On Thu, 30 Aug 2001 mmotyka@lsil.com wrote:
All I said was that actions can have unintended consequences. Make well considered choices. Look at the power industry deregulation in CA. Too much, too quickly and poorly crafted. By all means let's improve the educational opportunities in this country but not with some stooopid knee-jerk approach. Try and do it in one fell swoop based on right-wing war chants and I'll bet you do more harm than good.
Since we don't depend on the government for food, steel, concrete, or medical care (60% private money not much actual government acre delivery); why would we think that teaching by government employees would be efficient. We can argue about payment later (although taxing the poor to pay for the college education of the rich seems unfair), but no rational person can argue that socialist provision of services is superior to market provision in case like this.
This statement is neither entirely true nor entirely false but it sure as hell is a knee-jerk reaction to the issue. Sounds like the sort of foolishness that Rush Limbaugh vomits on the airwaves.
I can pick any public school teacher at random and cross ex them on the stand and establish that they don't know diddly squat. The concept that one should institutionalize one's children for 8 hours a day so that public officials can attempt to modify their knowledge, understanding, and physical and psychological deportment is the worst kind of child abuse. At future war crimes trials America's parents will have to answer for their crimes. (For those of you who attended slave schools, that last is a joke.) Can you seriously argue that governments do a better job of education or that it's safe to trust them with the souls (in the religious and non-religious sense) of the innocent. Apart from everything else one can say, attending slave schools subjects the child and the family to the full force of government record keeping. If you are not on the dole and you have no children in slave schools, your chances of having any sort of interaction with the minions of the coercive state apparatus are very substantially reduced. Much safer.
While you claim to favor choices, you have just argued that these choices should not be available.
Yes, just like the employment choice of "slavery" should not be available because it's wrong (at least within my proprietary community).
Uh, nope, that's not what I said. I said I would be in favor of carefully considered proposals. Proposals that are fair to individuals and beneficial to the community. Again, the two goals are neither completely compatible nor mutually exclusive.
What's the community got to do with it? I should give up money and children because people who are demonstrably stupider than I am think it would be a good idea? I don't give barbers who can't cut my hair the way I want my money or my hair. Why on earth should I do it to my children? The slave school teachers of those making that argument did at least that part of their work well. DCF