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

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

(Border Reiver): "So you've realized that the "parental performance" curriculum you originally..."
What? Missing a word here, apparently.
(Border Reiver): "... is inadequate and that a broader knowledge base is necessary."
Was that a question? No. "Better" is a comparative. Let "A < B" mean "B is better than A". My ranking: State-monopoly schooling with no legal escape options (e.g., Cuba, North Korea) < State-monopoly schooling with legal, unsubsidized escape options (Hawaii) < State-operated schooling with subsidized escape options to independent schools (e.g., Milwaukee) < Parent Performance Contracting < No State role in the education industry (plus: repeal of child labor laws and repeal of minimum wage laws).
(Border Reiver): "Now, please answer why an employer is going to educate people for anything but what is strictly necessary for the job for which they were hired? Of pay them enough so that they educate themselves when not on the job?"
To attract competent employees and earn their loyalty, perhaps?

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Why only physics that is more than a century out of date?

a) I did NOT say "only". I said "at least".
b) Classical Mechanics is NOT out of date.
c) Most people want schools to teach Science. Classical Physics is science. Far more students will have occasion to use Classical Mechanics than to use Relativity Theory or Quantum Mechanics.

 

[A'isha]

a) I did NOT say "only".

You specifically stated "19th Century physics", and made no mention of any later physics.

b) Classical Mechanics is NOT out of date.

It is, actually.

c) Most people want schools to teach Science. Classical Physics is science. Far more students will have occasion to use Classical Mechanics than to use Relativity Theory or Quantum Mechanics.

Teaching modern science, as schools do now, better prepares students for post-secondary education, as well as understanding and dealing with the modern world. Some of the subjects in your bare-bones curriculum even rely on it - I had to grasp the basics of quantum theory as part of high school chemistry class, learning about covalent bonding and things like that. not to mention that everything from solar panels to lasers to CRTs is merely inexplicable voodoo without an understanding of quantum mechanics.

Why do you propose to educate children even less than they're educated now, to teach them fewer and out-of-date concepts than currently are taught in school curricula? Your "schools" will turn out technological and scientific illiterates, who are wholly unprepared to not just help push the modern world forward, but are unprepared to live in it.

 

[Border Reiver]

(Border Reiver): "So you've realized that the "parental performance" curriculum you originally..."
What? Missing a word here, apparently.
(Border Reiver): "... is inadequate and that a broader knowledge base is necessary."
Was that a question? No. "Better" is a comparative. Let "A < B" mean "B is better than A". My ranking: State-monopoly schooling with no legal escape options (e.g., Cuba, North Korea) < State-monopoly schooling with legal, unsubsidized escape options (Hawaii) < State-operated schooling with subsidized escape options to independent schools (e.g., Milwaukee) < Parent Performance Contracting < No State role in the education industry.

(Border Reiver): "Now, please answer why an employer is going to educate people for anything but what is strictly necessary for the job for which they were hired? Of pay them enough so that they educate themselves when not on the job?"
To attract competent employees and earn their loyalty, perhaps?

Wouldn't it be more in the interests of the employer to ensure emplyee loyalty by means of "company store" approach, whereby employees are trained at company expense then compelled by contract to work a fixed number of years to repay the employer, preferably with "no competition" clauses worked into the contract, so as to prevent other employers from benefitting from the education that they didn't pay for?

You preferred method of providing education (zero state involvement) has been tried already in the development of human societies. It leads to a educated elite and the greater mass of people without education. Greater state involvement has obtained higher levels of education for larger numbers of people with corresponding rises in their relative affluence than at any time in history. Why should we turn back the clock?

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

You preferred method of providing education (zero state involvement) has been tried already in the development of human societies.¹ It leads to a educated elite and the greater mass of people without education^.1,2 Greater state involvement has obtained higher levels of education for larger numbers of people with corresponding rises in their relative affluence than at any time in history.³ Why should we turn back the clock?⁴

1. Everyone gets some education. What did not happen in primitive societies was schooling apart from adult society.
2. I'm not so sure. Consider early Europe. Often the elite were not particularly well educated. The scholars were not aristocrats but priests.
3. I believe affluence preceded State intrusion into the education industry. The State "jumped on the back of a galloping horse" (West's phrase). Either a majority want schooling for their children, in which case a State role is not necessary, or a majority don't want schooling for their children, in which case schooling is anti-democratic.
4. Because policies that compel attendance at State-monopoly institutions is abusive and wasteful of taxpayers' money and children's time.

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.

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 principals (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).

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 there- fore their personal responsibility, as 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. ...

 

[Border Reiver]

1. Everyone gets some education. What did not happen in primitive societies was schooling apart from adult society.

How primitive are you talking about? While hunter-gatherer and pastoralists societies might be able to do nothing but the equivalent of OJT, once you start to get settled communities with differentiated jobs, you start to see segregated training often based on age. The age cohort based education of the Zulus would be a prime example.

2. I'm not so sure. Consider early Europe. Often the elite were not particularly well educated. The scholars were not aristocrats but priests.

Using the idea of specialized training as education, the European aristocrats were certainly educated as a military elite, and were therefore able to maintain their position by denying such an education to the masses.

3. I believe affluence preceded State intrusion into the education industry. The State "jumped on the back of a galloping horse" (West's phrase). Either a majority want schooling for their children, in which case a State role is not necessary, or a majority don't want schooling for their children, in which case schooling is anti-democratic.

Given your typical reduction of democracy to the absurdity of having the people vote on a single pattern of footwear, I would think you'd not care either way on the inherent democracy of an educated populace.

In any event, the early industrial revolution did not see any great levels of wealth making it down to the masses. When you need to employ nearly the entirety of a family unit including children to obtain the basics of survival, that's not affluence.

4. Because policies that compel attendance at State-monopoly institutions is abusive and wasteful of taxpayers' money and children's time.

While policies that would deny the children of poorer people the opportunity to be employed in menial jobs are clearly indicative of a caring society.

Marvin Minsky Interview

Looking at outliers doesn't tell you what works for the majority.

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.

All that study did was confirm similar effects to the general population - ie persons who experience violence are likely to be violent themsves. Given similar studies on violence in the family or in the workplace, school's not much different.

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

Rhodes' study was not particularly maverick or controversial. And it's relevance to your position on schooling is what?

If a goal is to reduce violence experienced by children, what is your solution, isolate them from society until their parents deem them ready to assume the role that has been selected for them?

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Given your typical reduction of democracy to the absurdity of having the people vote on a single pattern of footwear ...

Where do I "reduc(e) ... democracy to the absurdity of having people vote on a single pattern of footwear"? What do you expect to gain by this misrepresentation of the argument? You discredit your voice, seems to me.

I offer the decision of the size and style of shoe as one of the many choices that are most obviously NOT appropriate material for aggregated decision making. Do you intend to suggest that it is?

I have asked many times in this thread and others the following two questions:
1. From State (government, generally) operation (or subsidization) of what industries does society as a whole benefit? You may imagine a dichotomous classification A = {x: x in an unlikely candidate for State operation (or subsidization)} and B = [x: x is a likely candidate for State operation (or subsidization)} or a continuum .................
(highly unlikely) -1_______.________+1 (highly likely).
2. What criteria determine an industry's classification or position on the continuum?

The education industry is not a natural monopoly. Beyond a very low level there are no economies of scale at the delivery end of the education industry as it currently operates. Education only marginally qualifies as a "public good" as economists use the term and the public goods argument implies subsidy and regulation, at most, not State operation of an industry.

An inappropriate industrial structure imposes costs on society. Some of these costs appear as violence, vandalism, and drug abuse. This is what the cartel's shills defend.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

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 there- fore their personal responsibility, as 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. ...

Rhodes' study was not particularly maverick or controversial. And it's relevance to your position on schooling is what?

__Why They Kill__ was not "Rhodes' study"; it was Rhodes' book about the work of the criminologist Lonnie Athens. Athens is the maverick, not Rhodes.

 

[A'isha]

Where do I "reduc(e) ... democracy to the absurdity of having people vote on a single pattern of footwear"?

Every time you try to dismiss local votes about public school issues by resorting to that useless analogy.

I have asked many times in this thread and others the following two questions:
1. From State (government, generally) operation (or subsidization) of what industries does society as a whole benefit? You may imagine a dichotomous classification A = {x: x in an unlikely candidate for State operation (or subsidization)} and B = [x: x is a likely candidate for State operation (or subsidization)} or a continuum .................
(highly unlikely) -1_______.________+1 (highly likely).
2. What criteria determine an industry's classification or position on the continuum?

And you've been given answers several times.

Beyond a very low level there are no economies of scale at the delivery end of the education industry as it currently operates.

The Lassibile and Gomez paper you love to cherry-pick quotes from disagrees.

Some of these costs appear as violence, vandalism, and drug abuse. This is what the cartel's shills defend.

You have yet to explain why your issues about violence done to children when they're forced to be in classrooms together during a large portion of the day (and year) are not also a factor in private and religious schools.

 

[Border Reiver]

Where do I "reduc(e) ... democracy to the absurdity of having people vote on a single pattern of footwear"? What do you expect to gain by this misrepresentation of the argument? You discredit your voice, seems to me.

You consistently bring any discussion where aggregate decision making is brought up to the absurd reduction of the argument of voting on shoes.

Here
Here
Here
Here
Here

I offer the decision of the size and style of shoe as one (of the many) choices that is most obviously NOT appropriate material for aggregated decision making. Do you intend to suggest that it is?

No, I would say in general democracies tend to direct their energies to what people see as serious issues. I would posit that given the energy people put towards public schooling that it is appropriate material for aggregated decision making.

An inappropriate industrial structure imposes costs on society. Some of these costs appear as violence, vandalism, and drug abuse. This is what the cartel's shills defend.

And of course none of that would be present in a private school, home school, or in on the job training? Violence is a part of human society.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Where do I "reduc(e) ... democracy to the absurdity of having people vote on a single pattern of footwear"? What do you expect to gain by this misrepresentation of the argument? You discredit your voice, seems to me.

You consistently bring any discussion where aggregate decision making is brought up to the absurd reduction of the argument of voting on shoes.

Here
Here
Here
Here
Here

"Absurd"? We agree. We agree that assigning to aggregate decision making processes (democratic or otherwise) the choice of shoes would not work. That's kinda my point. It's not "reduction", it's an analogy.

No, I would say in general democracies tend to direct their energies to what people see as serious issues. I would posit that given the energy people put towards public schooling that it is appropriate material for aggregated decision making.

That's our argument. You presume the conclusion.

And of course none of that would be present in a private school, home school...

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...

... or in on the job training? Violence is a part of human society.

Not to the degree that we see with compulsory attendance policies. I linked this above. In Hawaii, juvenile arrests fall when school is not in session. Juvenile hospitalizations for human-induced trauma fall when school is not in session. More recent work by Tim Halliday of the UH Economics Department finds a similar result.
Clive Harber,
"Schooling as Violence"
Educational Review, 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."
...
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.

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.
...
In the early 1980s, while the senior author was involved in a school violence project, an informal survey of a random group of inner city high school students was conducted. When asked why they misbehaved in school, the most common response was that they wanted to get back at teachers who put them down, did not care about them, or showed disrespect for them, their families, or their culture.
...
...schools do not encourage research regarding possible emotional maltreatment of students by staff or investigatiion into how this behavior might affect student misbehavior.
...
Since these studies focused on teacher-induced PTSD and explored all types of teacher maltreatment, some of the aggressive feelings were also caused by physical or sexual abuse. There was no attempt to separate actual aggression from feelings of aggression. 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. Yet, emotional abuse and its relation to misbehavior in schools receives little pedagogical, psychological, or legal attention and is rarely mentioned in textbooks on school discipline (Pokalo & Hyman, 1993, Sarno, 1992).
...
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).

E. G. West
Carleton University, Department of Economics
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.

Linda Darling-Hammond
Stanford University
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...

See here. And here.
The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, and brutal violations of common sense and common decency.--H.L. Mencken

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

... Given your typical reduction of democracy to the absurdity of having the people vote on a single pattern of footwear...

Where do I "reduc(e) ... democracy to the absurdity of having people vote on a single pattern of footwear"?

Every time you try to dismiss local votes about public school issues by resorting to that useless analogy.

We disagree that it's "useless". Brains vary more than feet.

I have asked many times in this thread and others the following two questions:
1. From State (government, generally) operation (or subsidization) of what industries does society as a whole benefit? You may imagine a dichotomous classification A = {x: x in an unlikely candidate for State operation (or subsidization)} and B = [x: x is a likely candidate for State operation (or subsidization)} or a continuum .................
(highly unlikely) -1_______.________+1 (highly likely).
2. What criteria determine an industry's classification or position on the continuum?

And you've been given answers several times.

Not to my recollection. I have seen three partial answers. One, long ago, was circular: we give to government power over those industries which we trust government to run well. Ant provided a short list (i.e., very incomplete answer to part 1) with no answer to part 2. Randfan endorsed Ant's answer.

The education industry is not a natural monopoly. Beyond a very low level there are no economies of scale at the delivery end of the education industry as it currently operates.

The Lassibile and Gomez paper you love to cherry-pick quotes from disagrees.

Their empirical result is as follows:
Gerard Lassibile and Lucia Navarro Gomez,
"Organization and Efficiency of Educational Systems: some empirical findings"
Comparative Education, Vol. 36 #1, 2000, Feb. , pg. 16

Furthermore, the regression results indicate that countries where private education is more widespread perform significantly better than countries where it is more limited. The result showing the private sector to be more efficient is similar to those found in other contexts with individual data (see, for example, Psucharopoulos, 1987; Jiminez, et. al, 1991). This finding should convince countries to reconsider policies that reduce the role of the private sector in the field of education.

That doesn't look like disagreement to me. Furthermore, across the US, within States, per-pupil costs rise and performance falls as districts increase in size. Corr(enrollment, $/pupil) is positive. Across the US, between States, per-pupil costs rise as the fraction of total enrollment assigned to large districts increases. Corr(%20K+dist., $/pupil) is positive.

An inappropriate industrial structure imposes costs on society. Some of these costs appear as violence, vandalism, and drug abuse. This is what the cartel's shills defend.

You have yet to explain why your issues about violence done to children when they're forced to be in classrooms together during a large portion of the day (and year) are not also a factor in private and religious schools.

Answered many times. Policies that give to individual parents the power to determine for their own children the choice of curriculum and the pace and method of instruction combine parents' local knowledge of the interests and aptitudes of their own children (which remote authorities do not possess and could not use if they did possess it) with the incentive to use that knowledge in children's interests. By analogy: What's the most popular size and style of shoe? Women's size 5 running shoes? Stiletto heels? Men's size 9-w work boots? Whichever, if that's the only size and style available, many feet will be forced into ill-fitting shoes. Every additional option reduces the total pain. Brains vary more than feet.

 

[A'isha]

That doesn't look like disagreement to me.

It's in the parts of the paper that you, mysteriously, never quote in your copypasta:

As far as the management of education systems is concerned, Table IV shows that centralized systems have lower expenditure per pupil than decentralized systems. It seems that, all other things being equal, management on a regional or local level gives rise to high administrative costs, which may reduce the share of funds allocated to teaching expenditures. This is true of both differentiated and non-differentiated systems.

[...]

Finally, centrally managed education systems performed as well as decentralized ones. The idea that decentralized systems are more efficient from the point of view of student achievement seems erroneous. Decentralized organization, which is becoming more common, combines two disadvantages: it is relatively expensive, and it is not as efficient as other organizations in relationship to student achievement.

There's your "economy of scale" in education.

Answered many times. Policies that give to individual parents the power to determine for their own children the choice of curriculum and the pace and method of instruction combine parents' local knowledge of the interests and aptitudes of their own children (which remote authorities do not possess and could not use if they did possess it) with the incentive to use that knowledge in children's interests. By analogy: What's the most popular size and style of shoe? Women's size 5 running shoes? Stiletto heels? Men's size 9-w work boots? Whichever, if that's the only size and style available, many feet will be forced into ill-fitting shoes. Every additional option reduces the total pain. Brains vary more than feet.

Not only does that dodge the question yet again, it highlights what's wrong with your analogy. Despite the many styles and types of shoes available, there are standardized shoe sizes. Just like there are many different styles and types of curriculum and textbooks and pedagogical methods within the (rather limited, by international standards) standardization of those things.

 

[RandFan]

"Absurd"?

Reductio ad absurdum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reductio ad absurdum (Latin: "reduction to absurdity"), also known as argumentum ad absurdum (Latin: argument to absurdity), is a common form of argument which seeks to demonstrate that a statement is true by showing that a false, untenable, or absurd result follows from its denial,[1] or in turn to demonstrate that a statement is false by showing that a false, untenable, or absurd result follows from its acceptance.

Reductio ad absurdum is a valid form of argument. However, your argument is fatally flawed for two key reasons.

1. Cost of entry (for the lack of a better term) is not commensurate. Shoes are relatively inexpensive per capita and therefore do not pose a significant risk to individuals and therefore society for lack of adequate footwear.
2. Poor people throughout the world have shoes but not an education. It's far easier to get a pair of shoes than it is an education sufficient to ensure more than menial labor (many menial labor jobs also require some degree of education.

Societies where parents cannot afford to send their children to school correlate to high levels of illiteracy and poverty. Education is fundamental to the health and well being of a society.


If, "IF", shoes cost the same as education, and "IF" adequate footwear were as fundamental to the wealth and well being of societies then I would be in favor of democratically providing the funds for general footwear for all. I would think that there should be a public and private option though just as I think there should be both public and private options for education.

 

[Dcdrac]

While I am in broad agreement with you about options between private and public Randfan you do not want to see how it oerates in the UK where the private edcation system almost de facto guarantees a top job to even the medicore offspring of the those that can afford to send their children to those schools.

 

[RandFan]

While I am in broad agreement with you about options between private and public Randfan you do not want to see how it oerates in the UK where the private edcation system almost de facto guarantees a top job to even the medicore offspring of the those that can afford to send their children to those schools.

While I've been labeled a "shill" for the NEA by Malcolm, I'm not exactly enthralled with the state of American education. The truth is that it's a complex problem that is not easily resolved with silly absolutist rhetoric (like compulsory schooling equates to slavery). I'd like to have that discussion and I have invited Malcolm and any others to have a substantive discussion on the merits of both only to be rebuffed.

Sadly my sig file is proven once again.

BTW: I'm happy to personally take your claim at face value, that said, your citations are missing.

 

[Dcdrac]

Here we go

http://cee.lse.ac.uk/ceedps/ceedp115.pdf

 

[RandFan]

Here we go

http://cee.lse.ac.uk/ceedps/ceedp115.pdf

Thanks for the information. I've not read the entire abstract yet so forgive me if it is covered and perhaps you can respond. Public schools remain the cheaper option. The problem with these kinds of comparisons is that the students for private schools are typically born advantaged and/or they are self selected. IOW: Parents who are more likely involved with their children and are willing to spend time to ensure children do homework and to provide assistance are also more likely to seek out these private options. They are also more likely affluent and by definition the children are born advantaged and statistically more likely to succeed academically.

What is typically lacking in these kinds of studies is a control. I don't know if the abstract contains one and I don't know what the methodologies are. ANTPogo and/or Nova Land would be better suited to critically analyzing the study. We will see if they join in.

In any event, could you pull quote any relevant sections? I would prefer a back and forth discussion as opposed to arguing via link.

Thanks.

 

[RandFan]

Here we go

http://cee.lse.ac.uk/ceedps/ceedp115.pdf

A quick point:

Rising wage inequality and falling social mobility form the backdrop. Reasons to expect an increasing advantage for private school pupils over the last several decades include the internal transformation of private schools with an increasing emphasis on academic achievements, and the substantive rises in the resources available, supported by increasing real fees which, in the context of the emergent knowledge economy and rising female labour force participation, parents were willing to pay.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

... your argument is fatally flawed for two key reasons.

1. Cost of entry (for the lack of a better term) is not commensurate. Shoes are relatively inexpensive per capita and therefore do not pose a significant risk to individuals and therefore society for lack of adequate footwear.
2. Poor people throughout the world have shoes but not an education. It's far easier to get a pair of shoes than it is an education sufficient to ensure more than menial labor (many menial labor jobs also require some degree of education.

1. (a) there is a better term: "price". "Cost of entry" (or, "barriers to entry) normally refers to the problems that producers face, not to the cost to consumers.
(b) We agree here. This has nothing to do with the problem I illustrate with the analogy between voting on the one size and style of shoes all 14 year-olds must wear and the one curriculum and pace of instruction all 14 year-olds must pursue. Brains vary more than feet. Aggregation of decision making authority into processes ruled by remote authorities must produce, for many students, a poor match between the individual student's interests and abilities, on the one hand, and the uniform pace at which students must move through the single curriculum, on the other.

Societies where parents cannot afford to send their children to school correlate to high levels of illiteracy and poverty.

That's nearly circular: poor societies are poor.

Education is fundamental to the health and well being of a society.

Perhaps. "Education" is too vague for this to be a testable proposition. Comparatively, "compulsory attendance at school" is not "fundamental to the health and well being of a society". The historical record provides numerous counter-examples.

If, "IF", shoes cost the same as education, and "IF" adequate footwear were as fundamental to the wealth and well being of societies then I would be in favor of democratically providing the funds for general footwear for all. I would think that there should be a public and private option though just as I think there should be both public and private options for education.

That's the "public goods" argument for charity, which does not imply State (government, generally) operation of an industry (consider Food Stamps). The argument for State operation of school, from "negligent parent" considerations, is different. That's the argument for compulsory attendance at school. Compulsory attendance laws don't mean much unless there exists some school for children whom all other schools have rejected. Call these default-option schools "the public schools". Likely, working in these schools would be less pleasant than working in schools in which students and teachers come together by mutual agreement. It would be reasonable to pay these schools a premium above the per-capita subsidy (e.g., vouchers) that taxpayers would offer to independent schools. Periodically putting out to competitive bid the contract to operate default-option "public" schools would address the "regulatory capture" issue that operation by unionized public sector workers currently creates.