what about poor children in the ghetto?

[nicholasair]

A business is a business. if something is good like competition for one business it is good for all business./

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]

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

LOL, like you do!

GS:

Were you a school board member for 8 years in a NY District that started mainstreaming special education children for the first time? I was.

Did you sit on a board that ran in the black for 8 years? I was.

Did you institute a gifted and talented program? I did.

Did you prevent schools from being closed by involving the community and business interests who could see it would be a blight to close a school? I did. That school is now full and the community is one of the best in NY City.

Did you end censorship in your school district? I did. It was my first public vote.

Did you fire incompetent teachers and supervisors despite the cost rather than pass them on to another district? I did. And I was endorsed by the UFT[teachers union], CSA[supervisors union], and the DC 37[lunchroom, janitorial, etc.] .

Did you create innovative environmental programs which integrated, VOLUNTARILY, businesses, citizens and the school system? I did.

So yes, I know what I am talking about.

Shall I add to the above list? You are out of your league on this one, my Canadian friend.

Adam

[DavidMcK]

"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." This is my favorite part (from general semanticist's post #15). Notice that it isn't required that you are unable to pay, but is sufficient if you just don't want to pay...you just don't feel like paying for someone else's services...lol.

[Philip Coates]

> 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.

I go away for a few hours and the whole damn thread spins out of control.

I should be allowed to be dictator of all comments here in the public interest. I blame the posters more than my benevolent rule, which would always be perfect and all-seing, always totally in the public interest and in the education of you, my poor misguided and poorly educated children. GS, I blame you for insufficient altruism which surely has lead to increasing disruptiveness. You let Adam become a basket case and make increasingly insane, belligerent posts using vile language such as "My Canadian Friend" which reduce the quality of the education and the well being I would have maintained had I not gone away to masturbate and take a two or three hour nap.

I apologize on everyone's behalf for his calling you a Canadian, when everyone knows you are merely a Semanticist.

[tjohnson]

Shall I add to the above list? You are out of your league on this one, my Canadian friend.

Adam

Thanks for the resume but what's your point?

[Selene]

Shall I add to the above list? You are out of your league on this one, my Canadian friend.

Adam

Thanks for the resume but what's your point?

Hmm those mercury fillings are beginning to do serious damage.

Do you happen to read your own posts? I would refer you to # 25 supra - that is the one with the 2 as the first integer and the 5 as the second integer.

Adam

[ginny]

If the issue here is the how to give kids a good, equal education, total equality isn't possible. As an army brat, I want to 9 different schools on three continents. I encountered some superb teachers, and some clunkers. Even as a kid, if I felt I wasn't getting my just due out of a class, I took my spiffy library card and got some books on the subject I figured I was getting jipped on. Learned plenty that way. Don't mean to brag, but I was always a straight A student (even when confronted with language difficulties.) Guess even as a kid, I looked after myself as best I could.

Ginny

[Philip Coates]

Ok, I guess an attempt at a humorous post didn't work on this thread.

[Barbara Branden]

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.

They live in cities because they do know the value of cooperation -- when they share common goals and values with their fellow city-dwellers and when force is not allowed. But when race turns against race and religion against religion, when the poor turn against the rich, when the weight of taxation becomes unbearable -- when force begins to take over the cities --that's when people start to leave, as they are doing in so many cities now. If my wealth. my safety, and my freedom require that I serve your purposes and my neighbor's' purposes and his neighbor's purposes rather than my own, why should I continue living among you?

Barbara

P.S. As for your remarkable statement about "what Objectivism seems to lead to" -- yes, of course, it's well known that Objectivism teaches the evils of cities and everything that goes wiith them -- business and industry and trade and art and music and science, and all manner of human achievement, in favor of the bucolic life.

[jeffrey smith]

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

No. I was simply pointing out the fact that we went to entirely private, government free education, you wouldn't just get parents trying to send kids to the best available academic institution available to them; you'd also get loads of parents who send their kids to places that teach ignorant nonsense because they approve the ignorant nonsense.

[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!

"I was simply pointing out the fact that we went to entirely private..." "What do you mean 'we' Kimosabe?, said Tonto looking out at the 200 Indians.

That is all you were "simply" doing? Wow, I guess I must of missed that one!

[Christopher]

Many Objectivist writers have written well-thought arguments against public education. Certainly private enterprise would take up a lot of the responsibility for education via for-profit, non-profit, and donation/volunteer. Is this sufficient to manage the entire population? That's a good question, and one that is almost impossible to know without real-world evidence. Since we've been talking about Sociology on another thread, it seems key here to truly discuss the possibility of some bottom-tier minimal education standards provided by government. . . Ok... deep breath. We can discuss it without blowing the idea out of the water too quickly now, I just know we can.

If, in order to maintain a well-functioning industrial-informational society in which Objectivist values can survive and prosper, a majority population at some education level is required, and if private enterprise cannot successfully achieve this level of education within the required population, then there is a legitimate argument for public education at some level.

The way to do this is simple: begin with choice. The cure for government corruption is more choice, more choice, more choice. Reduce the resources used in public education slowly; at the same time give more freedom to private institutions such that competition can begin in earnest. Continue this trend of allowing private education a stronger and stronger position while equally diminishing the resources into public education. Over time, either public education will disappear through this reduction plan entirely, or some social destabilization will occur as a result of this plan, and so it is a small step back to supporting the minimal education that is required by government immediately prior to where destabilization began to occur.

[Selene]

Many Objectivist writers have written well-thought arguments against public education. Certainly private enterprise would take up a lot of the responsibility for education via for-profit, non-profit, and donation/volunteer. Is this sufficient to manage the entire population? That's a good question, and one that is almost impossible to know without real-world evidence. Since we've been talking about Sociology on another thread, it seems key here to truly discuss the possibility of some bottom-tier minimal education standards provided by government. . . Ok... deep breath. We can discuss it without blowing the idea out of the water too quickly now, I just know we can.

If, in order to maintain a well-functioning industrial-informational society in which Objectivist values can survive and prosper, a majority population at some education level is required, and if private enterprise cannot successfully achieve this level of education within the required population, then there is a legitimate argument for public education at some level.

The way to do this is simple: begin with choice. The cure for government corruption is more choice, more choice, more choice. Reduce the resources used in public education slowly; at the same time give more freedom to private institutions such that competition can begin in earnest. Continue this trend of allowing private education a stronger and stronger position while equally diminishing the resources into public education. Over time, either public education will disappear through this reduction plan entirely, or some social destabilization will occur as a result of this plan, and so it is a small step back to supporting the minimal education that is required by government immediately prior to where destabilization began to occur.

Excellent suggestion.

Here is what the minimal government baseline should be. Reading. Writing. Math. Science. Civics.

OK done.

[jeffrey smith]

"I was simply pointing out the fact that we went to entirely private..." "What do you mean 'we' Kimosabe?, said Tonto looking out at the 200 Indians.

That is all you were "simply" doing? Wow, I guess I must of missed that one!

Oopsie moment. There was supposed to be an "if" in there. Don't know how it escaped from my keyboard

"We" being "the people of the United States of America". I know I'm part of that group, and I was under the impression that you also were a part of that group.

Should have read "I was simply pointing out the fact that if we went to entirely private...."

I was making the (what I think is an obvious point) that if there was absolutely no government intervention in education, church sponsored schools of the Creationist anti-science variety would flourish. Are you prepared for that?

And why you should be so far up on your high horse about me making that point is not at all obvious.

[Selene]

"I was simply pointing out the fact that we went to entirely private..." "What do you mean 'we' Kimosabe?, said Tonto looking out at the 200 Indians.

That is all you were "simply" doing? Wow, I guess I must of missed that one!

Oopsie moment. There was supposed to be an "if" in there. Don't know how it escaped from my keyboard

"We" being "the people of the United States of America". I know I'm part of that group, and I was under the impression that you also were a part of that group.

Should have read "I was simply pointing out the fact that if we went to entirely private...."

I was making the (what I think is an obvious point) that if there was absolutely no government intervention in education, church sponsored schools of the Creationist anti-science variety would flourish. Are you prepared for that?

And why you should be so far up on your high horse about me making that point is not at all obvious.

Thank you, Sir

Let the record strike my post! ;) B)

[ginny]

Jeffrey, are you saying you believe church-sponsored schools shouldn't have the freedom to exist? If schools only taught what you consider proper and correct ... kind of smells of dictatorship, doesn't it?

Ginny

[Brant Gaede]

Poor children in the ghetto? Let's have a BBQ! Love veal!

--Brant

wha about 'em? Yummy!!

rich kids taste best!

[BaalChatzaf]

Poor children in the ghetto? Let's have a BBQ! Love veal!

--Brant

wha about 'em? Yummy!!

rich kids taste best!

That is one swift proposal.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited August 3, 2009 by BaalChatzaf

[tjohnson]

Jeffrey, are you saying you believe church-sponsored schools shouldn't have the freedom to exist? If schools only taught what you consider proper and correct ... kind of smells of dictatorship, doesn't it?

Ginny

I think Jeffrey is saying that without the government mandating certain content of the curriculum many children will receive religiously skewed educations and suffer for it.

[ginny]

Well, of course some school would teach religion with all its consequences. Should it be illegal? I believe we have a little thing called freedom of speech. No one says you have to send YOUR children to such a school.

[tjohnson]

I go away for a few hours and the whole damn thread spins out of control.

I should be allowed to be dictator of all comments here in the public interest. I blame the posters more than my benevolent rule, which would always be perfect and all-seing, always totally in the public interest and in the education of you, my poor misguided and poorly educated children. GS, I blame you for insufficient altruism which surely has lead to increasing disruptiveness. You let Adam become a basket case and make increasingly insane, belligerent posts using vile language such as "My Canadian Friend" which reduce the quality of the education and the well being I would have maintained had I not gone away to masturbate and take a two or three hour nap.

I apologize on everyone's behalf for his calling you a Canadian, when everyone knows you are merely a Semanticist.

Not to worry, I have decided not to have any more discussions with Adam - I don't think he discusses in good faith.

[tjohnson]

Well, of course some school would teach religion with all its consequences. Should it be illegal? I believe we have a little thing called freedom of speech. No one says you have to send YOUR children to such a school.

I don't think "freedom of speech" was ever meant to be applied to educating children, do you? If we teach our children that the earth is 40,000,000 years old when scientists say it is 4.5 billion yrs old is this a question of freedom of speech?

[tjohnson]

They live in cities because they do know the value of cooperation -- when they share common goals and values with their fellow city-dwellers and when force is not allowed. But when race turns against race and religion against religion, when the poor turn against the rich, when the weight of taxation becomes unbearable -- when force begins to take over the cities --that's when people start to leave, as they are doing in so many cities now. If my wealth. my safety, and my freedom require that I serve your purposes and my neighbor's' purposes and his neighbor's purposes rather than my own, why should I continue living among you?

Barbara

P.S. As for your remarkable statement about "what Objectivism seems to lead to" -- yes, of course, it's well known that Objectivism teaches the evils of cities and everything that goes wiith them -- business and industry and trade and art and music and science, and all manner of human achievement, in favor of the bucolic life.

Interesting that you mention "when the poor turn against the rich". So you think poor people should live along side of rich people and accept their lot and not make any trouble? Frankly, I'm surprised the poor haven't revolted like they did in the French Revolution. As long as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer we will not have a stable society.

[anonrobt]

They live in cities because they do know the value of cooperation -- when they share common goals and values with their fellow city-dwellers and when force is not allowed. But when race turns against race and religion against religion, when the poor turn against the rich, when the weight of taxation becomes unbearable -- when force begins to take over the cities --that's when people start to leave, as they are doing in so many cities now. If my wealth. my safety, and my freedom require that I serve your purposes and my neighbor's' purposes and his neighbor's purposes rather than my own, why should I continue living among you?

Barbara

P.S. As for your remarkable statement about "what Objectivism seems to lead to" -- yes, of course, it's well known that Objectivism teaches the evils of cities and everything that goes wiith them -- business and industry and trade and art and music and science, and all manner of human achievement, in favor of the bucolic life.

Interesting that you mention "when the poor turn against the rich". So you think poor people should live along side of rich people and accept their lot and not make any trouble? Frankly, I'm surprised the poor haven't revolted like they did in the French Revolution. As long as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer we will not have a stable society.

since ye speaking in generalities, the 'poor getting poorer' is a myth - a long time myth...

[ginny]

Of course I believe that freedom of speech applies to schools. It's not selective. Parents have the right to determine what their children will learn. People have a right to their religion and they have a right to teach that to their children. BTW, are you saying you'd rather the government determine the curriculum????

Look, I could be misinterpreting the situation, but our recent poster, Nicholasair, is, I think, a young student. Look at his comment about the Indians. It seems that his school taught him all about the plight of the poor Indians, and nothing about the contribution of the white. Talk about slanted and wrong. (I could be wrong about Nicholasair being a high school student, but I don't think so.) Anyway, I rather send my kids to a good catholic school than a government school. At least with the former, I know what I'm dealing with and am in a position to handle it.

Ginny