what about poor children in the ghetto?

[nicholasair]

I have taken sociology courses taught by liberal teachers who are subjective. I know sociology is subjective, therefore one must question anything in a sociology classroom. If school were privatized how would poor childrens' families pay for the school? TO be successful in this economy you need skills.

[BaalChatzaf]

Some interested party would scout all the bright ones and take care of their schooling.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Philip Coates]

Subject: A Private Educational System

> If school were privatized how would poor childrens' families pay for the school? TO be successful in this economy you need skills. [nicholasair]

If education were private it would be both more varied and much cheaper. Competition lowers costs and brings innovation. I'm not selecting among these (context rules), but just some examples and principles to stretch your thinking:

1. The old rural one room schoolhouse, all the grades in one room, used to provide a better education than modern, expensive progressive schools. The older students integrated their knowledge by helping instruct the younger. Teacher assigns projects, and goes around the room. One texbook is used for part of the day by one student, then passed on to another. Cheaper textbooks and materials.

2. Work / study programs.

3. Teaching in part online or by t.v. for part of a year, then live courses. So the cost of the two is halved.

4. [This idea came to me some years ago when I first heard this question - it's the one I like and would implement if I were starting a great school in a poor country with a strong legal system, or in a ghetto] Contracts for delayed payment: You [the student] pay 5% of your salary for 15 years starting 15 years from now. If you can really teach, you will graduate successful students. And only a few very successful ones making high incomes would fund all the others. This is like the current "student loans". Only better! Note: The dollar amount is just an example - I don't know what the exact figure would be.

5. Scholarships. Students who got a really good education and it enabled them to rise up are grateful to their alma maters. And give them money.

6. Very large classes in many entry level subjects. The sessions where teacher goes around the room and answers questions, helps.

7. Most important of all, parents care deeply about their children, even in the ghetto. They already pay in taxes. They would surely scrimp and save to give their children basic skills. (Some even homeschool - but that's because the public schools are so rotten, especially in poor areas.)

8. Every dollar spent in a competitive educational system would produce more education. So if a poor parent can only afford $8,000 (and almost none are that poor) for, say, a pair of children in grade school or even high school, that would buy more than $16,000 or $32,000 today [after competition has taken hold and the incompetent and corrupt have to go away or shape up.]

There's more, but that's a start. Be creative.

[DavidMcK]

Nice reply Phil; I was thinking that the teachers that were formerly (if education was privatized) in the government education system could set up shop in their kitchen..there might be 5 or 10 schools in one neighborhood, you wouldn't even need the rural building.

You should also point out that the poor (especially the working poor) or already paying for education, in lost opportunities, in making kids 'well-rounded' instead of providing practical and marketable skills, and in dozens of other ways.

Edited August 1, 2009 by DavidMcK

[Selene]

Home schools

Private schools

Church schools

Industrial guilds

Apprenticeships

Foundation Schools

Mentorships

Commissions a la the Medici

local gang schools

human ingenuity is endless, boundless - just get the fucking state as far out of the way as possible and lo and behold we will work it out.

Adam

[tjohnson]

Hey guys, how do you deal with educational standards in this scheme? School 1 in the neighborhood could be teaching tiddly winks 101 and School 2 could be doing advanced calculus. You know, there are reasons things have evolved the way they have. Just because our systems aren't perfect doesn't mean they should all be abandoned in favour of profit motivated schemes. It's absolutely unbelievable that you think that the profit motive can solve all of mankind's problems.

[Philip Coates]

> educational standards in this scheme? School 1 in the neighborhood could be teaching tiddly winks 101 and School 2 could be doing advanced calculus.

GS, I worked in the private education sector. Parents are not shy about following up, visiting, talking to other parents. Even if only a few of them do, the word gets around. Are you well-read in the Oist literature? Are you familiar with "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" and Greenspan's essay "The Assault on Integrity"? has some very good points on the issue of reputation as one's invaluable asset - hard and slow to build, easy to tiddly wink away. Plus: how private review and investigatory and 'consumer reports' type things flourish even more once the regulatory agencies are not there.

The reason the *public* schools today so often teach tiddly winks 101 and american education is in the toilet and getting worse is because they have for all practical purposes a monopoly. They have your tax money, even if you don't like the lack of discipline, the failure to teach the basics, the illiteracy, the innumeracy...

[Selene]

GS:

Ahh so you have been to a union run American public school!

"School 1 in the neighborhood could be teaching tiddly winks 101"

Is there some holy power that comes to a school when we force children into them and call it public?

Is there an electric company that becomes more cost efficient and cheaper to the consumer when it is called "public"?

Adam

[Barbara Branden]

Hey guys, how do you deal with educational standards in this scheme? School 1 in the neighborhood could be teaching tiddly winks 101 and School 2 could be doing advanced calculus. .

I don't think you would have a problem answering your own question if I posed it in the following form: "How do you deal with standards for shoemakers in this scheme? Shoemaker 1 in the neighborhood could be making shoes that fall to pieces in a week; and Shoemaker 2 could be making shoes that are well-fitting, sturdy, and stylish."

Barbara

[tjohnson]

I don't think you would have a problem answering your own question if I posed it in the following form: "How do you deal with standards for shoemakers in this scheme? Shoemaker 1 in the neighborhood could be making shoes that fall to pieces in a week; and Shoemaker 2 could be making shoes that are well-fitting, sturdy, and stylish."

Barbara

I would reply by saying education is not shoemaking. The average Joe may know when his shoe fits but he may be sadly lacking when it comes to education. I am not saying that public schools don't need overhauling, but I don't think they should be abandoned either.

[Selene]

I don't think you would have a problem answering your own question if I posed it in the following form: "How do you deal with standards for shoemakers in this scheme? Shoemaker 1 in the neighborhood could be making shoes that fall to pieces in a week; and Shoemaker 2 could be making shoes that are well-fitting, sturdy, and stylish."

Barbara

I would reply by saying education is not shoemaking. The average Joe may know when his shoe fits but he may be sadly lacking when it comes to education. I am not saying that public schools don't need overhauling, but I don't think they should be abandoned either.

Ummm they can just compete without the guns then since you are so much against guns.

Adam

[jeffrey smith]

Just remember that are plenty of fundamentalist/evangelical churches that already operate private schools, and would love a situation in which they could teach their children without having to include evil secular humanist ideas such as evolution and the age of the universe, and that the United States was not founded as a Christian nation that needs to return to its roots, and would think that lack of accreditation by bodies recognized by those evil secular humanist people is a good thing. Similar result with Islamic madrassas, Chasidic cheders, and "everything good came out of Africa" Black Pride schools.

[Selene]

Just remember that are plenty of fundamentalist/evangelical churches that already operate private schools, and would love a situation in which they could teach their children without having to include evil secular humanist ideas such as evolution and the age of the universe, and that the United States was not founded as a Christian nation that needs to return to its roots, and would think that lack of accreditation by bodies recognized by those evil secular humanist people is a good thing. Similar result with Islamic madrassas, Chasidic cheders, and "everything good came out of Africa" Black Pride schools.

Right and if you had power, you would force children into public schools at gunpoint?

A nice black uniformed truant officer loading the individual citizens on the bus to the academic Auschwitz...hmm much better idea, and you are going to use another gun to force me to pay for this?

Wow what a deal!

[Barbara Branden]

I don't think you would have a problem answering your own question if I posed it in the following form: "How do you deal with standards for shoemakers in this scheme? Shoemaker 1 in the neighborhood could be making shoes that fall to pieces in a week; and Shoemaker 2 could be making shoes that are well-fitting, sturdy, and stylish."

Barbara

I would reply by saying education is not shoemaking. The average Joe may know when his shoe fits but he may be sadly lacking when it comes to education. I am not saying that public schools don't need overhauling, but I don't think they should be abandoned either.

Of any area I would grant to the state, education -- along with medicine -- would be the last. For evidence, look at the shameful state of American education today, look at our brainwashed university students. It would be preferable if education were treated like shoemaking -- that is, if results were the standard by which it was judged. As it is, our schools have very sore feet.

As for the "average Joe" -- to wildly paraphrase William Buckley, “I'd rather entrust the education of American children to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the President, the Senate, and Washington's bureaucracy."

Barbara

[tjohnson]

I think that in many cases there should be both public and private institutions, like in education AND medicine. The public ones are for people who can't afford or don't want to pay for special treatment and the private ones for the others. They call it 2-tiered healthcare and we have it already here despite the government's attempts to stop it. There are more and more private schools cropping up too, but it seems they are mostly religious based.

[Barbara Branden]

I think that in many cases there should be both public and private institutions, like in education AND medicine. The public ones are for people who can't afford or don't want to pay for special treatment and the private ones for the others. They call it 2-tiered healthcare and we have it already here despite the government's attempts to stop it. There are more and more private schools cropping up too, but it seems they are mostly religious based.

Do you really think it right to force people who pay to send their children to private schools, to also pay to send other people's children to public schools? If you want to help educate other people's children, that is your right -- but how do you justify forcing the rest of the taxpayers to indulge your particular charitable leanings?

Barbara

[tjohnson]

Do you really think it right to force people who pay to send their children to private schools, to also pay to send other people's children to public schools? If you want to help educate other people's children, that is your right -- but how do you justify forcing the rest of the taxpayers to indulge your particular charitable leanings?

Barbara

I have heard this argument before. Another variation is "why should I have to pay education taxes when I don't have any children"? The answer is because humans are social creatures and they have learned that cooperation is far superior than competition for long term survival. Who knows, some day, one of those children you helped educate may be taking care of you.

[Barbara Branden]

Do you really think it right to force people who pay to send their children to private schools, to also pay to send other people's children to public schools? If you want to help educate other people's children, that is your right -- but how do you justify forcing the rest of the taxpayers to indulge your particular charitable leanings?

Barbara

I have heard this argument before. Another variation is "why should I have to pay education taxes when I don't have any children"? The answer is because humans are social creatures and they have learned that cooperation is far superior than competition for long term survival. Who knows, some day, one of those children you helped educate may be taking care of you.

Dictionary.com defines cooperation as "an act or instance of working or acting together for a common purpose or benefit; joint action." That is not what you are advocating. You are advocating that other people, whether they share your goals or not, be forced to do what you think they should do. You are advocating not that people who share a common purpose should act together to achieve it, but that, like it or not, everyone be forced to serve your purposes. Surely you know the difference between voluntary cooperation and a gun.

Barbara

[BaalChatzaf]

I have heard this argument before. Another variation is "why should I have to pay education taxes when I don't have any children"? The answer is because humans are social creatures and they have learned that cooperation is far superior than competition for long term survival. Who knows, some day, one of those children you helped educate may be taking care of you.

Some day one of them might blow your f***ing brains out, too.

Wake up. We have no a priori duty to help others. We are only obliged not to harm them.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[tjohnson]

Dictionary.com defines cooperation as "an act or instance of working or acting together for a common purpose or benefit; joint action." That is not what you are advocating. You are advocating that other people, whether they share your goals or not, be forced to do what you think they should do. You are advocating not that people who share a common purpose should act together to achieve it, but that, like it or not, everyone be forced to serve your purposes. Surely you know the difference between voluntary cooperation and a gun.

Barbara

Why do people live in cities? Why don't they just all live in homesteads all over the country and defend themselves from attack and educate themselves and do their own science, etc.? This is what objectivism seems to lead to.

[Selene]

Dictionary.com defines cooperation as "an act or instance of working or acting together for a common purpose or benefit; joint action." That is not what you are advocating. You are advocating that other people, whether they share your goals or not, be forced to do what you think they should do. You are advocating not that people who share a common purpose should act together to achieve it, but that, like it or not, everyone be forced to serve your purposes. Surely you know the difference between voluntary cooperation and a gun.

Barbara

Why do people live in cities? Why don't they just all live in homesteads all over the country and defend themselves from attack and educate themselves and do their own science, etc.? This is what objectivism seems to lead to.

Utopia? Yep. Just follow the yellow gold brick paved road.

Adam

[tjohnson]

Utopia? Yep. Just follow the yellow gold brick paved road.

Adam

Yeah, the yellow brick road back to the middle ages.

[tjohnson]

The reason the *public* schools today so often teach tiddly winks 101 and american education is in the toilet and getting worse is because they have for all practical purposes a monopoly. They have your tax money, even if you don't like the lack of discipline, the failure to teach the basics, the illiteracy, the innumeracy...

You think the teachers are solely to blame for the state of education? I blame the parents more than the teachers. The biggest reason public education sucks so bad is because the children have become emotional basket cases because parents have chosen to pursue material things and value them over the well being of their children. Teachers have to deal ever more increasingly with behaviour problems that disrupt the class and reduce the quality of education.

[Selene]

The reason the *public* schools today so often teach tiddly winks 101 and american education is in the toilet and getting worse is because they have for all practical purposes a monopoly. They have your tax money, even if you don't like the lack of discipline, the failure to teach the basics, the illiteracy, the innumeracy...

You think the teachers are solely to blame for the state of education? I blame the parents more than the teachers. The biggest reason public education sucks so bad is because the children have become emotional basket cases because parents have chosen to pursue material things and value them over the well being of their children. Teachers have to deal ever more increasingly with behaviour problems that disrupt the class and reduce the quality of education.

So essentially, neither of you know what the hell you are talking about.

I served on a NY City School Board for 8 years. I taught. You are both quite clueless, but willing to blame away.

No religious schools. That is nice, but they are producing the better educated students. No home schooling even though they are extremely well educated and they can think on their own. Charter schools, well ok, but we have to make sure they are not teaching "tiddly winks"! Really...this is another reason you should not teach.

"The important appeal of the game for many players is the required combination of manual dexterity and strategic thought. Tiddlywinkers often claim that the game combines physical skill (such as in snooker or golf) with the strategy of chess. What is true is that tiddlywinks is unique in the combination of skill and strategy it requires. Strategy in tiddlywinks is often rather deep, since winks can be captured. Strategic and tactical planning involves anticipating opponents' moves rather than just building a sequence of one's own moves. Another factor that complicates the game is that there is a time limit to the play of the game, rather than until some objective in the game has been met.

All in all, tiddlywinks goes beyond the purely cerebral nature of a game such as chess. The fact that shots can be made or missed, together with the continuum of possible outcomes, makes strategy much less rigid than in chess, and prevents planning more than seven or eight shots in advance."

No you want a cookie cutter approach wherein the state sticks its incompetent bean counters with armed support destroy students on a broad scale.

Blame the parents?...be my guest! Blame the teachers?... be my guest! Meanwhile, back at the ole ranchero, you two good Germans provide the tax dollars for the buses.

Adam

[tjohnson]

So essentially, neither of you know what the hell you are talking about.

LOL, like you do!