I enjoyed reading your response, yet I cannot help but notice that my main point of contention is really not addressed. Perhaps I spent too much time on peripheral claims.
My main point is that because the government is involved, there is an indisputable element of force. I am not against appropriate uses of force, but I do not see a place for it in the selection of curriculum or personnel in the teaching profession.
I take your point on epistemology quite readily, but I do not see how you have shown standards to be any less subjective than beliefs. I am not a relativist. One of us, for example, is certainly wrong. But the core of epistemological inquiry is the acknowledgment that our knowledge must be justified by reality and not the other way around. I believe that to you the core of the issue is that "Ideas that fail this test should not be taught." I concur fully.
But the actual debate occurring here is not whether a theory has failed the test or whether it should be taught, but whether ANY theory justifies the use of physical force in order to promote or dissolve it.
To put it recursively, Compulsory Education isn't.
Overall, you seem to be a proponent of laissez-faire economics and probably social Darwinism.
I can understand how it would appear that way, but I am neither.
Have we not learned from the ongoing financial crisis that some regulation/dictatorship is essential for the good of the nation as a whole?
I certainly hope that is not what we have learned! Though it is an entirely different topic I should feel irresponsible if I did not point out that the whole philosophy behind fractional reserve banking is built on the government backed trading of immaterial goods. Naturally, in an artificial exchange system created by government intervention in capital markets any collapse of that system would make it seem like the existence of further intervention could have prevented the failure. You certainly must have the rule of law: punishment of theft and fraud and the enforcement of contract are essential to the foundations of a free market. What is "good for the nation as a whole" is what is good for the individuals of that nation, and it is for those individuals and not the government to decide how best to education their children.
However you do have to have to accept that at the heart of this is a difference between secular science and religious conservatism.
What I accept is that there are some religious activists who want the government to force the teaching of one philosophy, history and model of science and that there are secular activists who want to force the teaching of a different philosophy, history and model of science. It seems to me that the most scientific solution would be to allow everyone to educate their own children according to their own convictions, standards, philosophies or theories and let cold, hard reality be the arbiter of what teaching methods best utilize man's capacity for knowledge- and leave guns out of it, unless of course they are part of the curriculum.
Science is the way forward. It can put men on the moon, squash cities flat and spring upon us world-changing, unpredictable technologies like the internet. Do you want to rebel against that?
What I would rebel against is the idea that any particular scientific model is the way forward. Scientific inquiry in general has provided us with much to marvel at, but history is littered with failed theories and philosophies that would have led us to ruin. And you are not arguing that science is the way forward. You are arguing that government run education is the way forward in spite of the fact that you are also arguing that the creationists must not get a hold of government education or it will now be the way backward.
Also, internet arguments between people like us have been done so many times before as to have become
You may have answered your own question, in a way.
Societies where accepting an explanation on the merits of its presenter are a social norm will logically fall behind societies with a juvenile disregard for personality or accepted tradition IF there is also juvenile curiosity to go with it.
I don't suppose it has ever occurred to the technocratic elite that the mass rejection of public media and expert commentary on scientific topics by the NON-scientific community is indicative of precisely the sort of 'show me' culture that produces technological advancement. They know what they know. They don't know what YOU know, and aren't going to pretend to based on a few condescending discovery channel programs. Or in your case "BBC programmes.":oP
There is also a producer/non-producer element here. The more productive a society is, the more easily non-producers and hangers-on get by. Like hippies. Next time you are talking to a Fundie, see what sort of reaction you get when you draw THAT comparison.
Science is no different, and yet the majority of people who reject ToE in the US are working class people. This is why I tend to give more credence to my original explanation.
I fully appreciate your position and the difficulties of the scenario you present.
So what happens when a particular classroom contains 20 kids of creationist parents and 10 kids of secular parents?
The issue here, as identified by CaffeineJedi, is compulsory education. Educational standards are messy enough without adding COMPULSORY to them.
Moreover, what if in 50 years time, a similar situation exists except the idealogical parents decide they're into racial purity and press the school into teaching that black and mixed-race people are inferior? It's happened before.>
This is an example of how compulsory education reinforced evil. You seem to be saying that further compulsory education was the solution to the evil. My argument is that education should not be compulsory. It's like arguing over whether an absolute dictator was malevolent or beneficent. In the long run, the net result of dictatorships and lack of personal autonomy are devastatingly evil. Allowing parents to school their own children wherever they like results in better schools. Schools that teach fallacies will produce students that are ill prepared for their respective fields and will develop appropriate reputations. Students of such schools are capable of being reeducated at their own prerogative; this is a commonplace occurrence.
This isn't about your beliefs, or mine. I have a three year old boy and I would never, ever force feed him, much less anyone else's kids my "beliefs".
I find this statement confusing as it seems to contradict everything else you've said. The only thing I can imagine is that you are a terrible parent or you have some cognitive dissonance going on - and I don't like making accusations about someone I don't know. Are you saying that if your child adopts a philosophy of "running into the middle of the street whenever he wants" you are going to tolerate this?
This is about something called "standards".
And here the confusion is cleared away. It's just semantics. You probably think that beliefs are unfounded conjectures about the nature of reality or something, while standards are some sort of objective measurement. You are entitled to such rationalizations, though I think there are more accurate (and healthy) definitions. Clearly, whether they are standards or beliefs, we appropriately prefer our own to those adopted by others. The difference between us is that you seem to think that others should be forced to adopt your (or widely accepted) standards whereas I think that people will choose better standards out of self-interest and parental motivation.
Your point about restaurants is an excellent expansion of the topic but I think it is not an accurate analogy. Restaurant owners should certainly be held liable for damages or injury resulting from their services both civilly and criminally, just as other citizens are. That is all that is necessary for health and safety codes to be enforced without having to actually exist in legal form. But your analogy doesn't relate to the classroom or the school board. In order for it to be appropriate, you would have to say that restaurants should be forced to follow a strict and specific training manual for their employees to be competent. Again, clearly it is in the best interests of both the restaurant and its employees to provide safe, competent service (Additionally, commercial interest is a far less fierce motivation than parental interest, as you no doubt have experienced personally). No force is necessary and the standards may in fact be far inferior to the training manual. Yet you are arguing over what should be in the manual, as if THAT is the important discussion that should be taking place.
Instead of debating what should be forced, let us instead dedicate ourselves to allowing educational structures to fail or succeed on their own merits. Let us use our resources
Yes and this is clearly correct because you own the children in question and as they are your exclusive property you are entitled to make decisions as to what they should or shouldn't be allowed to learn.
Oh wait, you probably don't actually think that. You probably think that the government is entitled to do this through force because children belong to all of us collectively.
Above someone mentioned that children have a right to learn regardless of the ignorance of their parents. I would say that this is true and that this right coincides with the very human capacity to actually do just that, without the need for government intervention. If children of irrational parents could not develop into rational adults how could civilization have survived to this point? How could/. ?
Child abuse is a real societal problem and teaching children a terrible heresy can certainly be a type of child abuse, but the ability of the government to decide by force what children are to be taught logically leads-and historically has led- to far more irrevocable and long lasting abuses of human rights than simply allowing those with an evolved/intelligently-designed biological imperative to seek the utmost benefit for one's progeny to actually follow said imperative.
it's downright malicious to deliberate teach kids things that are untrue.
So what you are saying is that deep down, creationists and proponents of other ideologies you do not agree with clearly believe what you believe, but they're just evil enough to want the public school system to teach something different?
Please forgive my vehement sarcasm and anger. I know that you and many on this board are genuinely concerned with the well being of children. But the core of your argument is that it is you and not parents who are both more concerned and more competent with regards to their children and that government (and therefore force) is the best agent to implement your superior advocacy.
Couching the argument in terms of objective sounding levels of certainty such as "demonstrably untrue" demonstrates to me that you are doing so without demonstrating precisely who must demonstrate to a subjective degree precisely what subjective criteria to whom. That may not be a sentence, but unless you demonstrate your belief - (to whom, a panel of grammar experts designated by a representative elected by popular vote of generally recognized forum members?) - clearly the government has the right to jam a gun in the face of anyone who wants to teach their children a different philosophy of literacy.
From a human rights and -as far as I can see- evolutionary perspective, parents are simply the most efficient and proper guardians of children.
Slashdot Mirror
My main point is that because the government is involved, there is an indisputable element of force. I am not against appropriate uses of force, but I do not see a place for it in the selection of curriculum or personnel in the teaching profession.
I take your point on epistemology quite readily, but I do not see how you have shown standards to be any less subjective than beliefs. I am not a relativist. One of us, for example, is certainly wrong. But the core of epistemological inquiry is the acknowledgment that our knowledge must be justified by reality and not the other way around. I believe that to you the core of the issue is that "Ideas that fail this test should not be taught." I concur fully.
But the actual debate occurring here is not whether a theory has failed the test or whether it should be taught, but whether ANY theory justifies the use of physical force in order to promote or dissolve it. To put it recursively, Compulsory Education isn't.
Overall, you seem to be a proponent of laissez-faire economics and probably social Darwinism.
I can understand how it would appear that way, but I am neither.
Have we not learned from the ongoing financial crisis that some regulation/dictatorship is essential for the good of the nation as a whole?
I certainly hope that is not what we have learned! Though it is an entirely different topic I should feel irresponsible if I did not point out that the whole philosophy behind fractional reserve banking is built on the government backed trading of immaterial goods. Naturally, in an artificial exchange system created by government intervention in capital markets any collapse of that system would make it seem like the existence of further intervention could have prevented the failure. You certainly must have the rule of law: punishment of theft and fraud and the enforcement of contract are essential to the foundations of a free market. What is "good for the nation as a whole" is what is good for the individuals of that nation, and it is for those individuals and not the government to decide how best to education their children.
However you do have to have to accept that at the heart of this is a difference between secular science and religious conservatism.
What I accept is that there are some religious activists who want the government to force the teaching of one philosophy, history and model of science and that there are secular activists who want to force the teaching of a different philosophy, history and model of science. It seems to me that the most scientific solution would be to allow everyone to educate their own children according to their own convictions, standards, philosophies or theories and let cold, hard reality be the arbiter of what teaching methods best utilize man's capacity for knowledge- and leave guns out of it, unless of course they are part of the curriculum.
Science is the way forward. It can put men on the moon, squash cities flat and spring upon us world-changing, unpredictable technologies like the internet. Do you want to rebel against that?
What I would rebel against is the idea that any particular scientific model is the way forward. Scientific inquiry in general has provided us with much to marvel at, but history is littered with failed theories and philosophies that would have led us to ruin. And you are not arguing that science is the way forward. You are arguing that government run education is the way forward in spite of the fact that you are also arguing that the creationists must not get a hold of government education or it will now be the way backward.
Also, internet arguments between people like us have been done so many times before as to have become
You may have answered your own question, in a way.
:oP
There is also a producer/non-producer element here. The more productive a society is, the more easily non-producers and hangers-on get by. Like hippies. Next time you are talking to a Fundie, see what sort of reaction you get when you draw THAT comparison.
Societies where accepting an explanation on the merits of its presenter are a social norm will logically fall behind societies with a juvenile disregard for personality or accepted tradition IF there is also juvenile curiosity to go with it.
I don't suppose it has ever occurred to the technocratic elite that the mass rejection of public media and expert commentary on scientific topics by the NON-scientific community is indicative of precisely the sort of 'show me' culture that produces technological advancement. They know what they know. They don't know what YOU know, and aren't going to pretend to based on a few condescending discovery channel programs. Or in your case "BBC programmes."
Science is no different, and yet the majority of people who reject ToE in the US are working class people. This is why I tend to give more credence to my original explanation.
No force is necessary and the standards may in fact be far inferior to the training manual.
..should have read "No force is necessary and the restaurant's standards may in fact be far superior to the training manual."
So what happens when a particular classroom contains 20 kids of creationist parents and 10 kids of secular parents?
The issue here, as identified by CaffeineJedi, is compulsory education. Educational standards are messy enough without adding COMPULSORY to them.
Moreover, what if in 50 years time, a similar situation exists except the idealogical parents decide they're into racial purity and press the school into teaching that black and mixed-race people are inferior? It's happened before.>
This is an example of how compulsory education reinforced evil. You seem to be saying that further compulsory education was the solution to the evil. My argument is that education should not be compulsory. It's like arguing over whether an absolute dictator was malevolent or beneficent. In the long run, the net result of dictatorships and lack of personal autonomy are devastatingly evil. Allowing parents to school their own children wherever they like results in better schools. Schools that teach fallacies will produce students that are ill prepared for their respective fields and will develop appropriate reputations. Students of such schools are capable of being reeducated at their own prerogative; this is a commonplace occurrence.
This isn't about your beliefs, or mine. I have a three year old boy and I would never, ever force feed him, much less anyone else's kids my "beliefs".
I find this statement confusing as it seems to contradict everything else you've said. The only thing I can imagine is that you are a terrible parent or you have some cognitive dissonance going on - and I don't like making accusations about someone I don't know. Are you saying that if your child adopts a philosophy of "running into the middle of the street whenever he wants" you are going to tolerate this?
This is about something called "standards".
And here the confusion is cleared away. It's just semantics. You probably think that beliefs are unfounded conjectures about the nature of reality or something, while standards are some sort of objective measurement. You are entitled to such rationalizations, though I think there are more accurate (and healthy) definitions. Clearly, whether they are standards or beliefs, we appropriately prefer our own to those adopted by others. The difference between us is that you seem to think that others should be forced to adopt your (or widely accepted) standards whereas I think that people will choose better standards out of self-interest and parental motivation.
Your point about restaurants is an excellent expansion of the topic but I think it is not an accurate analogy. Restaurant owners should certainly be held liable for damages or injury resulting from their services both civilly and criminally, just as other citizens are. That is all that is necessary for health and safety codes to be enforced without having to actually exist in legal form. But your analogy doesn't relate to the classroom or the school board.
In order for it to be appropriate, you would have to say that restaurants should be forced to follow a strict and specific training manual for their employees to be competent. Again, clearly it is in the best interests of both the restaurant and its employees to provide safe, competent service (Additionally, commercial interest is a far less fierce motivation than parental interest, as you no doubt have experienced personally). No force is necessary and the standards may in fact be far inferior to the training manual. Yet you are arguing over what should be in the manual, as if THAT is the important discussion that should be taking place.
Instead of debating what should be forced, let us instead dedicate ourselves to allowing educational structures to fail or succeed on their own merits. Let us use our resources
Oh wait, you probably don't actually think that. You probably think that the government is entitled to do this through force because children belong to all of us collectively.
Above someone mentioned that children have a right to learn regardless of the ignorance of their parents. I would say that this is true and that this right coincides with the very human capacity to actually do just that, without the need for government intervention. If children of irrational parents could not develop into rational adults how could civilization have survived to this point? How could
Child abuse is a real societal problem and teaching children a terrible heresy can certainly be a type of child abuse, but the ability of the government to decide by force what children are to be taught logically leads-and historically has led- to far more irrevocable and long lasting abuses of human rights than simply allowing those with an evolved/intelligently-designed biological imperative to seek the utmost benefit for one's progeny to actually follow said imperative.
it's downright malicious to deliberate teach kids things that are untrue.
So what you are saying is that deep down, creationists and proponents of other ideologies you do not agree with clearly believe what you believe, but they're just evil enough to want the public school system to teach something different?
Please forgive my vehement sarcasm and anger. I know that you and many on this board are genuinely concerned with the well being of children. But the core of your argument is that it is you and not parents who are both more concerned and more competent with regards to their children and that government (and therefore force) is the best agent to implement your superior advocacy.
Couching the argument in terms of objective sounding levels of certainty such as "demonstrably untrue" demonstrates to me that you are doing so without demonstrating precisely who must demonstrate to a subjective degree precisely what subjective criteria to whom. That may not be a sentence, but unless you demonstrate your belief - (to whom, a panel of grammar experts designated by a representative elected by popular vote of generally recognized forum members?) - clearly the government has the right to jam a gun in the face of anyone who wants to teach their children a different philosophy of literacy.
From a human rights and -as far as I can see- evolutionary perspective, parents are simply the most efficient and proper guardians of children.