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

[A'isha]

a) Many jobs have changed very little.

Most have changed quite a bit. The IT revolution, in particular, makes the required tasks in, performance of, and knowledge required for jobs today drastically different than during Orwell's time.

b) Many of the accommodations that people will have to make are more effectively learned on the job than in a classroom.

Why do you seem to think it's an either/or thing? People can do what they're doing today: learn in both the classroom and on the job, at different stages.

c) Switzerland and Germany include apprenticeship programs in their education systems.

So?

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

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

McArdle specifically references Orwell. How could the dots be any closer together? The people who compose school policy did well in high school, got accepted to good colleges, did well (enough) to get into grad school, and did well (enough) to get advanced degrees. These people enjoy school (or, at least, disdain manual labor) and cannot imagine a life outside of school or some other government bureaucracy. Their idea of a good time is a day spent in a committee meeting. These people do not much resemble the population at large.

"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" --- Roland Meighan

 

[A'isha]

McArdle specifically references Orwell. How could the dots be any closer together?

Because she (and now you) aren't talking about Orwell or anything he wrote.

The people who compose school policy did well in high school, got accepted to good colleges, did well (enough) to get into grad school, and did well (enough) to get advanced degrees.

Thankfully, yes.

These people enjoy school (or, at least, disdain manual labor) and cannot imagine a life outside of school or some other government bureaucracy. Their idea of a good time is a day spent in a committee meeting. These people do not much resemble the population at large.

Here's where you and McArdle go off the rails and enter strawman-land. Not only do those people not much resemble the population at large, they don't even resemble the people you're purporting to talk about.

 

[RandFan]

¹Whether (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.

²Randfan apparently

³believes 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.

⁴How '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.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.

⁵Referring to participants to this discussion as "you" invites personalization and ad hominum argument.

1. Repeal of child labor laws? None of this would ensure that children would be educated. Vouchers are coupons that politicians can ever reduce. Vouchers are meaningless. None of this tells us how poor peope could afford to educate their children or how many children of abusive or neglectful parents would be educated. A.) Asserted. B.) Asserted.
2. Malcolm apparently believes it is okay to patronize. I have made a sincere effort to avoid rhetoric that you object to. I've specifically used the term "state run education" because you objected to anything else. If you were civil you would simply stop patronizing me.
3. What I actually believe is that there is no evidence that your plan is viable. I actually know that most modern liberal democracies have state run compulsory schools, and, that private industry values the fruits of those schools. Those two facts lead me to believe that your claims just are not credible. If you could show that private industry routinely favor private/parochial/home schooling then you would have something. As it is you have a few individuals who are not even education experts sharing there opinion.
4. State run compulsory education works. If you want to talk about improving it and offering parents more choices I've no problem with that. However, you have nothing to replace the demonstrably valuable education provided by state run compulsory schools.
5. We as a group prefer civil discourse absent a patronizing tone. I've earnestly tried to speak to you in a civil manner and avoid words and phrases that you don't like. I've done this in good faith. You continue to engage in behavior that provokes people.

 

[RandFan]

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.

A.) Manufacturing has been in steep decline for decades while service sector jobs have increased.
B.) [citations missing]
C.) I think this is wonderful and I would support such a program so long as it was like the German and Switzerland systems (both have compulsory education).

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

1. Repeal of child labor laws? None of this would ensure that children would be educated.^a Vouchers are coupons that politicians can ever reduce. Vouchers are meaningless.^b None of this tells us how poor people could afford to educate their children or how many children of abusive or neglectful parents would be educated.^c2. A.) Asserted. B.) Asserted.
3.Malcolm apparently believes it is okay to patronize. I have made a sincere effort to avoid rhetoric that you object to. I've specifically used the term "state run education" because you objected to anything else. If you were civil you would simply stop patronizing me.
4. What I actually believe is that there is no evidence that your plan is viable. I actually know that most modern liberal democracies have state run compulsory schools^a, and, that private industry values the fruits of those schools^b. Those two facts lead me to believe that your claims just are not credible. If you could show that private industry routinely favor private/parochial/home schooling then you would have something. As it is you have a few individuals who are not even education experts sharing there opinion.
5. State run compulsory education works.^a If you want to talk about improving it and offering parents more choices I've no problem with that. However, you have nothing to replace the demonstrably valuable education provided by state run compulsory schools.^b6. We as a group prefer civil discourse absent a patronizing tone. I've earnestly tried to speak to you in a civil manner and avoid words and phrases that you don't like. I've done this in good faith. You continue to engage in behavior that provokes people.^a

1a. Neither does the current system, which compels attendance at school, imposes taxes in support of school, and restricts parents' options for the use of the taxpayers' age 6-18 education subsidy to schools operated by dues-paying members of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel, guarantee that children will receive an education. Consider Detroit.
1b. Politicians can reduce support for the cartel's schools. Politicians can look the other way while system insiders steal taxpayers' money and blight poor kids' life chances. Policies that give to parents the power to determine for their own children which institution shall receive the taxpayers' age 6-18 education subsidy add market accountability mechanisms to the tax-funded education system. In a voucher-funded school system, parents act as taxpayers' agents in holding schools accountable. There is abundant evidence from public policy experiments in the US and from international comparisons that vouchers enhance overall system performance and improve efficiency.
1c. "What works?" is an empirical question to which experiment (in public policy, that means federalism and markets) will provide more accurate answers than will a State-monopoly enterprise. A real Rand fan would understand this.
2. There is abundant evidence. Readers may backtrack through this discussion.
3. Randfan calls "patronizing" the attempt to "address the argument, not the arguer" and keep this discussion impersonal.
4a. The evidence that Parent Performance Contracting is viable is the success of other forms of enhanced parent control, such as vouchers, charter schools, subsidized homeschooling, and tuition tax credits.
5a. State-run compulsory schooling works fine if the measure is the percent of GDP transferred from taxpayers to system insiders. Like other State-run enterprises that are more effectively managed by the system of title and contract law (markets), State-run schools deliver poor performance at high cost.
5b. I recommend Parent Performance Contracting as a stop-gap. How would children be educated in a minimally-regulated (i.e., no minimum wage laws, no child labor laws, no compulsory attendance statutes, no tax support of school) market in education services? The question makes as much sense as "what arrangements would people make for dinner in the absence of State-operated cafeteria?" That's not for anyone to say. The point of freedom is that other people's behavior is not predictable.

 

[RandFan]

1A.) The current system provided me an education. The current system provides something that private industry values, and education. You would have seen to it that I wasn't educated and you would send poor children into factories. Only nations with third world conditions force children to work (see China and India). No modern liberal democracy treats it poor citizens so shabbily. B.) Politicians cannot at this time make it financially difficult if not downright impossible for poor children to go to school. C.) Private industry values state run compulsory education. That's about as empirical as one can get. Ensuring the well being of poor people is in my rational self interest.

2.) There is evidence that A.) private industry values state run compulsory education. B.) The vast majority of modern liberal democracies ensure the future of their nation by seeing to it that every child attends school.

3.) You provoke people. I'm not alone on this. You continue to patronize even though I've asked you to stop. Even though I have, in good faith agreed to your terms in spite of my disagreeing with you on those terms. I've done so in order to have a civil discussion.

 

[bruto]

McArdle specifically references Orwell. How could the dots be any closer together? The people who compose school policy did well in high school, got accepted to good colleges, did well (enough) to get into grad school, and did well (enough) to get advanced degrees. These people enjoy school (or, at least, disdain manual labor) and cannot imagine a life outside of school or some other government bureaucracy. Their idea of a good time is a day spent in a committee meeting. These people do not much resemble the population at large.

"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" --- Roland Meighan

So help me out here. A person has criticized McArdle, and you respond that it is not possible to criticize McArdle specifically, because she referenced someone else? Even if she was wrong? Even if you were wrong? Is this a new rule of criticism? Can we all claim immunity simply by incorrectly citing the Bible or the wisdom of Malcolm Kirkpatrick?

 

[Belz...]

1a. Neither does the current system, which compels attendance at school

Oh, no ! The state forces children to be educated and competent ! What ever shall we do ?

 

[Border Reiver]

1a. Neither does the current system, which compels attendance at school, imposes taxes in support of school, and restricts parents' options for the use of the taxpayers' age 6-18 education subsidy to schools operated by dues-paying members of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel, guarantee that children will receive an education. Consider Detroit.

First, the various teachers unions do not operate the schools, they negotiate the contracts for teacher salary and benefits. Schools are operated by the local school boards, using guidelines provided by the state. Claiming that the teachers unions run the schools has as much validity as saying that the Auto Workers' Union runs General Motors.

Second, regardless of whether the child is at a publically funded school, private institution, or being homeschooled there is no absolute way to actually make the child learn, all you can compel is attendance.

1b. Politicians can reduce support for the cartel's schools. Politicians can look the other way while system insiders steal taxpayers' money and blight poor kids' life chances.

So, private institutions cannot fudge results or engage in corrupt behaviour? The invisible hand of the market is not going to stop instances of corruption from occurring - particularly in the situation you've drawn attention to where a private company for a few dollars more ensured that their clients passed the test by sending a "test writer" on behalf of the client?

5a. State-run compulsory schooling works fine if the measure is the percent of GDP transferred from taxpayers to system insiders. Like other State-run enterprises that are more effectively managed by the system of title and contract law (markets), State-run schools deliver poor performance at high cost.

The measure is based on the % prepared to movie into the workforce, assume roles in the greater society, or move to extended education. And based on that criteria, the system is working.

5b. I recommend Parent Performance Contracting as a stop-gap. How would children be educated in a minimally-regulated (i.e., no minimum wage laws, no child labor laws, no compulsory attendance statutes, no tax support of school) market in education services? The question makes as much sense as "what arrangements would people make for dinner in the absence of State-operated cafeteria?" That's not for anyone to say. The point of freedom is that other people's behavior is not predictable.

Good to see that you're ready to potentially cast the poorer segments of your society under the bus. Public education costs are not paid for by taxpayers with children of school age, they are spread over the entire tax base, allowing a greater number of students to be educated. The removal of a public option is not going to make education cheaper, and the concentration of costs onto the parents will force poorer parents with multiple children to decide which one gets the education, or if any will be educated.

Exclusion from education will mean that most children of poor parents will also remain poor, as they will not have the education to move to better paying positions, creating a class barrier that will be extremely difficult to penetrate, reducing the freedom that you're toting.

 

[Doubt]

1a. Neither does the current system, which compels attendance at school, imposes taxes in support of school, and restricts parents' options for the use of the taxpayers' age 6-18 education subsidy to schools operated by dues-paying members of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel, guarantee that children will receive an education. Consider Detroit.

Consider Detroit? Sure. Now consider cause and effect. Many, many things went wrong in Detroit including depopulation. If you want to use Detroit as an example of what is wrong with education you cannot only look at the city itself but must also look at the suburbs which is where those who could move to did. And the suburb schools are also mostly public schools as well.

Your notion of considering Detroit is cherry picking. Trying to isolate that as an example is quite laughable. In fact, no one school district is going to help you make your case because any one school district is an isolated example. Also you might want to expand your example to include other countries and see how well education correlates to other sociological and economic data.

Note: I am from the suburbs of Detroit and am getting sick of various charlatans trying to use it to support their political agendas. We see this coming from all directions. Left, right and other. If you want to make a case using just the city as an example without consideration of confounding factors then you are shooting your own credibility in the foot.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Oh, no! The state forces children to be educated and competent!

No. The State forces children to attend institutions that its agents call "school". Compulsory education is not possible; the human and canine IQ curves overlap.

 

[A'isha]

No. The State forces children to attend institutions that its agents call "school". Compulsory education is not possible; the human and canine IQ curves overlap.

Your desired changes not only do nothing to fix this, they make it worse.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Consider Detroit? Sure. Now consider cause and effect. Many, many things went wrong in Detroit including depopulation. If you want to use Detroit as an example of what is wrong with education you cannot only look at the city itself but must also look at the suburbs which is where those who could move to did. And the suburb schools are also mostly public schools as well.

Your notion of considering Detroit is cherry picking. Trying to isolate that as an example is quite laughable. In fact, no one school district is going to help you make your case because any one school district is an isolated example. Also you might want to expand your example to include other countries and see how well education correlates to other sociological and economic data.

Note: I am from the suburbs of Detroit and am getting sick of various charlatans trying to use it to support their political agendas. We see this coming from all directions. Left, right and other. If you want to make a case using just the city as an example without consideration of confounding factors then you are shooting your own credibility in the foot.

Randfan wrote "None of this would ensure that children would be educated..."
"None" is a contraction of "not one". One single example rebuts the statement "the current system ensures that children will be educated." In the current system, many children leave the cartel's "schools" with nothing to show for 12 years of their time and $150,000 of taxpayers' money.

Would "consider Detroit, for example" have immunized me from this criticism? It's hardly "cherry picking" if Detroit exemplifies widespread failure of big-city schools.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Your desired changes not only do nothing to fix this, they make it worse.

We disagree. Expanding the range of options available to parents mitigates the malign effects of State compulsion. Parent control enhances the contribution that local knowledge can make to education. Parent control introduces market-style accountability. Bureaucrats are not suicidal.
Does ANT have any evidence to support the assertion that expansion of parent options will "make it worse"? Cite = ___?

 

[RandFan]

Randfan wrote "None of this would ensure that children would be educated..."
"None" is a contraction of "not one". One single example rebuts the statement "the current system ensures that children will be educated." In the current system, many children leave the cartel's "schools" with nothing to show for 12 years of their time and $150,000 of taxpayers' money.

Would "consider Detroit, for example" have immunized me from this criticism? It's hardly "cherry picking" if Detroit exemplifies widespread failure of big-city schools.

The statement stands. Your plan would not have ensured that I had the opportunity to be educated. Education is expensive and my family couldn't have afforded anything. My father wanted me home to kill chickens and rabbits, move pipe and irrigation gates and pull weeds.

No thanks. I'm very grateful I have an education.

 

[Doubt]

Would "consider Detroit, for example" have immunized me from this criticism? It's hardly "cherry picking" if Detroit exemplifies widespread failure of big-city schools.

No. For the simple reason that what has gone wrong in Detroit involves many other issues than school test scores. Start with a depopulated city with a tax base that collapsed.

Using Detroit as an example of the failures of the US educational system would be like using post atomic bomb damage of Hiroshima as an example of poor fire codes.

And it does not help you with Randfan anyway because you would need to compare it to a similar city with no public education system.

 

[A'isha]

We disagree. Expanding the range of options available to parents mitigates the malign effects of State compulsion.

No it doesn't.

Parent control enhances the contribution that local knowledge can make to education. Parent control introduces market-style accountability. Bureaucrats are not suicidal.
Does ANT have any evidence to support the assertion that expansion of parent options will "make it worse"? Cite = ___?

What makes you think that children who are uneducable in public schools will be educable in your alternate system?

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

... Claiming that the teachers unions run the schools has as much validity as saying that the Auto Workers' Union runs General Motors.

Here's a friendly (to nitwit socialists) site on UAW holdings of GM.

... Second, regardless of whether the child is at a publically funded school, private institution, or being homeschooled there is no absolute way to actually make the child learn, all you can compel is attendance.

We agree. Institutions shape incentives.

...So, private institutions cannot fudge results or engage in corrupt behaviour? The invisible hand of the market is not going to stop instances of corruption from occurring - particularly in the situation you've drawn attention to where a private company for a few dollars more ensured that their clients passed the test by sending a "test writer" on behalf of the client?

The government of __A__ (locality) is the largest dealer in interpersonal violence in that locality (definition, after Weber). Papa John's is a bunch of guys who make pizza. The government of Hawaii is a bunch of guys who draw salaries extracted under threat of incarceration from the productive residents of the Hawaiian archipelago. People do not become more intelligent, better-informed, more capable (except to the extent that their access to the tools of interpersonal violence enhances their capabilities), or more altruistic when they enter the Sate's employ. We are all public citizens and private individuals. The performance difference between a State-monopoly enterprise and organizations in a competitive market depends on the incentives that the different institutional structures present to clients and insiders. The most effective institutional accountability mechanism that humans have so far devised is a policy that gives to unhappy customers the power to take their business elsewhere. Enhance that power and you'll enhance overall system performance.

...The measure is based on the % prepared to movie into the workforce, assume roles in the greater society, or move to extended education. And based on that criteria, the system is working.

Yah, if "working" means "hasn't killed us all...yet".

... Good to see that you're ready to potentially cast the poorer segments of your society under the bus.

Mods? Personalization? Good to see that Border Reiver is potentially ready to assist the NEA in its program to institutionally lobotomize the American public and turn America's children into cannibals.
Projection much?
How 'bout we grant, just for the sake of argument, that our disagreement is not about goals (well-educated, productive, happy fellow citizens) but about means? Compulsory attendance, subsidization of school, and policies which restrict parents' options for the use of the taxpayers' age 6-18 education subsidy to institutions operated by dues-paying members of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel are means, not ends. Unless, of course, one is an employee of the system. Then the institution (and the employment it provides) is the end.

... Public education costs are not paid for by taxpayers with children of school age, they are spread over the entire tax base, allowing a greater number of students to be educated.

That's the naïve theory. Please read James Tooley's The Beautiful Tree.

... The removal of a public option is not going to make education cheaper, and the concentration of costs onto the parents will force poorer parents with multiple children to decide which one gets the education, or if any will be educated.

Exclusion from education will mean that most children of poor parents will also remain poor, as they will not have the education to move to better paying positions, creating a class barrier that will be extremely difficult to penetrate, reducing the freedom that you're toting.

This is 180⁰ out of phase with reality. Government schooling reduces social mobility. Subsidization raises per-unit costs.

 

[elbe]

No. For the simple reason that what has gone wrong in Detroit involves many other issues than school test scores. Start with a depopulated city with a tax base that collapsed.

As a detroit metro native it really makes me sad how often people who don't seem to know much of anything about it's complicated history start trying to use it as some simple object lesson. That was a great city once, it deserves better than that.