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

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Political control of school harms most the children of the least politically adept parents.

... "political control of school harms most the children of the least politically adept parents" is not true.

... Statutory compulsion, in the forms of restrictions on homeschooling, compulsory attendance statutes, minimum wage laws, child labor laws, large school districts, policies which limit school choice, Statewide teacher credential requirements, etc., shift control over education away from parents to political authorities. Movement in any dimension away from parent control reduces overall system performance.

And how, precisely, does that support your claim?

How could the dots get any closer together? Political decision makers get more remote as districts increase in size, Each parent's voice gets more diluted, relative to the contribution that s/he can make in a small district. Each additional year that the law allows parents to keep their children home adds to their impact relative to the impact of political authorities. Parent choice among independent and parochial schools enhances their control through expansion of the range of curricular and methodological options. Black mean score is negatively correlated with district size. The mean score of children of HS-educated white parents is negatively correlated with district size. The mean score of children of college-educated white parents is positively correlated with district size. The NAEP test score gap between whites and blacks is positively correlated with district size.

Political control of school harms most the children of the least politically-adept parents.

 

[RandFan]

Political control of school harms most the children of the least politically-adept parents.

Private industry values education (state run compulsory education included). Poor children without education cannot get good jobs. Poor parents are the least likely to ensure that there children are educated. Poor parents often neglect and abuse their children. Poor parents often do not have the resources to send their children to private and/or parochial school. Poor parents often lack the competence to educate their children properly.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

No, the current system did not "grow from" the earlier systems...the German Reformation system and the Puritan colonial system were both long gone by the time Mann started his system, and both of them had nothing whatsoever to do with his desires and objectives in reforming education in the US. And New York City's system was established to remove anti-Catholic bigotry.

a) "Long gone" is false. The colony of Massachusetts Bay had a compulsory school statute on the books continuously since 1644. Enforcement became lax over time and then strengthened on Mann's initiative.
b) "To" is a statement of intention. Of course the promoters claimed benign motives. The Catholics obviously did not consider the State-monopoly system benign, since they bailed out (at considerable cost to themselves) in response.
c)New York City subsidized attendance at (mostly Church-operated) schools of the parents' choice until waves of Catholic immigrants provoked an allergic response. The City then selected one provider to receive the tax support (which provider taught the Protestant version of Christianity). The Catholics bailed. The US "public" school system originated in theocratic imperatives and anti-Catholic bigotry.

 

[Belz...]

How could the dots get any closer together?

First of all, this simply shows that you can't evidence your claim.

Second, you're just projecting your conclusions onto reality: you conclude that X is true, therefore X is true. That's not how science and empiricism work. You have to put various theories to the test and see if your predictions pan out, etc. As it stands you have one theory that you consider, to the exclusion of all the rest.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

How could the dots get any closer together?

First of all, this simply shows that you can't evidence your claim. Second, you're just projecting your conclusions onto reality: you conclude that X is true, therefore X is true. That's not how science and empiricism work. You have to put various theories to the test and see if your predictions pan out, etc. As it stands you have one theory that you consider, to the exclusion of all the rest.

Let's be specific. Which of the numbered assertions below do you dispute?

1. Homeschoolers routinely outperform conventionally-schooled children. There is abundant support for this proposition.
2. Independent and parochial schools outperform the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel's schools in the US. Independent and parochial schools outperform government schools in other countries. There is abundant evidence for this.
3. The correlation (district enrollment, score) is negative, where "score" is NAEP 4th and 8th grade Reading and Math scores. States with numerous small school districts outperform States which compel a large percentage of total student population to attend schools in large school districts. Smaller is better. There is abundant evidence for this.
4. The correlation (age start, score) is positive, where "age start" is the age at which States compel attendance at school and "score" is NAEP 4th and 8th grade Reading and Mat score. States which compel attendance at seven or eight have higher 4th and 8th grade Reading and Math scores than States which compel attendance at five or six. There is abundant evidence for this.

The above indicators indirectly measure the relative power of individual parents' control against the control over educational options that remote authorities exercise.

Additionally:...
5. States which impose few teacher certification requirements on school districts outperform States which require NTE or Praxis test scores. Teacher certification is bogus. Colleges of Education contribute less than nothing to teacher competence.

 

[A'isha]

How could the dots get any closer together?

Because none of the stuff you just posted has anything to do with political "adeptness" (whatever you take that to mean). It's merely a repetition of your previous assertions, with no connection to or correlation with the way the actual school districts work, nor with how the politics of those districts work.

a) "Long gone" is false. The colony of Massachusetts Bay had a compulsory school statute on the books continuously since 1644. Enforcement became lax over time and then strengthened on Mann's initiative.

A) The 1647 law (unlike the 1852 law) did not actually compel school attendance, despite your claims. It required that all townships over a certain size appoint a teacher (or, for larger towns, establish a grammar school with a master) whose wages would paid for by the townspeople who (entirely voluntarily) sent their children to him to be tutored.

B) "Enforcement became lax" is a pretty serious understatement (the entire colonial charter under which the authority of its laws were passed and enforced was revoked barely 41 years after the law was passed), and what little remained of the old system was replaced by the 1789 law that created publicly-funded school districts in Massachussetts.

C) By the time of Mann's initiative both the type of schools and the curriculum taught in those schools was far removed from those of the early Colonial Puritans (not least because, once the British took over the colony, they revoked the charter and its replacement expanded the vote to non-Puritan colonists and kept the colony under the authority of a Royal Governor, dramatically changing the religious and political nature of Massachusetts to the point that 1852 Massachussetts would have been completely unrecognizable to the 1647 Puritans).

b) "To" is a statement of intention. Of course the promoters claimed benign motives.

Yes, you've tried the "mindreading" argument before. Oddly, despite your insistence that thinking that what the "promoters" said constitutes divining their intention, you nevertheless seem to have no qualms about doing your own mindreading about what they must have really been intending and that said intention is at odds with their stated motives.

The Catholics obviously did not consider the State-monopoly system benign, since they bailed out (at considerable cost to themselves) in response.

No, they didn't "bail" because they didn't think it was benign, they were upset that the City decided to establish and fund a secular non-denominational school system separate from both the Protestant and Catholic church schools, because they wanted state funding for their parochial schools instead.

c)New York City subsidized attendance at (mostly Church-operated) schools of the parents' choice until waves of Catholic immigrants provoked an allergic response. The City then selected one provider to receive the tax support (which provider taught the Protestant version of Christianity).

No, the city established an elected school board and school system separate from the Protestant schools and the Catholic schools, as a deliberate attempt to accede to Catholic complaints about the school system that existed before the Maclay Act reforms.

The Catholics bailed. The US "public" school system originated in theocratic imperatives and anti-Catholic bigotry.

Repeating this does not make it true.

 

[Belz...]

Let's be specific. Which of the numbered assertions below do you dispute?

I'm asking you to support them. It's your claim, your burden of proof.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

I'm asking you to support them. It's your claim, your burden of proof.

I can expand each point if you want. Which do you doubt?

 

[Belz...]

Let's start with number 1. Stop stalling.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Let's start with number 1. Stop stalling.

Try civility.
Gandhi wrote in his autobiography that parents are the natural teachers of their own children. A grade is a uniform group. Students are not uniform. Schools which treat students as a "class" or a "grade" cannot simultaneously accommodate the variety of interests and abilities of any randomly assembled group of twenty age-graded students. A "class" will hold quick students back and run over students who could acquire the material with more repetition than the mean student requires.
Here...

Academic Performance

• The home-educated typically score 15 to 30 percentile points above public-school students on standardized academic achievement tests. (The public school average is the 50th percentile; scores range from 1 to 99.)
• Homeschool students score above average on achievement tests regardless of their parents’ level of formal education or their family’s household income.
• Whether homeschool parents were ever certified teachers is not related to their children’s academic achievement.
• Degree of state control and regulation of homeschooling is not related to academic achievement.
• Home-educated students typically score above average on the SAT and ACT tests that colleges consider for admissions.

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.

In this article Meighan cites findings that homeschoolers outperform conventionally schooled children academically.

Alaska subsidizes homeschooling and counts children in the subsidized homeschooling program as enrolled in a virtual government school. Homeschooled children of parents with no college training outperform students of college-trained teachers in conventional schools.

Here.

Independent Evaluations of Homeschooling
1. In 1997, a study of 5,402 homeschool students from 1,657 families was released. It was entitled, "Strengths of Their Own: Home Schoolers Across America." The study demonstrated that homeschoolers, on the average, out-performed their counterparts in the public schools by 30 to 37 percentile points in all subjects. A significant finding when analyzing the data for 8th graders was the evidence that homeschoolers who are homeschooled two or more years score substantially higher than students who have been homeschooled one year or less. The new homeschoolers were scoring on the average in the 59th percentile compared to students homeschooled the last two or more years who scored between 86th and 92nd percentile. i

This was confirmed in another study by Dr. Lawrence Rudner of 20,760 homeschooled students which found the homeschoolers who have homeschooled all their school aged years had the highest academic achievement. This was especially apparent in the higher grades. ii This is a good encouragement to families catch the long-range vision and homeschool through high school.

Another important finding of Strengths of Their Own was that the race of the student does not make any difference. There was no significant difference between minority and white homeschooled students. For example, in grades K-12, both white and minority students scored, on the average, in the 87th percentile. In math, whites scored in the 82nd percentile while minorities scored in the 77th percentile. In the public schools, however, there is a sharp contrast. White public school eighth grade students, nationally scored the 58th percentile in math and the 57th percentile in reading. Black eighth grade students, on the other hand, scored on the average at the 24th percentile in math and the 28th percentile in reading. Hispanics scored at the 29th percentile in math and the 28th percentile in reading.

There's much more evidence of superior performance by homeschoolers on standardized tests for college admission, if you dig.

I tutored a student who had attended government schools K-3, then Punahou (Obama's plush private school) 4-7. Punahou gave his parents a massive tuition break, since he scored over 1200 (old style) on the SAT before age 13. Monica Vo, a Math professor at UH, allowed him to sit in on Calc I between his 6th and 7th grade years. He sat in on Calc II in the summer between 7th and 8th grade. At that point his parents decided to homeschool him, which meant that they went to work and he sat in on Math classes. He studied History and Amharic on his own. When he turned 16 the UH let him enroll. He took the GRE (Math) before he turned 17 and received his MS (Math) before he turned 19. I wrote about this here.

Your turn. Do you have any contrary studies?

 

[RandFan]

Gandhi wrote in his autobiography that parents are the natural teachers of their own children.

?

My father taught me how to kill chickens and rabbits. He taught me how to plant and weed. He taught me how to move pipe and gates to irrigate crops. I hate farming. I wanted to be a computer programer. My father wanted me to work on the farm. My father was bi-polar and my mother hardly knew math. In fact, I taught my mother math, science, history, etc.. I was able to do so because I had a primary education. I graduated high school before my mother did.

My parents were incapable of teaching me much of anything that private companies value. I was an auditor and computer programmer. My parents could not have taught me that. Many poor people lack the skills necassary to teach their children all of the things necessary that private education requires.

Even though my home was dysfunctional I won't take issue with Ghandi. My parents gave me important life lessons. But they could not have possibly provided me with a primary education. Had there been no state run compulsory education I would very likely never have gone to the University of Utah. Crack addicts, neglectful parents, parents who care more for themselves, you have never explained how the children of such parents would not fall through the cracks.

Until you address that question the idea of getting rid of state run compulsory schools is a non-starter.

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

Try civility.
Gandhi wrote in his autobiography that parents are the natural teachers of their own children.

I've seen you mention this before.
This might work in a rural area where only rudimentary skills are necessary, but do you *really* believe this?
How many parents do you know who are so well educated that they can teach a child both language, history, mathematics, sciences, politics and all the other things needed to;
A: discover what you truly like and are good at and B: succeed in modern day life?
And do remember, possessing the skill =/= being able to teach it.
My English is excellent due to me reading/gaming in English for most of my adult life. Yet if I had to teach the language I would have no clue about any of the reason behind the grammar and what rules apply, simply because I am bad at that.
Similarly I know a lot about history and geography, but to teach it?

Sure you can find methods, but teaching is/should not be just repeating a method and looking up if the answers are correct. You should know the subject SO well that if you see a student struggling you can come up with various different ways to explain it.

So Ghandi's quote might have been accurate for some people during some part of history for a certain number of years, but it's totally irrelevant for the vast majority of humanity. Sure parents teach us things, and often important things, but to assume they can teach us anything and everything is just plain wrong.

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

?

My father taught me how to kill chickens and rabbits. He taught me how to plant and weed. He taught me how to move pipe and gates to irrigate crops. I hate farming. I wanted to be a computer programer. My father wanted me to work on the farm. My father was bi-polar and my mother hardly knew math. In fact, I taught my mother math, science, history, etc.. I was able to do so because I had a primary education. I graduated high school before my mother did.

My parents were incapable of teaching me much of anything that private companies value. I was an auditor and computer programmer. My parents could not have taught me that. Many poor people lack the skills necassary to teach their children all of the things necessary that private education requires.

Even though my home was dysfunctional I won't take issue with Ghandi. My parents gave me important life lessons. But they could not have possibly provided me with a primary education. Had there been no state run compulsory education I would very likely never have gone to the University of Utah. Crack addicts, neglectful parents, parents who care more for themselves, you have never explained how the children of such parents would not fall through the cracks.

Until you address that question the idea of getting rid of state run compulsory schools is a non-starter.

On the other hand, both my parents were well educated, especially my father. He worked in law, my mother had had normal education and an interest in arts. Both were quite happy for me to follow my own path and would support me whatever I wanted.
Yet what I wanted was the sciences. My mother had basic calculus. My father a bit better in that he could also do the economic side of math well.
But the actual maths needed to understand physics and chemistry and biology? I was better at that than both of them by the time I was 12 or 13. And the disciplines I needed the math for neither of them understood. Had they taught me, I never would have made it to university, regardless of how hard they or I worked.
No bi-polars, no counteracting parents and still it took public education for me to learn.

 

[RandFan]

On the other hand, both my parents were well educated, especially my father. He worked in law, my mother had had normal education and an interest in arts. Both were quite happy for me to follow my own path and would support me whatever I wanted.
Yet what I wanted was the sciences. My mother had basic calculus. My father a bit better in that he could also do the economic side of math well.
But the actual maths needed to understand physics and chemistry and biology? I was better at that than both of them by the time I was 12 or 13. And the disciplines I needed the math for neither of them understood. Had they taught me, I never would have made it to university, regardless of how hard they or I worked.

No bi-polars, no counteracting parents and still it took public education for me to learn.

Thank you. Exactly.

 

[Belz...]

Try civility.

No, YOU stop stalling.

Gandhi wrote in his autobiography that parents are the natural teachers of their own children.

What do I care about Gandhi ? I asked for evidence, not anecdotes, though I'm not sure you understand the difference.

Here...Roland Meighan
"Home-based Education Effectiveness Research and Some of its Implications"
Educational Review, Vol. 47, No.3, 1995In this article Meighan cites findings that homeschoolers outperform conventionally schooled children academically.

Where's the data ? They seem to make your claim, but I don't see how they reach that conclusion.

Here. There's much more evidence of superior performance by homeschoolers on standardized tests for college admission, if you dig.

Biased advocacy group.

here.

Again, what YOU write is not convincing.

Your turn. Do you have any contrary studies?

I don't need to. So far you've simply demonstrated that you have no clue what evidence for your claims would look like, but it DOES at least answer my question. Thanks.

 

[A'isha]

Again, what YOU write is not convincing.

I did like how his evidence for the success of homeschooling is an anecdote about a prodigy of a kid whose "homeschooling by his parents" was in reality him attending college courses taught by a professor at a public state university, though.

 

[Belz...]

Yes, it's amazing how people can cite stuff that proves them wrong as though it proved them right.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

I did like how his evidence for the success of homeschooling is an anecdote about a prodigy of a kid whose "homeschooling by his parents" was in reality him attending college courses taught by a professor at a public state university, though.

It was legally homeschooling. His parents notified the DOE of their intent to homeschool. That's all that's required. Nothing in Hawaii law requires that parents provide instruction between 0800 and 1530. I argued that the advantage of parent control is flexibility to deal with variations in student ability and interest. Treatment of students as a "class" serves the purpose of administrative convenience when dealing with masses of students but forces students of varied interests and abilities to move through a uniform curriculum at a uniform pace.

 

[Border Reiver]

It was legally homeschooling. His parents notified the DOE of their intent to homeschool. That's all that's required. Nothing in Hawaii law requires that parents provide instruction between 0800 and 1530. I argued that the advantage of parent control is flexibility to deal with variations in student ability and interest. Treatment of students as a "class" serves the purpose of administrative convenience when dealing with masses of students but forces students of varied interests and abilities to move through a uniform curriculum at a uniform pace.

So, was the student compelled by his parents to attend instruction by the professor? If so, what was the student's renumeration?

How is compelling the student's attendance for no wages at a non-public institution different from compelling attendance at a public institution (ie. what makes this situation not "slavery" by your definition)?

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

I've seen you mention this before.
This might work in a rural area where only rudimentary skills are necessary, but do you *really* believe this?¹How many parents do you know who are so well educated that they can teach a child both language, history, mathematics, sciences, politics and all the other things needed to;
A²: discover what you truly like and are good at and B: succeed in modern day life?
And do remember, possessing the skill =/= being able to teach it.
My English is excellent due to me reading/gaming in English for most of my adult life. Yet if I had to teach the language I would have no clue about any of the reason behind the grammar and what rules apply, simply because I am bad at that.
Similarly I know a lot about history and geography, but to teach it?

Sure you can find methods, but teaching is/should not be just repeating a method and looking up if the answers are correct. You should know the subject SO well that if you see a student struggling you can come up with various different ways to explain it.³
So Ghandi's quote might have been accurate for some people during some part of history for a certain number of years, but it's totally irrelevant for the vast majority of humanity. Sure parents teach us things, and often important things, but to assume they can teach us anything and everything is just plain wrong.⁴

1. Yes. At least, when one compares homeschooled children to the students of the teachers in the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel's schools (consider the column "percent above basic").
Parents do not need to know everything (and no child anywhere learns everything); there are these amazing resources that knowledgeable insiders call "books". "Homeschooling" also includes tutors.
2. Is there a "B"?
3. Perhaps one "should". That does not describe the average Education major. Education majors have among the lowest SAT scores of entering college students. Education majors have among the lowest scores on the GRE, LSAT and GMAT of all applicants for graduate school. A former Dean of the Honors program at the UH told me that Education majors had the highest GPA in their major and the lowest GPA outside their major of all students at UH.
4....
Albert Einstein
"Force and Fear Have No Place in Education"

To me the worst thing seems to be for a school principally to work with methods of fear, force and artificial authority. Such treatment destroys the sound sentiments, the sincerity and self-confidence of the pupil. It produces the submissive subject. . . It is comparatively simple to keep the school free from this worst of all evils. Give into the power of the teacher the fewest possible coercive measures, so that the only source of the pupil's respect for the teacher is the human and intellectual qualities of the latter.

Albert Einstein
"Autobiographical Notes"
Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, (Paul Schilpp, ed. (1951), pp. 17-19)

It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry, especially if the food, handed out under such coercion, were to be selected accordingly.

Marvin Minsky
Interview
Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery )1994-July

... the evidence is that many of our foremost achievers developed under conditions that are not much like those of present-day mass education. Robert Lawler just showed me a paper by Harold Macurdy on the child pattern of genius. Macurdy reviews the early education of many eminent people from the last couple of centuries and concludes (1) that most of them had an enormous amount of attention paid to them by one or both parents and (2) that generally they were relatively isolated from other children. This is very different from what most people today consider an ideal school. It seems to me that much of what we call education is really socialization. Consider what we do to our kids. Is it really a good idea to send your 6-year-old into a room full of 6-year-olds, and then, the next year, to put your 7-year-old in with 7-year-olds, and so on? A simple recursive argument suggests this exposes them to a real danger of all growing up with the minds of 6-year-olds. And, so far as I can see, that's exactly what happens.
Our present culture may be largely shaped by this strange idea of isolating children's thought from adult thought. Perhaps the way our culture educates its children better explains why most of us come out as dumb as they do, than it explains how some of us come out as smart as they do.

This is what the cartel's shills defend, and by their defense, endorse. In Hawaii, juvenile arrests FALL when school is NOT in session. Juvenile hospitalizations for human-induced trauma FALL when school is NOT in session.