On Sat, 15 Nov 1997, ? the Platypus {aka David Formosa} wrote:
On Fri, 14 Nov 1997, Tim May wrote:
At 9:40 PM -0700 11/14/97, ? the Platypus {aka David Formosa} wrote:
The system of democratic voteing assumes an educated voteing population because of this free scular education is a basic right that should be prodided by the state.
The"system" asssumes no such thing,
So an informed electorate is not neccery for democarsy to work? Creating such an electorate has been one of the fundermentle elerments in most education policies of westion democries.
The problem is that current government (what everyone usually calls "public") schools are creating a disinformed electorate. Most high school and college students think "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is in the Constitution. For the last 30 years, our free education has degraded to "you get what you pay for". When we had a public/non-governmental school system (with businessmen parents on school boards and teachers who viewed their duties as a vocation instead of just another career) children came out of high school knowing how to read and write (and diagram sentences), and do mathematics, and usually several useful arts. Now they have high self esteem in their ignorance. So while education is fundamental to freedom, no where does it say that government should be the main or only provider of education. Most other countries are different since they don't have the same type of church and state problems (the Church ran the education system for centuries in some), so simply have subsidized what was there. In the US, the Government ensures that no part of religion - including morality and virtue - can be part of education, so things like diligence in doing homework are foreign to the system as much as not stabbing your classmates. Since it would be judgmental to teach them not to shoot or stab people, we place metal detectors in schools. There is also one enlightment era concept implicit in "informed electorate" I disagree with, and is clear at this point in history. Many people would argue that Reason = Virtue, i.e. that all evil comes from ignorance of some consequence of an act. Currently, even if I prove that something won't work because of economic laws, and even show that every time in the past something bad happened, the answer is usually that we are smarter (reason), or have better intentions (virtue) this time around. Reason is used to rationalize vice (Because of global warming...), and Virtue is used to rationalize tyranny (gun bans - nice people have no use for them - for an obvious example). Reason without virtue only creates greater evils, and virtue without reason causes more unintentional harm than intentional good. Both are necessary for the electorate in a democracy, and our supreme court says we cannot teach virtue in public school, and the educators have stopped teaching reason. So the basic right you argue for is to be viceous and ignorant via government schooling. Such an electorate will remain neither free nor democratic for long.