Skilled worker shortage hurts U.S.

Posted: Sun Jan 07, 2007 1:45 pm

Knight_of_BAAWA wrote:

However, that's coercing children to be placed in some school, and parents to do it. And obviously would involve taxation (since how else would the money be paid on behalf of the child to the educational institution). Your suggestion merely continues the poor educational system of now.

Saitou wrote:

The differences are: Parents choose what school to place their children in.

Whoopty-do. They're still required to do it, just as now. I'm looking for a SUBSTANTIVE difference, not a COSMETIC one. Putting different wallpaper up in a room doesn't change the basic room, right?

Saitou wrote:

There are more privately run schools to choose from. Yes there would be taxation as today but I think the costs would go down because of market forces rather than the government monopoly and teacher's uni0n stranglehold we have now.

The problem is that it would devolve into what we have today.

Saitou wrote:

I know it's a bit intrusive and coercive but I believe it is critically important to the person that child will become and to society itself that everyone have an opportunity to an education.

Knight_of_BAAWA wrote:

An opportunity, yes. But not a requirement.

Saitou wrote:

For children I absolutely insist it be a requirement even if it inspires libertarians to call me quasi-fascist (or worse).

You don't have the right to force others to do your bidding. Period.

Saitou wrote:

Kids can't earn the money themselves and while parents should pay for it many of them won't and it's not just they who will suffer here.

Knight_of_BAAWA wrote:

That's just making others suffer, though, when you create the tax.

Saitou wrote:

Some will suffer from the taxes and some will benefit from the schooling.

The ends do not justify the means.

Saitou wrote:

I have a philosophy of helping those who are unable to help themselves.

Knight_of_BAAWA wrote:

Laudable. But there's no justification for enforcing that philosophy on others.

Saitou wrote:

I can only justify it to people who make the same evaluation and reach the same conclusion as myself. You're right though--this is an unfairness that I wholly support.

Supporting any unfairness is wrong.

Saitou wrote:

Charity very well could work here instead of government but I'm not sure it'd work well. It could be inconsistent or "poisoned" like if most of them were religious indoctrination centers (as opposed to the government/liberal indoctrination centers we have now).

Knight_of_BAAWA wrote:

It's not up to you, though, to decide. That's the job of the parent.

Saitou wrote:

True but if we have a secular government using some of it's authority to offer more options they'll be there.

And we'll still end up with what we have today, given the proclivity of government agents to expand their own power.

Saitou wrote:

I know there are weaknesses to my plan here but there would be weaknesses in any plan.

Knight_of_BAAWA wrote:

I don't see how letting people make their own decisions contains any weaknesses.

Saitou wrote:

The children do not have the ability to decide for themselves and they are the people that are most affected by any plan.

I don't see how you can make that claim, nor how you can justify imposing your desires on others. It's no different than sjc holding some claim over others because he says he has a need.

Graduate Thinker Joined: Oct 24, 2005 Posts: 666

Saitou wrote:

Jason_Harvestdancer wrote:

It's much better that everyone be equally illiterate than many people have a good education?

Since you are an intelligent person and well informed you don't need to make these kinds of arguments. If our crappy near communist system we have can produce graduates where most aren't illiterate then a privatized system should produce much better results where virtually no-one would be illiterate. Hell, even the system we had in decades past did a much better job than today's schools.

You libertarians often confuse me. You go to such an extreme where only near absolute liberty can be moral that you'll find some of the most unacceptable things acceptable. I know I'm using my own subjective judgement here but having children miss the opportunity for an education because their parents either can't or won't provide one for them is unacceptable and I think harmful to society.

Do you have anything better than "poor bastard" for such children? What if charity can't pick up the slack? Should the kid get a job? Or should he wait until he's in his teens and can work before he begins his education?

What I have is the track record of non-government educational systems versus the track record of government educational systems, especially in this country with it's Prussian-Dewey educational system. What is largely unknown anymore is that once upon a time, not only was education not compulsory, it wasn't even government supported. During that time, literacy rates were higher than they are today.

Education came from a very wide variety of sources, including low cost private schools, high cost private schools, private tutors, community schools supported only by those who used them, parents directly educating their children, and yes charity schools that did indeed pick up the slack.

Of course, government had to get into the act. Whenever government enters into a field, it has a habit of driving away the competition, and now the average person is incapable of thinking of who would do something if not for the government. Who indeed? The average person may think the public school is free, but that is after the average person has already paid too much for that public school. If the taxes for the school had not been taken away, the parent would find enough resources for most of the private schools already in existence.

Still not enough? Still convinced it wouldn't be available if not for government because private schools cost more? As a conservative you surely have a little more faith in the market than sjc does, and I can guarantee there is a market for low cost education in this country, but it is not cost effective because the money that would be used to pay for it is currently paying for shit schools. There are investors who have calculated that it can be possible to make a large profit from low cost decent quality schools. Liberals would deride them as "Wal-Mart schools" or "McSchools", but the point is they would indeed serve the needs of the buyers and if they fail to there will indeed be other options, options that are affordable since the taxes aren't paying for shit schools.

Once these government schools were established, it so happened that there were children who could take advantage of them who weren't. Since everyone was paying for it, it was wrong that people were paying for opportunities that weren't being used and thus truancy laws were written. Now instead of those who are interested going to what they mistakenly think is a free school, you have everyone going to what they mistakenly think is a free school. Those who weren't interested started to disrupt the education of everyone else - a process that continues to this day. I remember back when I was in high school, and it was the case then, and I was in the best school in the county (I can only imagine what the other schools in the county were like), and the situation has not only not improved, it has degraded. Do I find fault with truancy laws? Of course. Just because you are doing the absolutely wrong thing doesn't mean you should do it as poorly as possible. I can easly come up with five suggestions to greatly improve the quality of public schools to the point where they are as good as they were in 1950 on the principle of "If you're really going to implement this bad idea let's try to have it do as little harm as possible and maybe do some good". Truancy laws are one example. Although all the bleeding hearts in the USA think I'm being callous, I want them to realisticly answer how much good it will do someone who has no intention of learning to sit in a class room and fail yet another course while he disrupts the class in an effort to score pussy. He's not learning, even though he's sitting there. One cannot tell me that someone who never does any homework, never listens to the teacher, beats up other students for fun and profit, and stocks shelves for a living after he graduates (same job he had before graduation) is going to benefit from being assigned (but not reading) Romeo and Juliet and then failing that class because he didn't read it. On the other hand, the student who actually would benefit from being assigned that reading is reluctant to go to that school because he will get beaten up by the aforementioned "student".

On the principle of "if you have to do this wrong thing, you can still do a less bad job", we could, for instance, switch from the Prussian model to the Swedish model .

What you suggest is to keep the mandatory aspect, both in mandatory funding and truancy laws. What I have just shown is how mandatory funding and mandatory attendance have been a two-pronged attack that has caused a serious decline in the quality of education in this country.

Do you have anything better than "poor bastard" for those who cannot attend an actual school because the money for the actual school is being used on a government school?


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