Split Thread Does compulsory schooling equate to slavery? (Split from: "Liberal Fallacies" thread)

[RandFan]

1. More or less likely than whom? Whether parents who keep children out of school enhance or degrade mental development relative to children who attend school depends on the parents and on the schools that the comparison group attend.
2. That depends on the school.
3. They won't be answered "yes" or "no" because, like the question "does X-radiation enhance longevity" the answer depends on the specific case. Radiation therapy is not indicated for the common cold, for example.
4. The relation between credentials and income indicates the success of the rent-seekers political strategy of lobbying for degree requirements for various employment and against use to pre-employment tests.

• I've given the example so many times you should know I'm comparing a poor person to a rich person.
• No, but on average, and that's a dodge.
• I said "typically" such questions can be answered, even your example has a "typical" answer.
• And that is another dodge. How is private school not slavery and public school is slavery?

And why do most if not all successful nations have compulsory education?

 

[RandFan]

To a degree. Compulsory, unpaid labor is slavery.
Compulsion and compensation are matters of degree. Compulsion and compensation vary in degree with the range of options available to parents and children. Every increase in the range of options reduces compulsion and enhances compensation.

Ad hoc explanation. And what metric do I use to determine if public school is slavery. If the free market demands it that doesn't make it slavery it just makes it compulsory. Tell me what makes public school more like slavery than private school other than special pleading. Got it? No special pleading.

 

[RandFan]

That is an artifact of the employment laws which penalize pre-employment tests which yield a "disparate impact" and which make firing employees who don't fit costly.

Which employment law forces private business employers to hire educated workers counter to the best interests of the employer?

A lot of English MAs wonder the same thing as they restock shelves and fall farther behind in their student loan repayments. A lot of welders wonder why they had to take four years of high school literature.

Which slave owner forced the students to be English students?

 

[A'isha]

And why do most if not all successful nations have compulsory education?

And why do those successful countries that have compulsory education but don't have affirmative action also have employers who demand degree requirements for various employment?

 

[Dancing David]

slavery is a matter of degree.

Sophistry shall avail you not

 

[Dancing David]

Free market employers want school with certificates educated people. Malcolm hates free enterprise industry, and hates junior colleges.

In fact MK has never addressed this point except to change the subject. Employers do NOT want to train their employees in the skills for the job, they want them to have them at application time.

MK hates the free enterprise system, at least in this respect.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Since compulsion and compensation are matters of degree, slavery is a matter of degree. Force and freedom are different directions on a continuum. In a legal environment which limits parents' options for the allocation of their children's time, the term "slavery" applies with a precision that depends (inversely) on the degree of control that parents exercise.

Sophistry shall avail you not

That looks like disagreement. Where do you disagree?

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Which employment law forces private business employers to hire educated workers counter to the best interests of the employer?¹Which slave owner forced the students to be English students?²

1. Case law on Federal anti-discrimination statutes forces employers to use credentials in lieu of pre-employment exams.
2. Reading comprehension problems again? Free people (people who pay exaggerated tuition for degrees w/o a career payoff) make mistakes. Government loan subsidies encourage those mistakes.

 

[A'isha]

1. Case law on Federal anti-discrimination statutes forces employers to use credentials in lieu of pre-employment exams.

What about all those non-American countries not subject to US case law or anti-discrimination statutes?

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Ad hoc explanation. And what metric do I use to determine if public school is slavery. If the free market demands it that doesn't make it slavery it just makes it compulsory. Tell me what makes public school more like slavery than private school other than special pleading. Got it? No special pleading.

Try civility,
How 'bout..."What metric do I use to determine if public school is slavery? Tell me what makes public school more like slavery than private school."
Same question, right? Just without the attitude.

Whether a consequence of a worker's performance qualifies as "adequate compensation" depends on the appetite of that worker for that consequence. Compulsory, unpaid labor is slavery. Pay (from the "unpaid" part) is clearly a matter of degree. Policies that give to individual parents the power to determine the choice of curriculum and the pace and method of instruction give control to people who know those individual children best and who are more reliably concerned for their welfare than are remote bureaucrats. The result of parent control is a closer match between the individual child's interests and aptitudes and the curriculum and instructional methods. Motivation is critical to individual student performance and overall system performance is a weighted sum of individual performances.

 

[A'isha]

Try civility,
How 'bout..."What metric do I use to determine if public school is slavery?

Actually, to even ask that question is pointless, since it's built on false assumptions.

The result of parent control is a closer match between the individual child's interests and aptitudes and the curriculum and instructional methods.

This is blatantly untrue.

As the drive to get Creationism taught in public schools and the complete falsehoods taught by Evangelical Christian homeschooling textbooks shows.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

(Malcolm Kirkpatrick): "Laws and court decisions make test-based pre-employment screening legally risky."
(elbe): "I trust you have some citations for your claims, yes?"
(Malcolm Kirkpatrick): "Yes. See the chapter on the evolution of affirmative action in employment in Murray and Hernstein, The Bell Curve."
(ANTPogo): "Murray's book is racist bunk, as I told you when you first brought him up, and B) that isn't actually a cite in support of your claims, as elbe requested."
(Myron Proudfoot): "Alas, "racist bunk" for Murray is a feature, not a bug."
As used in American English today, "racist" means "a caucasian who disagrees with a socialist".
When Murray arose in that earlier discussion (it was Ant who introduced The Bell Curve to that discussion, btw), I asked Ant for a sentence from The Bell Curve that supported her characterization of Murray as "racist". Ant did not supply any such quote. I suspect that neither Ant nor Proudfoot has read The Bell Curve. The general argument, the relation between IQ and various measures of social success such as SES and incarceration, and the heritability of IQ, would make just as much sense in a racially monochromatic society such as Iceland.

As to Ant's complaint: "that isn't actually a cite in support of your claims", the book is 500+ of text plus another 200 pages of notes and appendices. There is a chapter on affirmative action in employment and an appendix devoted to trends in affirmative action law on employment. If you're really interested, you can take it from there. I don't have the book memorized well enough to supply page numbers off the top of my head.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

... The result of parent control is a closer match between the individual child's interests and aptitudes and the curriculum and instructional methods. Motivation is critical to individual student performance and overall system performance is a weighted sum of individual performances.

This is blatantly untrue.
As the drive to get Creationism taught in public schools and the complete falsehoods taught by Evangelical Christian homeschooling textbooks shows.

Would you send your kids to government-operated schools in Detroit of Chicago? Some parents will mis-educate their children. So will some teachers. Furthermore, political control of school turns differences over curricula into winner-take-all contests that guarantee a poor fit between the State-mandated curriculum and individual children's interests and aptitudes.

 

[A'isha]

As used in American English today, "racist" means "a caucasian who disagrees with a socialist".

No, it means "racist".

When Murray arose in that earlier discussion (it was Ant who introduced The Bell Curve to that discussion, btw),

Yes, which is why I said "when you first brought him up", not "when you first brought it up".

I asked Ant for a sentence from The Bell Curve that supported her characterization of Murray as "racist". Ant did not supply any such quote.

Instead, I linked you to the many dissections of the book which look at quotes from the book and explain in detail why they were racist.

As to Ant's complaint: "that isn't actually a cite in support of your claims"

And it's not. Because it doesn't explain just how the chapter in Murray's crap book about affirmative action is relevant to your claims about the reason private sector companies want educated, degreed employees, nor does it explain why countries outside the US and so not subject to American anti-discrimination laws and affirmative action practices also have private sector companies that want educated, degreed employees.

 

[A'isha]

Would you send your kids to government-operated schools in Detroit of Chicago?

If the alternative was sending them to a school where the teacher was a fundamentalist Evangelical who taught out of A Beka textbooks, in a heartbeat.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

... (attitude deleted) ... Employers do NOT want to train their employees in the skills for the job, they want them to have them at application time. ... (attitude deleted)

That does not represent the complete range of possibilities. Neither do employers want to pay, in taxes, for training that the State then fails to deliver. Labor market regulation makes on-the-job training more expensive than it would be in the absence of such regulation.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

If the alternative was sending them to a school where the teacher was a fundamentalist Evangelical who taught out of A Beka textbooks, in a heartbeat.

Really? Safety is of no interest?
If you can homeschool or use vouchers for a decent school, that's not the only option.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

... I linked you to the many dissections of the book which look at quotes from the book and explain in detail why they were racist.

Right. So you're taking someone's word for it.

 

[A'isha]

Really? Safety is of no interest?

What does safety have to do with it?

If you can homeschool or use vouchers for a decent school, that's not the only option.

I definitely don't want to homeschool - I'd probably be pretty good at teaching any kids I might have history and English and the non-math parts of science, I'd be far, far inferior to a real math or science teacher on those particular subjects. They'd probably do best going to an actual school where they're taught all subjects by accredited professional teachers, and outside of school I can help them build on the basics they learn there in the particular subjects I excel at.

Right. So you're taking someone's word for it.

No, I'm pointing you at where multiple people have already put far more effort and attention into answering your question about Murray's racist claptrap than I have the time or the inclination for.

 

[Cleon]

I don't know where Malcolm's getting this idea that prescreening prospective employees is "legally risky." I work in IT - virtually every interview I've ever attended included being tested on my technical skills. The EEOC has this page explaining that testing people on their cognitive abilities, skills, or knowledge is 100% kosher, as long as it's related to the work they'll be doing.