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India's Schooling Experiment Tests Rich and Poor
theodp writes "Passed in 2009, India's Right to Education Act mandates that private schools set aside 25% of admissions for low-income, underprivileged and disabled students. Many of the world's top private schools offer scholarships to smart poor kids, but India's plan is more sweeping in that the rules prohibit admission-testing of students. 'Over the years schooling offered by these two systems [public and private] has become increasingly disparate and unequal,' explained Anshu Vaish of the Dept. of Human Resource Development. But the most notable results of the experiment thus far, reports the WSJ, are frustration and disappointment as separations that define Indian society are upended, leading even some supporters to conclude that the chasm between the top and bottom of Indian society is too great to overcome. Hey, at least we don't have these kinds of problems in the US, right? BTW, about 30% of this year's Intel Science Talent Search 2011 Finalists hailed from private schools, where annual tuition ranges from $15,750 at Ursuline Academy (the alma mater of Melinda Gates) to $37,020 at Groton School (the alma mater of FDR). Some 10% of all elementary and secondary school students were in private schools in 2009-2010, according to the US Dept. of Education."
This is an excellent illustration at a much larger scale of exactly the education problems we face in the U.S., where we spend more on prisoners than students.
Speaking for myself, I have... let's call it an "above average" character in terms of education and intellect, and yet public schools couldn't be bothered with me. Had it not been for the fact that my parents had worked hard enough to be able to afford very expensive private schooling, I would never have graduated from High School.
The answer is NOT for those who can afford such things to be taxed into giving up those funds to educate everyone else's children. The "answer" is not even something I can feasibly address with any sanity or brevity in a forum like this one (ok, I can in three words: "One room schoolhouse"), but it should be rather clearer now what a failure our current model is, where students are graduating from High School less educated than their parents - on average - for the first time in our nations history over the last several years, and that we need to completely re-address our schools, teaching methods, and sociocultural emphasis (or lack thereof) on education.
"Inveniemus Viam Aut Faciemus" 'We will find a way... Or we will make one!' --Hannibal of Carthage
This is an excellent illustration at a much larger scale of exactly the education problems we face in the U.S., where we spend more on prisoners than students.
Of course we spend more on prisoners than students. Prisoners live in prisons 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Students are in school for 7 hours a day, for only 8 months out of the year.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Enjoy the 28 Most Expensive Private High Schools In America
http://www.businessinsider.com/most-expensive-private-schools-2011-4
The US just has to ensure testing is fully funded in every state and that its best and brightest get scholarships to the top endowment funded U.S. universities.
Testing 100% of every states students vs educating the bottom ~90% every year? Best to put limited state tax funding into the top few %.
The real question is how to keep the bottom 90% distracted every year?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
By the time I was finishing high school the situation was so bad that in my State 70% of the seats were reserved for these castes. The remaining 30% was considered to be "open competition", which means any disadvantaged student who scores high will not be counted towards the quota. The closing score for engineering/medical admission for my caste was some 98.5%, that is anyone scoring less would not get admission. The closing score for the ST category was some 45% and SC was 55% and BC was around 75%. The central government did not have the BC category so for IITs 80% of the seats were in play. Some 1350 seats for the entire population of India. If you have been wondering why the IIT alumni of that age (45 to 55 presently) are so strong in academics and engineering, it is because they were the students score above mean+3 sigma.
Over the years a creamy layer has developed and the people who benefited by the reservation policy in 1950s, their children and their great grand children enjoy all the benefits. The benefits do not reach the really stuggling, poor deserving people of these castes. Among the so-called forward castes so many poor rural people have much higher disadvantages. The situation is so bad there, even the corrupt Indian politicians and the corrupt journalists pandering to the semi-literate allegedly suppressed communities are coming out periodically with such band aids to sooth the raging public anger. The really poor disadvantaged people of all castes are pissed off. Only the creamy layer of people belonging to the SC/ST/BC castes likes the present situation.
One good that has happened over the last two decades is the mushrooming growth of private colleges that finally gave all people to get an engineering degree if they wanted it. Now the private colleges are outshining State funded colleges. Now the creamy layer has its eyes on the private colleges. They want in, into that sector too. So this is their way of forcing the private colleges also to impose a reservation system.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
in Asia it's all about the test and mass cheating goes on there. The us needs to drop the teach the test idea and go back to the old days. College is odd that some of the high cost schools are carp and all about makeing money and other are better price wise but range from poor to good.
I believe that you are looking for this video.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Problem is far more complex then your gross oversimplification. A good example is that one of the main requirements of getting proper schooling is environment. As public schools lose more and more of good, calm, studious students to private schools, the problem of concentration of lack of talent intensifies. This in turn feeds the "white flight" element even further by pressing more good students out.
End result is bad for both - on one hand poor get worse schooling. On the other hand, rich become so disconnected from reality, you end up with tiered society and all its problems.
If you want to see the most historically infamous case on where tiered society leads, look up French Revolution. That said, historic examples of this stretch from India mentioned here, to more modern examples such as Arab Spring phenomenon. And to get there, you usually have a gross collapse of socioeconomic environment, including but not limited to massively raised crime rates, gradual economic decline, social and political instability, and shrinking middle class, majority of which drop down to the poor tier of society with small minority joining the rich.
Rich win in short term, which is why it appears to be a natural state of human society to slowly edge towards tiered society in known history, which ends reset when it's not longer supportable and social imbalance causes a revolution and re-distribution of wealth.
India is poor for a reason - it's Government. The State is profoundly corrupt and protectionist.
I agree with that, although, many of their problems also has to do with the structure of their society and having over a billion people.
The thing is, when you have an under-class that's perpetually impoverished, there is no way for them to get out of poverty on their own: they're trapped. Giving them the opportunity to better themselves via education not only provides them with more opportunity but it also benefits the society as a whole - including the owner ship classes. For example, here in the States, the owner class is constantly bemoaning how they can't get enough educated workers. The owner class isn't willing to provide their own training nor are they willing to pay for it via higher taxes and as society, we're losing out big time. Couple in the fact that labor is so much cheaper elsewhere, we're seeing a decline in our standard of living and as a result our society is declining.
If India wants to better they're society and eventually solve their problems, they must provide more opportunities for education and for economic advancement. The education will also help to solve the issues that you mentioned.
Speaking as an ex-Libertarian, the "I worked for it and it's all mine" attitude is short sited and doesn't work - society collapses when wealth becomes too concentrated - which we'll see.
Bumping them up a grade is a silly solution, because they're then taught more advanced material (that they may not have the relevant prerequisites for) at the same speed, rather than being taught the material for their level at a faster speed.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Unfortunately, in my country that's not even an option. The law mandates 10 years in school (our system is different from the American one with different names etc.), no exceptions.
Second to last year of school I finally got to a school that didn't mind bumping me up a class. I completed what I thought would be the final year, finished my exams with an average of B+ if my conversion isn't entirely off ... and was told by the Department of Education that my exam papers were invalid and I had to take the last year again.
There is no room for being different, for being better than others. If nothing else, laws that can't be bent will see to that.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
I urge everyone to read to the end which relates impoverished Vipil's successes, showing why good education for everyone is a great boon for society.
Though I like the outcomes of India's law, I think it is impinging on the freedom of the schools too much. Consider the borderline families, where the effective 25% price premium means the difference between sending their children to a good school or not. We barely afford to send our own kids to private school, and an extra charge of that size might well kick us out.
The real solution is to make the public schools so good that almost no one feels tempted to go private. Both India and America have problems getting there, but I think it's possible.
In the meantime, I'll spend the money to make sure my kids learn about evolution, partake in music, gym and recess, avoid bullies and silly zero-tolerance policies, and meet friends who think books are cool. And I'm giving up vacations, cars, and retirement savings to do that, so please don't confiscate my money specifically to improve general education. Good education is important enough that everyone should benefit and everyone should pay.
The best part, I might add, is that there is nothing "better" about private schools except the mental image society collectively has. The only reason private school students do better is because they are selected for nice things more frequently because of their prestigious background. In fact, I would argue that private school teaching is probably inferior to public schools (at least in Canada); private school teachers are paid significantly less than public schools, and so public schools get their pick first.
The only reason private school students do better on standardized tests is because private schools pick all of the best students with supportive parents. If you have a class who can practically teach themselves, it doesn't matter if a monkey is teaching them, they're going to do better than the class of low income and disenfranchised students.
THIS was a superb solution. Sadly the same thing is happening in America and in Canada. It is often thought that "Well for the child's social development we shouldn't take him out of his age group" or "If we bump little Johnny it might make little Eric and Matthew feel stupid".
#1 is stupid because by the time I as 8 my peers were all 11 or 12 year olds anyways. I didn't hang out with anyone from my own age group regardless. This continued all through school and I went to several different schools.
#2 is retarded because no persons concerns should affect any other person as long as its not outright harmful to them. Little Eric and Matthew and
I was so bored that I missed something like 70% of my grade 12(graduating) year and still had a 82 average. This taught me extremely poor work ethic and caused other issues. If it wasn't for me learning some good work ethic outside of school I would have been completely screwed for life.
Skipping grades should be the go to method when no advanced programs exist. The child should definitely be involved in the decision, and have the final say, but trying to make it happen nowadays is ridiculous. Especially when you get a kid in grade 6 who is only getting high 80s and low 90s because he/she is so bored they're reading something else to pass time and ignoring lessons altogether.
If I take my money, which belongs to me, and I open *my* school, it's *my* business - and no one elses.
No one else has *any* right to come along and order me around - let alone ordering me who my students will be.
First of all, running an education establishment like a business will inevitably lead to intellectual bankruptcy - education is a public service.
As such, it is A-OK for public service to lose money as long as it provides acceptable service - which is education, which in turn is there to provide progress and higher standard of living and happiness for both citizens AND their society in general.
That is why it is A-OK for the education sector to be subsidized by the government. Which leads us to the next point - certification.
All that shiny education your hypothetical school would provide is useless if it is not certified i.e. if the diplomas you give out are not accepted by your students' future employers AND by the government(s) that issues work and other permits to those businesses.
After all, your school may only consist of your website and your kitchen table where you print your diplomas.
Or, you may be teaching crazy shit like dianetics and whatnot.
I for one would like to know that some government body has checked your school and made sure it is not an organ harvesting operation.
Or simply that you provide an adequate education along with that piece of paper that claims that I've actually "studied shit" while at your school.
So, there ARE rules which you MUST obey if you want your school to be allowed to exist.
To quote the eminent philosopher Keanu Reeves: "You need a license to buy a dog, to drive a car - hell, you even need a license to catch a fish.".
Ergo, fuckin' A you're gonna be told what you can and what you can't do when opening a school.
There's this thing, it's called Freedom. It means no one can force you to do things, or deceive into doing them - unless they're acting in self-defence, and this isn't self-defence.
Actually... generally speaking, self-defense has nothing to do with that which you call Freedom and is generally defined as negative liberty, as opposed to positive kind.
And then there is "the real freedom", but I'm guessing from you nickname that you already know about that.
Why would anyone have to act in self-defense against you if you are only practicing your liberties, which are just like his/her liberties - unless you are not entitled to those liberties in the first place (due to previous actions on your part) or you are misusing them.
In which case, you should not have the right to those liberties.
But that's usually left for the courts to decide.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The private school teachers (partially as a result of the lower pay) are also the ones who want to teach -- not the ones who got an English degree and then realized that they couldn't get any other job. Private schools also aren't run by the teachers' unions, so they have far more flexibility in firing inferior teachers, etc. Lastly (and possibly most importantly), they're held directly responsible by the parents. A private school loses customers and funds when parents get disgruntled; public schools can change nothing and have no negative consequences. Of course, schooling in this antiquated model is soon going to be defunct once internet/distance learning gains acceptance as parents will be able to choose from a plethora of options, which aren't based on geography, for almost zero cost compared to a brick and mortar school since lectures, materials, etc. can be replicated at no additional cost. When you can send your kid to online school for $300 a year versus sending them to the free, government prison-schools we have now who wouldn't? Eventually, quality online schools may even be completely free to all and run on a charity basis, so even poor kids without computers can access them from their local public libraries.
There are a lot of factors that influence kids as far as success in school is concerned. In an affluent family the child may not have much in the way of chores or work assigned to them. In a poor family a child may be up at 4 am throwing newspapers to help feed the family. The diet and medical care available to the poorer folk may also hold their children back. The ability to hire tutors or send kids to educational camps in the summer can have a huge effect. Even the emotional security of knowing that plenty of money is at hand to keep a home secure and running well can boost a child's abilities. In the US the trend is to bully the teachers and point a finger at them. This law in India seems to be an attempt to bully private schools and point a finger at them. The hard fact is that if the US closed down all private schools and forced the super rich to place their kids in the exact situations with the poor kids that the public school system would improve by leaps and bounds. No rich man could bear to see the conditions and dangers in many public schools let lose upon their child.
The best part, I might add, is that there is nothing "better" about private schools except the mental image society collectively has. The only reason private school students do better is because they are selected for nice things more frequently because of their prestigious background. In fact, I would argue that private school teaching is probably inferior to public schools (at least in Canada); private school teachers are paid significantly less than public schools, and so public schools get their pick first.
The only reason private school students do better on standardized tests is because private schools pick all of the best students with supportive parents. If you have a class who can practically teach themselves, it doesn't matter if a monkey is teaching them, they're going to do better than the class of low income and disenfranchised students.
Can you cite any studies or well known facts to support these statements? I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'd just like to see something other than some anonymous person's assertions on a tech chatboard.
Private schools can and do kick out trouble-causing students, and there is a direct correlation between the presence of such children and the overall performance of a class. This is probably a larger factor than merely selecting the academic elite, who themselves may come from abusive or otherwise troubled homes and who may bring such problems into the classroom.
However, the academic elite by and large tend to follow their economic class's trends. In other words, affluent parents spend more on their children's education, give them better tools and more opportunities to do well, and effectively can buy a smoother pathway to the top with fewer obstacles. SAT scores are correlated with wealth.
To argue that private school teaching "is probably inferior to public schools" is a broad and unsubstantiated claim. Leaving aside the fact that some kids attend private school for non-academic reasons (their parent went there, it's smaller, it's more prestigious), we can ask--do private schools really help kids perform better? It's controversial, according to this Time blog, but a separate study shows that Catholic schools do a better job overall.
There are many excellent public schools in the U.S. and Canada; Montgomery County in MD for example, and Middlesex County in Massachusetts are superb--well funded, high academic standards, good support for the arts, and involved parents. The high performing schools in these districts, though, are in the affluent areas like Belmont and Newton and Lexington in Massachusetts. The lower income Middlesex schools in Waltham and Watertown are down a rung or two.
As for the quality of teachers, it's disputable that private schools hire inferior teachers at lower pay, at least in the U.S. This was more true decades ago, but in recent years private schools have had to compete for a shrinking pool of good teachers and they have raised salaries and benefits nearly to union scale. Nonetheless, private schools have remained a desirable destination because the students tend to be better behaved, the troublemakers are removed, and there tends to be more parental buy-in. This only makes sense; when you're paying $16,000 a year for your child, you tend to have more and stronger opinions about how the school is run.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
You put in awful lot of faith in the free market working in education. Can you point to a single situation where it has worked? Looking at any list of the world's top economies or eduction systems shows a list filled with countries with a strong government investment in education.
Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html :-) because ultimately local schools will grow into larger vibrant community learning centers open to anyone in the community and looking more like college campuses. New York State could try this plan incrementally in a few different school districts across the state as pilot programs to see how it works out. This may seem like an unlikely idea to be adopted at first, but at least it is a starting point for building a positive vision of the future for all children in all our communities. Like straightforward ideas such as Medicare-for-all, this is an easy solution to state, likely with broad popular support, but it may be a hard thing to get done politically for all sorts of reasons. It might take an enormous struggle to make such a change, and most homeschoolers rightfully may say they are better off focusing on teaching their own and ignoring the school system as much as possible, and letting schooled families make their own choices. Still,homeschoolers might find it interesting to think about this idea and how the straightforward nature of it calls into question many assumptions related to how compulsory public schooling is justified. Also, ultimately, the more people who homeschool, the easier it becomes, because there are more families close by with which to meet during the daytime (especially in rural areas). And sometime just knowing an alternative is possible can give one extra hope. Who would have predicted ten years back that NYS would have a governor who was legally blind and whose parents had been forced to change school districts just to get him the education he needed? So, there is always "the optimism of uncertainty", as historian Howard Zinn says. We don't know for sure what is possible and what is not. "
"New York State current spends roughly 20,000 US dollars per schooled child per year to support the public school system. This essay suggests that the same amount of money be given directly to the family of each homeschooled child. Further, it suggests that eventually all parents would get this amount, as more and more families decide to homeschool because it is suddenly easier financially. It suggests why ultimately this will be a win/win situation for everyone involved (including parents, children, teachers, school staff, other people in the community, and even school administrators
See also:
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/
http://basicincome.iovialis.org/e00.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Income_Guarantee
"A basic income guarantee (or basic income) is a proposed system[1] of social security, that regularly provides each citizen with a sum of money. In contrast to income redistribution between nations themselves, the phrase basic income defines payments to individuals rather than households[2], groups, or nations, in order to provide for individual basic human needs. Except for citizenship, a basic income is entirely unconditional. Furthermore, there is no means test; the richest as well as the poorest citizens would receive it. The U.S. Basic Income Network[3] emphasizes this absence of means testing in its precise definition, "The Basic Income Guarantee is an unconditional, government-insured guarantee that all citizens will have enough income to meet their basic needs.""
What good is education as far as economic advancement when the robots and AIs and voluntary social networks are going to do most of the jobs inthe future?
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/robots-jobs-and-our-assumptions/
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
USA before 1965. That was not difficult, was it?
You can't handle the truth.
Well Northern Ireland and some counties in England have Grammar Schools, which are state schools which select the students who get the best marks in the 11+ exam. They generally get better results than private and public[1] schools.
[1] In British English, a public school is type of fee paying private school, not a state funded school. It can lead to confusion when having these types of debates.
But seriously, there are lots of poor people in India. Consider this: the HDI of India as a whole is less than that of West Bank by about 0.1. The general consensus is that Public schools are terrible in India; probably because of corrupt mid-level bureaucrats.
"How many charities are founded by rich people? By their very nature, almost all of them."
Nonsense. There are millions of charities in the world. The number set up by some rich guy with an endowment is miniscule compared to all the grass roots efforts.
Private schools do better because the class clown that disrupts the learning environment is not required to remain in the classroom. Search online for student videos of my science class or other cell phone videos of public classroom teaching. Most of them show the learning environment is a zoo and can be hardly listed as a learning environment.
Schools cut down on special ed and tried to integrate special needs kids back into the classroom. This was followed with no child left behind. This coupled with regulations against effective discipline to maintain classroom order and the aggressive kids without the same rules then can make the rules. This went unchecked for a while which is now followed by anti bully reactions.
It is time to stop applying patch on top of patch and wishing it will work. It's broken and not working. Public school is not a place to advance your learning, feel good about doing well, and becoming well prepared to face the future.
Those who can use private school. Those who can't afford private school home school and use co-op schooling. ( a huge part of my community does co-op )
The main difference in this is the privileged are taught by the successful to succeed in business. The under privileged are taught how to use social services, run a hidden grow operation, or other business to be successful with their peers. They are not afforded the same educational opportunities as they are taught early on that they will not be able to succeed. They are taught instead how to work the system.
I was raised in public school. It was NOTHING like public school today. I too have had to use an alternative to educate my kids. Unfortunately I didn't start early enough so bad habits learned in public schools from their peers is still negatively impacting them. Due to this some are ill prepared to take on secondary education at this time and will not be wasting money on student loans only to fail.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/39911910
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/business/Cramer_Tackles_the_Student_Loans_Crisis_Philadelphia-115674714.html
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/11-2
College if it happens will be pay as you go instead of being part of the next sub prime bubble.
The truth shall set you free!
In British English, a public school is type of fee paying private school,
No it isn't. Private and public schools are both forms of independent schools, neither is a subcategory of the other. Private schools are businesses run to make money and typically accept pupils based on their parents' ability to pay. Public schools are non-profit entities (typically registered charities), which exist to provide education. They typically do charge fees, but also provide financial assistance to a significant number (often over 20%) of students who are academically able, but not from families that are able to pay.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
There is similar happening in Scotland, albeit via a different approach - essentially private schools can have their charitable status revoked if they do not pass the "public benefit" test. This is applicable to all charities, though generally interpreted in private schools in relation to the level of fees charged and the proportions of bursaries granted: if high fees mean poor people are effectively excluded from the school, their "public benefit" is not so very "public".
There was quite a push specifically on private schools a few years ago, this is a good, albeit old, article, but the government and charity regulator seem to be backing off quite a bit now, perhaps partly due to change in government and party because the schools have elevated their bursaries in response (some of which is due to receiving more donations for this very reason). Someone who gives politicians a lot of benefit over any doubt might wink and mutter "well played" at this point, but I think that's giving out a lot more credit than due.
In practice what charitable status means is relief from rates, a significant local tax based on property values (private schools here tend to have a lot of prized property). It does also mean relief from corporation tax, that donations qualify for a tax deduction and a few other things, but any decent accountant should be able to engineer a way around those, albeit perhaps with a few ongoing headaches. What I'm saying is compliance certainly is advantageous, but is not mandatory, neither in the legal nor practical sense.
I think this is a much more reasonable approach, though while our poverty gap is pretty bad it's nothing on India's, and we don't have their caste problems either. There's also far less relevance of race here than there seems to be from my media-led impression of the US (we do have it, but it's relatively endemic to certain cities), so tackling racial inequality often comes under the more general banner of anti-poverty.
For what it's worth I audited a private school and, while 1 school does not make for a statistically representative sample, I was a little stunned at how close their bursary system was to what I'd consider an ideal model. They offered everything from long-term loans at base interest rate to fully paying their fees, uniforms, sports equipment, school trips, anything needed for after-school activities and school meals. All of this is done in a manner that avoids the "poor kid with his free meals voucher" embarrassments. Few in the school itself would even know who had bursaries. The pupil acceptance committee certainly didn't.
Bursary award consideration was non-competitive, entirely based on the student (especially any reasons why state school would be unsuited) and the ability of the parents to pay. There was no special extra-hard test to sit or any such thing. Other than the standard entry exam for all students who did not have family at the school, academic, sporting, creative or other ability only mattered if there was some special fund set up due to restriction set by a donor (they could be rather eccentric). Race and so on was completely ignored, with the only exception being that *after* issuing the awards they did do a few numbers with their fingers-crossed.
You put in awful lot of faith in the free market working in education. Can you point to a single situation where it has worked? Looking at any list of the world's top economies or eduction systems shows a list filled with countries with a strong government investment in education.
USA before 1965. That was not difficult, was it?
To understand how the US got where it is today you need to understand one important detail: up to around 1950 the US was a strongly immigration driven economy - unlike any of the other major economies.
If you look at key "US inventions" before 1965 resulting in a Nobel prize then virtually all of them were invented by people who were born and taught elsewhere (mostly in Europe) and then emigrated to the US . If you look at the list of Nobel laureates there's barely anyone born and educated in the US in that time frame - only immigrants.
If you were right then that list would be full of US-born Nobel prize holders ... but it isn't.
So, without realizing it, you actually support the grandparent's point: countries with historically strong public education lead in innovation. And yes, countries can also brain-drain capable people from other countries and can thus bridge their lack of good public education - but I'm sure that's not the point you wanted to make?
Well, since you are a government shill, I am not really surprised to see you in yet another thread of mine, but you are wrong here just as well.
I am not talking about Nobel prize winners or anything of the sort. I am clearly talking about public schools, which are overpriced in USA today, which is on the brink of economic disaster of unimaginable magnitude, all due to its government driven economic policies that destroy the free market competition.
1979 was when they introduced the DOE, but 1965 was when the passed the SS act as well as Medicare, and that was an implicit way to collect more general taxes for the government programs, whatever they are, (not for the benefit of SS or Medicare funds, which never existed and are ponzi schemes.)
US students did not have to go into tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and they were getting an actual education, which was quite worth while, and this has nothing to do with any immigrants, who incidentally came to the USA not because of any government programs, but DESPITE those very programs.
Immigrants came to the USA for the FREEDOMS FROM the government, not looking for government handouts, so while in your warped twisted mind of a shill, you assign the success of USA to the government, the reality is that all the government is killing USA by killing its economy, and people are leaving the country today for the same reason so many came into USA in the first place - there is no economic freedom in USA anymore.
The fact that USA has no economic freedom due to all of the business regulations, has ridiculously high taxes, ridiculous barriers to entry, which are impossible to overcome to become a competitor to government sponsored monopolies, that and printing and borrowing and more printing of money - inflationary fiscal policy, which leads to the increases in prices for all commodities and eventually products around the world, (until the world stops using USD completely and stops buying US bonds), that policy leads to destruction of US market, destruction of US school system as well, as it is no longer necessary.
Who needs schools in USA? Why bother? US worker is the last worker in the world in terms of attractiveness to a potential employer.
Here are some numbers, which show how impossible it is to have capital savings in fiat currencies (in this case USD) given the government destruction of it
sugar Dec 2003: 20.40 cents/pound, Apr 2011: 36.97 cents/pound, price up by over 81%
Beef Dec 2003: 105.40 cents/pound, Apr 2011: 193.00 cents/pound, price up by over 83%
Barley Dec 2003: 100.77 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 208.70 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 107%
Rice Dec 2003: 197.00 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 500.57 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 154%
Cocoa Beans Dec 2003: 1,646.58 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 3,113.52 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 89%
Tea Dec 2003: 205.22 cents/KG, Apr 2011: 325.33 cents/KG, price up by over 58%
Rubber Dec 2003: 57.31cents/pound, Apr 2011: 265.49cents/pound, price up by over 363%
Corn Dec 2003: 111.98 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 318.45 USD/Metric Ton, price up by over 184%
Bananas Dec 2003: 371.43 USD/Metric Ton, Apr 2011: 1,013.47 USD/Metric Ton,
You can't handle the truth.
What it comes down to is that the govt sees that pvt schools are doing a better job than the govt schools.
Instead of making the govt schools better, make the pvt schools share the load.
Spend 35 grand per pupil in the "govt" schools and they will magically get better.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Your example is a system that struggled, then failed, then struggled again, then only when we went to war and the Government was the customer to the booming industries in the US and factories were full of relatively cheap labor (women mostly) did it start to thrive again?
- this sentence by (probably) a US 'educated' AC, is the example of the magnitude of sheer ignorance on the role that the government of US played in creation of the Great Depression via money printing in late twenties, to pump up the valuation of UK pound, which then lead to an asset bubble, resulting in the market collapse, which then prompted the US government to do all sorts of spending, bail outs and stimulus, that I have outlined here in some detail
The Great Depression ended only once the WWII ended, and all the government 'stimulus' (money to build and drop bombs) ended, and allowed the USA to restructure its productive capacity towards products and services required by the world. Of-course at the time US had a monopoly on production, so it thrived, but that kind of monopoly couldn't last forever, so as other countries rebuilt their manufacturing base, USA lost its monopoly on labor prices, but the government got used to very high levels of spending, so it couldn't stop and eventually defaulted by getting off the gold standard and printing unbacked fiat.
The US economy has been falling apart not because there's regulation, but because of the nature of the regulation.
- it is falling apart because there is government in business and economy in the first place. ALL government regulations end up distorting the markets and lead to unintended consequences, all of which are bad for the economy, because they rely on forces other than willingness of market participants.
We do a lot of catering to big business owners, while throwing the rest of the people under the bus.
- this is just not true. The business owners are a minority, and politicians learned to be populous by catering to the majority - employees, thus the business owners got screwed plenty. Some of them got out of business, some learned to cope by moving business out of the country, some bought politicians to maintain and even to increase their business, especially because so much competition was destroyed by the government in the first place, so a number of businesses became monopolies only due to government in the first place, and now it bails them out, stimulates them, buys them out, prints cash and hands it over, etc.etc.
You can't handle the truth.
In British English, a public school is type of fee paying private school,
No it isn't. Private and public schools are both forms of independent schools, neither is a subcategory of the other. Private schools are businesses run to make money and typically accept pupils based on their parents' ability to pay. Public schools are non-profit entities (typically registered charities), which exist to provide education. They typically do charge fees, but also provide financial assistance to a significant number (often over 20%) of students who are academically able, but not from families that are able to pay.
Which, more or less, makes a British 'public' school what Americans think of when they say 'private school'. Well, excepting that most american private schools are in some fashion religious, but our notable secular private schools are things pretty much directly modeled on British public schools. In some cases explicitly so.
Read Freakonomics for a study on the importance of student desire.
The Chicago school system was ordered to integrate so they set up a lottery system for kids at disadvantaged schools to maybe win a ticket to a 'good' school. Subsequent 'analyses' showed the students who won the lottery did better than the losers but Levitt realized you had 3 populations, not two.
There were the people who didn't enter the lottery
people who entered and lost and
people who entered and won
All the other studies lumped the folks who didn't enter along with the lottery losers. Levitt's study discovered there was no significant different between the losers and winners of the lottery. The only significant difference was between those who entered the lottery (those who wanted an education) and those who didn't care (or their parents didn't care) and didn't enter the lottery.
One technique that my high school used (it's a little more difficult for public schools, I was sent to a private school due to behavioral handicaps, paid for by my local school district) was, if they had advanced students, send them to college, starting their freshman year of high school if applicable.
The local technical college even had a program where college classes counted for both college and high school credit. So, they basically outsourced their advanced classes, and students got free college credit.
That's not quite true. The vast majority of private schools are charities. It would be very difficult for a non-charitable private school to compete with the tax breaks that charities get. "Public schools" originally referred to those schools regulated under the Public Schools Acts of 1868 and 1873. They were "public" in the sense that anyone who could afford the fees and pass the entrance exam could get a place, and were not restricted to members of a particular religion or to royalty or members of the aristocracy.
The private school teachers (partially as a result of the lower pay) are also the ones who want to teach -- not the ones who got an English degree and then realized that they couldn't get any other job.
Huh? I see no evidence for that.
In general, I think most teachers go into teaching because they want to teach, public and private. Some of them just burn out faster.
The one advantage that private schools do have is that it's much easier for them to eject students out for being disruptive.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
No, they won't. Or at least they won't become the equals of the students that attend the 35k schools at the moment. The reason is simple: to get into a 35k school you have to have 35k to spare and think a good education is worth 35k. Parents who value education are more likely to have kids who value education, and kids who value education learn better then those who think it's a waste of time... no matter how much you spend on them.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
actually no, im from utah, the state w/ the lowest money per pupil ratio by far, and we are doing ok ( think we are higher then the median on every meaning less test the force students to take), what matters is more how stable the students lives are, how happy the teachers are, and how educated the parents are, etc.
while all of these are correlated w/ wealth it isnt caused by it directly
warning pointless sig
Yes it is.
monkey spunk. A public school is just an older and more prestigious private school.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I went to a fairly prestigious high school in the bay area that was private. I can say based on anecdotal experience, shared by peers who were in public schools, that the teachers at my high school on the whole were "superior" to those at the public schools. If nothing else, the bar was set far higher for us than for those in the public school. A good friend of mine, who is extremely intelligent, shared with me his high school experience and essentially for merely showing up he was lauded for his brilliance. This caused to be somewhat problematic for him when entering a fairly good public university in the state of California. He no longer was lauded for being brilliant by merely showing up and caused him to have to reevaluate his entire approach to education and the amount of time he dedicated to his education.
The high school I went to required us to take no standardized tests, they did not participate in any state wide ranking and did not even publicly rate the graduating class (although, I have since found out, because my sister now teachers there that they do indeed rank the class by GPA but only disseminate the information to universities students apply to). Instead of standardized tests, a huge emphasis was placed on critical thinking skills. Skills that have immense market value and differentiate individuals significantly in any market place (be it in getting into a university for undergraduate or graduate studies or being more employable after education).
My graduating class was 80 students. Eight of my peers went on to attend universities such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford. So nearly 10% of my class, despite the fact that our GPA's were hard capped at 4.0 (there were no honor classes at my high school) went on to attend some of the most prestigious universities in the country. Certainly there were socio-economic factors that have nothing to do with talent that were at play, but with that said can you show me a public school anywhere in Canada or the United States that produces those kinds of results?
And lastly because of the small size of the school, the teachers were able to spend an immense amount of time and energy working with individual students improving various aspects of their scholastic process. I remember long hours spent with my favorite English teacher, working one-on-one to improve my critical thinking and writing skills in an ungraded setting. This was done because the teachers cared about us as people and invested themselves in our futures. This trait is not readily apparent among teachers in the public school system, though I doubt it is the fault of the teachers themselves and more a product of the way that the public education is setup and the logistical difficulties of educating a very large number of people with very divergent skill sets.
The public school system in the western world has issues, and the public model cannot simply adopt the private model and expect success because of logistical reasons. With that said, based on my experience and the anecdotal information gleaned from peers who attended public schools, my current intention is not to have children until I am in a position to be able to afford to fund their entire education privately because that is what will give them the necessary advantage to succeed in the modern world.
The system is as it is, and will only change over a long period time with small incremental changes. It's fun to get on a soapbox and pontificate about the way the world should be, but at the end the day one must come down from the soapbox and deal with reality as it is else be lost in the riptide of change. (Also, let me state that the soapbox statement is not an attempt to troll or an attempt to insinuate that you were on a soapbox of any kind but merely placed to illustrate something that many individuals do while engaged in this sort of discussion, you are not doing this.)
Moreover it doesn't address the social learning that takes place in school. By forcing a gifted student into classes with more "mature" students you put them at a disadvantage socially on a number of levels. I realize this is Slashdot and we don't entirely value the process of social education here, but it is arguably the most vital component to having success in the modern economic environment.
I failed miserably at my first passion because I had not forced myself to become acclimated to certain sorts of social settings that were vital to my success. By nature, I'm a shy and introverted person, but I cannot escape the fact that my own fears and insecurities prohibited from finding the success I desired. I have accepted this and moved on to other things, but do so with the knowledge that in order to find success in future endeavors I must address these shortcomings.
The world does not spin on brilliance and intellect alone, it's about people and working with and for people to attain common goals. Social education is more important than any other sort of education and by pushing gifted students up on the ladder quickly we run the risk of robbing them of this opportunity and hamstringing them in future endeavors.
In the US most middle class private schools' main purpose is to give their kids a hefty dose of Jesus in their lessons. While kids in private schools learn more it's because of parental involvement and despite the broken lesson plans.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
That sounds like a great program, and is another option available.
Really, the biggest concern here is the "no child left behind" bullshit. They're increasingly targeting the lowest of the set while the highest languish and eventually get so messed up in the head due to a severe lack of challenge that they may as well have been the lowest.
I propose we reset and take the school system backwards about 30-40 years, see what happens.
The private school teachers (partially as a result of the lower pay) are also the ones who want to teach -- not the ones who got an English degree and then realized that they couldn't get any other job.
Huh? I see no evidence for that.
In general, I think most teachers go into teaching because they want to teach, public and private. Some of them just burn out faster.
The one advantage that private schools do have is that it's much easier for them to eject students out for being disruptive.
? I have two teenage siblings, and I must say that the most infuriating element of public school here in Italy is that it shirks problems whenever it can. Inferior teachers, security problems, hazing, students pushed on even if they lack both the will and the preparation...I am fortunate because both my sons are good students, but we are not an "average" family, in that my wife could afford to stay at home and grow the kids, which is a luxury these days.
coming back to the"student ejection" problem, remember that for the most part the decisions are made by parents, understandably, since they are paying.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
That's a different world from India. According to the article, the posh private school is $1,500 per year, and the government only pays $300 for the 25% poor students it has forced the school to take. $1,500 per year is less than 1/10th what some US states pay per pupil.
Doing some poking around, it appears the average primary school teacher salary is about $3,000 per year in India, with a student:teacher ratio of 40:1, meaning the government expenditure on teaching is only $75/year per student. Even so, that is over 10% of the total government budget, and the expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP is about the same as South Korea. (4.1% vs. 4.2%) Other poor countries such as Yemen, Cuba and Morocco spend much more in GDP terms than India, though, and India could afford to reduce the student-teacher ratio to 30:1 while at the same time increasing the average teacher salary to $4,500. (Thus doubling teacher salary expenditures to $150 per student per year.) The effective cost per teacher hour would rise less than 20% if absenteeism were reduced from 25% to 5%. A less ridiculously low salary would attract more and better teachers and a smaller class size would reduce burnout and absenteeism.
In the US, on the other hand, most states are well into the region of diminishing returns from paying higher salaries, although reducing class size could still have benefits. The main opportunities in the US for improving education are in eliminating the expensive and counterproductive bureaucracy and the ridiculously over-specified curricula and methods that it mandates.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
its completely opposite here in india. public school teachers are paid significantly less than private school teachers. the infrastructure in govt run schools is pathetic, the teachers callous and undedicated.
also i don't think that a class consisting of smarter people does not need good teachers.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
There are other significant advantages in NSW (Australia) at least. Smaller class sizes, better facilities (federal government subsidies are quite generous to private schools imo), a ranking system almost beyond comprehension that does favour private school students.
Simply put, the marking system looks at how your school ranked you (say they said you were 10th in your year), they look at the marks everyone scored at the exams - say you got the highest mark in your school, this is given to the student who was ranked as the top student by the school and every one is then scaled accordingly.
Another aspect of the ranking is half the marks are assessed by the school so they want to moderate the marks so they look at how your school scores at these external exams and scales the assessment according to this rank - the calculations apparently are too complex to explain.
My understanding is if you are a bright student in a "dumb" school, half your mark would get scaled to oblivion (if you scored full marks for every test and every assignment, the teacher gives you 95% as your assessment, they would look at your school's rank and if they deem your school is bottom of the heap, your assessment would be "scaled appropriately - you might have scored 100% in the test too - you might be the only person that did but that is not taken into account).
NSW Board of studies.
BM3
The bottom line is that birds of a feather flock together - that old line about "opposites attract" is nonsense.
The problem is that dumber, lazier people tend to go in for conspiracy theories that claim all their problems are due to the rich, privileged elite, and little else is responsible for their lower quality of life.
I'd say that you can't argue with a paranoid, and that freedom of association/dissociation must prevail. If the smart people separate out to form their own society and the dumb people form theirs, then each will have to live in the bed they make.
What kind of school taught you that it's correct to ram so much shit into one sentence?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
India is developing since you can exploit their people via caste system.
http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/may/03touch.htm
China is developing since you can exploit their people by abusing human rights.
http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-show-1-tech-apple-workers-forced-to-sign-no-suicide-pledge/20110504.htm
Americans are suffering since US regime is letting Chindia exploit their people via outsourcing.
I believe US visa system/outsourcing should be linked to caste system in India and human rights in China.
Govt must constitute a panel to rewrite US Constitution and Quran
Here in Florida, bad though our education system may be, this is available statewide. In fact, every high school I've seen has a few college courses on-campus. Most students take their classes at a community college, but can attend a four-year university. The only problem is that oddly, taking community college classes in high school has a higher GPA requirement than full-time enrollment and the programme is not generally open to freshmen.
Here is some anecdotal experience. My son goes to this school mentioned in the article. And it is a good school, with some seriously good teachers, from my personal experience. This school and many other schools have been taking in "economically weaker sections" or EWS kids from some time now, but not more than some 5 to 10%. Also, different schools had different models for inclusion. The Delhi Public School, I believe holds special evening classes for these kids, whereas other schools like to integrate them into the main class.
The specific experiment described in this article actually took effect in this school year and has raised the proportion of these kids in the class to 25%. Of course, I am not privy to whatever internal issues the teachers/kids have been having, but its early days still. The no-testing admission has been the law in Delhi for some time now, but now has become law across the nation (I hear that private school admission in Bombay is even more difficult than Delhi). Most of the schools are incensed at having their own policies superseded arbitrarily by the law; hence the resistance. However, I am fairly certain that they will adjust to this and do a good job, once the initial issues are ironed out.
From my own personal experience there are two issues to deal with. First is the rich poor divide. Compared to many of the parents in this school, I am decidedly on the poorer side; these are the parents who own farm-houses in Delhi (about USD 10 million apiece) and send their 5 year olds to the south of France for summer vacation. My family got to go to the hills near Shimla, overnight journey by train. The first time I took my son to one of his friend's birthdays my jaw fell open. As a middle class parent with a middle class upbringing, I am having the same conversation about rich-poor divides with my son when I plan his next birthday party. I simply cannot afford to match his friends birthdays and, even if I could, have no intention of doing it. In my opinion, this is an important purpose of school; my child needs to learn the importance of money but not to make the mistake of conflating it with self-worth; he needs to learn to get along with all people, both richer and poorer than him.
In short, by having EWS students in the school, they are not creating a new problem; however, of course the EWS parents and children feel it more keenly and probably need counseling on how to deal with it.
The second issue is the eagerness for an education and the ability to follow that through. IMHO this is the most serious problem: most of the other kids in school have parents who are genuinely motivated that their children get an education and have the ability to help their children, either directly or by hiring tutors. This is the place where the EWS parents suffer the most and they need the most help. In many cases, they simply need reassurance; it is often the case where the kid is lagging behind a little in something or the other, but within the overall is well within the group limits; given time he or she will catch up. However, the parent panics when they hear about it from the teacher and start that "all work no play" nonsense alluded to in the article. Which actually increases the pressure on the child and makes things worse. I think this is where we parents can actually help, by forming support groups and reaching out to the EWS parents. However, this is the kind of thing which can't be legislated and takes time. The schools can probably also reach out to the parents (the Shri Ram school has a parent teacher association, but I am not aware if they are directly dealing with the issue) for help. Once again, all of this will take time.
I was in an experimental program in elementary that incorporated aptitude based approaches with at your own pace coursework. Basically if you read at a 6th grade level you were given 6th grade coursework for your reading/English lessons regardless of whether you were in 1st or 8th grade. Further, we were given basically a whole lesson plan outline ahead of time and a series of things to accomplish before we could move on.
This was great for me - I am very much a self-starter and wound up ripping through my lessons quickly enough that they had to figure out something else to do with me but it was horrible, absolutely horrible for most of the students because they weren't really prepared for so much responsibility. Maybe 1/10th of the students performed well enough and of that maybe only 1/25th actually thrived.
It also sucked from a socialization standpoint - we weren't really working together as even the kids on the same material were working at vastly different speeds. They tried to remedy that by having some of us act as tutors when other kids had problems, but that wound up with a kind of power differential situation that was awkward in some cases and a didactic situation in others where you had kids completely untrained in how to teach things just bagging on their classmates.
I could see ways now of improving the method, but its a kind of complex process to get right which is why, I think, it hasn't yet been gotten right.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
You read it, you understood it, I am not a book writer, so what's your problem? Or should I write it in my mother tongue instead to make it easier for you to comprehend?
You can't handle the truth.
My school had different sets for most subjects. You had exams at the end of each year, and were put with people who scored similar marks in each subject. They would be the same age as you, and they'd be moving at a similar speed. The weakest students were in a class that moved slowly, the stronger ones covered it more quickly. At the end of the year, there would be another exam and the students would be reassigned the next year. Typically, most students stayed in the same set, with a few moving up or down one class. This had two significant advantages over moving students up a grade:
First, it was per-subject. Someone could be in the top set for French and the bottom set for maths (or vice versa), so it helped students who were gifted in one area but weak in another. There were only a few of us who were in the top sets for arts and science subjects, most people who were in one would not be in the other.
Second, it kept pupils with their peers. If you were in the top set, you were with people who were better at the subject than average, not with people who had simply had an extra year to study it. This also meant that the top set classes could advance more quickly. Moving a student up a year just means that they cover more advanced material at the normal pace for pupils a year older, it doesn't mean that they cover relevant material faster.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I have no studies, and I'm not going to look any up for you. I'm a teacher, if that helps. It is, however, generally accepted that you don't compete for the best employees with the lowest pay/benefits (and in my region, private schools pay the least). My goal is not to say public is better, but to challenge the assumption that private is better.
It is absolutely disputable whether public schools or private schools, on average, have higher quality teachers. Unionized public school teachers may very well start out as effective and deteriorate with nearly guaranteed job security and eroding patience. And even if there were a trend, it's going to vary a lot among individuals. On the other hand, I think it is safe to say that public school teachers have to balance a heck of a lot more, and it would be impossible to accurately measure teaching quality. We can both agree that nearly all the problem students get shunted to public education; naturally, private education students would have higher grades.
The point I'm saying is this [and it should be fairly self-evident, with or without studies]: saying that private education is better because the students score better [because they only admit the best students, with the fewest behavioural problems and the most invested parents] is like saying that scientists have cured cancer because no one dies from cancer in this country anymore [because they send cancer patients to a remote island before they die].
That would, I think, be a pretty cost effective way to handle most of the students performing (in whichever direction) outside the current norm.
There are still some edge cases - students who would be in a set of their own at their school, for example. One way might be to aggregate those students from across a region and then have the set system applied there again.
In Chicago, we did something like that - some of us were given the SATs and depending on how well we scored on those we were put in college or highschool level courses. For subjects like maths and science, you went to University of Illinois to take classes (and then, I guess, later they made a school - Illinois Math and Science Academy?); for composition and history type classes you went to a high school. The only downside was that this was just 1 or 2 days a week, and you still had to do all of your elementary level coursework, which was incredibly annoying.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Government funded education well before 1965. Hell it funded it way before 1865.
Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012
1979-80 was when they created the 'department of education', so that was clearly a huge loss for education quality and affordability, but 1965 was when they passed SS act and Medicare as well, so they started collecting even more taxes for government spending and growing, that's why I hold that year as an important one in terms of affordable education and other services (health care, insurance) becoming the thing of the past.
People used to be able to pay for their education and health care before government stepped in with the bread and circuses votes and passed more taxes and punished the workers more, but of-course the ultimate destruction started in 1913, when they introduced the Fed with the printing press, who got the ability to monetize government debt and they started collecting income taxes and created the IRS. Both of those things are responsible for very quick growth of government, and now in USA, government work force consists of about 10% of the population (including contractors and the military).
Government spending is destroying everything - from education to healthcare, to insurance to peace on this planet, to currencies themselves.
You can't handle the truth.
Perhaps my question was unclear. When and where was there a successful free market only education system? All of the dates you point to are after the creation of a government funded education system. It may have been at the state and local level, but it was government. I wasn't asking about federalism or central banking's impact on education, just for a situation where a strictly free market system has provided superior outcomes to what a government system has been able to create.
Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012
Well, we are in the story about a successful private schooling system in India being raided by the government, so that's one. But USA used to have private schooling system - private schools, which provided competitive education at affordable rates before federal government brought in all sorts of money, which created artificial demand and pushed prices up and quality down, simply because there is no reason to bother with quality - anybody can get a loan, and there is no reason to bother with competitive affordable pricing, again - anybody can get a loan. In the climate, where anybody can get a loan, there is no incentive to compete either on quality or on price, and the education is inflated, so more and more is needed to stand out of the pack, all this, while kids are getting insane loans from government to go to schools they shouldn't even go to, because they don't know neither what they are doing there, nor what they are getting themselves into with these loans.
As to public schools ran by localities - there is competition between localities, so if you want to attend a public school, you move to one, that offers this, and if you do not want to, you move somewhere, where you get good private education.
You can't handle the truth.
That would be a great idea--if most of these families wouldn't immediately run out and blow the money on crack, gold jewelry, flashy cars, etc. almost immediately, And they would.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Home schooling is not a replacement for public education, and a basic income social program is not a replacement for directed government spending. I can't even begin to list the overwhelming problems that would rapidly develop in such a system: inequality of access to education, loss of standardization heading into higher education, expansion of free ridership, inflation of basic costs...
"I wonder how long it would take for the population of New York State to double."
And the problem with that is?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Schooling is not education; you prefer this? http://thewaronkids.com/
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Perhaps some would. Let's say you are right. Remember, most of these people are the product of schooling. What does that say about raising those now adults during their formative years during the 1980s in day-prisons confined in chairs doing paperwork most of their youth and then fed mainstream TV promoting consumerism the rest of the time? It might take a while for the culture to heal...
Also, why should everyone suffer because a few will mess up? There are already plenty of laws about "negect" and kids. Obviously, if parents don't provide at all for their kids, the community is probably going to step in eventually in some way. And if every family had a lot of money and free time, relatives and neighbors would be able informally to help out the kids whose parents were really messed up. Besides, if parents don't care about their kids, school or not, that kid is going to end up messed up. How many such kids already flunk out of school because they can't do their homework or have to go home to take care of an alcoholic parent? Lots. See:
http://www.thecaseagainsthomework.com/
Many times, addictive behavior comes from stress, and money stress in families with kids is a big issue in our society (about 20% of US kids are raised in poverty), and so this approach might alleviate some of that stress. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
Nothing is perfect. But overall, which is more fitting with democracy, family values, individual rights, and a free market?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Look, I went to public school and I am well aware of its shortcomings, so don't condescend to me. But your purported solution would be worse than the status quo, and that's an accomplishment.
"I am well aware of its shortcomings,"
Which include drugging children, suspension of civil rights, terrorizing kids, fostering a climate of bullying, breaking the bonds between children and their families, damaging the teachers in other ways, destroying intrinsic motivation, boring people, keeping people from reaching their full potential by wasting years of their lives, and so on...
Do you have alternative proposals?
Anyway, after you have mulled the idea over for a while, you may get past a knee-jerk reaction. It's hard to admit how much big institutional systems have harmed us, even when we have "succeeded" in the world they have shaped.
From New York State Teacher of the Year, John Taylor Gatto: ... ...
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"Solve this problem and school will heal itself: children know that schooling is not fair, not honest, not driven by integrity. They know they are devalued in classes and grades, that the institution is indifferent to them as individuals. The rhetoric of caring contradicts what school procedure and content say, that many children have no tolerable future and most have a sharply proscribed one. The problem is structural. School has been built to serve a society of associations: corporations, institutions, and agencies. Kids know this instinctively. How should they feel about it? How should we?
Before you can reach a point of effectiveness in defending your own children or your principles against the assault of blind social machinery, you have to stop conspiring against yourself by attempting to negotiate with a set of abstract principles and rules which, by its nature, cannot respond. Under all its disguises, that is what institutional schooling is, an abstraction which has escaped its handlers. Nobody can reform it. First you have to realize that human values are the stuff of madness to a system; in systems-logic the schools we have are already the schools the system needs; the only way they could be much improved is to have kids eat, sleep, live, and die there.
A huge price had to be paid for business and government efficiency, a price we still pay in the quality of our existence. Part of what kids gave up was the prospect of being able to read very well, a historic part of the American genius. Instead, school had to train them for their role in the new overarching social system. But spare yourself the agony of thinking of this as a conspiracy. It was and is a fully rational transaction, the very epitome of rationalization engendered by a group of honorable men, all honorable me -- but with decisive help from ordinary citizens, from almost all of us as we gradually lost touch with the fact that being followers instead of leaders, becoming consumers in place of producers, rendered us incompletely human. It was a naturally occurring conspiracy, one which required no criminal genius. The real conspirators were ourselves. When we sold our liberty for the promise of automatic security, we became like children in a conspiracy against growing up, sad children who conspire against their own children, consigning them over and over to the denaturing vats of compulsory state factory schooling."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.