New Charter School Info Out *drumroll*...

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

(Malcolm): "I reason axiomatically here:
1. Most parents love their children and want their children to outlive them.
2. If you live among people there are basically three ways you can make a living: (a) you can beg, (b) you can steal, (c) you can trade goods and services for other people's goods and services.
3. Most parents accept proposition #2 and prefer 2(c) for their children.
4. Therefore, most parents want for their children what taxpayers want from schools, that children be able to take a productive place in society.
5. System insiders differ systematically from parents in general and taxpayers in general and so have systematically different interests from parents and taxpayers.

Those 'issues' are simply red herrings. It's also blatantly fallacious reasoning. 'Parents want best, therefore they will make the best choices'¹ is fallacious reasoning that also is irrelevant². Other parents want what is best for their children and society that their children live in, and thus want exactly the opposite.³It's an appeal to mommy instinct, and just as fallacious here as when anti-vaccers do it.⁴...You can disagree all you like, but if you don't have an argument to present as to why, then I'm not especially interested in your disagreement.

The above is a direct argument. I have tried to make it clear. To address tyr's objections, I have numbered them.
1. I do not say "best". I wrote "Most parents love their children and want their children to outlive them". Does this sound unlikely? Given propositions #2 and #3, why would not #4 follow?
2. This point, about parents' motivations, is directly relevant to the relative merits of parent power in school selection over policies which give to remote bureaucrats the power to match curricula to children whom they have never met. Bureaucrats don't care for individual children as much as those children's individual parents care for them, and bureaucrats do not have the detailed local knowledge (of individual children's interests and aptitudes) that parents have. Furthermore, employees in a rule-bound bureaucracy will encounter regulations that prohibit, on equal-protection grounds, individualized curricula.
3. Parents do not compete in a zero-sum game, as tyr implies here. The argument for education as a public good (otherwise, there's no welfare-economic argument for any State role in the education industry) implies that education is not a zero sum game. If A is a carpenter, s/he gains when B's competence as a mason increases.
4. I agree that many people feel protective toward children, generally. Call this "the mommy instinct". Evolutionary biology indicates that the power of this instinct increases with biological relation (parents for offspring more than for neices and nephews, siblings for siblings more than for cousins, etc.). This is again an argument for parent control.

 

[leftysergeant]

1. Most parents love their children and want their children to outlive them.
2. If you live among people there are basically three ways you can make a living: (a) you can beg, (b) you can steal, (c) you can trade goods and services for other people's goods and services.
3. Most parents accept proposition #2 and prefer 2(c) for their children.

Not in dispute.

4. Therefore, most parents want for their children what taxpayers want from schools, that children be able to take a productive place in society.

They also need to be prepared to act in their collective and individual self interest by drawing on more than just their specific job skills.

5. System insiders differ systematically from parents in general and taxpayers in general and so have systematically different interests from parents and taxpayers.

Vague hand-waving based on arguments not entered into evidence.

Bureaucrats don't care for individual children as much as those children's individual parents care for them, and bureaucrats do not have the detailed local knowledge (of individual children's interests and aptitudes) that parents have.

Nor have racist, fundamentalist rednecks who want their kids to go to work early to earn there keep any idea what is good for my grandkids.I LIKE their not being able to demand that science classes conform to their religious prejudices, and that they cannot demand that schools teach that the labor unions were the downfall of a once-great nation.

Furthermore, employees in a rule-bound bureaucracy will encounter regulations that prohibit, on equal-protection grounds, individualized curricula.

That crap is certainly not taught in college-level education courses. Maybe you just met a lot of treachers and public officials or dim-witted anti-public-school advocates who claim that it is true.

In one of my Special Ed classes, the professor, on the first day, faced us and said:

"You know what is the best thing to do for a child who has trouble learning? It's whatever works."

Mind you, I said that this was a Special Education class. Special Ed is all about "equal access" and how to deliver it. Do try to keep up.

If anything cripples the school's ability to accomodate a student who has difficulties with the standardized curriculum, it is that crap that Bush the Geezer saddled them with called Goals 2000. When you have to teach to a test, real learning goes bye-bye. (His dim-witted son further screwed it up, for the profit of the corporations that produce teaching programs and testing materials.)

3. Parents do not compete in a zero-sum game, as tyr implies here. The argument for education as a public good (otherwise, there's no welfare-economic argument for any State role in the education industry) implies that education is not a zero sum game. If A is a carpenter, s/he gains when B's competence as a mason increases.

And they all benefit when C learns what is wrong with allowing a mega-pig farm upstream of the water works and that he has a right to protest it at the land-use review procedings. (Which probably galls anarcho-capitalists to no end.)

4. I agree that many people feel protective toward children, generally. Call this "the mommy instinct". Evolutionary biology indicates that the power of this instinct increases with biological relation (parents for offspring more than for neices and nephews, siblings for siblings more than for cousins, etc.). This is again an argument for parent control.

Anarchistic twaddle. Works great for a roving troop of baboons. Not so much for a post-bronze-age civilization.

 

[tyr_13]

(Malcolm)SNIP

To address Malcolm's objections, I've spliced my responses into his post using the 'QUOTE' and '/QUOTE' tags because that's a lot easier to read.

To address tyr's objections, I have numbered them.
1. I do not say "best". I wrote "Most parents love their children and want their children to outlive them". Does this sound unlikely? Given propositions #2 and #3, why would not #4 follow?

You don't think that 'best' is substantially the same as what you did write? That's a useless objection. No it doesn't sound unlikely, but it is still irrelevant to the question of if switching educational methods accomplishes that. As it doesn't actually address the question it is a red herring, a dodge, a distraction.

2. This point, about parents' motivations, is directly relevant to the relative merits of parent power in school selection over policies which give to remote bureaucrats the power to match curricula to children whom they have never met.

No, that's absolutely false. 'Well meaning' doesn't ever mean 'correct'. And again, it's irrelevant to the question as parents can already do this to an extent under the current system if they so wish.

Bureaucrats don't care for individual children as much as those children's individual parents care for them, and bureaucrats do not have the detailed local knowledge (of individual children's interests and aptitudes) that parents have. Furthermore, employees in a rule-bound bureaucracy will encounter regulations that prohibit, on equal-protection grounds, individualized curricula.

Besides the already addressed uselessness of the first sentence, the second is true, but ignores that more often the rules will protect children from abuses, being taught blatant falsehoods (which would appear to be your goal seeing as you keep mentioning 'equal-protection' as if it was a negative and dodging objections on it) more often than it harms. If parents find a rule is causing more harm than good, then they can work to change the rule or it's implementation. If they can't change it, chances are good that they are well intentioned and wrong, so it's a good thing it won't change easily. There are exceptions, like the 'no child left behind' policy.

3. Parents do not compete in a zero-sum game, as tyr implies here. The argument for education as a public good (otherwise, there's no welfare-economic argument for any State role in the education industry) implies that education is not a zero sum game. If A is a carpenter, s/he gains when B's competence as a mason increases.

I've argued no such thing, that's a silly looking straw man that would be readily apparent if you posts were not so labyrinthine.

4. I agree that many people feel protective toward children, generally. Call this "the mommy instinct". Evolutionary biology indicates that the power of this instinct increases with biological relation (parents for offspring more than for neices and nephews, siblings for siblings more than for cousins, etc.). This is again an argument for parent control.

Which is irrelevant to being correct about how best to educate a child, just as it is irrelevant to knowing if a vaccine is safe, or any of the facts of science, history, etc, that mommy can't know and should trust the experts on. Again, many bureaucrats, educators and others are ALSO parents who want the current system.

 

[Alt+F4]

Bureaucrats don't care for individual children as much as those children's individual parents care for them, and bureaucrats do not have the detailed local knowledge (of individual children's interests and aptitudes) that parents have.

Beyond silly. I guess kids should never be allowed on a public bus because their parents can do a better job driving them around. Kids probably should not have contact with any sort of bureaucracy because none of those meanie union types actually care about kids.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

(Malcolm): "Bureaucrats don't care for individual children as much as those children's individual parents care for them, and bureaucrats do not have the detailed local knowledge (of individual children's interests and aptitudes) that parents have."

Beyond silly.

Why do cartel defenders argue in this style? A defensive reaction to a perceived weakness in their case? It does not indicate confidence, seems to me. With what assertion does Alt disagree?

...I guess kids should never be allowed on a public bus because their parents can do a better job driving them around. Kids probably should not have contact with any sort of bureaucracy because none of those meanie union types actually care about kids.

Note the difference between "as much as" in my contribution and "never" and "not...any" in Alt's. The obvious counter to Alt's strawman opposition is that public transit and most encounters with State bureaucracy (outside of school) are voulntary. Parents determine when their children may ride the city bus or visit the county zoo. These institutions do not take control from parents.
Hope everyone enjoyed Christmas and has a productive and happy new year.

 

[leftysergeant]

Why do cartel defenders argue in this style? A defensive reaction to a perceived weakness in their case? It does not indicate confidence, seems to me.

Not a bit of it. It is a natural reaction to your mindless sloganeering. Calling the public schools a "cartel" is just puffery and manipul;ative use of the language. The private schools are becoming a cartel. They are beyond the reach of the strate which must collect the taxes to pay for the vouchers.

If my houseis going to be taxed to provide an essential service to civilization, I'll be damned if I will sit by and watch it used to subsidize an enemy of civilization, especially one that will further stratify us by socio-ecconomic layers. THe poor are never going to be able to afford the yuppie academies. It is that simple.

You still have not shown us that the difference between private and public schools is the result of anything opther than smaller class sizes and the ability too discard children.

This is not an answer to the problem of stagnation of civilization and loss of upward mobility.

Your attitude is unexcusably arrogant.