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

[Garrison]

A full response to this would involve a consideration of "standards". I doubt anyone in this discussion has the patience. Almost everyone misuses the term. A standard is a unit of measurement. Redefining "meter" or "foot" will not make children taller. Further, the failure of State schools has far less to do with written job descriptions (which is what Garrison must intend here by "standards") than with the incestuous relation between politicians and other system insiders (administrators and teachers). Absent escape options for parents (vouchers, relaxed restrictions on homeschooling, etc), the evolution of cooperation between the predators upon taxpayers (and students) is inevitable.

It is not; as I'm sure everyone but you understood. I find it interesting that you resent other's misrepresenting your intentions but are quite happy to misrepresent others.

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

You're making my point. Contra Randfan's assertion that on-the-job training is for "the poor", children of privilege also took this route. Yes, Fitzroy likely had tutors before he attended the Admiralty school. Again, that makes my point: his parents successfully provided education without school. One further point. Fitzroy blazed through what the Admiralty considered a three year curriculum in twenty months. This indicates (a) he was quite bright and (b) the Admiralty school did not force all students to move at a uniform pace.Go "dishonest" yourself,

Are you seriously comparing the 'lessons' given to mill worker children to that of a child from a noble family being trained for an admiralty position that he was destined for purely by accident of birth?
Tell me, were the other children on board, the young deckhands and powderboys, in his classes? After all, they were on the same ship.

 

[jimbob]

What is the term for an argument from spurious authority, when the quoted authority specifically contradicts one's point?

 

[bruto]

You're making my point. Contra Randfan's assertion that on-the-job training is for "the poor", children of privilege also took this route. Yes, Fitzroy likely had tutors before he attended the Admiralty school. Again, that makes my point: his parents successfully provided education without school. One further point. Fitzroy blazed through what the Admiralty considered a three year curriculum in twenty months. This indicates (a) he was quite bright and (b) the Admiralty school did not force all students to move at a uniform pace.Go "dishonest" yourself,

I don't think I am making your point at all, and your failure to realize this is strange. Fitzroy's parents avoided school because they were very rich and likely could afford a private tutor, a home schoolroom, and whatever else the upper nobility could afford. Their situation in no way reflects what the bulk of people could do. No doubt, Fitzroy was also a very bright person and an exceptional student, which is why he became famous for his accomplishments, and it is to the credit of the Admiralty school that he was not held back, just as many students now and throughout history have been allowed to skip ahead. The failure to provide that option at times does not mean that public education is inherently at fault. My sister skipped grades in both public and private schools in both the United States and France. I skipped a couple too, though in private schools. If this no longer is possible, the fault lies in practice, not in the general idea of public education.

It is true that in those days, which we ought to remember too were two hundred years ago, a rich officer underwent "on the job training" as did many people, but not all jobs are equal and not all training the same. I doubt you would find a paid schoolmaster at a woolen mill or a bakery, but you probably would aboard a naval vessel. The training of a rich officer candidate heading toward the admiralty is career training of a different sort from, say, learning a trade or running a loom.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

What is the term for an argument from spurious authority, when the quoted authority specifically contradicts one's point?

That authority does not contradict the point. Here:...
Albert Einstein
"Force and Fear Have No Place in Education"

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

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

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

Nothing in the above provides an exemption for the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel's schools. Einstein had no experience of American pre-college schooling. He may have fallen for progressive propaganda in supposing the US schools were immune to this criticism. His larger point, the damaging effect of compulsion on motivation, remains.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

... it is to the credit of the Admiralty school that he was not held back, just as many students now and throughout history have been allowed to skip ahead. The failure to provide that option at times does not mean that public education is inherently at fault. My sister skipped grades in both public and private schools in both the United States and France. I skipped a couple too, though in private schools. If this no longer is possible, the fault lies in practice, not in the general idea of public education.

NOT(attendance at school = education). NOT(compulsory attendance at schools operated by government employees = public education). The State cannot operate schools without an operational definition of "school" (i.e., employee job description). The State cannot subsidize education without an operational definition of "education". Interest group politics will produce rent-seeking coalitions of insider groups that have interests very different from those of children, parents, or taxpayers. These groups will bend these definitions to their interests. See Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation. State agencies start life far along the road to "regulatory capture".

...
It is true that in those days, which we ought to remember too were two hundred years ago, a rich officer underwent "on the job training" as did many people, but not all jobs are equal and not all training the same. I doubt you would find a paid schoolmaster at a woolen mill or a bakery, but you probably would aboard a naval vessel. The training of a rich officer candidate heading toward the admiralty is career training of a different sort from, say, learning a trade or running a loom.

There is something to this, but not so much as to be decisive. First, something like language fluency applies to most skills. Time spent in a classroom is time not spent learning to operate or repair machinery. Second, one did, in fact, find "teachers" of a sort in some factories, where workers would pay one of their number to read while the rest worked (the ancient equivalent of Muzak, I guess).

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

It is not; as I'm sure everyone but you understood. I find it interesting that you resent other's misrepresenting your intentions but are quite happy to misrepresent others.

Please expand on this point. Where do we disagree?

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Malcolm, do you believe reality is subjective? Specifically, that if a certain worldview is something that you prefer, and want it hard enough, that it will spring into being?

The topic is the effect of organized violence and threats of violence (the State) on education system performance. Moderators admonish us to avoid personalization. Try it,

 

[bruto]

NOT(attendance at school = education). NOT(compulsory attendance at schools operated by government employees = public education). The State cannot operate schools without an operational definition of "school" (i.e., employee job description). The State cannot subsidize education without an operational definition of "education". Interest group politics will produce rent-seeking coalitions of insider groups that have interests very different from those of children, parents, or taxpayers. These groups will bend these definitions to their interests. See Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation. State agencies start life far along the road to "regulatory capture".There is something to this, but not so much as to be decisive. First, something like language fluency applies to most skills. Time spent in a classroom is time not spent learning to operate or repair machinery. Second, one did, in fact, find "teachers" of a sort in some factories, where workers would pay one of their number to read while the rest worked (the ancient equivalent of Muzak, I guess).

Your first response is utterly and completely unrelated to what I was saying. I am not sure what it even means, but if it has anything to do with what I was saying, it lacks a translator to find out what.

Your second portion is unbelievably silly. Do you really think that having a person read to factory workers, "the ancient equivalent of Muzak" has anything to do with the presence of schoolmasters on ships?

 

[Belz...]

Einstein's analysis of the relation between compulsion and motivation generalizes. Nothing excepts schools in the US. Perhaps Einstein was being diplomatic, or perhaps he bought the progressive propaganda about US schools, with which he had no direct experience, prevalent at the time.

Perhaps Einstein was wrong. He didn't seem to be right more than once in a while, like most people.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Your second portion is unbelievably silly. Do you really think that having a person read to factory workers, "the ancient equivalent of Muzak" has anything to do with the presence of schoolmasters on ships?

Go "silly" yourself,

I responded to

I doubt you would find a paid schoolmaster at a woolen mill or a bakery, but you probably would aboard a naval vessel.

 

[A'isha]

I like how Malcolm simultaneously presents Einstein as an authority on the critical flaws of "the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel's schools", while simultaneously handwaving Einstein's making an explicit exception of American schools from his criticisms by declaring that Einstein didn't actually know anything at all about those schools which Malcolm is using Einstein's quote to criticize!

 

[bruto]

Go "silly" yourself,

I responded to

So you responded to my suggestion that one would probably find an actual schoolmaster on a naval vessel but not at a woolen mill or a bakery, by suggesting that a person who reads to the workers as an equivalent to Muzak, who was jocularly called a schoolmaster, was somehow equivalent, and you think I'm the silly one?

 

[Minoosh]

I live in a place where there is open enrollment region-wide and an abundance of charter schools. The charters receive a per-student subsidy and are exempt from certain regulations, such as the requirement to hire certified teachers. They are not typically unionized. Malcolm seemed to think they are an acceptable middle ground. If the argument is that compulsory education is slavery, that seemed to amount to an acceptance of slavery, as long as parents (and plenty of grandparents - some parents flake out, apparently) are given a choice as to slave master.

Malcolm, I'm speaking of you in the third person, but not to disparage your point of view. It's just that you are the only one putting forth the "slavery" argument, so instead of saying "people who believe compulsory education equates to slavery" I can just say "Malcolm."

It used to be a crime to teach a slave to read. Why, I'm not sure. Now, apparently, it is a requirement. On the whole I think that's an improvement. Ditto with basic numeracy. There is more accountability built into K-12 education than there was 20 years ago, and in my state at least, there is more choice. But it is still compulsory and still primarily government-funded, which is on the whole a good thing, IMO.

We have this crazy idea to give kids equal opportunity in education, even though they don't all wear the same shoe size. Truly, I've never met a teacher, or even an administrator, who believes what Malcolm claims they believe. Maybe it's different in Hawaii.

As someone who came into education after a lifelong career in the private sector, I do see "corruption" of a sort. But it's not crooked unions extorting taxpayers' hard-earned funds. It is much subtler than that. If we were having a serious discussion on public education I'd develop this thought more, but I will go for the short version. Teachers, in my experience, are so dedicated to keeping things upbeat that we end up believing our PR. We tell kids, "We know you can succeed." Privately we may believe the kid is as dumb as a bag of hammers, but we are so used to projecting a positive outlook that I'm sure we kid ourselves. We cheerfully assure each other, ourselves and children that we are all working hard and that we will succeed. That's the corruption I see, but I'm not sure what the alternative is. We have to try. So we decide every kid has to read at a certain level, has to have a decent grasp of decimals and fractions, has to have some grounding in history, civics, geography, etc.

I'm working now at a school that recently changed its focus to "college prep," and I have mixed feelings about this, because college itself has gotten so bureaucratic that we end up emphasizing the importance of learning to jump through hoops. But, there are hoops in a lot of real life, in all sorts of careers. I was lucky to thrive in a field that placed basically zero importance on formal education, but even then, to narrow the field, a B.A. was useful since it demonstrated an ability to stick to something.

I'd love to have a conversation about how we kid ourselves, how we could stop doing that, how we might funnel gifted plumbers into apprenticeships, for example. But despite all this dog-human overlap etc., I believe that teaching kids to read and figure, on the public dime, is a duty, and one that most teachers take seriously, and a standard for which both teachers and students are now held accountable. (I'm using "standard" in its common usage). There have always been the self-taught, the privately schooled and the tutored, and perhaps there always will be. You can deride public education as "one size fits all" or you can exalt it as "equal opportunity in education." I'd love an honest discussion about all this. The slavery argument has apparently convinced no one, and there are more productive lines to pursue, IMO.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

So you responded to my suggestion that one would probably find an actual schoolmaster on a naval vessel but not at a woolen mill or a bakery, by suggesting that a person who reads to the workers as an equivalent to Muzak, who was jocularly called a schoolmaster, was somehow equivalent, and you think I'm the silly one?

No. I'm saying that factory workers arranged informal instruction on their own.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

I live in a place where there is open enrollment region-wide and an abundance of charter schools. The charters receive a per-student subsidy and are exempt from certain regulations, such as the requirement to hire certified teachers. They are not typically unionized. Malcolm seemed to think they are an acceptable middle ground. If the argument is that compulsory education is slavery, that seemed to amount to an acceptance of slavery, as long as parents (and plenty of grandparents - some parents flake out, apparently) are given a choice as to slave master.

Compulsion is a matter of degree. The wider the range of education options available to parents and students, the smaller the damaging impact of compulsion.

...IMO.

Thanks for a civil discussion.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

I like how Malcolm simultaneously presents Einstein as an authority on the critical flaws of "the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel's schools", while simultaneously handwaving Einstein's making an explicit exception of American schools from his criticisms by declaring that Einstein didn't actually know anything at all about those schools which Malcolm is using Einstein's quote to criticize!

Einstein addressed the effects of compulsion on motivation. He was right about that.

 

[jimbob]

Odd to chose a midshipman's education in the Royal Navy as a exemplar of education without coercion.

 

[Nick Terry]

Odd to chose a midshipman's education in the Royal Navy as a exemplar of education without coercion.

From the early 19th Century, at that. And Fitzroy was an officer.

It's pretty well documented that armies and navies started demanding educational qualifications for officers during the mid to late 19th Centuries, and continue to do so. Nobody could repeat Fitzroy's career progression today. Both the Royal Navy and British Army require GCSEs and A Levels. The US Army requires that prospective officers be high school graduates.

Promotion to higher ranks, especially in the US Army, is now highly contingent on possessing undergraduate and even graduate degrees.

Unsurprisingly, the US armed services have close relationships with a variety of military colleges and also military prep schools; their needs for educated leaders require that there be functioning educational establishments.

 

[jimbob]

From the early 19th Century, at that. And Fitzroy was an officer.

It's pretty well documented that armies and navies started demanding educational qualifications for officers during the mid to late 19th Centuries, and continue to do so. Nobody could repeat Fitzroy's career progression today. Both the Royal Navy and British Army require GCSEs and A Levels. The US Army requires that prospective officers be high school graduates.

Promotion to higher ranks, especially in the US Army, is now highly contingent on possessing undergraduate and even graduate degrees.

Unsurprisingly, the US armed services have close relationships with a variety of military colleges and also military prep schools; their needs for educated leaders require that there be functioning educational establishments.

It is worth adding that this was part of a state-run organization, with a strong element of coercion.