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

[Border Reiver]

It would. Besides, much of the compulsory 12-year curriculum is fluff. Minimum wage laws, child labor laws, and compulsory attendance laws put on-the-job training off limits to many children.

So what are you considering "fluff?" Geography? History? Social studies? Gym? Math?

Child labour laws were enacted to address very real social concerns. Minimum wage laws exist so that families do not have to have the majority of a family unit working to reach subsistence level, and so that employers aero table to use their far superior bargaining position to exploit workers. Children, lacking the knowledge of their rights and what are considered valuable skills, are especially vulnerable to exploitation and the laws are there to prevent that.

.I believe that is mistaken, but I grant the argument for the sake of compromise. How 'bout tuition vouchers, tuition tax credits, subsidized homeschooling, or Parent Performance Contracting at 2/3 of the regular-ed budget of the cartel's schools?

Any program that deals with the expenditure of public monies needs oversight, so simply by adding vouchers, subsidies, or your PPC notion will INCREASE administration costs by adding several new programs to administer, and monitoring costs for all the non-publically administered monies.

Then you need to consider economies of scale for things such as books, teaching aids, etc, all of which will be greater for smaller schools, training centres and much greater for homeschoolers. Consider a textbook- school boards can reduce their cost per unit with large orders for several schools, private schools will still be able to make use of some bulk discounts, homeschoolers cannot. Schools can also get several years out of text books, while homeschoolers generally just get one.

Then there is the fact that schools can have specialists, spreading the costs across a student population, vice home schools or even single schools who may not not have the resources to deal with more specialized training. Those schools can still access such skills, but at a higher cost.

Then there is the issue of instructor illness and lost instructional time. In school boards, there is a pool of on call substitutes available when instructors are ill, private schools have this as well, but the pool is smaller. This option is obviously not available on a consistent scale to home schoolers.

How do you split a dime bag if you don't have a scale? Every street-smart kid knows the strategy: I cut, you choose. Let's take the cartel's promoters at their word and accept their claim that the budget they request is necessary. Then it should be impossible for parents empowered with vouchers to accomplish the job for less.

Using Canada as an example again, I note that private schools here cost more in tuition fees alone than the per student cost for the public option.

How about you provide some actual figures showing that private schools with comparable cirricula are cheaper than the public option?

 

[A'isha]

Poor people make poor decisions and buy junk and bad services elect megalomanic economically illiterate politicians.

Yes, but fortunately George W. Bush was limited to just two terms in office.

So what are you considering "fluff?" Geography? History? Social studies? Gym? Math?

Anything that's not "Math, basic language fluency, classical mechanics (i.e., 19th century physics), chemistry, vocational prep", from what he's said before. Things like biology and evolution are excluded, because "Your auto mechanic does not need evolutionary theory", because children's future career paths are apparently going to be predetermined during early education - we'll somehow know that certain kids are only going to be auto mechanics later in life anyway, so therefore we don't have to bother teaching them things that the Lower Classes don't need to know.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

When will this tired nonsense end? ....
When are you going to understand ...
...
I could not tell my father I wasn't doing chores for the day. I could not tell my father "I quit". Well, I could tell him that but I would have gotten severely disciplined.
...
(All human behavioral traits are heritable. Anyone else wonder whether Randfan's parenting style mirrors his interpersonal style? MK)
...
If there was some nation where children could do whatever the hell they pleased and that nation were higher in economic freedom and measurable well being then you would have a point.

Such a place only exists in Disney movies like Peter Pan and Pinochio...
...
...the notion that there is no private option is a big lie. A big fat one.

Someone once said:...

... 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.

????

Do you have a point? I stand by what I said in both instances. You are caught up in dichotomies. You are excluding the middle. My position lies there.

The point is obvious. The discussion that Randfan says he would "like to have" as long as he conducts the discussion in this abusive interpersonal style. What, aside from "rebuffed" does he expect?

 

[A'isha]

When will this tired nonsense end? ....
When are you going to understand ...
...
I could not tell my father I wasn't doing chores for the day. I could not tell my father "I quit". Well, I could tell him that but I would have gotten severely disciplined.
...
(All human behavioral traits are heritable. Anyone else wonder whether Randfan's parenting style mirrors his interpersonal style? MK)...
If there was some nation where children could do whatever the hell they pleased and that nation were higher in economic freedom and measurable well being then you would have a point.

Such a place only exists in Disney movies like Peter Pan and Pinochio...
...
...the notion that there is no private option is a big lie. A big fat one.

Someone once said:...

... 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.

Wow. I missed that the first time I read this.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Tuition at a private school costs approximately $13,000/year now before additional fees are added. The amount of taxes collected from me that goes towards education is considerably less than that, and would represent approx. 1/3 to 1/6 of a middle class person's annual pay, which generally puts most people in a position of eating or educating. I believe that by not pooling the resources of the entire tax base, you are creating a nearly permanent semi-literate underclass which would consist of the vast majority of the population.

I believe that is mistaken ...

What is the basis for this belief?

1. Across industries, across countries, competitive markets in goods and services lowers costs and improves quality.
2. Beyond a very low level there are no economies of scale at the delivery end of the education business 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 (government, generally) operation of an industry.
3. School can be expensive. Education is potentially cheap. It does not take 12 years at $12,000 per pupil-year to teach a normal child to read and compute. Most vocational training occurs more effectively on the job than in a classroom.
4. Compulsion degrades motivation, and motivation is a critical component of educational achievement.
5. Large pools of resources attract parasites and predators, who wrest control from normal citizens. Across the US, per pupil costs rise and performance falls as districts increase in size.

Please read James Tooley's __The Beautiful Tree__.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Child labour laws were enacted to address very real social concerns. Minimum wage laws exist so that families do not have to have the majority of a family unit working to reach subsistence level, and so that employers aero table to use their far superior bargaining position to exploit workers. Children, lacking the knowledge of their rights and what are considered valuable skills, are especially vulnerable to exploitation and the laws are there to prevent that.

That's the romantic version of legal history that the cartel's schools teach. I recommend Joel Spring, The American School and Friedrich Hayek (ed.) Capitalism and the Historians on the history of child labor laws and the people behind them and Walter Williams, The State against Blacks and Thomas Sowell, Markets and Minorities, on the history of minimum wage laws and the people behind them.

 

[RandFan]

State-mandated attendance at school is a downside of wealth.

Ad hoc rationalization. You are now just making stuff up to attack the data and science. There is nothing axiomatic about your statement. Humans are a social species and improving society has a synergistic effect. We feel good when our neighbors are not starving or struggling. Most of us have empathy and compassion. Scientifically understood as mirror neurons. Evolution endowed us with the capacity to care about our fellowman. And as we do that more and more society become more and more wealthier. And the evidence bears this out. Social animals in the wild are among the most successful. Prey animals typically far out number the predators.

Your thesis requires us to believe that nations that do whats best to have high health and well-being are contradictory when it comes to education. Your thesis also requires us to believe that evolution is wrong and that it does not increase the overall health of the society if the most successful reduce some of their fitness for the good of all.

 

[RandFan]

The discussion that Randfan...

I'm reasonable in my responses to you. In deference to you I do as you ask and use the term State Compulsory Schools. And you? You condescend to me every opportunity you get. I've been very accomodating and then you come out with your "school = slavery" nonsense and back to your old ways of condescending.

How unsurprising.

 

[RandFan]

The point is obvious. The discussion that Randfan says he would "like to have" as long as he conducts the discussion in this abusive interpersonal style. What, aside from "rebuffed" does he expect?

One more thing, my statement was in response to this:

In school, children are not free to quit, so what are the consequences?

It is nonsense. Obvious nonsense. Just when start having a constructive conversation you come out with that. It's been thoroughly debunked.

If you would have read the rest of my post to understand rather than getting upset over the fact that I attacked your ideas as nonsense then you would have seen I was right to call it nonsense, especially given how many times it's been debunked.

Parents are the ones to force their children to go to school whether it's parochial, private, homeschooling. You've not demonstrated that children are fearful of state compulsion nor have you demonstrated that children even know that there is a mandate or that they care.

You won't address the fact that parents force their children to do chores and to go to private and parochial schools. You are simply reading to find something to complain about.

 

[RandFan]

That's the romantic version of legal history that the cartel's schools teach. I recommend Joel Spring, The American School and Friedrich Hayek (ed.) Capitalism and the Historians on the history of child labor laws and the people behind them and Walter Williams, The State against Blacks and Thomas Sowell, Markets and Minorities, on the history of minimum wage laws and the people behind them.

I recommend you look at the facts. Australia has $16.88 minimum wage. America pays food stamps to Wall-Mart employees so that we can supplement labor for the richest people on earth.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Ad hoc rationalization. You are now just making stuff up to attack the data and science. There is nothing axiomatic about your statement. Humans are a social species and improving society has a synergistic effect.

Sounds like: "It would be good if it happened, therefore it happens" to me. It would work this way if polities were not vulnerable to parasitism and predation.

We feel good when our neighbors are not starving or struggling. Most of us have empathy and compassion. Scientifically understood as mirror neurons. Evolution endowed us with the capacity to care about our fellowman.

This could just as well be an argument for the proposition that a State presence in the education industry is unnecessary.

And as we do that more and more society become more and more wealthier. And the evidence bears this out. Social animals in the wild are among the most successful. Prey animals typically far out number the predators.

Careful. Have you considered oceanic food chains?

Your thesis requires us to believe that nations that do whats best to have high health and well-being are contradictory when it comes to education.

It's not so all-or-nothing.

Your thesis also requires us to believe that evolution is wrong and that it does not increase the overall health of the society if the most successful reduce some of their fitness for the good of all.

I recommend Dawkins, The Selfish Gene and Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation. Biological reciprocal altruism only extends to close relatives. A culture may instill it in the young, but then defectors will prosper by cheating people who trust blindly.

 

[RandFan]

Sounds like: "It would be good if it happened, therefore it happens" to me.

Not even close. Rational self interest. We suffer when others suffer. Therefore it's in our rational self interest to help others.

It would work this way if polities were not vulnerable to parasitism and predation.

I'm not sure what you are getting at but the theory makes predictions and provides explanations and the theory is confirmed over and over with animals and human. We are a social species and it's in our best interest to help out our fellow many.

This could just as well be an argument for the proposition that a State presence in the education industry is unnecessary.

So long as individuals acting on their own ensured that poor people got an education. Philanthropy is good in the US but it cannot compete with the government. And, again, nations highest in economic freedom and well being provide these programs. You argue as if it is a fluke but I have the science and the data. We evolved to live in groups of about 200. Once we get beyond that number the freeriders have less to fear from social stigma. Which is why civilization has always needed some form of government.

Careful. Have you considered oceanic food chains?It's not so all-or-nothing.I recommend Dawkins, The Selfish Gene and Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation. Biological reciprocal altruism only extends to close relatives. A culture may instill it in the young, but then defectors will prosper by cheating people who trust blindly.

Actually no, the math, theory and practical evidence shows an expanding circle. We can predict based on shared genetic material the likelihood one will help another. Child, then sibling, then cousin, then neighbor, then member of tribe, then member of species. Game theory makes the prediction beautifully and the data fits the prediction.

Evolution ensures there will be cheaters. They can actually help the group. There is variation for a reason. If we were all sociopaths we would not be a social species.

 

[Border Reiver]

That's the romantic version of legal history that the cartel's schools teach. I recommend Joel Spring, The American School and Friedrich Hayek (ed.) Capitalism and the Historians on the history of child labor laws and the people behind them and Walter Williams, The State against Blacks and Thomas Sowell, Markets and Minorities, on the history of minimum wage laws and the people behind them.

I can look to 19th century Britain and the urban US from the same period where the urban poor are having to ensure that extended families are all working to bring in money to ensure that the rent was paid and minimal food was available. That was required because employers routinely paid minimal wages on the principle that most un and semi skilled workers should be paid next to nothing because if that person won't do it, there's probably someone else who would like to eat who will do it for that wage.

The biggest cause of rejection for military service in the US, Canada and the UK during WWI and WWII was problems associated with chronic malnutrition.

 

[yodaluver28]

I know argument from YouTube is generally frowned upon and for good reason but this excellent BBC documentary on the horrors child slave labor in Victorian England explains exactly what happens when the poor are politically and financially powerless as well as uneducated and thus unable to move into skilled labor, medicine, law, or any other profession. They are forced to take extremely dangerous menial work for a pittance just to survive. When the labor of poor adults isn't enough, they're killed by the horrible working conditions, or sent to war overseas, their children and orphans are enslaved to do it in their place. This deprives the children of an education and any opportunity to improve their own lots in life, if they survive into adulthood at all. There is a very good reason why this vile practice has been banished is so many countries and no one with a conscience wishes to go back to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87eVOpbcoVo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_zJeDKE9vI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJAr9gPyvms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRp8vUesbbE

RandFan is quite right about humanity being inherently social and societies that recognize this are far more free and contented than those who deny it. The most recent World Happiness Report is clear on the matter. The five happiest countries in the world, in order, are Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, The Netherlands, and Sweden. Among the factors used in determining the rankings: real GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, perceived freedom to make life choices, freedom from political corruption, social support, charitable donations, and overall generosity.

http://unsdsn.org/happiness/

 

[Niche Geek]

1. Across industries, across countries, competitive markets in goods and services lowers costs and improves quality.
2. Beyond a very low level there are no economies of scale at the delivery end of the education business 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 (government, generally) operation of an industry.
3. School can be expensive. Education is potentially cheap. It does not take 12 years at $12,000 per pupil-year to teach a normal child to read and compute. Most vocational training occurs more effectively on the job than in a classroom.
4. Compulsion degrades motivation, and motivation is a critical component of educational achievement.
5. Large pools of resources attract parasites and predators, who wrest control from normal citizens. Across the US, per pupil costs rise and performance falls as districts increase in size.

Please read James Tooley's __The Beautiful Tree__.

You are honestly saying that your ideology trumps fact? His figures must be wrong because the alternative is that your premises are incorrect?

 

[RandFan]

I know argument from YouTube is generally frowned upon and for good reason but this excellent BBC documentary on the horrors child slave labor in Victorian England explains exactly what happens when the poor are politically and financially powerless as well as uneducated and thus unable to move into skilled labor, medicine, law, or any other profession. They are forced to take extremely dangerous menial work for a pittance just to survive. When the labor of poor adults isn't enough, they're killed by the horrible working conditions, or sent to war overseas, their children and orphans are enslaved to do it in their place. This deprives the children of an education and any opportunity to improve their own lots in life, if they survive into adulthood at all. There is a very good reason why this vile practice has been banished is so many countries and no one with a conscience wishes to go back to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87eVOpbcoVo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_zJeDKE9vI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJAr9gPyvms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRp8vUesbbE

RandFan is quite right about humanity being inherently social and societies that recognize this are far more free and contented than those who deny it. The most recent World Happiness Report is clear on the matter. The five happiest countries in the world, in order, are Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, The Netherlands, and Sweden. Among the factors used in determining the rankings: real GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, perceived freedom to make life choices, freedom from political corruption, social support, charitable donations, and overall generosity.

http://unsdsn.org/happiness/

Thank you. It was the Human Development Index along with reading Richard Dawkin's The Selfish Gene that got me to reconsider social darwinism (or whatever the hell I believed at the time, I was a quasi libertarian conservative).

I had honestly believed that America was highest in every index. I honestly believed that the more that government involved itself in the affairs of people the less free that those people would be. Yet this is contradicted by every study there is. And the facts conform with the science. Some think it's a which came first, chicken or egg, problem. When in reality it is a dynamic feedback loop. Obviously a nation needs some wealth to help the poor. But helping the poor increases the wealth of a nation allowing them to help the poor some more.

Malcolm, and I'm referring to him here in the third person because I'm not addressing him, believes that wealthy nations help people (provide social services to the poor and disadvantaged) in spite of the fact that it is hurting those nations to do so. Yet he cannot come up with examples of nations that don't provide those services and are therefore at the top of some index.

I don't have a label for my ideology. I believe in the importance of individualism, personal responsibility, thrift, saving, investment, entrepreneurship, rational self interest (I am a Rand fan), private industry, private ownership of both real and intellectual property. in short I believe that capitalism to be the greatest economic engine the world has ever known.

But unfettered capitalism (Laissez-faire capitalism), like so called "communism" (stalinism, maoism, etc.) are doomed to failure because both make the fatal error of not understanding the true nature of capitalism. The point made best by Martin Luther King.

“Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both.”

Of all the false dichotomies none has been more detrimental to humans. It is estimated that Mao and Stalin were responsible for the death of more than 100 million of their own citizens. Many if not most died of starvation, either due to arrogance and anti-intellectualism or it was forced on them during Stalin's purges or Mao's Great Leap Forward. They sacrificed their citizens for the good of the state. Inadequately regulated capitalism resulted in economic bust and boom periods that wiped people out financially, created monopolies, corrupted govt and caused the great depression and the great recession.

We have history as a guide. We have seen that the greatest economic expansion for all tiers of society occurred after FDR's reforms.

Let's learn from history.

Thanks for that BBC documentary. I will watch it now.

 

[RandFan]

3. School can be expensive. Education is potentially cheap. It does not take 12 years at $12,000 per pupil-year to teach a normal child to read and compute. Most vocational training occurs more effectively on the job than in a classroom.

Ive seen no substantive evidence of your claim. To get a job making $50,000 or more per year you will at the very least need a high school diploma.

Here's a chance for you to prove us wrong Malcolm.

Create a fake character of a young individual who has had no schooling but has some kind of education. You have no grades for advanced mathematics, physics, liberal arts or any other required course to obtain a degree in high school. You have no college and have not been to any institution of higher learning (AKA Schools). All you know is how to read and write and you know how to compute.

Now, put this information on a resume and apply for as many good paying jobs as you can (architect, engineer, programmer, whatever, the point being that it just cannot be a menial job. I'll give you an out, apply for an internship or apprenticeship position with the same qualifications, remember, the idea is that you have never been to school but you can read, write and "compute". All of the applications must be to third party, arms length (no nepotism) employers.

Or try this, call a head hunter and tell them you have never been to school but you can read, write and compute and you would like a job. See how long you can keep them on the phone. Schools are so detrimental to children according to you that this fake character must have an advantage that employers would jump through hoops to get such a person, right?

Or, here's an idea, apply for any accredited university. Tell them you have never been to school but you can read, write and "compute". Let's see how many schools will accept you.

Good luck and lets see how you do. Let's see how your fantasy education fares in the real world.

 

[RandFan]

http://unsdsn.org/happiness/

It's interesting that there is so much overlap with all of these studies.

HDI, Economic Freedom, and there are others. I would also recommend that people read Phil Zuckerman's Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment. Now the book makes a correlation between secularism and contentment but it's difficult to ignore that these nations, low in crime and high in well-being also provide generous social benefits.

Malcolm claims that it is in spite of the social programs that these nations do so well. Okay, let's accept the premise for a moment, it certainly does not demonstrate the gloom and doom demagoguery of libertarians, and Conservatives. You know the types, the ones who use the word "liberal" as an epithet. If we assume that these nations do not demonstrate that the misery index is negatively correlated to strong social policies then they are at least not correlated with it either.

So why not? If you can have a high degree of wealth and happiness why not allow for generous social programs? Are we really so worried about free riders that we would rather bite our nose in order for us to spite our face?

 

[RandFan]

From the happines link above.

The Report also shows the major beneficial side-effects of happiness. Happy people live longer, are more productive, earn more, and are also better citizens. Well-being should be developed both for its own sake and for its side-effects.

To quote the Bible, For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? --Mark 8:36 Apparently he will be no more the richer for it (IMO, soul = humanity, empathy, compassion).Ebenezer: But it was only that you were an honest man of business!
Jacob Marley: BUSINESS? Mankind was my business!

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

... call a head hunter and tell them you have never been to school but you can read, write and compute and you would like a job. See how long you can keep them on the phone. Schools are so detrimental to children according to you that this fake character must have an advantage that employers would jump through hoops to get such a person, right?

Or, here's an idea, apply for any accredited university. Tell them you have never been to school but you can read, write and "compute". Let's see how many schools will accept you.

Good luck and lets see how you do. Let's see how your fantasy education fares in the real world.

Homeschoolers do this all the time. British A-level exams, the SAT and the GRE establish some level of education independent of school. The Foreign Service exam, actuarial exams, bar exams, and the LA welder's test establish certifiable skills.