As long as this is now CypherCesspit and not CypherPunks, I might as well play the game. Doug Hughes writes:
If you feel like subsidising education, then by all means, do it. But why should you stick a gun in my back to do the same? What if I do not want to do the same as you?
Then you will be living in a country with lower education standards, increasing illiteracy, and a pretty pitiful base with a declining socio-economic structure.
What, like the one we live in NOW? As I said, things have gotten steadily worse since Horace Mann invented the modern government socialization institution we call the "public school". (It was originally created to force the horrible subhuman Irish and Germans to send their kids to places where good protestant values would be inculcated into them, not as a way to increase the literacy rate. Check on your own if you don't believe me.) Every year since World War II, expenditures in real dollars have increased per pupil at the government schools. Every year, average class size has gone down in the government schools. Indeed, year after year, the demands of the education mafia are always met. Who, after all, would dare deny anything to the poor children. Of course, almost every year, educational quality has declined. Has it occurred to you that something is probably wrong with your world model when in spite of the fact that everything the education mafia asks for is granted they can't deliver the goods? Maybe if New York City spends $20,000 a year per student instead of the $10,000 they spend now things will get better? One wonders why the parochial schools get away with spending only $2500 and yet deliver a better education.
So, because they live in a poor district they are not entitled to the same level of education as a rich city suburb? The illiteracy rate in Alabama is 40%! This is just plain sick!
When I was a kid, everything that had characters printed on it was readable. Who is *preventing* them from reading?
environment, lack of education, lack of money, lots of factors.
I learned to read outside of school. I realize I had a privileged background -- my parents being literate and all -- but in fact I'll note that my parents claim that they didn't teach me to read, the goddamnoisybabblebox did. One day I just started reading at them and they were shocked as could be. Perhaps its this sort of thing, and the fact that the literacy rate was higher BEFORE public education, that lead me to believe that we don't need any more "assistance" from the friendly neighborhood government. We need less, a lot less, and as fast as possible.
Nobody is holding a gun to anybody's head saying "Don't Read". But improving literacy is a goal that needs to be undertaken. Do you not agree that low literacy is a bad thing and needs to be taken care of?
I agree that it is bad that some people do not know how to read, but the cost is mostly paid for by them except when society decides to "help the unfortunate". Even then, it is the illiterate who can't get a job, not me. Literacy is a private good, not a public good. If you would like to see an improvement in literacy I therefore have a simple solution. Eliminate public schools. The literacy rate has been in steady decline since Horace Mann's lovely innovation. With only private schools available, teachers will live in terror of being fired for being ineffective. Schools that don't teach children the skills their poor parents scrimp and save for will lose their students. Incompetant fools will no longer be tolerated. The schools will cease to spend time teaching random socialist fluff and will become businesses hired to inculcate skills like reading, mathematics and reasoning ability -- or they will be fired. I live in hope that some day schools will be forced to go begging for students, and will find themselves faced with questions like "if Johnson Elementary across town can teach my kid for $500 less a year and teach him to read a year earlier in a safer environment, why the hell should I pay incompetant dweebs like you?" I long for the day when Albert Shanker and the entire teachers union hierarchy is forced to sweep streets for lack of any other job that anyone will offer them. So, yes, I want to see education improved. The answer in my mind is to fire the entire government.
I'd have to be convinced that that is a good thing. However, making sure everybody has a good education is of paramount importance to any society. It's going to cost some tax dollars, but, in my opinion it would be money well spent
Housing is of paramount importance to society. Do you feel that you would like to live in government housing projects over a privately owned apartment? Food is of paramount importance to society. Why do we have no government run feeding stations to replace these evil supermarkets, then? Heat is of paramount importance to society -- in New England you can't survive the winter without it. Why, then, do we not have government operated and financed oil companies to replace the evil private ones. Communications are of primary importance to society. Would you swap our phone system for the phone system in Greece, or even the one in France, which are publically subsidized and run by the government? Do you prefer using the U.S. Postal Service, or Federal Express when you absolutely positively have to get the package there? If you had a choice, would you go to a V.A."hospital" or see a private physician? In short, why do you think the government, which fucks* up everything it touches, and which has controlled education for a century, is the answer to fixing the education problem, when it so obviously is the CAUSE of the education problem? (*intentionally placed to provide CDA fodder.)
Some people on this list argue that the current representative govt system is bad, and that true democracy is better.
Actually, I believe most people on this list argue for no government or so little that its decisions hardly matter. Perry