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

[RandFan]

That is ridiculous.

Hanged, not hung.

Thanks.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Compulsory education has benefits, Malcolm....that is, an education.¹
Can you tell me how slaves benefited from being slaves?²
that's the difference you seem to be ignoring, and I wonder why.³

...and a side bet says that you won't answer.⁴

...or should I say, you can't answer...

1. Some children of negligent parents may benefit. Many children lose, for reasons related to the malign effect of compulsory processes on (a) student motivation and (b) employee motivation.
2. They didn't. That's the point of comparing enslavement in other context to the compulsion applied to students in the cartel's schools.
3. Far from ignoring it, I dispute it. Both involve compulsion and both impose costs greater than the benefits.
4. You lose.

 

[A'isha]

1. Some children of negligent parents may benefit.

No, all children (and society as a whole) benefit.

Many children lose, for reasons related to the malign effect of compulsory processes on (a) student motivation and (b) employee motivation.

Children are not comparable in any way to adult employees. Children have to be forced to do things they need to do but don't want to do, because they are children. That's why parents have to make kids do things as mundane as completing their chores and taking baths.

Children who are self-motivated enough to educate themselves (and even then, they require the assistance of adults knowledgeable about the subjects they are attempting to learn) are prodigies so rare that to restructure the entire US education system for their benefit is an idea so colossally stupid that words kind of fail me here.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

...based on my reading of his posts his argument appears to be that education is not a benefit; it's an anchor that drags down the best and the brightest and exists only for the enrichment of the educational establishment...

Garrison does not appear to base his "reading" on clear expressions of my position in this thread.

... NOT(education = attendance at school). NOT(compulsory attendance at school = compulsory education).

I don't see anyone recommending "no education". NOT(school = education). NOT(State operation of schools = public education).

 

[jimbob]

Meanwhile Malcolm Kirkpatrick refers to everyone else in the third person, and makes insinuations about other posters, whilst accusing other people of incivility.

If he did want to be more clear in his communication, and still wanted a slightly pretentious use of pseudo-logic he could simply say

school ≠ education". "State operation of schools ≠ public education"
"education ≠ attendance at school". "compulsory attendance at school ≠ compulsory education"
Etc.


It would still be better to replace the "not equals sign with the phrase, "Not equivalent to" , in my view as that is slightly more accurate.
However I am still not sure what the point of repeating these assertions is, because nobody else in the thread is advocating mandatory attendance at a state-run school.

I am advocating mandatory attendance (as one can't enforce learning) at an institution that has been shown to meet certain educational standards, which can include homeschooling, but which does NOT include child labour.

...based on my reading of his posts his argument appears to be that education is not a benefit; it's an anchor that drags down the best and the brightest and exists only for the enrichment of the educational establishment...

Garrison does not appear to base his "reading" on clear expressions of my position in this thread.

... NOT(education = attendance at school). NOT(compulsory attendance at school = compulsory education).

I don't see anyone recommending "no education". NOT(school = education). NOT(State operation of schools = public education).

NOT(child labour = education)

 

[RandFan]

1. Some children of negligent parents may benefit. Many children lose, for reasons related to the malign effect of compulsory processes on (a) student motivation and (b) employee motivation.
2. They didn't. That's the point of comparing enslavement in other context to the compulsion applied to students in the cartel's schools.
3. Far from ignoring it, I dispute it. ^a Both involve compulsion and both ^b impose costs greater than the benefits.
4. You lose.

1. Simply asserted. Not just "some", a great deal do and you've nothing to replace state run compulsory schools. Most students who go to state run compulsory schools graduate. Their chance of making more money then their peers who drop out is significant.
2. Children cannot get good jobs in the private sector without education and again, you've not explained how they would do that without state run compulsory schools.
3. Home schooling, chores and parochial schooling involve compulsion. Compulsion is a function of inculcation. We don't let our children do anything they want. B.) Argument by assertion. A fallacy. Had I lived in a world you designed I would very likely not have had an education and I would have had to work menial jobs most of my life.
4. Try a little civility.

 

[RandFan]

Garrison does not appear to base his "reading" on clear expressions of my position in this thread.

Try civility.

I don't see anyone recommending "no education".

I see you recommending policy changes that would result in poor children having less access to education. Until you demonstrate how the poor would be educated under your system then you are virtually recommending that poor children not be educated.

And referring to others in the 3rd person is childish and patronizing.

 

[Garrison]

Garrison does not appear to base his "reading" on clear expressions of my position in this thread.

I do beg your pardon, I left out the word 'state' before 'education' by mistake.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

I see you recommending policy changes that would result in poor children having less access to education.

Whether (a) Parent Performance Contracting (my preference), (b) subsidized homeschooling, (c) tuition vouchers, (d) statutes that allow charter school creation by any 501-c(3), (d) mandatory (for government schools) credit-by-exam, or (e) repeal of child labor laws, minimum wage laws, compulsory school attendance laws and repeal of tax support of school, would "result in poor children having less access to education" than the current system is the core of our difference. Abundant evidence supports the following propositions:
A. As institutions displace parents in education decision making, overall system performance falls.
B. Political control of school harms most the children of the least politically adept parents.

Randfan apparently believes that prescription of curricula by remote, politically-determined authorities will generate a better match between individual children's interests and aptitudes, on the one hand, and the curiculum and pace and method of instruction, on the other than will policies that empower parents to determine for their own individual children the choice of curriculum and the pace and method of instruction.

How 'bout a Federal Department of Pediatric Podiatry that prescribes the single size and style of shoes that children in each one-year age cohort, nation wide, must wear? Brains are more variable than feet. Socialists vastly overstate the benefits of standardization. They ignore abundant historical evidence or they know better and advocate destructive policies for fun and profit.

Until you demonstrate how the poor would be educated under your system then you are virtually recommending that poor children not be educated.

That's like "Until you demonstrate how the poor would be educated fed under your system without collectivized agriculture and State-operated cafeteria then you are virtually recommending that poor children not be educated starve. No. Collectivized agriculture produced mass famine. The NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel has done for education in the US what collectivized agriculture did for nutrition in the Soviet Union, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, and Mengistu's Ethiopia.

And referring to others in the 3rd person is childish and patronizing.

Referring to participants to this discussion as "you" invites personalization and ad hominum argument.

 

[A'isha]

That's like "Until you demonstrate how the poor would be educated fed under your system without collectivized agriculture and State-operated cafeteria then you are virtually recommending that poor children not be educated starve.

You do realize that the US has a state-run system for ensuring that the poor have access to food and thus won't starve without your goofy strawman of "collectivized agriculture and State-operated cafeterias", right?

And why do you compare state-run education to Soviet-style collective farms, and not to, say, currently-existing state-run systems in Western countries such as defense, police, the judicial system, infrastructure maintenance, and even health care?

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

... I am advocating mandatory attendance (as one can't enforce learning) at an institution that has been shown to meet certain educational standards, which can include homeschooling, but which does NOT include child labour. NOT(child labour = education)

Please reconsider. Earlier...

...Here's Megam Mcardle:...

Not everyone likes school. I've always been struck by this passage of Orwell's in The Road to Wigan Pier.

The time was when I used to lament over quite imaginary pictures of lads of fourteen dragged protesting from their lessons and set to work at dismal jobs. It seemed to me dreadful that the doom of a 'job' should descend upon anyone at fourteen. Of course I know now that there is not one working-class boy in a thousand who does not pine for the day when he will leave school. He wants to be doing real work, not wasting his time on ridiculous rubbish like history and geography. To the working class, the notion of staying at school till you are nearly grown-up seems merely contemptible and unmanly. The idea of a great big boy of eighteen, who ought to be bringing a pound a week home to his parents, going to school in a ridiculous uniform and even being caned for not doing his lessons! Just fancy a working-class boy of eighteen allowing himself to be caned! He is a man when the other is still a baby. Ernest Pontifex, in Samuel Butler's Way of All Flesh, after he had had a few glimpses of real life, looked back on his public school and university education and found it a 'sickly, debilitating debauch'. There is much in middle-class life that looks sickly and debilitating when you see it from a working-class angle.

It's still true: the mania to get more and more people into college is the brain child of people who think that school is fun, and that anyone who doesn't go is being deprived of something like a trip to Disneyland packaged with a job guarantee.

Please read this article by Ted Kolderie.

 

[A'isha]

Wow, McArdle's got a pretty laughable strawman there.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Wow, McArdle's got a pretty laughable strawman there.

That's no rebuttal.

 

[A'isha]

That's no rebuttal.

It is, actually.

McArdle attributes a certain position to a specific group of people that those people do not actually hold, making her counter-arguments against that position irrelevant and meaningless.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

It is, actually.

McArdle attributes a certain position to a specific group of people that those people do not actually hold, making her counter-arguments against that position irrelevant and meaningless.

You mean Orwell "attributes a certain position to a specific group of people that those people do not actually hold"? You mean Ted Kolderie "attributes a certain position to a specific group of people that those people do not actually hold"? Or is a preference for non-academic pursuits a position that academics wish other people didn't actually hold?
This "strawman" is the central topic of this argument: remote experts prescribing curricula and methods of instruction for other people's children.

 

[A'isha]

You mean Orwell "attributes a certain position to a specific group of people that those people do not actually hold"? You mean Ted Kolderie "attributes a certain position to a specific group of people that those people do not actually hold"?

No, I mean McArdle attributes a certain position to a specific group of people that those people do not actually hold. I even wrote "McArdle" right there in my post.

 

[jimbob]

Society has changed since the Road to Wigan pier was written. Jobs have changed.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Society has changed since the Road to Wigan pier was written. Jobs have changed.

a) Many jobs have changed very little.
b) Many of the accommodations that people will have to make are more effectively learned on the job than in a classroom.
c) Switzerland and Germany include apprenticeship programs in their education systems.
d) Ted Kolderie makes a parallel argument, recently.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

No, I mean McArdle attributes a certain position to a specific group of people that those people do not actually hold. I even wrote "McArdle" right there in my post.

McArdle agrees with Orwell. Ted Kolderie agrees with Orwell. You disagree with McArdle and you then disagree with Orwell and Ted Kolderie (and Marvin Minsky).

 

[A'isha]

McArdle agrees with Orwell. Ted Kolderie agrees with Orwell. You disagree with McArdle and you then disagree with Orwell and Ted Kolderie (and Marvin Minsky).

What McArdle wrote (particularly in the section you quoted) has nothing to do with anything Orwell, Kolderie, or Minsky ever said.