it comes to taxation, but that has no bearing on my point. My point stems from when you also agreed with this:
quote:
quote:Having a well educated populace helps all of us, not just those with children.
I still agree. But I tend to think that for instance, teaching children what trigonometry is used for and the general concept of how it works for one week (with an option of taking the class at a later date) and moving on to more practical issues like balancing a check book or taking care of a child are more helpful towards an "educated populace" then spending months grinding out trig work.
So my contention is that at the point where you're agreeing that everyone is benefiting from children being educated, then by using your stance that people pay into the services they benefit from, everyone should pay for public education regardless of if they have children. I think the debate on what public education entails is separate from the necessity of public education and its funding.
Wait, I don't think I was all that unreasonable in this post. Let me fix that.
I liked Spiderman 3.
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quote:And here I thought American ideals were "freedom for all", not "do what we say or else 'cause we know what is best for you".
In this case, I think the two are intricately dependent on each other. To have the freedom to not have your life be completely mapped by the socioeconomic status of your parents, there must be societal systems that enable upward mobility. Mandated education is a part of that.
What type of freedom do you have if you are born poor and there is no free education? The freedom to work at dead end jobs until you die?
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posted
I can accept that public funding for education and content of "general education" are separate issues. And while I agree that education might well be categorized in "Infrastructure", I tend to think that education would hugely benefit from being privatized. It's not simply a matter of "I don't gots kids, I shouldna pay fer dems learnins".
Let's say the auto insurance situation was more like public education. Both with ed and ins the government requires the minimum. Both are for the general good of the country. But with insurance, the government doesn't use tax money to pay for nor provide the coverage for the insurance. Imagine they did! Getting paid for a repair or a hospital trip would be a mountain of paper work and likely not be handled well. We already have lines out the door at the DMV.
Now imagine schools running like auto insurance. Lots of competition driving price down and quality up, smaller more specialized schools (like AARP insurance and professional truck driver insurance).
We could have a low income related school monies much like welfare, which would take some of the pressure off lower income households. And not all the costs would be paid by outside sources...some money still flowing from the Uncle Sam teet.
Oh, and liking Spiderman 3 isn't that unreasonable...you want unreasonable: Spiderman 3 is the best movie ever made ever.
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quote:And here I thought American ideals were "freedom for all", not "do what we say or else 'cause we know what is best for you".
In this case, I think the two are intricately dependent on each other. To have the freedom to not have your life be completely mapped by the socioeconomic status of your parents, there must be societal systems that enable upward mobility. Mandated education is a part of that.
What type of freedom do you have if you are born poor and there is no free education? The freedom to work at dead end jobs until you die?
There has to be some middle ground between work at a dead end job until you die and if you don't go to school we will put you in jail which is a better representation of freedom of choice and freedom from being stuck in a low social class!
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quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: I can accept that public funding for education and content of "general education" are separate issues. And while I agree that education might well be categorized in "Infrastructure", I tend to think that education would hugely benefit from being privatized. It's not simply a matter of "I don't gots kids, I shouldna pay fer dems learnins".
Let's say the auto insurance situation was more like public education. Both with ed and ins the government requires the minimum. Both are for the general good of the country. But with insurance, the government doesn't use tax money to pay for nor provide the coverage for the insurance. Imagine they did! Getting paid for a repair or a hospital trip would be a mountain of paper work and likely not be handled well. We already have lines out the door at the DMV.
Now imagine schools running like auto insurance. Lots of competition driving price down and quality up, smaller more specialized schools (like AARP insurance and professional truck driver insurance).
I wish I could etch this point into your computer screen with a paperclip: basic education is a Public Good. Auto insurance is a private good. The private market does not deliver public goods efficiently. The public sector does not deliver private goods efficiently.
If private schools were *actually* more efficient than public ones, then they could compete directly with the public system *now*. They don't. Why? Because they can't. So they offer a premium service, and their excludability maintains their value. Non-excludable = not-private. Non-private = public.
Hell, you're allowing for welfare to intervene in order to eliminate the excludability of a private system because you *recognize* that if it can't actually work as a public good. But consider the effect of a welfare program in place to eliminate the economic excludability of poor students into a privately run system, for a moment. It would be innefective and enormously costly unless the government had the right to bargain for the service, and thus also effect some *control* over the service.
Remind you of anything? Like medicare?
Know why we pay two times the percentage of our GDP into healthcare compared to other countries? Because we treat a public good as if it is private.
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quote:There has to be some middle ground between work at a dead end job until you die and if you don't go to school we will put you in jail which is a better representation of freedom of choice and freedom from being stuck in a low social class!
What is this middle ground? There are many countries around the world who have tried various things and all of these case studies point to socialized education being a requisite for a society that enables social mobility.
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posted
Now we are crossing discussions...we were talking about mandatory schooling, not socialized. Also, any link to those case studies, as they would be relevant to the other side of the talk and I would be curious to see them.
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How is mandatory schooling not socialized? I guess that's your proposal- but that's not really in existence anywhere in the world that I know of. And by case studies- I just meant looking at the education systems in other countries and the results from them. I challenge you to find a country that you want to live in that does not offer socialized (that is mandatory) schooling.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
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I'm not trying to be contrary...correct me if I'm wrong, but socialized school speaks to that the funds for it come from everyone through taxes while mandatory schooling speaks to a law requiring people of a certain age to undertake accredited schooling of one sort or another.
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a) for me is more a problem I have with how our taxes are structured with a lack of citizen's ability to choose where any of the money goes or does not go. Sure, we can elect new representation, but that only goes so far. As I said before, if I had the opportunity to direct where my tax money was going, education would be one of my designations, and not just because I have children.
b) is a problem for me but only to the extent that c) and d) are a problem. If we had the best kick arse education system in the world hands down I might feel a bit different. Being legally required to attend the 18th best is rather painful. I would say that there should be a minimum general knowledge test and not an age limit, as if you have an Ender or Doogy Houser (sp) then their age is not really that relevant to the amount of knowledge they posses, as well as it better ensures the goal of a generally educated populace.
c) and d) are the points which are least in contention as far as I can tell, and also the most relevant to my gripes with the system.
posted
Taxes qrencollected to fund public goods. That is, non excludable, generally unfungible services. Introducing taxpayer choice on the individual level is ludicrous on the federal level. We have legislators. And the speed qt which they work is part of why they are there n the first place. This is not a direct democracy. Legislation and representative government mediate our needs and wishes.
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To address c) I had a great public education; the children in Beverly Hills likely have a great public education. The children in Watts and Englewood not so much. One big difference* is that, since public education is mostly paid for with local property taxes, Lake Forest has a whole lot more money than Englewood. Not that the kids I grew up with were any brighter or have more innate aptitude than the kids on the South Side.
Nor would capitalism ease this problem. I taught in a private school that served inner city kids and it was deplorable - light years away from the quality public school I went to just a few miles away. Scraping together every cent they could for the brightest kids in the neighborhood (and they were plenty bright - painfully bright given how little we could offer them) we still had no real supplies (if I needed paper or pencils, I brought them myself) no computers, no music or art or gym, usually spoiled school lunches, dirty classrooms and teachers who were paid practically nothing and who (understandably) left once they were certified or hired elsewhere.
Cutting public money is the opposite of what we should be doing to solve those problems.
*Other big differences are related to poverty as well but not so much to the schools. Lack of parental support, nutrition, even basic safety plays a big part of success in education as well. As does the lack of a hope for the future. The majority of middle school age kids I was teaching did not think they would survive high school, much less worry about whether what they learned there would be useful to them as adults.
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The money is not an incentive to improve the school system. The money is an incentive to *control* the school system. Not the same thing.
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posted
Exactly. Same with the privatization of prisons, telecommunications, and energy, the incentive was not to improve the system, but to control it (and by way of regional monopolies granted, gouge it).
The rest of the modern world laughs at the quality of our privatized cell service and reception, for instance. And, I'm sure, look aghast upon our privatized prison systems, most certainly prison health coverage.
(stories like that make libertarianism seem awesome, of course, since systemic issues like that would not be improved by the perverse incentives of invisible hands and free markets and all that; if anything, it would spread it far and wide, like the dozens of other externalities the economic philosophy does not address)
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quote:Originally posted by Vadon: I liked Spiderman 3.
I liked that whole emo look he had going on! It was truly an excellent movie. Center-shelf right next to Phantom Menace.
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posted
The idea that schools cannot be provided to the poor by private markets is absolutely false. The video Victoria's chance shows through narrative how private schools for the poor exist in Ghana. James Tooley, a private school researcher from Britain, whose research shows that low-cost private schools from India perform better than government schools presented and defended his research at the Cato Institute. Private schools are accountable to parents since parents pay the school, and the school's performance improves as a result.
Furthermore, education is not a public good since education is excludable; a school can prevent someone from attending the school.
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I wasn't aware anyone had said that schools cannot be well-managed by private markets.
quote:Furthermore, education is not a public good since education is excludable; a school can prevent someone from attending the school.
This is...well, it's just a bad argument. A given school can prevent someone from attending, if that someone violates some pretty serious rules. That someone then has (and is generally compelled to) attend different public schools. I wasn't aware that the requirement for public schools to be a public good, all students had to be able to attend whatever school they choose regardless of any circumstances.
And...goodness, you've described the absolute ideal of private market systems and the virtues of competition. But we've...kinda seen throughout America's history how unrestrained free market competition doesn't, in fact, by default result in the best possible result for consumers. Is there some reason, aside from faith in capitalism, why it should be considered a given in education?
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
I would like to point out that the CATO institute is an libertarian activist institution with an agenda and not very credibly in its interpretation of the data? Of course it'll present the argument that privately run schools can do well! What they fail to mention is that this will, like the kibbutzes' and communes will break down completely on a nationwide scale.
Also tragedy of the commons, if every parent demands the school be accountable to the needs of their special snowflake then in the worst case situation this will degrade the school's ability to teach. The purpose of parent-teacher organizations in the public sector is a degree of oversight and accountability, you put too much control in their hands in a private market.
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I said that "The idea that schools cannot be provided to the poor by private markets is absolutely false." (In fact, they might be better as the research I mentioned showed.)
I mentioned this in response to comments made by others. This includes kmbboots, who said,
quote:And making only parents pay for education is a super way to make sure the children of poor people stay poor!
And Orincoro, who said,
quote:You understand the real and immediate effect on communities that would result from such a policy? And the enormous burden and disadvantage it would place on the poor? What you're asking for is the makings of institutionalized ghettoization on American education- to a greater extent even than already occurs, with local funds paying for much of education already.
A public good must be non-excludable by the definition of a public good. Education is excludable; hence, it is not a public good. The simple fact that a school could theoretically exclude students from attending establishes that schooling is not an economic public good. It doesn't matter that under present practice schools exclude students only if they violate some rules. That alone establishes that school/education is not a public good since it establishes that schools are capable of excluding people from using their services. A student being able to attend whatever school they choose regardless of any circumstances is not a requirement for a government school to be a public good.
America's history has not been a history of unrestrained free market competition, so I don't think strong conclusions about free market competition can be drawn from America's history. Some private schools really aren't free market schools since they are regulated and subsidized by government.
Even if unrestrained free market competition doesn't result in the best possible result for consumers that doesn't mean that government restraints will be any better because they could be worse. No claim was made that free markets would result in the best possible result for consumers, but it could be better than government-managed education.
How do you know what is best for consumers when people want different things and have different demands and interests? How do you measure what is best for people? Who gets to decide what is best for consumers? You?
"I would like to point out that the CATO institute is an libertarian activist institution with an agenda and not very credibly in its interpretation of the data."
This is ad hominem and irrelevant to the reasons and evidence presented. The argument, reasons, and evidence don't change at all if they were made by the government.
"What they fail to mention is that this will, like the kibbutzes' and communes will break down completely on a nationwide scale."
Why will it break down? (What exactly will break down?) If it breaks down at the national level, then it can be kept local. (Whatever "it" is.) According to the video I mentioned, these schools appear to be working quite well.
"Also tragedy of the commons, if every parent demands the school be accountable to the needs of their special snowflake then in the worst case situation this will degrade the school's ability to teach."
I don't understand the tragedy of the commons assertion. If a parent/student doesn't really get what they want, then they will leave the school. How does this degrade the school's ability to teach? If some students leave, then the school can continue teaching the students that remain. If you mean the school may no longer exist or may loose revenue since some students leave, then that is because people don't want what the school provides. They shouldn't have to pay for what they don't want -- what is not valuable to them.
It is the student and parent that are the direct recipients of educational goods. They have the most to loose and they pay with their effort and lives, so they should have the most control.
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Part of why I feel that the privatization of schools would result in a better end product is that we could have many, smaller, specialized schools which fit better for the highly varied interest and needs of our country's highly varied children.
Yes the government should set standards to ensure that schools are producing well educated students, but those standards should not be so strict and specific that it forces everyone to get cookie cuttered into the same shape and size (teaching memorization to pass standardized tests). Part of what makes this country so great is our highly diverse populace and the different things we do well.
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quote:I would like to point out that the CATO institute is an libertarian activist institution with an agenda and not very credibly in its interpretation of the data? Of course it'll present the argument that privately run schools can do well!
I get so tired of people just automatically assuming that if someone or some group has an agenda (ideals, standards, political affiliation, etc) that anything they do will be false and should be discarded without even looking at it. Let's be realistic, everyone has an agenda, and just because you think that something is true doesn't mean you will falsify your data to make it so.
I'm not saying the data is right on, I'm saying it should be judged on it's own merits and not dismissed out of hand simply because it was presented at institute with an opinion.
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posted
I don't think government standards will ensure that schools are producing well educated students. People are always bickering about these standards. No one can settle on any standards that are effective. Standards are antithetical to diversity since they require sameness, not difference. So how is the idea of government standards consistent with children's highly varied interests? Standards not so strict to be enforced don't do anything, so they might as well be done away with.
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
Your explanation is grasping at straws, temporarily suspending a student, or expelling a student to force them to go to a different school, doesn't change this fact. Your grasping at a minor and non trivial technicality that doesn't statistically matter on a national, state, or municipal scale.
Also you fail to understand the good that state intervention provides; which is that of a single standard and gauranteed way to insure full literacy of the population. It is an historical fact that compulsury universal education has always led to universal literacy and a multiplier effect on economy output on a national scale. Where was the 99% literacy for "free market" nations prior to universal education?
Government spending on education provides a service, that everyone can afford because its free, this is in effect just like giving everyone 50,000$ each to spend on education for those 11 years. The demand is still from the people, its their choice which public school to go to.
If every school was private, you'ld have corporations cutting or closing down schools if the demand isnt high enough, irregardless of the number of students who would be out of an education because of so, and the huge number of people who would not be able to afford even a high school education.
There is literally no good argument for the privatization of the national education system.
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Blayne Bradley
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quote:Originally posted by EarlNMeyer-Flask: I don't think government standards will ensure that schools are producing well educated students. People are always bickering about these standards. No one can settle on any standards that are effective. Standards are antithetical to diversity since they require sameness, not difference. So how is the idea of government standards consistent with children's highly varied interests? Standards not so strict to be enforced don't do anything, so they might as well be done away with.
"You are now educated enough to work in our factory to purchase products from out company owned story in our company built town in our company approved but otherwise toothless union."
^^^ End result of a privatized school system because its impossible to prevent undue corporate influence.
Under your proposal, let us suppose that the social sciences or the humanities. Already ones that aren't in high demand by the job market as it is that everyone more or less only take because the school requires them to, what happens to them and the ~out of my ass number ~800,000 jobs of teachers teaching humanities? If practically no one teachers them, and no one wants them, no one will retain them.
The whole debate to privatize education is crass and open conspiracy by the upper class to destroy and enslave the middle and lower class into perpetual slavery and ignorance.
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This confuses necessity with sufficiency. The fact that governments provide education doesn't mean that we need government to do it. With government education, we have no choice but to pay for it. Government education is not free; it is paid for by taxes, and a free market could provide it for less money than governments spend. Poor people are able to afford education from free markets, as the video I linked to shows.
Some of the increased literacy rate could come from improved teaching methods and better technology as well as increased demand for literacy in a technologically advanced society, not necessarily from government mandated education. Nations with increasing government intervention in education also tend to improve technologically and economically. See India, Ghana, and China for examples. These places have increased government education and are improving economically and technologically as well. Literacy is more important in an economy with more programmers, doctors, etc. than in an economy with more fishers and laborers, so demand for literacy improves with a better economy.
So what if schools close down if demand isn't high enough? If people still want education, they'd build new schools themselves. They'd start new corporations. If demand isn't high enough then that simply means peole don't care about education. Even if there were government schools in this situation, people might not attend them anyway. For some people, education is a pricey service that has little value to them. They shouldn't be compelled to pay for it.
Where are these "free market" nations that you speak of?
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posted
Working in a corporate factory to buy things from a corporate store doesn't seem so bad to me. I fail to find fault with that. This is worse than what, starvation and poverty?
As with every market, people that lose jobs in an industry with too little demand may have to retrain and find other jobs. This is what humanities people might have to do (as well as anyone else).
Posts: 338 | Registered: Jan 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Where was the 99% literacy for "free market" nations prior to universal education?
Show us where a modern, absolutely unrestrained free market education system has been replaced by a "universal" education system and then we will discuss literacy among the population.
quote:Government spending on education provides a service, that everyone can afford because its free, this is in effect just like giving everyone 50,000$ each to spend on education for those 11 years. The demand is still from the people, its their choice which public school to go to.
It's not free. It's paid for by government revenues, which come from the citizens. Definitely not free by any definition of the word. I would prefer to keep my 50 large and educate my future children in the ways and by the institutions that I see fit.
quote:There is literally no good argument for the privatization of the national education system.
No one is calling for a wholesale privatization of education. The government could maintain standards while still allowing students and parents more options and flexibility
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quote:Originally posted by EarlNMeyer-Flask: So how is the idea of government standards consistent with children's highly varied interests?
An example of a government standard off the top of my head that would achieve the goal while leaving interests varied: Children by the age of X must have X number of accredited classes in reading comprehension, X number of classes in Y subject, etc ad nausium.
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: There is literally no good argument for the privatization of the national education system.
That just strikes me that you have already made up your mind and even if a good argument existed (which I think they do) you would reject it. But perhaps I misjudge you...
quote:The whole debate to privatize education is crass and open conspiracy by the upper class to destroy and enslave the middle and lower class into perpetual slavery and ignorance.
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: The whole debate to privatize education is crass and open conspiracy by the upper class to destroy and enslave the middle and lower class into perpetual slavery and ignorance.
posted
All free markets without regulation or government intervention all tend towards either monopolies or oligarchies.
"Whenever businessmen meet, the topic always without fail turns towards a conspiracy against the public." -Adam Smith.
"No one is calling for a wholesale privatization of education. The government could maintain standards while still allowing students and parents more options and flexibility"
Except not only would the costs of services skyrocket under privatization, but the actual quality of services would decrease, in fact we are seeing this dynamic in FULL FORCE with now with American healthcare, which is one of the lowest ranking in the western world.
A privatized system would eschew and cut corners on services and quality in order to maximize profits, we see this with healthcare and other natural monopoly proned systems like utilities, and especially internet.
Privatized internet in Canada and the US has less bandwidth and lower quality of service at far higher prices than most of Western europe, this is inexcusable failure of the "free market".
It wouldn't end with partial privatization, there would be those calling for even more steps towards privatization, as in with healthcare, those who have been educated to vote against their own interests who hold the view that the problem with free market failures like healthcare is because there was "too much" gov't intervention.
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quote:Originally posted by EarlNMeyer-Flask: This confuses necessity with sufficiency. The fact that governments provide education doesn't mean that we need government to do it. With government education, we have no choice but to pay for it. Government education is not free; it is paid for by taxes, and a free market could provide it for less money than governments spend.
It's funny; libertarians say the same thing about healthcare.
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posted
It's true about healthcare.
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
the US is the perfect example of how its false, as well as internet. Compare the US Internet and Healthcare to nearly ANY other western country and you'll see US ranks far behind.
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quote:Originally posted by EarlNMeyer-Flask: It's true about healthcare.
Sure, for a society that will leave the poor often literally out in the street to die if they cannot afford emergency treatment.
As long as that society doesn't have to deal with the externalities of issues like vaccination and possible endemic health threats that require systemic, proactive treatment, though.
So, basically, overall, only in a world that we aren't going to see exist because it is reliant on far too many convenient circumstances.
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