kuro5hin.org || How Home-Schooling Harms the Nation

[Duncan Frissell]

On Thu, 30 Aug 2001 mmotyka at 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