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talkpoliticsTeri Adams, Head of Independence Hall Tea Party and School Voucher Activist:
Our ultimate goal is to shut down public schools and have private schools only, eventually returning responsibility for payment to parents and private charities. It’s going to happen piecemeal and not overnight. It took us years to get into this mess and it’s going to take years to get out of it.
In other words, Adams would like education to be, along with medical care, available only to those who can pony up the cash for it.
The article I’ve linked to includes a few quotes from people speculating about what drives the American right’s hostility towards public education. The ban on teacher-led prayer is invoked, along with the mercenary desire to funnel the money now paid into public schools into private hands.
I suspect it’s much more simple than that. Without universal education, the far right wouldn’t have to contend with so many pesky arguments about the facts of history, math, science, etc.
Crossposted from Thoughtcrimes
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Re: Public education is political indoctrination paid for by theft
Date: 17/7/11 17:31 (UTC)So, what is in a name? I suspect that while I am talking of cutting the whole tree back (or even better, down) you want to argue over which particular little named leaves are trimmed away. If you must have a name, let's keep to the subject of the original post and say the U.S. Department of Education should be abolished, not reformed, not replaced. Education in the U.S. reverts back to oversight by the individual states as the U.S. Constitution originally had it. The Department of Education is not legitimately ennumerated authority of Congress according to article I of the U.S. Constitution. There's a start for you.
Re: Public education is political indoctrination paid for by theft
Date: 17/7/11 18:48 (UTC)Re: Public education is political indoctrination paid for by theft
Date: 17/7/11 22:07 (UTC)If the public education cartel were broken, and it is failing, as we speak, people would find that there were and are almost uncountably many alternatives to the 12-year sentence of hard (and inefficient) drill-and-kill classroom labor in rows of desks occupied by 20 to 50 other "students." The cartel has locked itself into a nineteenth century, early industrial revolution, third-wave, factory production paradigm which is ridiculously arcane and evolutionarily unsound. The thing is, at least in the U.S., the system is not working, has disserved the poor worst of all, is not adapting, and is inevitably heading for a well-deserved collapse, whether people choose to acknowledge that unpalatable political, economic, and sociological reality or not. On a broader scope, the K-12 paradigm itself is the prisoner of the 400 year old university paradigm, which is itself suffering from the same kinds of sclerotic inability to adapt, grow, or repair, and is crumbling.
Of course, this does not even begin to raise the objection that government and education must be separated, precisely for the same reason that government and church must be separated. Any government which presumes to indoctrinate the citizen is not "free" and run by the citizens.
Re: Public education is political indoctrination paid for by theft
Date: 17/7/11 23:59 (UTC)m: how do parents pay for "private food",
They buy it. Food is not generally as expensive as education. In cases where parents cannot afford to buy "private food" (and those cases are becoming more and more common in this country) they rely either on "public food" (food stamps and welfare) or charities. Sometimes the children rely on the "public food" provided by schools during the regular school year. Food banks these days are pretty much swamped, especially at the end of the month, by families who can't put food on the table.
And sometimes, all of these fail, in which case, the families go hungry.
M: he public education cartel were broken, and it is failing, as we speak, people would find that there were and are almost uncountably many alternativesyaddayaddayaddayaddayaddayaddayadda...
You're just offering more generalized blather here. You really are in love with the "look Ma, I'm writing!" approach to prose, aren't you?
What affordable "alternatives" are you talking about? A barter system? How would that work? For instance, I teach, and am currently paid to teach, English in a summer school here. What would the mostly low-income working class parents of my students offer me in barter? And how would that barter be realistically translated into an ability to play for my rent, utilities, and healthcare?
Re: Public education is political indoctrination paid for by theft
Date: 18/7/11 01:05 (UTC)Yes, yes, when you can't attack the substance, attack the style. I offered you two links, one of which was an entire book. You've offered nothing back but your sweet little unsupported assertions, which you've called "generalized blather" when you've made the accusation of me. That's hypocrissy on stilts for you.
As for alternatives, I'm talking about anything voluntary that works for people. Who pays you now? Do you work directly for your clients or are you paid by the government "summer school"? If parents weren't already under the burden of the taxation and regulatory overhead they would be in a much better position to offer a competent teacher cold hard cash for his services. How does the plumber make a living? Are you trying to put forward the idea that most people in the world value having their children educated less than they do having their sinks unclogged? If that were even remotely true, who is so enthusiastic as to vote to have the State force them to pay for an education and mandate that their children utilize the service in the first place? I put it to you that much of what we call "education" could be arranged as apprenticeships and private initiatives in internship programs. If classroom instruction and "kindergarten" programs really do produce the results claimed for them, parents could patronize cheap, private alternatives or found their own. The "education professionals" have done their best to mysticize the process of education, just as Socrates claimed they would if pedagogy were ever "professionalized." It is in the professional interest to make what the professional does look mysterious and too difficult for the layman, and that is what generations of "educators" have accomplished. Unfortunately for them, the money has tended to gravitate toward the top of the cartel where the politically connected reside and only trickle down to the peons in the trenches, as it always does. The U.S. spends, on rough average, $10,000.00 per student, per year. That is insanity, beyond doubt. If I spent the cash spent, by the Dept. of Education's own admission on one student's education on both of my daughters, I could send each of them to a very exclusive and market-proven private acadamy, and that is provided that I neither desired nor had the ability to involve myself in their education at all. Multiply this ridiculous figure by the number of pupils in the average classroom, around 20 or so, and then by twelve years and ask yourself then if there is "enough" money to pay a reasonably competent teacher quite handsomely.
Re: Public education is political indoctrination paid for by theft
Date: 18/7/11 22:02 (UTC)Food is not generally as expensive as education because raising, selling, and distributing food does not require quite the same level of training and education that teaching does.
M: Yes, yes, when you can't attack the substance, attack the style.
Oh, I'm attacking both.
M: I offered you two links, one of which was an entire book.
You've offered a lot of hyperbole, posturing and generalized blather, and no, I have no intention of reading an entire book on your account. If you have specific quotes from that book that you consider pertinent I'd be glad to see them, but I'm not going to wade through an entire book just to locate them.
M: You've offered nothing back but your sweet little unsupported assertions..
You seriously require me to offer sources to support the existence of Food Stamps, WIC, the school lunch program, and food banks?
M: As for alternatives, I'm talking about anything voluntary that works for people. Who pays you now? Do you work directly for your clients or are you paid by the government "summer school"? If parents weren't already under the burden of the taxation and regulatory overhead they would be in a much better position to offer a competent teacher cold hard cash for his services.
It's not taxes that impoverish many of the parents of my students. It's stagnating wages coupled with the high cost of living, in particular housing and medical expenses.
M: How does the plumber make a living?
Plumbers are paid.
M: Are you trying to put forward the idea that most people in the world value having their children educated less than they do having their sinks unclogged?
No. Where do I say this?
M: If that were even remotely true, who is so enthusiastic as to vote to have the State force them to pay for an education and mandate that their children utilize the service in the first place?
Your above question makes no sense. Parents who can afford to send their kids to private school are free to do so.
M: I put it to you that much of what we call "education" could be arranged as apprenticeships and private initiatives in internship programs. If classroom instruction and "kindergarten" programs really do produce the results claimed for them, parents could patronize cheap, private alternatives or found their own.
More unspecific blather on your part.
If "cheap private" alternatives were likely to crop up, they would have already.
You still haven't explained how this "barter" system you mentioned would work.
Re: Public education is political indoctrination paid for by theft
Date: 18/7/11 22:18 (UTC)India has an overall literacy rate of only 61%.
Re: Public education is political indoctrination paid for by theft
Date: 19/7/11 00:02 (UTC)Then you should not have made one.
BS: Yes, India does have public education, but there are scads of stories of self-education that you can find, mostly regarding the poor, if you were so inclined.
None of which can replace a widespread, readily available public education system.
Re: Public education is political indoctrination paid for by theft
Date: 20/7/11 21:45 (UTC)If you know of a large country without some form of public education that has a 99% literacy rate, by all means cite it.
Re: Public education is political indoctrination paid for by theft
Date: 20/7/11 22:49 (UTC)Re: Public education is political indoctrination paid for by theft
Date: 21/7/11 20:03 (UTC)Sorry, but I do insist on connecting my arguments to reality. DREADFULLY bad form, I know, on an online discussion board, but I'm kind of old-fashioned that way.