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| Acmlm's Board - I2 Archive - World Affairs / Debate - Teachers: Over- or Under-paid? |
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hhallahh Bob-Omb Level: 38  Posts: 467/607 EXP: 365476 For next: 4971 Since: 03-15-04 From: Portland, OR Since last post: 73 days Last activity: 60 days |
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| Explain to me, then, the essential features of education which, unlike other industries, makes it unable to work on a free market. I don't understand how such an argument could be made that doesn't basically reduce to "The government just does it better", which is almost always untrue. I mean, here's the really weak voucher situation - take the public school in the neighborhood, privatize it, and give all the parents of students in that school money equal to what the government normally spent per student and set the admission wage to that price. In this case, the question would simply be, "Can a private company run a school better?" The answer isn't necessarily "yes" - there are plenty of shitty private companies, I'm sure - but I can't see how it would necessarily be "no" either. | |||
Arwon Zora Level: 35  Posts: 237/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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Originally posted by hhallahhOriginally posted by Ziffski I think that's more to do with the way funding is distributed in the US. My understanding is that it is ludicrously uneven and local - school districts collect from their according to their district's income and its demographics, and so the quality of the school depends too much on the economic status of the local area, and its size. The essential argument for public schooling is that it is not really an economics issue but a social one. Like health or environmental protection, there's lots and lots of non-money social issues at play. Externalities. Education is something that needs to be universally and equally available, its a social resource everyone should contribute to, because the outcomes of schooling - the sort of people schools end up producing and sending off into society - affect everyone. It's investment in the future, in long term economic viability, in social cohesion, fuck, call it a form of crime prevention and insurance. Markets produce uneven and capricious outcomes, and this isn't a desirable situation in situations where universality and equality of opportunity are basically the most important issues. Sure, by all means, have private schools, but those are luxuries people choose to work for, and shouldn't be government supported. Far better to focus on and ensure that the public system is quality, rather than create a sort of private/public multi-tiered limbo, where the "private school" system is partially government funded and socialised anyway, but not everyone can afford to access it. .... In rural areas such as mine there's the added issue that there's simply not enough of a market, you wouldn't get much competition because there's only a couple of schools in the region, and in smaller towns it'd basically just be the one public school and maybe a Catholic one as well (and they're quasi-public here anyway). As with most services, privatisation and reliance on markets would tend to disproportionately screw over regional and rural populations. (edited by Arwon on 01-01-05 06:12 AM) |
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hhallahh Bob-Omb Level: 38 Posts: 468/607 EXP: 365476 For next: 4971 Since: 03-15-04 From: Portland, OR Since last post: 73 days Last activity: 60 days |
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You say it's not an economic issue, but then you go into a bunch of economic reasons for the necessity of universal education. Strange.  It's true that education is a public good, but it's too much to say that everyone needs all the education a person gets in 12 years of school. It's true that kids not going to school could have economic consequences that are hard to forsee without social analyses (mostly on issues of crime, socialization to the "American way", etc.), but these consequences are secondary considerations. The argument that all children need the kind of education they get now is untenable, imo, and I wouldn't object to a system more like Europe or Japan's - focus more on funneling kids into trade schools at a younger age so as to not waste money on them in grade school. Either way, none of your concerns can't be dealt with by my "weak voucher" scenario - privatize schools, set prices equal to the old costs (or less), and give parents vouchers. I'm not really sure what conception of vouchers you're attacking. It's not like millions of kids wouldn't go to school under a voucher system - that's what vouchers are supposed to prevent to begin with. You may see markets where small portions of the population can't afford to go to the local school, but then the question would be... why is this? Are they living outside their means? Kinda like how a family may not be able to live in Manhattan without rent control or whatever? I don't have much sympathy for that. |
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Arwon Zora Level: 35 Posts: 238/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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| It's not that some people wouldn't be able to afford to go to school, that paragraph was a rant directed at the current partially-subsidised, paratistic nature of the private school system in this country - if they're private, why do they get government money at the expense of public schools? Also: Did I say that everyone needs to go to school for 12 years? I did not. That doesn't happen here, there's a school leaving option in Year 10, so the thought never really entered my head. I know that the 4 years of American high school are largely useless, but this speaks of an education system dysfunction far deeper than anything the magic of a voucher system could fix. I'm not talking about just the last couple of years of High School, I'm talking about the absolute necessity of a good, thorough, universal and egalitarian education system through the first eight or ten years of school. I just don't see the point of radically changing the nature of the education system for no good reason when the current set up works fine and could be made to work better. And yes, I have concerns about introducing a "market" into schooling, because markets, as I said, produce uneven outcomes and this isn't desirable with education. Voucher system proponents seem to argue that in some hazy way that resources would be funneled towards "good" schools. Maybe. But what about the kids at the "bad" schools, whose funding gets sucked away as other people leave and their vouchers go elsewhere, but they for whatever reason (distance, parental distaste for the "good" school, kid likes his damn friends, simple lag between "school gets shitty" and "everyone leaves and it closes") don't move? What stops these "bad" schools, or the ones that have an unjustly "bad" reputation, from getting utterly gutted and kids getting screwed by this? Some schools and people would benefit, but others wouldn't. I'd rather everyone get an adequate education (it doesn't seem to have hurt me, and many others...) than some get a good one and others get a bad one. |
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Zarathud Level: 12  Posts: 28/55 EXP: 7184 For next: 737 Since: 12-27-04 From: Terra, Sol. Since last post: 294 days Last activity: 294 days |
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I don't want to get too tangled up in this debate right now, but I'd like to make one small point here: Originally posted by Arwon Public schools also produce "uneven outcomes". Some students benefit from them more than others, partly due to their own personal traits and partly due to the teachers and curriculums they get stuck with. The results of schooling are going to be uneven whether it's a public or private system. In the scenario we're discussing, the government would be supplying vouchers (means-tested of course) to the people who couldn't afford the schooling, so there wouldn't be an equality of opportunity problem either. As far as I can see the only question would be over effiiciency, and markets tend to do better in that regard than governments. |
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hhallahh Bob-Omb Level: 38 Posts: 471/607 EXP: 365476 For next: 4971 Since: 03-15-04 From: Portland, OR Since last post: 73 days Last activity: 60 days |
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| Yea, the issue of "tracking" is contraversial within the public school system... should children of different ability levels be segregated into different classes? This inevitably leads to some children getting better educations than others. And since the correlation between tracking level and economic class is pretty strong... does this constitute an undesirable, unegalitarian outcome? if they're private, why do they get government money at the expense of public schools? Um, because they're saving the government X amount of dollars by not going to public school. It's not parasitic except insofar as it causes the public schools to contract... one can argue that this will necessarily degrade educational quality, but I don't think that's the point you're trying to make. Obviously, if a kid doesn't go to the public school, the government doesn't really need the money that it would have spent if that kid had gone to private school, right? And yes, I have concerns about introducing a "market" into schooling, because markets, as I said, produce uneven outcomes and this isn't desirable with education. I'm not quite sure whether this is a normative argument or an economic one. If you consider it normatively undesirable, well... I'm not highly interested in arguing that, except to say that voucher schools could hypothetically yield an egalitarian result in the same manner that public schools do or don't do if the proper controls were added. If you consider it economically undesirable, that's where I'd probably make a stronger objection. What stops these "bad" schools, or the ones that have an unjustly "bad" reputation, from getting utterly gutted and kids getting screwed by this? The only way that this wouldn't happen under any system would be to completely eliminate school choice, or to make the barriers to school choice so high that very few families could overcome them. This is desirable? (Too lazy to type more.) |
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Arwon Zora Level: 35 Posts: 240/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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| Well, I view the subsidisation of private school as creating a multi-tiered public system - if the private schools are partially government funded, then they should be considered, more or less, as public schools also. It's the same objection I have to government involvement in our private health system Yet, not everyone can go there, not everyone can afford or gain entry, it's an optional luxury the government shouldn't be funding (if the private sector is so damn efficient shouldn't it stand on its own?), especially when there's such concern about the funding level for the PUBLIC system. Why the hell should private schools that have thousands of dollar entry fees anyway, get government funding, as presently happens? Zara: Yes they do produce uneven outcomes, people being inherently different and in different situations and all that, but with the public system they're at least all starting from basically the same place. I'm not saying its possible or desirable to ensure every graduate is a flurking genius and a modern renaissance individual, but I am concerned that every school provdes decent chances for the kids that go there to do this if they are so inclined. Let's not overstate the problems here. It's entirely possible to succeed in public school if you're capable of it and motivated, it's entirely possible to get by and get through if you're not so good, the system works okay despite constant media hysteria to the contrary. I can't see how making education into a marketplace is going to accomplish that any better - the most anyone seems to be saying is that it wouldn't make things worse. I dunno, maybe the Aussie school system is a lot less fucked up than the American. This is entirely possible based on my experiences in California and New South Wales. But, even then, I'm not sure that free market magic is going to fix US education. This voucher system seems to be largely an American idea at least in my experience... but it seems to me that obsession with it as the US education system's saviour, such faith in its virtues, seems misplaced... since at most it seems like it'd just be redistributing the same inequalities and same problems in new ways and along new lines - you'd still have good schools and bad schools. So why such fervor for a system that'd just rearrange things? Anyways, like I said, I think it's far better to have everyone get an adequate education, than for some to get a stellar one and others to get a poor one, and as far as my experience and education has shown, the general trend is that markets are uneven, there are big winners but big losers too, that's the nature of market forces. I can see a voucher system turning schools at least partly into slick public relations firms, trying to attract the most students (and kicking out undesirables and difficult students because that jeaopardises its chances to attract more people and thus more government vouchers). Yeah, some schools would end up very good and well funded, while others would end up very bad and poorly funded, even moreso than now. We're not talking about supermarket chains or phone companies here... the consequences of schools "going under" due to market forces shouldn't be dismissed quite so lightly. Now, the funny thing about school is that even if it isn't perfect, most people tend to muddle through and survive and come out as functional adults. I don't really like the idea of messing radically with a system that seems to work okay and has done for sometime. As I said earlier, I infinitely prefer for everyone to get an adequate education and muddle through, than some to get a stellar education and others to get a very poor one. --------- Also, I think we're all talking about different "voucher" systems here. The way I hear it explained, is that every child has a voucher from teh gubermint, and whatever school they go to, that school gets the funding for that voucher. The argument runs that it's a way of making school funding responsive to market forces. So if a bunch of people desert a school, that must mean the market is showing that the school isn't very good (so says the theory), thus that school will get less funding, while funding will be redirected to more desirable schools with higher numbers. |
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dex IRC Lazy Network Admin Dude Level: 11  Posts: 39/46 EXP: 5848 For next: 137 Since: 11-16-04 From: St Julians, S. Wales Since last post: 116 days Last activity: 59 days |
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| Ignoring the Private/Public debate (Sorry guys), based on the UK I can say quite easily that teachers are massively underpaid, and that gets worse depending on the subject they teach and at what level, as Ziff said earlier in this thread they have to work numerous hours at home and at schools afterwards just to get homework/classwork marked or things set up for the following day, even lesson planning has to be done at home, because quite simply they don't have the time during the school day, they are actually running a childminding service and educating them the same, if the teacher was to drop their guard for one minute, particularly to Infant School Children (5-8 year olds) it could be disastrous, and as they were the responsible adult in charge they carry the can for it. Of course there are other roles not initially thought of: Mentoring, Supporting, Counselling (to some extent) not to mention the staff running pastoral duties or discipline, form tutors have to act as a go between to all these services and ensuring their students keep up in their work and maintain a student community, despite already having the time constraints placed on them by teaching their subject and still get paid no more for it. Hardly fair, and they are the mainstream teachers, contrary to popular belief Private School teachers don't always get paid more, sometimes they get less on the basis that they are normally teaching less students and as such have less demands placed on them, of course there are those who will be paid more. Going back to mainstream schools at High School level (11-16 year olds) most teachers get paid a base rate which isn't that great and then depending on the subject or subjects they teach will get paid bonuses, so an Art teacher might get a lot less than a Maths teacher, despite actually possibly having a greater workload, these bonuses aren't based on which subjects are useful or not to the student, currently they are based on which subject has a shortage of staff, two years ago that was sciences, now it's Maths and the bonuses have shifted accordingly; other factors also come into this bonus scheme within the UK, if an area has a general shortage of teachers then bonuses are paid to them on the perogative of the Local Goverment Education Authority, naturally these bonuses come out of the set budget for Education in that region, so bonuses are kept small in order to minimise effect on the students whilst offering an incentive. Very rarely are living costs locally reflected in pay conditions, except in London and Birmingham so depending on where a teacher lives this small pay packet may not go as far as it would in others, so you might ask "Why not live away and commute?" The answer is simple, few if any teachers in the UK get paid mileage for travelling from home to work, though they will get it for trips etc, so that entire argument is dissipated as the money saved in moving out of a city for example is negated in petrol costs or paying for Public and/or Private Transport. Moving onto the Post-16 section (whether it be FE College, Sixth-Form College, Sixth-Form) there isn't even remote parity in pay. A teacher in a Sixth-Form (ie an attached unit to a High School with the same rules, teachers etc) will net considerably more than a FE College Lecturer, despite the fact that nominally a FE College Lecturer will carry out much more work and often will do 9am-9pm non-stop Lecturing. The bonuses that High School teachers get awarded are still carried on to Sixth-Form teachers with extra bonuses for teaching it at the appropiate level (more for A-Level than AVCE for example), however teachers at Sixth-Form or FE Colleges will not. All 3 are publicly funded, just in different fashions, the body that funds the Colleges will not offer bonuses despite the fact that Colleges also offer many more subjects such as Engineering which can not be taught in Sixth-Forms. Overall you can quite easily say that teachers don't get paid nearly enough, most cannot afford a mortgage on property and many have difficulties living in cities due to lack of pay. So why teach? Because they like it, and enjoy it, but that isn't enough and the effect is starting to show with many teachers starting to go back to University to study for new jobs, at the student's expense. I am currently training to be a teacher myself, and this I find personally worrying, so I'm either going to be broke, lucky to have a well-paid partner or hopefully the government may well have resolved this situation by 2010 when I'll be fully trained. |
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Zarathud Level: 12 Posts: 35/55 EXP: 7184 For next: 737 Since: 12-27-04 From: Terra, Sol. Since last post: 294 days Last activity: 294 days |
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| "...but with the public system they're at least all starting from basically the same place." Not really. Some students just are generally smarter than others to begin with, and like I said, their experience will vary right from the beginning depending on their teachers. "...but I am concerned that every school provdes decent chances for the kids that go there to do this if they are so inclined." I agree, it's good to at least give everyone a chance at getting an education. We're not arguing over that, just the method by which it's supplied. "It's entirely possible to succeed in public school if you're capable of it and motivated, it's entirely possible to get by and get through if you're not so good, the system works okay despite constant media hysteria to the contrary." In most places it works "okay", yes, but that doesn't mean it can't be structured to work better. "I can't see how making education into a marketplace is going to accomplish that any better - the most anyone seems to be saying is that it wouldn't make things worse." Broadly speaking, these would be the main benefits to privatization of education:
"...but it seems to me that obsession with it as the US education system's saviour, such faith in its virtues, seems misplaced... since at most it seems like it'd just be redistributing the same inequalities and same problems in new ways and along new lines - you'd still have good schools and bad schools. So why such fervor for a system that'd just rearrange things?" Well people support it for different reasons; economsists for the reasons I outlined above, parents for the reason that they like having that kind of control, but many people simply on the principle that granting people greater choice is a good thing. "Anyways, like I said, I think it's far better to have everyone get an adequate education, than for some to get a stellar one and others to get a poor one" The Japanese have a phrase for this: ashi no hippariai no sekai. It means "pulling each other back to ensure no one gets ahead." I would rather see students get the most possible out of their educations rather than have everyone get mediocre ones. But I think you're overplaying the idea that there will be crappy schools; in any distributuion there's a high end and a low end, but how many truly crappy businesses stay in business for long? "I can see a voucher system turning schools at least partly into slick public relations firms, trying to attract the most students (and kicking out undesirables and difficult students because that jeaopardises its chances to attract more people and thus more government vouchers)." You mean like universities already do? "We're not talking about supermarket chains or phone companies here... the consequences of schools "going under" due to market forces shouldn't be dismissed quite so lightly." Why? The economic principles at work are basically the same. "I don't really like the idea of messing radically with a system that seems to work okay and has done for sometime." It doesn't have to be a radical transition. If anything it would be a gradual one to give people time to adjust and see how well the new system works, gater data and evaluate the respective performances of students and schools, etc. "Also, I think we're all talking about different "voucher" systems here. The way I hear it explained, is that every child has a voucher from teh gubermint, and whatever school they go to, that school gets the funding for that voucher." Basically, yes. But the vouchers should be means-tested so they only go to people who legitimately could not afford it. "The argument runs that it's a way of making school funding responsive to market forces. So if a bunch of people desert a school, that must mean the market is showing that the school isn't very good (so says the theory), thus that school will get less funding, while funding will be redirected to more desirable schools with higher numbers." Basically, yes. Or the school can improve its practices and get a better reputation. Or a different education firm could buy it up and turn it into a better one. It's not any different in principle from say, restaurants or stores. If there's a demand it will be there. The only way the market may fail is in areas which aren't densely populated enough to make it past that critical threshold where it's worth it" to start a private school there, in which case I wouldn't have much of a problem with the government subsidizing some schools in rural areas where no schools would otherwise exist. |
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Arwon Zora Level: 35 Posts: 241/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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| I'm confused here. You seem to be talking as though school vouchers is a means of privaatising the school system... whereas from where I'm sitting it's more like the government getitng involved in the private system as voucher money is directed there. How can it be privatised if the government would now be giving money to all schools? Would they seriously just give up funding to any school at all while expecting no control over where its money is going? France, for example, has a "School choice" system which basically sees heavy subsidisation and government influence over the cirriculum of private schools. Here, too, private schools also are somewhat inside the public system and its cirriculum, since they're partially subsidised by the state and federal govt. (Actually, the federal government spends more money on private than public schools). So are we talking about a market system with no government involvement, or are we talking about spreading the welfare and paternalism around more widely? ... Also, you speak of "local control" but to me that's a significant problem in the US as it is. Schools' standards vary wildly at least partly BECAUSE there's such local control - schools in affluent areas are better funded, because they generate a lot of funds through local property taxes that go directly to the school's budgets. That's how it works in California, at least, I'm not sure how the rest of the country works. Then there's this "School Board" thing. Who thought it was a good idea to let the crankiest and most ideoligical citizens, with the biggest axes to grind, practically run schooling systems with little oversight? To let them install bigass wireless networks and huge stadiums and fancy shiny buildings in schools that have to share textbooks? To let them shriek and piss and moan about evolution and sex-education rather than, you know, administer and manage the schools in their area? To me the two biggest things the US could do to fix its system is regulate and fund the system at a state instead of local level, to reduce the influence of loopy agenda-driven cranks, and reduce the vast inequities that come from letting schools directly reap their local property taxes. It's really kinda difficult to aruge this really well, because Australia's public education system is quite different to the US's, and I'm coming into this with a different set of assumptions and experiences. My prescriptions for the US system are basically rooted in what seems to work here, you lot probably think we're all desperately socialist and stuff, whereas from where I'm sitting your health and education systems look like expensive anarchy. |
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hhallahh Bob-Omb Level: 38 Posts: 475/607 EXP: 365476 For next: 4971 Since: 03-15-04 From: Portland, OR Since last post: 73 days Last activity: 60 days |
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| One thing that needs to be considered in economic analyses of schools is the school as a natural monopoly, at least in many communities (which I'm sure Arwon is concerned about).... I don't have time to go into things, but the dynamics would work differently in those markets. | |||
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Arwon Zora Level: 35 Posts: 242/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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| Becuase parents are reluctant to move kids from school to school because of disruption to social life, separating from friends, different cirriculums, and so forth? Apparently people who aren't used to moving schools every 2 or so years (I am a military brat) find the idea of moving schools as scary as moving house. |
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Kefka Indefinitely Unbanned Level: 81 Posts: 2385/3392 EXP: 4826208 For next: 166641 Since: 03-15-04 From: Pomona, CALIFORNIA BABY! Since last post: 4 hours Last activity: 4 hours |
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Originally posted by Generation Terrorist Well, they do it cause they love kids and want to make the kids contribute to society one day. Or at least the good ones do. They are not "cool with it" in many places. In fact, last year, in my own school district, there was a 2 day period where teachers went on strike against the district office for not giving anyone a raise in TEN YEARS. And they still havent had the raise. Oh, and did anyone actually say overpaid?  I would be surprised if they did.Oh, and a lot of us wish, I'm sure, that all schools had the same standard of curriculum as particular private schools do... too bad that won't happen anytime soon.  |
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alte Hexe Star Mario I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night Alive as you and me "But Joe you're ten years dead!" "I never died" said he "I never died!" said he Level: 99  Posts: 2261/5458 EXP: 9854489 For next: 145511 Since: 03-15-04 From: ... Since last post: 2 hours Last activity: 2 hours |
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Originally posted by Arwon One grade school change every 2 years for me, also. Didn't impact me too much. Luckily with high schools, in Canada, if you have your parents permission and the transportation arranged you can go to any school in the Region that you live in. I chose to go to my high school because of its well known activist population (which incidentally has died out, leaving me one of the too true few) and the excellent academics (they pulled funding when I got there, and fired the better teachers). Yet, with all the faults that my school has (like chipping lead paint) I am getting the same information as other teens. Standarized public curriculums rock! |
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Zarathud Level: 12 Posts: 39/55 EXP: 7184 For next: 737 Since: 12-27-04 From: Terra, Sol. Since last post: 294 days Last activity: 294 days |
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| "So are we talking about a market system with no government involvement, or are we talking about spreading the welfare and paternalism around more widely?" I picture socialized education as being analogous to socialized health care. What I have in mind would be more like the government giving poor people vouchers for mandatory catastrophic health insurance, but otherwise totally staying out of the health care/schooling market. I'd only advocate government paternalism to enforce a baseline minimum education in things like math and writing in schools, perhaps via standardized testing (I'm also all in favour of a reputation system of some kind). "Also, you speak of "local control" but to me that's a significant problem in the US as it is. Schools' standards vary wildly at least partly BECAUSE there's such local control - schools in affluent areas are better funded, because they generate a lot of funds through local property taxes that go directly to the school's budgets." What differences are we talking about here, in quality of teaching or in material funding? If the former, then that has very little to do with location. If you're talking about the latter then I would think that the kind of system I'm talking about would actually be an improvement over the current one. As it is now, students get assigned a school based on their location and that's that. Giving students and their parents greater freedom to shop around and choose from a greater geographical area of schools would help alleviate this problem, since the money the schools got would depend more on how many people chose their school and less on location. "Who thought it was a good idea to let the crankiest and most ideoligical citizens, with the biggest axes to grind, practically run schooling systems with little oversight? To let them install bigass wireless networks and huge stadiums and fancy shiny buildings in schools that have to share textbooks? To let them shriek and piss and moan about evolution and sex-education rather than, you know, administer and manage the schools in their area?" To me this would be another benefit of school choice: right now schools are politicized and generally guided by the crankiest and most meddlesome with too much time on their hands (as you rightly point out), and whatever they collectively decide on is what everybody is forced to deal with. Parents can have a "voice" in the process, but in the end have to submit to the will of the committee. In a market, people have "exit" and can vote with their feet if they don't like the way a particular school is run. "To me the two biggest things the US could do to fix its system is regulate and fund the system at a state instead of local level, to reduce the influence of loopy agenda-driven cranks, and reduce the vast inequities that come from letting schools directly reap their local property taxes." Aren't you just shifting the problem one level up in this scenario? Either way the schools are going to be regulated by someone, and I don't see any convincing reason to believe that a more distant and more centralized bureaucracy is going to be any more efficient than local one. You may not necissarily get the exact same problems, but you'll likely get a host of new ones. State-level regulation is subject to pretty much the same public choice problems as local regulation, it just has less situational knowledge. You'll still get lobby groups and whatnot affecting the process, and if anything, the further regulation gets from "ground level", the slower it is to recognize problems and act accordingly. "It's really kinda difficult to aruge this really well, because Australia's public education system is quite different to the US's, and I'm coming into this with a different set of assumptions and experiences. My prescriptions for the US system are basically rooted in what seems to work here, you lot probably think we're all desperately socialist and stuff, whereas from where I'm sitting your health and education systems look like expensive anarchy." Well hey, I've lived most of my life in the People's Republic of Canada, so I think we're about on the same footing. US health and education are a mess, but then they're a bit of a mess up here too (though the schools less so and the health care more so). I would just argue that it's a mess due to excessive (rather than insufficient) government meddling. |
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alte Hexe Star Mario I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night Alive as you and me "But Joe you're ten years dead!" "I never died" said he "I never died!" said he Level: 99 Posts: 2279/5458 EXP: 9854489 For next: 145511 Since: 03-15-04 From: ... Since last post: 2 hours Last activity: 2 hours |
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| Zarathud, when you have children, I pray that your views change. To turn your children into nothing more than a commodity is dehumanizing at best. The American education system is a wreck of a thing. I have had many family members who went South. They told my family not to bother. The greener pastures were hardly pastures at all. In Canada we have standardized education by province, some better than the others (Ontario standing as a shining example, despite some glaring flaws in implimentation due to Conservative stupidity). If we're thinking of the same reputation system, similar to what guides the tuition of US universities, that is disgusting. A fair and even education is deserved by all, this voucher program directly eliminates that. I don't care what you say, this program leaves holes that will inevitably hurt the poor and underpriviliged. As for your views on healthcare, handing out vouchers only at "catastrophic" events will probably not cover things like pneumonia or ailments that can have standing effects, especially on children. It will cause more harm than good when people have to pay for their own eye treatments and chiropracter (and other physio-therapies) when they work low-wage jobs that cause physical effects like this. As for "excessive government meddling" the fKitten Yiffer of our systems is due to attempts by the Conservative wings of Canadian politics to ruin education and shift the social aspects of it to the right wing. |
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hhallahh Bob-Omb Level: 38 Posts: 476/607 EXP: 365476 For next: 4971 Since: 03-15-04 From: Portland, OR Since last post: 73 days Last activity: 60 days |
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| It's to the detriment of society's well-being if we don't treat children like commodities. It may revolt one's sensibilities, but... that is definately an insufficient justification for any kind of government intervention. If it's "dehumanizing", then your problem is with the capitalist system, and... well, that's your loss. Normative argument based on the need for equity and desert are easily negated by pointing out that it's also morally unpalatable to make some pay for the education of others. The problem isn't the commodification of children... the solution is the commodification of children. As long as it's done well. |
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Kefka Indefinitely Unbanned Level: 81 Posts: 2394/3392 EXP: 4826208 For next: 166641 Since: 03-15-04 From: Pomona, CALIFORNIA BABY! Since last post: 4 hours Last activity: 4 hours |
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Originally posted by hhallahh But if we treat them as just commodities, then the American school system would be nothing more than an assembly line that produces high school graduates. Only about 2/10 students entering high school end up with a college degree. Do you not find a problem in that? We worry too much about just shipping everyone through and giving them a high school deploma, and not enough time worrying about how everyone can be helped after they graduate. There are a few public schools, like the Met, that accept low level income students that have had hope lost for them and turn them into successful high school students (100% of the school's graduates accepted into college, 70% end up with college degree). "The Big Picture" schools are quite good at this. Now, if they can do it with somewhat limited resources, why can't others? The curriculum there is VERY individualized and it helps everyone become better thinkers, and not better memorizers. So, because I can see that kids can be taught to be outstanding thinkers and individuals, and this happens through an individual education, I think it is wrong to view us all as commodities. "Normative argument based on the need for equity and desert are easily negated by pointing out that it's also morally unpalatable to make some pay for the education of others." If you didn't want to pay for the education of others, you would have to completely privatize education, no? Otherwise, there is bound to be tax money going into school funds. -------------------------- If the school system itself was a bit more individualized and not based on everyone learning the same things at the same time in a given classroom (because there are always bound to be kids who won't catch on as quickly or catch on much faster, so it will hurt both groups), then the system would be way better, and we would be seeing America become smarter, and not a bunch of TV-watching slugs. If there was a standard like this in education, lower level income kids would have a hell of a lot better chance of being successful as adults. Also, if there was an affirmative action-like system based on income levels as opposed to race... but that's a different topic. I strayed off topic. And I probably missed half of what was said. Sorry. |
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hhallahh Bob-Omb Level: 38 Posts: 477/607 EXP: 365476 For next: 4971 Since: 03-15-04 From: Portland, OR Since last post: 73 days Last activity: 60 days |
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| An "efficient" education system in no way dictates that only rich students would receive good education, nor would it necessarily dictate that any fewer students should get higher education. I'm not really sure what it would dictate, since the cost/benefit problem of educating each student is quite complex. Normally we'd let the free market solve such problems, but this doesn't work with education, since education is a public good and the free market will always underallocate public goods. Hence there is an argument for subsidized education, even in a system that commodifies children. But the structure of this educational system will have efficiency as its goal, is all. If the most efficient system were the one we have now, then we would say it should be kept because of its efficiency - hence, one might say that children are being commodified at the moment. Of course, this fact wouldn't entail a need for some socialistic reform. Associating commodification with things like a necessary loss of individual attention or meritocracy is indefensible. |
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alte Hexe Star Mario I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night Alive as you and me "But Joe you're ten years dead!" "I never died" said he "I never died!" said he Level: 99 Posts: 2291/5458 EXP: 9854489 For next: 145511 Since: 03-15-04 From: ... Since last post: 2 hours Last activity: 2 hours |
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| No, it is quite easily defendable. The last time we really turned people into traded commodities it was called slavery. |
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