While I don't feel like responding to the rest of your post, I just wanted to comment on this:
Personally, I'm a proponent of homeschooling, but I realize not every family is willing to put that much time and energy into their kids.
I have one comment, here: way to be a self-righteous, condescending jackass. Then again, my experience with homeschoolers is that this quality is unfortunately common...
Way to completely avoid addressing my other points in favor of engaging in an ad hominem attack on someone you've never met! I'll admit my comment was not well thought-through. In all fairness I should change it to "willing and/or able" to account for single parents and others in exceptional circumstances. I do think homeschooling would be best for anyone who can manage it (with the obvious exceptions of parents who are terrible anyway), but I understand if anyone disagrees. In any case, I don't even have any kids of school age yet, so I don't see how I even could be self-righteous. Again, way to assume stuff about me, Sherlock.
What about proposed voucher systems, which hope to bring the success of privatization to families who can't afford private schools?
Can we say "government subsidy for private business"? How is that magically better than a well-executed public system?
Well, first off, let me clarify that I would much rather see this charity provided by organizations that are backed by charitable individuals, rather than provided by the government. Still, if government's going to bully in and take the job, I'd rather see the money used more efficiently. Public schools are run in an inefficient way, plain and simple. Private organizations would be motivated to provide a better product in a more efficient way, so they can make more money. This is where I think it helps to see education as a product (albeit, a product we should weep to see anyone not have access to), not a "right". Public schools are perfectly content to stay mediocre. Besides that, private schools wouldn't be forced to hire union teachers and follow union rules for promoting inept teachers simply because they have more seniority or know the right people. That's why Los Angeles is considering hiring private organizations to take over some of its public schools in the not-too-distant future (in the news: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/26/national/main5265756.shtml)
Of course a voucher program wouldn't magically happen overnight. Actually, though, it's different than government subsidy for private business, in that the government is, in this case, not deciding where the money will be used. The government could, of course, decide a list of approved schools from which beneficiaries could choose, similar to WIC. But I'm not here to argue the specifics. Personally, I'm a proponent of homeschooling, but I realize not every family is willing to put that much time and energy into their kids.
Do you *really* believe enough private schools will open such that the market would actually function? Because, I gotta say, I'm skeptical.
Don't be naive. If there's money to be spent, there will be places to spend it.
Aha! So many of my school-age family and friends are on the year-round schedule already. Now, wasn't that a good excuse for missing the point? I'm not particularly a fan of year-round myself. It seems to me school is more appropriately seen as a peripheral part of one's life, rather than the meat of it. Similarly, I strive to do an exceptional job at work without letting it become the focus of my life.
What about proposed voucher systems, which hope to bring the success of privatization to families who can't afford private schools? Granted, I would much rather, from a philosophical standpoint, have vouchers be funded by private charity rather than government coercion, but from a pragmatic standpoint I think publicly funded voucher systems would at least work better than the union/mafia-dominated status quo.
"not too many of our kids are working the fields today"
Arne Duncan apparently thinks that people who work in fields don't need to know as much as people who perform other tasks. I though modern agriculture was more complicated than flipping burgers, but what do I know?
Actually, I have linux set up on my parents' (and, by extension, my nephew and niece's) computer at their place, and my nephew was able to get a native windows app up and running with no issues whatsoever. Granted, I was surprised, but all he did was download the app, double-click it and start clicking "next". The app happened to be some free driving game, complete with 3d acceleration. I know this isn't always going to be the case, but wine really does work well. Aside from that, my wife and I run mostly FOSS apps on our windows laptops for both personal and business purposes anyway (Firefox, OO.o, Eclipse, Tbird, Pidgin, etc.), and the apps that aren't FOSS have linux freeware executables (Reader, Skype, Flash Player, Earth, Picasa). The one, solitary reason I still run Windows is that both the vendor-supplied and Open Source drivers for ATI r6xx chipsets in Linux still suck. They're improving, but glxgears is not the same as CS:S.
If they don't stop this behavior, Police who testify will have to use something more convincing than a quote from Wikipedia to put someone behind bars.
s'pose I should've said, "AFAIK Ubuntu still doesn't implement LVM by default, but Fedora does." Anyhow, I agree that ZFS sounds more featureful than LVM, but not like the completely unique thing the article makes it out to be.
Seriously, "apt-get". Tut-tut. Other issues I see: KDE 4.0 doesn't run on OpenS yet. Virtualization options listed in the article sound uncompelling. Should I choose the option with mediocre performance or the one that is currently being ruined by Citrix? I want me some KVM. Also, ZFS does sound great, but its treatment of extended partitions sounds barbaric, and many of those features are available using LVM in Linux. AFAIK Ubuntu still doesn't implement LVM, but Fedora does. Firewalling doesn't look fun, and AFAIK OpenS currently has no equivalent to SELinux. It sounds to me like it might be great for running your NAS, but it certainly doesn't sounds to me like it fits for desktop use yet, nor like it fits the jack-of-all-trades role Linux does.
...By sending them to public school. It's naive to think that your kids aren't being experimented on by public schools. And besides, isn't all of life an experiment?
Isolation is certainly a terrible reason for homeschooling, but I appreciate you not extending that to all homeschoolers. Most homeschoolers I've ever met do it out of a desire to give their children a quality of education they don't believe they can get anywhere else, and of course out of a desire to have their children learn about certain subjects, especially evolutionary science, sex and politics outside of the government's prescription.
My wife and I were both homeschooled, and we plan to homeschool our children (13-month daughter, gender-as-yet-unknown on the way). We are both very appreciative of the investment our parents made in our lives, and want to pass that on to our kids. I particularly relish the fact that my longtime friend who was private-schooled and constantly ridiculed me for homeschooling is now planning his wedding with a homeschooled girl he met college. I teach computer classes full-time, and my wife is pretty sharp too.
As with homeschooling, I think the success or failure of "unschooling" is determined by the commitment and ability of the parents. Homeschooling worked out great for my wife and I, but I had friends in homeschooling circles who were ill-prepared for life outside the sheltered garden. I have a friend whose mother credited him on his transcript for many units of Spanish even though he never took the language. I took it at the local community college in 11th and 12th grade. The children of the one family I know that implements unschooling are unruly and socially domineering, but I blame it on the parents, not the method. I would love to see unschooling implemented by a family I agreed with on other issues.
I certainly benefited from structure, though. I had to do math, even though I didn't like it, and logic (which I believe was instilled by math lessons) is now one of my greatest professional assets. I hated writing essays, but now I make a living talking to people and writing courseware. I think that wise parents can implement a balance of structure and reinforcement of the student's passions that will serve the student well throughout their life.
That is all.
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While I don't feel like responding to the rest of your post, I just wanted to comment on this:
Personally, I'm a proponent of homeschooling, but I realize not every family is willing to put that much time and energy into their kids.
I have one comment, here: way to be a self-righteous, condescending jackass. Then again, my experience with homeschoolers is that this quality is unfortunately common...
Way to completely avoid addressing my other points in favor of engaging in an ad hominem attack on someone you've never met! I'll admit my comment was not well thought-through. In all fairness I should change it to "willing and/or able" to account for single parents and others in exceptional circumstances. I do think homeschooling would be best for anyone who can manage it (with the obvious exceptions of parents who are terrible anyway), but I understand if anyone disagrees. In any case, I don't even have any kids of school age yet, so I don't see how I even could be self-righteous. Again, way to assume stuff about me, Sherlock.
What about proposed voucher systems, which hope to bring the success of privatization to families who can't afford private schools?
Can we say "government subsidy for private business"? How is that magically better than a well-executed public system?
Well, first off, let me clarify that I would much rather see this charity provided by organizations that are backed by charitable individuals, rather than provided by the government. Still, if government's going to bully in and take the job, I'd rather see the money used more efficiently. Public schools are run in an inefficient way, plain and simple. Private organizations would be motivated to provide a better product in a more efficient way, so they can make more money. This is where I think it helps to see education as a product (albeit, a product we should weep to see anyone not have access to), not a "right". Public schools are perfectly content to stay mediocre. Besides that, private schools wouldn't be forced to hire union teachers and follow union rules for promoting inept teachers simply because they have more seniority or know the right people. That's why Los Angeles is considering hiring private organizations to take over some of its public schools in the not-too-distant future (in the news: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/26/national/main5265756.shtml)
Of course a voucher program wouldn't magically happen overnight. Actually, though, it's different than government subsidy for private business, in that the government is, in this case, not deciding where the money will be used. The government could, of course, decide a list of approved schools from which beneficiaries could choose, similar to WIC. But I'm not here to argue the specifics. Personally, I'm a proponent of homeschooling, but I realize not every family is willing to put that much time and energy into their kids.
Do you *really* believe enough private schools will open such that the market would actually function? Because, I gotta say, I'm skeptical.
Don't be naive. If there's money to be spent, there will be places to spend it.
I would think a lot of the stuff from MAKE! Magazine would be useful.
Aha! So many of my school-age family and friends are on the year-round schedule already. Now, wasn't that a good excuse for missing the point? I'm not particularly a fan of year-round myself. It seems to me school is more appropriately seen as a peripheral part of one's life, rather than the meat of it. Similarly, I strive to do an exceptional job at work without letting it become the focus of my life.
What about proposed voucher systems, which hope to bring the success of privatization to families who can't afford private schools? Granted, I would much rather, from a philosophical standpoint, have vouchers be funded by private charity rather than government coercion, but from a pragmatic standpoint I think publicly funded voucher systems would at least work better than the union/mafia-dominated status quo.
"not too many of our kids are working the fields today"
Arne Duncan apparently thinks that people who work in fields don't need to know as much as people who perform other tasks. I though modern agriculture was more complicated than flipping burgers, but what do I know?
Actually, I have linux set up on my parents' (and, by extension, my nephew and niece's) computer at their place, and my nephew was able to get a native windows app up and running with no issues whatsoever. Granted, I was surprised, but all he did was download the app, double-click it and start clicking "next". The app happened to be some free driving game, complete with 3d acceleration. I know this isn't always going to be the case, but wine really does work well. Aside from that, my wife and I run mostly FOSS apps on our windows laptops for both personal and business purposes anyway (Firefox, OO.o, Eclipse, Tbird, Pidgin, etc.), and the apps that aren't FOSS have linux freeware executables (Reader, Skype, Flash Player, Earth, Picasa). The one, solitary reason I still run Windows is that both the vendor-supplied and Open Source drivers for ATI r6xx chipsets in Linux still suck. They're improving, but glxgears is not the same as CS:S.
Seriously, either the poster or whoever's deciding to dual-boot it is making a mistake in my estimation.
If they don't stop this behavior, Police who testify will have to use something more convincing than a quote from Wikipedia to put someone behind bars.
Beautiful. Couldn't find that info on the main OpenSolaris page of kde's site. Nice to know.
s'pose I should've said, "AFAIK Ubuntu still doesn't implement LVM by default, but Fedora does." Anyhow, I agree that ZFS sounds more featureful than LVM, but not like the completely unique thing the article makes it out to be.
Seriously, "apt-get". Tut-tut. Other issues I see: KDE 4.0 doesn't run on OpenS yet. Virtualization options listed in the article sound uncompelling. Should I choose the option with mediocre performance or the one that is currently being ruined by Citrix? I want me some KVM. Also, ZFS does sound great, but its treatment of extended partitions sounds barbaric, and many of those features are available using LVM in Linux. AFAIK Ubuntu still doesn't implement LVM, but Fedora does. Firewalling doesn't look fun, and AFAIK OpenS currently has no equivalent to SELinux. It sounds to me like it might be great for running your NAS, but it certainly doesn't sounds to me like it fits for desktop use yet, nor like it fits the jack-of-all-trades role Linux does.
...By sending them to public school. It's naive to think that your kids aren't being experimented on by public schools. And besides, isn't all of life an experiment?
Isolation is certainly a terrible reason for homeschooling, but I appreciate you not extending that to all homeschoolers. Most homeschoolers I've ever met do it out of a desire to give their children a quality of education they don't believe they can get anywhere else, and of course out of a desire to have their children learn about certain subjects, especially evolutionary science, sex and politics outside of the government's prescription.
My wife and I were both homeschooled, and we plan to homeschool our children (13-month daughter, gender-as-yet-unknown on the way). We are both very appreciative of the investment our parents made in our lives, and want to pass that on to our kids. I particularly relish the fact that my longtime friend who was private-schooled and constantly ridiculed me for homeschooling is now planning his wedding with a homeschooled girl he met college. I teach computer classes full-time, and my wife is pretty sharp too. As with homeschooling, I think the success or failure of "unschooling" is determined by the commitment and ability of the parents. Homeschooling worked out great for my wife and I, but I had friends in homeschooling circles who were ill-prepared for life outside the sheltered garden. I have a friend whose mother credited him on his transcript for many units of Spanish even though he never took the language. I took it at the local community college in 11th and 12th grade. The children of the one family I know that implements unschooling are unruly and socially domineering, but I blame it on the parents, not the method. I would love to see unschooling implemented by a family I agreed with on other issues. I certainly benefited from structure, though. I had to do math, even though I didn't like it, and logic (which I believe was instilled by math lessons) is now one of my greatest professional assets. I hated writing essays, but now I make a living talking to people and writing courseware. I think that wise parents can implement a balance of structure and reinforcement of the student's passions that will serve the student well throughout their life. That is all.
It really seems like the police might have more important things to do...are they police or nannies?