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Why One Woman Says Sending Your Kid To Private School Is Evil
theodp writes "Slate's Allison Benedikt is ruffling some feathers with her recent manifesto, If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person. 'Not bad like murderer bad,' Benedikt writes, 'but bad like ruining-one-of-our-nation's-most-essential-institutions-in-order-to-get-what's-best-for-your-kid bad. So, pretty bad.' If your local school stinks and you send your child there, Benedikt explains, 'I bet you are going to do everything within your power to make it better.'"
I say that sending your child to public school is akin to child abuse.
Sounds like an really cool place.
Thanks for telling me up front that you don't know what you're talking about so I got to save time by not reading the rest.
Don't Bogart the fish sticks
That is a very poor assumption. Lots of private organizations use money unwisely, even to the point of committing outright fraud.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
where most schools are private, and the public ones are more prestigious than the private ones.
Why send your kids to school at all?
I bet if you sent your kids to the ghetto, you'd do everything you could to improve it!
States are fictitious entities, and what exists in reality are individuals. There exists a need to make both private and public institutions as good as possible, and that can only come about through honesty on everyone's part. One example would be private schools that are affordable and do not set unrealistic entry standards to intentionally keep out what the management perceive as unsavoury segments of society. And on the other hand public schools should also improve their standards and not merely serve as a last resort for the lowest segments. Altruism is needed to some extent whether in public or private life. Otherwise we get evil/incompetent corporations and evil/incompetent governments and there's not a whole lot of difference between the two.
and governments never would use money unswisely!!! and fraud? you'd have to be joking!!!
The fundamental issue is not private versus public.
But if you have only one school system, then it's a monopoly, and the lack of competition leads to bad schooling.
Of course there are good teachers in a public system, same as they are bad ones. But a monopoly guarantees that the system will be bad.
I really hate people that tell me I'm a bad person because I do what I think is best for my kids. They still get my taxes to pay for public education so why the hell should I be a bad person for sending my kids to a better school?
She's just another damned collectivist who thinks that they should have the right to control another aspect of my life.
Bill Gates: " If they [my children] had to go to a general inner-city school, I would do anything I could to avoid that being the case, because as a parent, I particularly see the potential in my kids that that wouldn't unleash," Gates said.
President Obama: President Obama reopened Monday what is often a sore subject in Washington, saying that his daughters could not obtain from D.C. public schools the academic experience they receive at the private Sidwell Friends School.
Matt Damon: Damon told the Guardian there were no longer public schools progressive enough for his family so private was the only choice in their new home of Los Angeles.
That's a terrible assumption. First of all, private organizations use money unwisely all the time. It's just that no one makes a big deal about it because "well, it's their own money, they can waste it if they want." They aren't actually any better than public organizations.
Secondly, most schools don't actually waste money. The schools you see spending shitloads of money on fancy laptops for students or things like that are almost always in rich neighborhoods which are swimming in money. They've covered all their necessary expenses (i.e. enough desks for everyone, plenty of textbooks, etc.) but they have money left over, so they spend it on luxuries. Nothing wrong with that. When a school does this and isn't in a wealthy neighborhood, you'll find that the expenses were covered by a private donation. In this case, someone donates money to the school and states that the money may ONLY be used to purchase fancy equipment. The school couldn't use the money on textbooks or school renovations even if they wanted to.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Sadly (and really only generally speaking - there are exceptions), private schools' quality is driven by market forces whereas public school policies are driven by politics. School officials obtain and maintain decision making positions and power by there connections. There is little to nothing even a group of parents can do to address this. When they do, it gets taken away.
For example, in my city, parents organize "booster clubs" to raise money for their local schools and improve the quality. But parents in poorer sections of the city are often genuinely unable to do this. For example, they have a disproportionate number of families with a single parent who barely makes ends meet and works too many hours to have time to invest in a booster club. Since this is unfair, the school system is working to take money from the booster clubs to distribute to the poorer areas. So, the parents have the incentive removed and, disheartened, give up. The school system has decided, essentially, "If those schools are going to fail, it's only fair that all schools fail."
The parents can't do anything to fix their public school, so the ones who can afford it take their kids out and put them in private schools. Ms. Benedikt is correct that there are Bad Persons at play. She is dead wrong about who those Bad Persons are.
First of all, private organizations use money unwisely all the time.
Yes, but when they do, you can take your money elsewhere. For example, if I were to find out that my daughter's private school was wasting money, I'd pull her out and send her to a different school. However, if I find out that my daughter's public school is wasting money, THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO because I have to send her there or I go to jail, CPS takes my daughter away and sends her to the school anyway.
Love the sig, by the way.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I'd not call it interesting: It's mostly name calling and a bunch of strawmen.
Now, I do not think that sending a kid to a private school is in any way evil, but I'd much rather see a proper refutation, instead of just answering crap with crap. I mean, I'd understand sinking to crappy dialectic if the original point was actually difficult to refute, but why not use proper logic to refute an argument as full of holes as that one? If anything, a refutation that bad gives credence to the original article,and makes me think this guy is right in the same sense that a broken clock is right twice a day.
I've seen better refutations in the slashdot comments.
You can vote for a new school board. Volunteer to help their election campaign. Or run for election yourself. You actually have MORE voice there than with a private school, where losing 1 customer is quite frankly not a big deal.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
The national motto is "IN GOD WE TRUST"
In reality, since you invented neoliberalism, the Washington Consensus, Ayn Rand and the Chicago School,
it really should be: "BUGGER YOU JACK, I'VE GOT MINE".
Larry Correia (multi NYT bestselling author of Monster Hunter International) did a point by point slam on this article:
Fisking Slate over Public Schools
Naked link to same article:
http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2013/08/30/fisking-slate-over-public-schools/
The woman who wrote the slate article is married with 3 kids in New York. Strangely, last year she wrote in Slate about how happy she will be to stop paying $5000/month on private preschools.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
"Reading Walt Whitman in ninth grade changed the way you see the world? Well, getting drunk before basketball games with kids who lived at the trailer park near my house did the same for me. In fact it’s part of the reason I feel so strongly about public schools."
These three sentences pretty much sum up everything you need to know about the article.
You can vote for a new school board. Volunteer to help their election campaign. Or run for election yourself. You actually have MORE voice there than with a private school, where losing 1 customer is quite frankly not a big deal.
One customer is a bigger deal than one taxpayer. The former can stop paying. Money speaks louder than words do.
You can vote for a new school board. Volunteer to help their election campaign. Or run for election yourself. You actually have MORE voice there than with a private school, where losing 1 customer is quite frankly not a big deal.
Well, considering that the last school board election was decided by more than one vote, my voting would have made no difference. Sure, I could run myself, but I'd be running against some academia type who has the backing of the teacher's union, which make up the bulk of the school board voters anyway, because he/she won't make the teachers accountable. (I support vouchers and would never get elected) And even if I could start a campaign to elect school board members who would make schools and teachers accountable, how many years would my child have to go to a sub-standard school while my campaign gains traction, gets the right people elected, and positive changes can be proposed, approved and implemented?
Or, I can send my daughter to the school that I choose today, knowing that she'll have an incredible advantage over all those poor minority kids with parents that can't afford to send their kids to private school.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Personally I think social security is fraud. My dad paid a ton of money into social security, literally maxing out the benefits for 30 years in a row, and he only started collecting SSI just a few months due to back pain from all of those years of being an auto mechanic (they wouldn't give him disability, so he only collected about $700 a month.) He died just a day before the next check would have come. I tried to get at least a partial payment so that I could give it to my mom to pay her mortgage, and the asshole on the other end of the line told me how SSI is welfare and he had to live the whole month to get anything at all.
What a fucking joke. The whole thing is setup with the promise that you pay into it and you're taken care of should any problems come down, so how is collecting on that promise welfare? He paid I'm guessing close to a hundred thousand dollars into it over his lifetime (he made quite a lot as a mechanic because he was pretty damn good at what he did) and they won't even give his widow a single $700 check.
Fraud is defined as being deceptive, which is exactly what social security is. It's a Ponzi scheme that you are forced by law to "invest" into. I honestly can't wait until the whole thing collapses, which is exactly what it is going to end up doing soon.
Sure we've all been screwed over by private entities/individuals plenty of times, but almost none of us have been ripped off and outright scammed as bad as social security is doing to us right now.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Your primary duty is to your child. I promise you, responsible parents agonize about the best options for their children. Sometimes private, sometimes public.
We started private and then left. The early years at private were probably worthwhile. I tell myself that. They were expensive.
But we've been delighted with the quality of our public schools. They operate from one third the budget of the private school (per pupil). The buildings and landscaping are dramatically tougher, but we're happy with the change. The teachers have been high quality, highly dedicated to the job and responsive to us. My kids are engaged and enjoy their schools.
You have essentially no control over the private school or the public school. In both cases, you will monitor your kids' work, talk regularly to their teachers, meet their friends and their friends' parents. Your recourse in both cases is to find a different school.
No one should demonize a parent for trying to do the best they can for their child. Your first duty is to your child. Social welfare and activism should come after family.
Yes, those who doubt massive, growing, and all-encompassing government, and don't wish to be pwned by it, are morally suspect.
Dictators throughout history could not be more pleased useful idiots are trying to build this meme.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
You cannot say on the one hand that we can't have control over our public schools and then on the other hand that we have to be sent to them.
And yes, we've tried to reform our public schools but they won't let us do it.
How hard is it to fire a pedophile teacher? Nearly impossible. How hard is it to fire a bad teacher? How hard is it to put in hiring standards for teachers?
We've tried to put this in place for decades and the schools, teacher's unions, and politicians have stopped us. So fine. You don't want us to have any control over these schools. Mission accomplished. But why would I feel morally compelled to stay in the system if you're made every effort to systematically marginalize me?
You cannot have both. Either you let me have influence over the system... and I will change it so that I find it acceptable... OR you do not get me in the system.
Choose. Effectively, either the teacher's unions need to get neutered or you can expect intelligent parents to choose other schools when public alternatives are unacceptable. We are not sacrificing our children on the alter of your corruption and incompetence.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
There are no private schools in Finland. Turns out, when you make the kids of the rich and powerful go to the same schools as everybody else, those schools turn out to be decent. Here's an article on how Finland outperforms the USA in education.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
So they think Obama is a racist?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Let me clue you in.
In, on December 24, 1913 when no one was looking Income Tax came into being. The problem is there were people out there who spent a whole lifetime free. They earned their money and did with it what the wanted. Compliance with paying income tax was low to the point of being nonexistent. It would also not be likely that a jury of your peers would find you guilty of doing anything wrong if you had not paid it.
There had to be a way to get people to comply, and they had figured it out by the 1930's. Social Security was a program you could opt into. If you did, you also opted into paying Federal Income Tax. But now, you could retire at 65 and the government would take care of you. The average life span was less than 65. It would be much like Social Security being started today and them promising benefits when you turn 85. Your average white, wage earning male (the major working population back in the 1930's) is not living to 65 back then, nor are they living to 85 now.
It was so very nice for us that the government offered a 1 in 5 lottery program and all we had to do was to opt into paying income taxes AND have social security payment come out of our wages. Don't forget your employer pays to. Do you know why you are only worth $14 an hour and not $16? Your employer is already paying into Social Security on your behalf as well. It counts towards your pay and figures into what they are willing to offer for wages.
Speaking of bad Social Security Stories. My parents were divorced and remarried. One division of Social Security believes that they never remarried and therefore my mom is entitled to no benefits. The other division believes that they did remarry, and she is responsible for reimbursing his funeral expenses.
It will be a shame when it collapses. There are millions of people who had been promised that they could rely on it, have planned on it being there, and will find that it is not there. If you think unemployment is high now. What happens when 65-100 year olds are dumped on the labor market?
vi +
Indeed concrete individuals should take priority. I think she's approaching from a kind of categorical imperative. Hence her statement, "Whatever you think your children need—deserve—from their school experience, assume that the parents at the nearby public housing complex want the same. No, don’t just assume it. Do something about it." Or, again, her rather annoying, "ruining-one-of-our-nation's-most-essential-institutions-in-order-to-get-what's-best-for-your-kid bad." In other words, she would prioritize the needs of the "nation" over those of your "spawn" [her word, not mine]. After all, wouldn't it be wrong to put your own children before the common good? Isn't it selfish to secure for your own what humanity is often denied?
This kind of thinking always puts me in mind of a passage from the Brother Karamazov. In the passage a woman declare to Elder Zosima her great love for all of humanity, but her apparent inability to actively love an individual. Zosima replies:
Loving and caring for abstractions like humanity or the nation is comparatively easy. Humanity, nations, or the people are objects which can be loved without fear. They will never leave or reject you. They can be readily idealized, so one never doubts the worthiness of loving them. And since they're abstracts, one needn't have to worry about them remembering those times you didn't particularly feel like caring for them. It's also very rewarding. In some cases, all we need to do is vote the way we think best, and then we can hold our heads up high, even regarding neighbors in scorn who have failed to see our good sense.
Loving and caring for concrete individuals is quite hard. They are sometimes ungrateful--in the case of infants and teenagers, it can seem almost constantly so. They have bodily needs which require unpleasant cleaning. They have wills of their own and cannot be idealized. They can remember your bad days. They can suffer and you may feel responsible, even when you're not. They can break your heart. They die.
This, I think, is at the heart of the preference many have, particularly among the educated and white collar, for giving priority to abstracts. A person such as Benedikt can hold you in contempt, for she prioritizes the higher ideal of the national good, while you privilege your "spawn" by giving them the
You can vote for a new school board. Volunteer to help their election campaign. Or run for election yourself. You actually have MORE voice there than with a private school, where losing 1 customer is quite frankly not a big deal.
Oh, and my daughter's class has six students. Losing one of those students is a HUGE deal. How big of a deal is it to a public school if I pull my child out of an class room that I pay for no matter what, that is already overcrowded, doesn't have enough textbooks to go around and has a shortage of desks?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
If every single person took public transportation, would public transportation improve?
If every single person lived in public housing, would public housing improve?
If every single person was on food stamps, would food stamps improve?
History indicates that way of thinking doesn't work out well.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Altruism, patriotism, and love of country are all good things. But goods are not all equal. If you ask me to be altruistic, to sacrifice a portion of my time or money to help improve my community, this is a fair request in keeping with civic duty. But if you ask me to sacrifice the good of my children for sake of civic duty, I will deny the claim outright. The duty I owe to wife and children is a higher duty than those I owe to any community. Altruism directed toward one's community is a great good, but the bonds which establish a family are greater still for without the bonds of family all communities must cease.
You mean like Hawaii, which has a state-run education system (not town or local)?
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawai'i_Department_of_Education
It's the parent's prerogative to send their children wherever they see fit. It's also the parent's prerogative to prepare their children the best they can for "real life". Some parents are well equipped to actually fully participate in their children's environment, try to make it better, implicate themselves, do activities, vote, give time, money, opportunities and trying to make the school a genuine good place for their children to be.
Not everyone is able to do that. My parents were able to do that. They were able to actually send me to alternative (and public) school, to participate fully in the school's life, always be there for me. It was a hard choice for them, not only needing to drive me an hour every day, then go to work, but also participate many nights and even some days to school life. Even for them, they eventually gave up one such school, and went to another one because it was plainly too demanding. So I wouldn't expect everyone to give the dedication to bring their prized school up to par to their expectations. Some parents are just able to pay up, are not able to speak or talk adequately, or they don't have time to dedicate themselves to such hard work, and we have to respect that. Alas, today in this world where parents are paying premium and expecting their young bastard children (exaggeration intended here) to do well, and screaming to the teacher (instead of screaming at your own children) whenever they don't have straight As is the norm, I expect the school system to remain crooked.
In the end, people are voting with their attendance. If your school system is bad enough to fear for lives just by attending, I'd expect people to try to move away from these places. There's preparing for real life and there's plain madness... and I'm truly sorry for the dedicated teachers giving their lives and soul for these schools; my mom is such a teacher (nearing her last working years now), giving her life to people with learning disabilities (or missed opportunities); her and many fellow teachers are giving what they can, but sometimes, it's not enough to convince parents.
On my side, I actually moved to a place where active outdoor life is adequate, near good quality schools (not the best - but in the >75%), and I plan my children to have a good chance in life, using neighbourhood friends, public school system, dedication, caring and be with my (future) children for anything they might need. That's where I decided to give my money, that's where my vote is going, even if I have to take the train and public transportation 3hr every single work day.
...if every single parent sent every single child...
if we assume the power to influence such large groups of diverse people; what other, more efective, statements could we make in this fashion?
1) if every single voter refused to vote for a politician that lied...
2) if every single american got a sedan instead of an suv...
3) if every single nazi, had actually been a teddy bear...
there are people out there who would rather send their kids to a good school and live their lives rather than spend their spare time trying to make a crap public school better. The activist mindset where people expect other people to take on their own cause(s) is the height of arrogance. So public school suck. Fine. That doesn't mean we all have to send our kids there just for the sake of motivating us to try to improve it; there are people whose paying jobs it is to make those schools better.
Studied in England.
In a small prep school: quite good, but awful mathematics teacher (shame as that was what I liked).
In a £30k/year (current) moderately well-known private school: meh.
Final year in a state school: maths teacher really on the ball.
tl;dr No type of school will guarantee you anything, except maybe nicer meals and smaller class sizes. Good and bad teachers are everywhere.
At least the original author was sincere - this guy is just being an asshole because he knows it'll bring in pageviews. Once you've started using "Liberal" as an insult, you're just preaching to the choir & have no intent of actually engaging in rational discourse.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
So the plan is to have no accountability at all? There has to be some objective measure of performance. If the tests don't measure what is important for the kinds to know then change the tests.
If you really believe that idiocy you are spilling here, you either give away all your money to the poor, donate 90% of your salary every month, and never do superfluous things like watching moves, buying books, going out, travelling, etc, or you, my friend, is a complete hypocrite.
There is no middle ground for this line of thought, either you put your interests above the collective and is an "egoist shit" or you can't have anything better than the barest minimum until everybody does.
I am sick and tired of your kind of hypocritical "liberalism".
So out of curiosity I looked up the $ per pupil spent in our inner city schools of Minneapolis and compared it to what is spent in the well to do city of Edina. Just for fun I have included what my school district spends.
In 2011:
14,404 Minneapolis
9,699 Edina
8,510 Waconia
The majority of the difference in funding between Minneapolis and Edina is state aid. So even though I do not live in Minneapolis, I pay to make sure that they can spend more per pupil than one of the richest school districts in our state.
Sort of makes me think that $$ doesn't have everything to do with education, and that we need to start having some honest conversations about parental and community involvement. If the parents do not stress the importance of education and raise their children, the schools cannot educate them.
There are downsides. Way back in my first year at University I saw far too many graduates from expensive schools crash and burn when they found they were not in a comfortable cocoon anymore. Many tended to have social problems for a while as well, but that was mostly the ones from all male schools. Years later when I started working at a University I found many of them to be stuck up little shits that tried to bully the technical staff, or the other extreme of timid little mice that just about had to be prodded with a stick to do anything at all. The attitude of "if it's not on the exam I'm not going to listen" was difficult to shake from either group.
So I'd say if you are going to put your kid in such an environment make sure that they get some other form of social contact as well - scouts or some other activity where they get to interact with people outside of their school.
As American society becomes more culturally, linguistically, religiously, etc. diverse, public schools are one of the few things holding it together. The U.S. is the great "melting pot" that takes people from various backgrounds and melds them into a somewhat coherent society with certain shared values. The free-to-enroll public school is one of the things that made that possible, teaching the majority of young people a common national history, a shared understanding of science, and so on.
But as education becomes increasingly factionalized, with Catholic schools teaching that contraception is evil, Fundamentalist Protestant schools teaching that evolution is a lie, charter schools endorsing the cult of the Market (which is their reason for being), home schools teaching who-the-hell-knows-what, and each one editing history to support their individual agenda, that commonality is being lost. Families who once insisted (in the face of racially-integrated bussing) that neighborhood schools were essential to the healthy social development of children are now driving their kids miles to the education outlet whose curriculum and student body matches their preconceptions (and their racial, religious, and economic standards). When you look at survey or poll results and wonder "how can these people believe that?", or looked at the legislators elected by people of other districts, the answer is that it reflects whatever they were taught to believe, at whatever school they attended.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
The American right wing is just pro-corporate and pro ruling class.
Not even American.
That's the definition of right wing in a political context.
That's why the examples of right wing we have to point to are Monarchy and Fascism/Nazism.
It sickens me no end that there are people living in America with the contempt for themselves and this nation as to actually describe themselves as right wing when our major defining wars (the revolution and WW1/2 were fought against the right and the right are always portrayed (and often actually are) complete fucking monsters.)
There is one major flaw with her logic. People who send their kids to private schools still pay taxes that support the public schools. By not sending their child to the public school, there is actually more revenue per student enrolled in the public school, unless the state legislature does something like reappropriate it elsewhere (which would make them evil, but again, they are politicians).
So, if people pay for the public schools but don't cause an increase in the variable cost of running the public schools because their kids are in a private school, that is evil how?
Oh yeah, the left were just angels. Stalin and Mao were model leaders.
I now anxiously await your belabored response spouting that Stalin and Mao were really right wing.
So many people use the old "liberal" and "conserative" labels wantonly, when they don't really correctly identify a modern division.
Statist is a word that does correctly distinguish the major division of our times. Are you primary for, or against the state supporting each and every person, to the extent that some (or all) choices are removed at the directive of the state?
The people falling on one side or the other are both Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives.
So instead of stopping reading, you should read more carefully when you encounter the term as it's someone who realizes there is more depth to the matter than the classic labels that would otherwise be shallowly applied.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Any belief that forcing public schools on everyone is seriously misguided. Nothing ever gets better when it's forced on people. The best schools in the world are in Finland, where a voucher system forces public schools to compete with private schools.
Uh, wrong. There are no private schools in Finland. Everyone gets the same education, and the results seem to be exactly what the author of TFA is suggesting.
I agree 100%. I actually moved to a better town to get my kids into a better school. The local school from my former home town had a crackhead blow his brains out on the playground. The kids found him the next day inside a playground feature. Allison can eat a bag of dicks.
And hey! If you really want to have a better school experience for everyone - take 5% of the defense budget and put it into schools. It would probably be 100 times the money they're used to having.
Garbage in, garbage out. So forgive me if I don't feel like playing. I'd like my kids to wind up better than the baggy pants wearing drug addled dipshits from my previous home town.
And good luck to you. I hope you get your children into the best place they can be.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Uh, the article you are linking says Finland has a small number of private schools. And they are completely funded by the state. Finland is not forcing anyone into public school, instead their public schools are so good, that almost nobody wants to go to a private school, even when private schools are free.
Jan
There are a lot of government programs I oppose, but social security isn't one of them. Imagine if we got rid of it, what would happen? A lot of people would not save anything. Other people would invest but get unlucky and lose their entire investment (and it could be you). So there will be a bunch of people who are old with no way to live. Are we going to let them die on the streets? No, we are going to take care of them, so you will be taxed either way.
If it really bothers you that much to pay that small social security amount each month, then stop whining and get a raise. That's the entrepreneurial spirit, or whatever.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Other people would invest but get unlucky and lose their entire investment (and it could be you)
This! a 1000 times this. People DO NOT GET THIS.
They think that if they "invest wisely", diversify, invest in index tracking funds, pay attention, and do all the right things, that they will be fine.
And this is idiotic. Statisically, yes, this will pan out. But investment is still a calculated risk. If this "do everything right strategy" yielded a 99.99% chance that you would have sufficient money for your retirement and everyone followed it there would still be several hundred thousand people who didn't.
Doing everything right does not guarantee a positive return. It maximizes the chances of a positive return, but a negative return is still entirely possible, and its going to happen to people, even people who did everything right.
Besides, what happens without social security?
Crime. Because the people who don't have enough to survive aren't going to just roll over and die, they'll try to take what they need any way the can from anyone they can.
And even if a person does have amazing skill and become a millionaire or whatever, I don't understand the mentality that says, "well those people made bad choices, so let them die in the street." It's ok to help people out in their old age, it's not like social security is THAT much
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If it really bothers you that much to pay that small social security amount each month, then stop whining and get a raise. That's the entrepreneurial spirit, or whatever.
Getting a raise does not address the issue that I pay Social Security and I'll never get it back. There won't be a Social Security when I retire because the federal government will not have the resources to pay it out.
Are we going to let them die on the streets? No, we are going to take care of them, so you will be taxed either way.
People taking care of other people does not mean taxes. There are other social structures to care for the elderly if the government does not. Too many people have become accustomed to government programs "solving" all our problems that these people cannot imagine any other solution except more government.
Do you think that if we did not have public schools that all our children would be uneducated? Of course not. People would solve this problem on their own without government encouragement or intervention. Public schools are a relatively recent social development. People were educated before public schools. I believe we'd be more educated without them.
Same goes for the care of the elderly. I believe we'd be better off without so called "social security".
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
... would you stop equating every public service to communism? You're becoming quite ridiculous.
One way or another the elderly will be paid for by working age people. It's really just a matter of how to organize it and how many elderly people without support you're willing to let die.
Unless that can't be affordable. Then it won't happen. That's the problem with these fantasies. Someone has to pay for them. Social Security has the problem that it promises to pay out considerably more over the average lifetime of a recipient than they put in, but never does anything useful with the money that is put into that system. The money is used to buy US bonds, which are just a mechanism for tossing Social Security money into the general fund and squandered.
But even if we take those bonds at face value as some sort of investment that will always pay out, we still have the problem that they aren't earning enough to pay for current Social Security promises. The system is insolvent on several different levels.
And it's worth noting that one has a lot more options and knowledge for planning for retirement now than they did back in 1935. I think we ought to rerun that experiment now.
The top 1% don't earn. They don't need to.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I see I didn't really make this clear, but the counter to your point is that schools don't necessarily want parental involvement. We get in the way. We cost money, and we question the judgement of professionals. You can see where that might be a problem.
Oh, that's a totally different problem. Whether they want parental involvement or not is not really up to them. It's easier for the teachers if the parents aren't involved, at least on some levels, but that is only because the teachers are caught between the parents and the administration and it is the administration that makes the rules. It's like complaining to the bank teller that the loan rates are too high or the deposit rates are too low. The teller doesn't have any say in setting those rates. Likewise, the teacher has very little say in what goes on in today's classroom. It is all based on policies that the teacher has to enforce without having any input. So when a parent steps forward with legitimate concerns or requests, it puts the teacher in a bind.
As for advanced or gifted students, they are a real problem in the public schools because over the past 40 years, the model has been to teach to the lowest common denominator, which leave these kids out. Prior to that, although still common in many parts of the world, the system emphasized the brightest kids in the classroom. The advantage of the old system is that the brightest kids, tomorrows doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. excel. The disadvantage was average kids did average and the lower kids did poorly. So the social engineers said we need to work on bringing educational equality to the public schools.
And they have, but not how they envisioned. They didn't raise the bottom up, but they lowered the top down. Today, for those who can afford it, if they have a bright or gifted child, they do just what the family you described did, they go to private schools for those who can't afford it, they hope for the best but it usually means their kids abilities will never reach their full potential. In the US, they work really hard to make sure that no kid gets left behind in the public schools, but they work equally hard to make sure no kid gets too far ahead either. Then they complain how US public school students fall so far behind other countries in math and science -- it's because a large portion of the kids with real abilities are no longer in the public schools because those schools were no longer equipped to meet their educational needs.