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

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Malcolm is also against educational standards and a common curriculum. He's perfectly fine with letting private or home schools teach creationism instead of evolution and other blatant falsehoods, even once declaring that "[y]our auto mechanic does not need evolutionary theory" in defense of this (implying that it's perfectly okay to determine early on in a child's life that he or she just doesn't need the same real, full education that more "elite" children will receive).

Dunno 'bout "perfectly okay". I prefer Parent control to political control. Some people will fall through the cracks in any system.

 

[A'isha]

Add access to the same level of tax subsidization, per pupil, and I'd accept that as a decent compromise.

No. If parents want to educate their kids someplace different, they're perfectly free to do that. On their own dime.

Just like people who want to buy their own car instead of taking the bus are on their own when it comes to paying for said car.

The problem with any legal regime other that complete State indifference is that children are not standard and some political body will define standards for children they don't know personally. Parents roll a bucket of genetic dice when they put their kids together and come kids come up snake-eyes. For every level of performance above "comatose", and for every level of support, there is some child for whom that level of support is insufficient that level of performance.

Your proposed solution does not actually fix the problem. It just ignores it, by making educational standards disappear. It's like fixing the problems of some clunker automobiles being too slow to drive at the minimum freeway speed of 40 mph by eliminating that minimum entirely. It doesn't actually help the clunkers move any faster.

The human and canine IQ curves overlap.

We've already debunked this nonsense, too.

 

[A'isha]

Dunno 'bout "perfectly okay". I prefer Parent control to political control. Some people will fall through the cracks in any system.

Yes, but your system will increase the number of people that fall through the cracks.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Yes, but your system will increase the number of people that fall through the cracks.

That's where we disagree.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

No. If parents want to educate their kids someplace different, they're perfectly free to do that. On their own dime.

Just like people who want to buy their own car instead of taking the bus are on their own when it comes to paying for said car.

Your proposed solution does not actually fix the problem. It just ignores it, by making educational standards disappear. It's like fixing the problems of some clunker automobiles being too slow to drive at the minimum freeway speed of 40 mph by eliminating that minimum entirely. It doesn't actually help the clunkers move any faster.

We've already debunked this nonsense, too.

The "nonsense" is the notion that the sun shines out of the governments *******.

 

[Belz...]

Really, state-mandated schooling is the opposite of slavery: it gives children professional education that will allow them to have jobs and carve their own destiny later on. It empowers them in a way home schooling almost never can.

Any comment, Malcolm ?

 

[A'isha]

That's where we disagree.

There's nothing to disagree with: you want to return to the system used before compulsory education was established. Except we know that huge numbers of children slipped through the cracks under that system...that's why compulsory education was established in the first place, to stop those children from slipping through the cracks.

 

[A'isha]

The "nonsense" is the notion that the sun shines out of the governments *******.

No one but you has ever asserted "the notion that the sun shines out of the governments *******" in this thread.

 

[RandFan]

Or if they had to sleep on campus for the rest of their natural lives.

Or if they were beaten up on a whim.

Or if they didn't get to leave and get a job when they became adults.

Or if they were considered property.

Really, state-mandated schooling is the opposite of slavery: it gives children professional education that will allow them to have jobs and carve their own destiny later on. It empowers them in a way home schooling almost never can.

This is demonstrably true. Private industry values education and that includes state run, compulsory education.

Odds stacked against high school dropouts finding success

It matters not that private industry also values parochial school or other forms of education. It matters that private industry values state run, compulsory education. If going to state run compulsory schools resulted in worse outcomes than not going to state run compulsory schools then the data would be reversed. Private industry would prefer zero education to state run compulsory schools. That is not true. Saying that private industry values education in general is a red herring.

That's a fact. One ignore time and again.

 

[Minoosh]

Add access to the same level of tax subsidization, per pupil, and I'd accept that as a decent compromise.

I was laboring under the impression that no decent compromise could perpetuate slavery and armed robbery. That's a game-changer. It's sort of what is happening with charters. I doubt if standards will go away, though. It's seen as a competitive issue for the U.S. and also as a remedy for "the soft bigotry of low expectations."

The human and canine IQ curves overlap.

I think, maybe, that I finally understand what you mean by that cryptic statement. There are accommodations for children who need extra support to handle the academics, and there's also realism about kids who will never be on a true academic track.

Dogs generally have to go to special dog school.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

...

...

... 9. All human behavioral traits are heritable, including intellect and ambition.

I'd ask for a citation here, but I already know you're drawing this from Murray's racist claptrap.

4.1 Steven Pinker, actually.

Citation to what he said about heritability, then?

Just follow the link here.
But this shouldn't be the least controversial to people who have read a reasonable amount of evolutionary biology (Darwin, G. G. Simpson, Richard Dawkins, Matt Ridley, C.D. Darlington, etc.). Like the skeletal system, dentition, digestive system function, respiratory system function, or immune system function, nervous system function evolved. Unless human evolution is over, regional varieties of human will differ. It takes a (typically, Socialist) religious faith in functional equality of economically important traits among regional varieties of human to deny this. Doctrinaire Socialists are as susceptible to dogmatic fundamentalism as any creationist.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

... we know that huge numbers of children slipped through the cracks under that system...that's why compulsory education was established in the first place, to stop those children from slipping through the cracks.

That's the self-serving History of Education that the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel's schools teach. It's false. Compulsory attendance at school originated in theocratic indoctrination. Just search " 'That Old Deluder, Satan' Act".

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Really, state-mandated schooling is the opposite of slavery: it gives children professional education that will allow them to have jobs and carve their own destiny later on. It empowers them in a way home schooling almost never can.

Any comment, Malcolm ?

The reality is that State-mandated attendance at schools (combined with the consequent State-mandated definition of "school" and "education" and the necessary bureaucratic machinery and the inevitable bureaucratic bloat) guarantee high cost and poor performance.
The clearest indication that the principal purpose of compulsory attendance statutes is NOT education but rather to provide employment for dues-paying members of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel is the measurement of education in units of time. "A year of Algebra I" or "three credit hours of 20th Century US Diplomatic History" makes as much sense as "a pound of friendship" or "a square meter of curiosity".

 

[RandFan]

The reality is that State-mandated attendance at schools (combined with the consequent State-mandated definition of "school" and "education" and the necessary bureaucratic machinery and the inevitable bureaucratic bloat) guarantee high cost and poor performance.

Yet you have not provided any evidence that private industry values education from parochial schools over the education of state run compulsory schools. That is a fact. If you could show me a chart or data that demonstrated that private industry valued zero education to education through state run compulsory schools I would be interested in that but it would not turn state run compulsory education into slavery. There is still demonstrable value in gradating from a state run compulsory school. What such data would mean is that state run compulsory eduction to be inferior in some ways.

However, it would also not explain how people like me, a poor person whose father was irrational and bi-polar, would be educated. The value of that is much greater than simply being a drop out. Most people who have had little or no education are far more likely to be destitute than those educated in state run compulsory schools. That's a demonstrable fact.

 

[A'isha]

Just follow the link here.

That's not Pinker arguing your point, that's Pinker describing Turkheimer's "Three Laws of Behavior Genetics". Pinker goes on to describe the problems and criticisms of them. It's hardly the authoritative cite you purport.

That's the self-serving History of Education that the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel's schools teach. It's false. Compulsory attendance at school originated in theocratic indoctrination. Just search " 'That Old Deluder, Satan' Act".

That law has nothing whatsoever to do with modern compulsory public education. Maybe you ought to search, for example, the Elementary Education Act 1870.

 

[Border Reiver]

That's the self-serving History of Education that the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel's schools teach. It's false. Compulsory attendance at school originated in theocratic indoctrination. Just search " 'That Old Deluder, Satan' Act".

And from those origins it has evolved. But the idea that people should be able to read in order that they should not be taken advantage of so easily remains.

 

[Minoosh]

The Economist is banking on this model: Raise everyone up out of poverty through "industrialization" - again, a word I use for convenience - maybe it could be called compassionate capitalism. Reduce infant mortality so you don't have to birth 14 to ensure you'll have one to take care of you in old age. In their model birth rate falls as social and material well-being rise. This stabilizes population circa 2050.

I forgot to add something really important. The mechanism for accomplishing the above is universal public education.

A point Malcolm would probably appreciate: A World Bank study (per the Economist) indicated that in Uganda, the most effective tutors for third-grade math students were fourth-grade math students.

http://info.worldbank.org/etools/docs/library/244476/day7Uganda%20Efficiency%20Study.pdf

I just tried to find the Economist article and got the above PDF. Further searching turns up a bunch of wonky stuff. I'd like to discuss educational efficiency and effectiveness - how we can optimize what we've got - but this thread is not about how to improve taxpayer-funded schools.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

...that's why compulsory education was established in the first place, to stop those children from slipping through the cracks.

That's the self-serving History of Education that the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel's schools teach. It's false. Compulsory attendance at school originated in theocratic indoctrination. Just search " 'That Old Deluder, Satan' Act".

That law has nothing whatsoever to do with modern compulsory public education. Maybe you ought to search, for example, the Elementary Education Act 1870.

"The first place" in the British colonies of North America that had compulsory attendance laws was the Congregationalist theocracy of Massachusetts Bay (c. 1644). The other religious colonies (Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, New Harmony, Connecticut) followed. The Southern commercial colonies, such as Virginia, left education to parents. "The first place" anywhere to have State-mandated compulsory attendance was some German principality after the Protestant Reformation where the Lutheran clergy, fearing that Catholic parents would not properly indoctrinate their children into the new religion, prevailed upon the ruler to mandate attendance at (Lutheran) Church-operated schools.
Prior to the mass migration to the US of Polish, Irish, and Italian Catholics, the policy that subsidized attendance at (mostly Church-operated) schools of the parents' choice (vouchers, basically) was more common than direct State operation of schools. After waves of Catholic immigration provoked an allergic reaction in the resident Protestant majority public-sector entrepreneurs like Horace Mann talks panicked legislators into granting them control over their very own pet bureaucracy. The "public" school system originated in religious intolerance and anti-Catholic bigotry.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Just follow the link here.
But this shouldn't be the least controversial to people who have read a reasonable amount of evolutionary biology (Darwin, G. G. Simpson, Richard Dawkins, Matt Ridley, C.D. Darlington, etc.). Like the skeletal system, dentition, digestive system function, respiratory system function, or immune system function, nervous system function evolved. Unless human evolution is over, regional varieties of human will differ. It takes a (typically, Socialist) religious faith in functional equality of economically important traits among regional varieties of human to deny this. Doctrinaire Socialists are as susceptible to dogmatic fundamentalism as any creationist.

That's not Pinker arguing your point, that's Pinker describing Turkheimer's "Three Laws of Behavior Genetics". Pinker goes on to describe the problems and criticisms of them. It's hardly the authoritative cite you purport.

Readers may assess. Pinker explains the principle. He does not dispute it. He agrees. So does Dawkins.

 

[Belz...]

Dunno 'bout "perfectly okay". I prefer Parent control to political control. Some people will fall through the cracks in any system.

Parents simply don't have the knowledge to teach all the stuff we need to know nowadays to their kids. They can start them off, but that's it. We don't live in an age where you teach basic language and farming to your kid and that's it. Mandatory education is good for everyone, in that it makes people more qualified and helps the economy.