Public Education is a Socialist Monopoly

[JonathanQuick]

/// It's because you point out spelling errors constantly - this is ridiculously bad manners.

You may wish to review the endless litany of Leftist commentaries on Republican Vice President Dan Quayle's misspelling of "potatoe," and on the trivial gaffes of President Bush, which were likewise endlessly cited by Leftists as proof of HIS "stupidity."

Double standards are ridiculously bad manners. Leftists never ever will acknowledge as much, nor deviate from their ridiculously bad manners.

If you think I'm going to idly sit by and take insult after insult from YOUR side, guess again. Leftist bullying may work on almost all of your victims, since you snarky people are so many and so clearly successful.

You and your pals are in serious need of adult supervision.

In everyday conversation, do you make a huge fuss about it every time your partner stutters or mispronounces a word?

Quayle. Bush. Every time, by the Democrats - the lovely folk who call everyone else "the right wing religious extremists."

// You talk to people with contempt. It's only natural that they respond in kind.

Your side started it, and with a very great deal more in terms of both quantity as well as quality, or I should say ANTI-quality.

I have a hard time believing that striking fear into people is a good way to make them do a better job. Do you have any data that suggests your plan would have the desired effect?

Striking fear into people is how the Democrat Party has been operating for decades! DECADES! It is how teachers' unions work! For DECADES!

"They're coming for our seniors and our children!" - Former Speaker of the House, Tip O'Neil

"Global warming will CONSUME US! Flood us OUT!"

"Tea Baggers are RACISTS! Ku Klux Klansmen!"

"They're trying to destroy science!"

Someone may have said it, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily true. You will have to provide more than a single quote if you are to prove teacher's unions truly don't care about students. My own experiences, at least, are completely contrary to this.

The PRESIDENT of the American Federation of Teachers is NOT "someone."

//

I also think you need to define the terms better. Do you think sexual education and multiculturality are left-wing values that should be cast aside? Are the (SIC) other such values?

Keep throwing things up against the wall, and PRAY that something - ANYTHING sticks.

No, those evil old "Neocons" are the ones promoting homosexual agendas in kindergarten and multiculturalism everywhere. Haven't you heard?

Who do you refer to by "chimps"? Less-talented children?

One of your fellow Leftists has the avatar of a grinning chimp.

Your attempt to portray ME as being as hateful as Al Gore was when he said "The extra chromosome right-wing" is disingenuous and lame.

I've spent way too much time refuting everything you said.

You have no interest in debate. You simply spin and create strawmen, again and again.

ciao

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[excaza]

Any spare time in your endless ranting to answer my question?

 

[Mirrorglass]

Meh. Like I said before, he is pretty clearly a troll, and a fairly imaginative one at that. It would be interesting if he even pretended to actually debate, but I suppose I will have to contend with betting on how long it will be before he is banned.

 

[Jeff Corey]

"I've spent way too much time refuting everything you said."
"No you didn't."
"Yes, I did!"
"Didn't."
"Did"
"Look, this isn't an argument, it's mere contradiction."
"No it isn't"
"Yes it is. An argument is a connected series of discourse designed to prove a point. Contradiction is the automatic gainsaying of what the other person says."
"No. it isn't."

 

[excaza]

Ignore List

everyone who's asked me a question I can't rant away

Fixed that for you.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

...you would get into a problem of juvenile delinquency. All of those kids who's parents don't care enough or can't afford to send them to school roaming the streets looking for something to do. You can't force them to go to school, they aren't paying for that. So, out of boredom and a lack of anything better to do with their time, they turn to petty crime and vandalism...Always try to think your ideas through to their logical outcomes. The system now is not perfect but the alternatives can be far worse and more expensive. Let's just work on reforming the system we have now rather then tossing everything out on a whim.

In Hawaii, between 1987 and 1997, juvenile arrests (total), property offenses, drug offenses, and violent offenses fell in summer, when most government schools were not in session. This was not an artifact of monitoring; reported burglaries fell in summer. Juvenile hospitalizations for human-induced trauma fell when school was not in session. Schools do not prevent crime; they cause it.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

I know rather a lot of public school teachers. I know none of them with kids in private school. I'd love to see evidence that there's any kind of trend for teachers to do so. I suspect there is not.

Dennis Doyle used information from the US census (the detailed survey that samples the population) to establish this.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Wait a minute, I thought private schools didn't exist in the United States? You did after all, say that public schools have a socialist monopoly on education. Maybe you should learn what words mean before you use them in thread titles.

In most US States the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel's schools occupy an exclusive position in receipt of the taxpayers' age 6-18 education subsidy. They qualify as a monopoly.

Also, how do you account for the fact that all the nations which outrank us in education also primarily use a public education program?

Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Singapore subsidize a parent's choice of school.

 

[Jeff Corey]

In Hawaii, between 1987 and 1997, juvenile arrests (total), property offenses, drug offenses, and violent offenses fell in summer, when most government schools were not in session. This was not an artifact of monitoring; reported burglaries fell in summer. Juvenile hospitalizations for human-induced trauma fell when school was not in session. Schools do not prevent crime; they cause it.

Correlation does not imply causation.
That's just basic science education.
Those who think it does
Have brains full of fuzz,
And indulge in mental masturbation.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

...I'm just arguing that being a private school doesn't inherently make you better than a public school...

I recommend Chubb and Moe, Politics, Markets, and America's Schools (Brookings, 1991). After comparing top-performing schools to low-performing schools they concluded that the strongest predictor of school success (measured in terms of gains on standardized tests of reading, math, and science), after average parent SES, was a composite variable they called "the degree of institutional autonomy". That is, the more people above the level of Principal telling the Principal how to do her job, the worse a school performed. They argue that State (government, generally) control of school undermines institutional autonomy. They recommend tuition vouchers.

...I find your argument that a well funded public school with a multitude of resources has no advantage over some dilapidated school where the kids are sharing a handful of decades old resources does not make sense to me, especially given my experience and knowledge of well funded Mass. public schools which are highly ranked and beat out private schools in the area.

Across the US, the correlation (%minority enrollment, $/pupil) is positive. Minority districts get more money per pupil. Across the top 130 largest school districts in the US, the correlation (enrollment, $/pupil) is positive. Large districts get more money per pupil. Kozol's thesis (Savage Inequalities), that taxpayers stint on poor inner-city minority students, is a lie. Dilapidated buildings and obsolete textbooks do not result from insufficient taxpayer generosity. The bureaucrats steal taxpayer money and poor kids' life chances.

...

Jonathan, since you seem to be unaware of this fact, you should know that money can actually be exchanged for goods and services. These services include resources which are necessary to teach students things.

any response to this?

See above.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Correlation does not imply causation.
That's just basic science education.
Those who think it does
Have brains full of fuzz,
And indulge in mental masturbation.

I haven't been around in a while. Have the rules changed?

Additional Rules for posting in the JREF Topics, General Topics & Forum Topics sections...
9.You will not post anything indecent. This is content that depicts or describes sexual or excretory organs or activities in an offensive manner.

Anyway, Bertrand Russell disagrees. See the chapter on Hume in A History of Western Philosophy. If correlation does not imply causation, what does? Correlation or something like it all we will ever have. Strictly speaking, a time series is not "correlation".

Roland Meighan
Home-based Education Effectiveness Research and Some of its Implications
Educational Review, Vol. 47, No.3, 1995.

The issue of social skills. One edition of Home School Researcher, Volume 8, Number 3, contains two research reports on the issue of social skills. The first finding of the study by Larry Shyers (1992) was that home-schooled students received significantly lower problem behavior scores than schooled children. His next finding was that home-schooled children are socially well adjusted, but schooled children are not so well adjusted. Shyers concludes that we are asking the wrong question when we ask about the social adjustment of home-schooled children. The real question is why is the social; adjustment of schooled children of such poor quality?

The second study, by Thomas Smedley (1992), used different test instruments but comes to the same conclusion, that home-educated children are more mature and better socialized than those attending school.

So-called "school phobia" is actually more likely to be a sign of mental health, whereas school dependancy is a largely unrecognized mental health problem

Linda Darling-Hammond
American School Board Journal, September 1999.

...(M)any well-known adolescent difficulties are not intrinsic to the teenage years but are related to the mismatch between adolescents' developmental needs and the kinds of experiences most junior high and high schools provide. When students need close affiliation, they experience large depersonalized schools; when they need to develop autonomy, they experience few opportunities for choice and punitive approaches to discipline...

Hyman and Penroe
Journal of School Psychology

Several studies of maltreatment by teachers suggest that school children report traumatic symptoms that are similar whether the traumatic event was physical or verbal abuse (Hyman, et.al.,1988; Krugman & Krugman, 1984; Lambert, 1990). Extrapolation from these studies suggests that psychological maltreatment of school children, especially those who are poor, is fairly widespread in the United States....
...The results indicated that at least 1% to 2% of the respondents' symptoms were sufficient for a diagnosis of PTSD. It is known that when this disorder develops as a result of interpersonal violence, externalizing symptoms are often the result (American Psychiatric Association, 1994)...

While 1% to 2% might not seem to be a large percentage of a school-aged population, in a system like New York City, this would be about 10,000 children so traumatized by educators that they may suffer serious, and sometimes lifelong emotional problems (Hyman, 1990; Hyman, Zelikoff & Clarke, 1988). A good percentage of these students develop angry and aggressive responses as a result...
...As with corporal punishment, the frequency of emotional maltreatment in schools is too often a function of the socioeconomic status (SES) of the student population (Hyman, 1990).

Karen Brockenbrough, Dewey G. Cornell, Ann B. Loper
"Aggressive Attitudes Among Victims of Violence at School"
Education and the Treatment of Children V. 25, #3, Aug., 2002.

Violence at school is a prevalent problem. According to a national survey of school proncipals (National Center for Educational Statistics, 1998), over 200,000 serious fights or physical attacks occurred in public schools during the 1996-1997 school year. Serious violent crimes occurred in approximately 12% of middle schools and 13% of high schools. Student surveys (Kann et al, 1995) indicate even higher rates of aggressive behavior. Approximately 16.2% of high school students nationwide reported involvement in a physical fight at school during a 30-day period, and 11.8% reported carrying a weapon on school property (Kann et al, 1995). Research on victims of violence at school suggests that repeated victimization has detrimental effects on a child's emotional and social development (Batsche & Knoff, 1995; Hoover, Oliver, & Thomson, 1993; Olweus, 1993). Victims exhibit higher levels of anxiety and depression, and lower self-esteem than non-victims (eg., Besag, 1989; Gilmartin, 1987; Greenbaum, 1987; Olweus, 1993).

Clive Harber,
"Schooling as Violence"
Educatioinal Review p. 10, V. 54, #1.

"...It is almost certainly more damaging for children to be in school than to out of it. Children whose days are spent herding animals rather than sitting in a classroom at least develop skills of problem solving and independence while the supposedly luckier ones in school are stunted in their mental, physical, and emotional development by being rendered pasive, and by having to spend hours each day in a crowded classroom under the control of an adult who punishes them for any normal level of activity such as moving or speaking."

Clive Harber
"Schooling as Violence"
Educatioinal Review, p. 9 V. 54, #1.

Furthermore, according to a report for UNESCO, cited in Esteve (2000), the increasing level of pupil-teacher and pupil-pupil violence in classrooms is directly connected with compulsory schooling. The report argues that institutional violence against pupils who are obliged to attend daily at an educational centre until 16 or 18 years of age increases the frustration of these students to a level where they externalise it.

E. G. West
Department of Economics
Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
"Schooling and Violence"

We conclude that so far there is no evidence to support the 19th century Utilitarian hypothesis that the use of a secular and public school system will reduce crime. Beyond this there is some evidence indeed that suggests the reverse causality: crime actually increases with the increase in the size of the public school sector. Such findings will undoubtedly stimulate further work, and clearly more research would be helpful. But if further investigation confirms the findings of Lott, Fremling, and Coleman, we must reach the verdict that the cost of public schooling is much higher than was originally believed. Published figures show that the conventional cost of public schools, on average, are already just over twice those of private schools.11 When we add to this the extra social costs of increased delinquency, the full seriousness of the inefficiency of our public school system is more starkly exposed.

San Francisco Chronicle 2005-Nov.-01

The UC Berkeley-Stanford study found that all children who attended preschool at least 15 hours a week displayed more negative social behaviors such as trouble cooperating or acting up, when compared with their peers. The discrepancies were most pronounced among children from higher-income families.
Children from lower-income families lagged behind their peers who didn't attend preschool an average of 7 percentage points on the measure of social behavioral growth. But children from higher-income families lagged 9 percentage points behind their peers. These wealthier children did even worse when they attended preschool for 30 hours or more: They trailed their peers by 15 percentage points.
"It's not clear why children from higher-income families exhibit more negative behaviors than their stay-at-home peers. Fuller speculated their peers might be in enriching home environments that include things like trips to the library as well as dance and music lessons. Other studies have found childcare centers negatively affect children's social development", said Jay Belsky, director of the Institute for the Study of Children, Families and Social Issues at Birkbeck University of London, in an e-mail interview.
"It is time to come to grips with what all too many have denied for all too long, namely, that all disconcerting news about adverse effects cannot be attributed to low-quality care, which has been more or less the mantra of the field of child development and the child-care advocacy community for decades", Belsky said.

Richard Rhodes
Why they Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist

Criminal violence emerges from social experience, most commonly brutal social experience visited upon vulnerable children, who suffer for our neglect of their welfare and return in vengeful wrath to plague us. If violence is a choice they make, and therefore their personal responsibility, as (criminologist Lonnie) Athens demonstrates it is, our failure to protect them from having to confront such a choice is a choice we make, just as a disease epidemic would be implicitly our choice if we failed to provide vaccines and antibiotics. Such a choice-to tolerate the brutalization of children as we continue to do-is equally violent and equally evil, and we reap what we sow.

"I'm sorry I have so much rage, but you put it in me." --Dylan Klebold

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

So publicly funded public schools are socialist and publicly funded (through vouchers) private schools aren't?

Correct. The dictionary definition of "socialism" is "government ownership of the means of production" (schools, in this case).
The government cannot subsidize education without a definition of "education" and then this definition will bind students, teachers, and voucher-receiving schools, to some degree. Accreditation agencies play a large and largely unexamined role in the preservation of the current system.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

At Francesca:...

(This is the only way I can quote the relevant text . . )

Yes he knows something about socialism and monopolies. But you don't know anything much about him. You quote-mined, missing quite a trick, then you made something up. People don't need to know more than Friedman to know more than you.

Appealing to authority when you get what the authority said wrong isn't a logic fallacy so much as a competence one.

Are you sure Jonathan got Friedman wrong? I have read Friedman's 1955 Freeman essay in which he proposed tuition vouchers, Capitalism and Freedom, which contains a chapter ("The Role of Government in Education") that basically restates the Freeman essay, and his introduction and afterword to the Cato publication Learning and Liberty: Milton Friedman's Voucher Idea at Fifty. In a Reason interview, Friedman says that E.G. West convinced him that tax subsidization was unnecessary.

Enough for you?

The changes over time are interesting; Friedman became progressively more skeptical of any State (government, generally) role in the education industry.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

...What you are talking about is socioeconomic status. And when you are up, SE tends to keep you up and when you are down, SE tends to keep you down. This contributes to generational poverty and impoverished neighborhoods. Impoverished neighborhoods tend to have poor performing schools. Is there something wrong with trying to break this cycle?

No.

...Is there a way to do it that does not involve public education?

"Public education"? Maybe not. "Government-operated schools"? Certainly. According to Herman Brutsaert's comparison of government schools and parochial schools in Belgium (which subsidizes a parent's choice of school), parochial schools generate higher standardized test performance and a lower correlation between parent income and scores. State operation of school exacerbates inequality.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

We're all still waiting for a viable solution. Vouchers aren't realistic. Look at the number of private schools versus the number of public schools. You have far more students than a private students can accommodate. That won't work.

The current structure of the US K-12 school system is an artifact of the policy which restricts parents' options for the use of the taxpayers age 6-18 tuition subsidy to schools operated by government employees. This policy originated in anti-Catholic bigotry in the early decades of the 19th century. Vouchers would generate a shift in the relative representation of government-operated and independent schools.

What would you like the educational system to do?

Tuition vouchers would be a good start. I'd settle for a legislation that exempts from compulsory attendance statutes any student who passes the GED, at any age, and mandates that school districts subsidize post-secondary tuition at any VA-approved post-secondary institution or subsidizes employment at any qualified private-sector employer, at some fraction (say, 3/4) of the district's regular-ed per--pupil budget.

 

[John Jones]

Not one of you had a professor in any classroom repeatedly condemn your "ignorance," your "stupidity," and harass and mock you as so many of you have done to others so often.

Clever, no?

Friendly?

Civil?

And NOT ONE OF YOU had the guts, the decency, to stand up to the vile author of this "Bible-humping moron" crap.

What cowards these men be.

You don't get to pick peoples battles for them. Why do you continually resort to this petulant non-argument?

Perhaps I know you from another forum?

 

[John Jones]

"I've spent way too much time refuting everything you said."
"No you didn't."
"Yes, I did!"
"Didn't."
"Did"
"Look, this isn't an argument, it's mere contradiction."
"No it isn't"
"Yes it is. An argument is a connected series of discourse designed to prove a point. Contradiction is the automatic gainsaying of what the other person says."
"No. it isn't."

I luv it!

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

I am just astonished at the level of vitriol and hate being spewed forth. I've occasionally seen this kind of thing in discussions about race or religion, but not so much political leanings and never singling out a profession. It makes me wonder what kind of trauma was experienced to cause such a violent reaction.

It is entirely possible that people who spew such vitriol are also just plain jerks

Or that they see, through the propaganda, the appalling waste and abuse in the current system.

It also occurs to me that if what Jonathan says is true and he earns enough to pay $86,000 in taxes... well, he must have had some pretty good teachers somewhere along the way.

Nah, I'm sure he taught himself how to read, write, do math, and use a computer. He never needed any teachers, because he's just that awesome!

Richard Arkwright, Cyrus McCormick, and Thomas Edison were homeschooled. Benjamin Franklin attended school for two years and apprenticed. Robert Fitzroy attended the Admiralty school for twenty months, between age 12 and age 14, then went to sea. Hyram Maxim attended school to age 13 and apprenticed.

 

[John Jones]

Correct. The dictionary definition of "socialism" is "government ownership of the means of production" (schools, in this case).
The government cannot subsidize education without a definition of "education" and then this definition will bind students, teachers, and voucher-receiving schools, to some degree. Accreditation agencies play a large and largely unexamined role in the preservation of the current system.

Are you a sock-puppet of a previously banned poster? No offense intended, but your posting style is oddly familiar.

 

[Jeff Corey]

I luv it!

Then you'll probably love this, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teMlv3ripSM

And now for something different.

Mental masturbation:
"And indulge in mental masturbation.
Malcolm Kirkpatrick "I haven't been around in a while. Have the rules changed?
Quote:
Additional Rules for posting in the JREF Topics, General Topics & Forum Topics sections...
9.You will not post anything indecent. This is content that depicts or describes sexual or excretory organs or activities in an offensive manner."
Ooh, ooh, mental masturbation is indecent? That sure as feces beats me.