You are supposed to define education.
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Politics Discussion Thread (Heated Arguing Warning)
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Let's go from specifics to more general issues, less we get bogged down. In New Orleans, the government was essentially forced by Katrina to abandon the predominant US education model. In a most radical fashion, they essentially closed the public education system and moved to an almost entirely charter model. Today, over ten years later, not only does the system persist (something like 80% of enrollment is in charters), it has shown pretty strong results. So, in New Orleans the government does not undertake to provide education, it simply makes money available to educators, whoever they are and however their organization came to be (many of the schools receiving govt funds are Catholic). Access to education becomes a problem that the local people themselves solve and they are left free to do it however they see fit, within some confines. What is a "school" in that case? It's not a state institution. Is it for-profit? Sometimes, but rarely -- the actual market for bona fide for profit education is pretty small. More often than not its an institution manifesting some other form of sociability, people may care about education for its own sake, or providing education as a larger duty, or as a means of building an attractive neighbourhood, it doesn't matter.
Which leads us to the point I wanted to make with medieval cities. It's not that they solved this particular problem, it's that by learning about medieval cities we can learn about a wide range of forms of human sociability that effectively solve problems, without being either state or for profit. Guilds, of course are a prime example, as are parishes, but also markets, watchmen associations, secret societies, etc, etc. What's particularly noticeable is that medieval cities also had governments, but no-one believed that it's the job of city government to actually ACT to directly solve the myriad problems that were addressed by the numerous associations of a city. The government had a specific job, and that job was completely different from undertaking particular projects, it was a job of coordination and maintenance of order. Many leading members of associations, such as guilds, were ALSO members of government, and it's very instructive to observe how distinct these roles were. To be sure, sometimes the city government would engage in problem-solving directly, as opposed to providing a platform for it, especially where there was a chance to make some money. In any case, it's not to say that medieval cities provide a model to follow, but they do open the mind to how creative people can be in structuring cooperation, and how much wider is the universe of productive association than the public/private dichotomy we are used to. An opening the space for such creativity is precisely the point, that's what charter schools and vouchers are a good step towards. The state, as I mentioned at the very start, is a specific type of association, that is well suited for solving a specific, if fairly narrow, range of problems. Abolishing it would be pretty nonsensical, even were it practical. Of course, here we come to the most general issue and perhaps most difficult one to discuss. For you, the defining feature of the state seems to be its universality, the fact that it's all-encompassing within its borders and able to undertake projects on behalf of ~everyone, funded by ~everyone. This sounds quite similar to Rousseau's "general will". There are plenty of other conceptions of what the state is and what it should be for. I think even on this forum plenty will not agree with the suggestion that just because most people believe that basket weaving is a good thing to learn, the government should institute a rule to this effect. PS. Oh yeah, to follow up on Kills point -- education is an abstraction, you can't standardize access to it, until you have some more concrete content, how many hours, of what exactly, taught by people with what kind of qualification. And that's just the point -- WHO should be taking these decisions.
The problem when you go to "more general issues" is that you can sometimes forget the practical problems that arise from them.
Your New Orleans example is interesting but there are three flaws there IMO : First it is a short term "experiment", and I expect that in 20 years it will either have reverted to a more classic public education area or the non-public schools will have become mostly for-profit (or both of those at the same time). If not, then it will be an interesting example of a non public education system. Secondly there remains a public option in most places around N-O I assume. So to come back to the original point, it is not a system in which the government doesn't provide education. Thirdly this "experiment" has been undertaken in an area which had been wiped out. So the cost of rebuilding a public school network vs rebuilding another type of school network was pretty similar. Everywhere else in the US, and in most of the rest of the world too, the public school network is already here and replacing it with something else would create a period of transition that would be extremely problematic. In the case of N-O there was likely going to be a period of 2-5 years where the kids in the area had lower quality education. In the case of the rest of the world, that transition period would create worse quality education for kids during a few years in an unnecessary way, and for hard-to-quantify rewards at the end of the transition.
For fun!
Safe D: HI, CA, MA, MD, VT, NY, WA, RI, NJ, CT, DE, NM Likely D: VA, ME, NV, MN-1, MN-2, MI Lean D: PA, WI, FL, AZ, OH Toss-Up: TX, MS, MO, IN, MT <--likely to break all one way Lean R: NE, TN, ND, WV Likely R: WY, UT
For me at least I believe "society" has an obligation to strive for equal opportunity...and there is no area that has a greater impact than education. Practically those that can afford to will pay to give their children an edge, I myself will have dropped about $100K/kid on education *before* college. Lower income families can't do that obviously. My county spends $7,100 per student, so that would equate to $85K over 12 years. Not so different...
You also need to consider that a large sum goes to educating special needs children, which the private schools simply decline to admit. Children in privates schools typically have a strong support system at home, access to tutors, etc. Not so common with public school children, again increasing the load the public schools need to carry. Private schools don't need to spend money on security, which is a big public school problem, especially in lower income districts. All these and more factors put a burden on the public schools that makes straight comparisons misleading. I don't really differentiate between charter and public schools. They are both free. At least where I leave they are tested to the same standards and have a very similar curriculum. Hell there is one charter school that shares a physical campus with a traditional public school. There are exceptional examples of both types; the data from Broward County (where 25% of schools are now charter) is inconclusive on which model, on average, performs better. Darrell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_(E...te_note-81
Paraphrased from the wikipedia article if you don't want to read it in full: In 2010 in the UK, the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government passed the Academies Act 2010, which invited all state schools in England (Education in the rest of the UK is a devolved matter), to become "Academies". Academies in the UK are still technically state schools, being entirely funded by the government (so no vouchers), but outside of local government (Council) control. They are self-governing non-profit charitable trusts and may receive additional support from personal or corporate sponsors, either financially or in kind. They don't have to follow the national curriculum, but do have to have a broad, and well-balanced curriculum that includes core subjects of English and math. Although initial uptake from pre-existing state schools was slow, by now most secondary schools in the UK (less so for primary) are Academies. They are still subject to inspection by Ofsted (The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills). I was kinda surprised no-one brought this up earlier considering it's relevance to the current discussion. I haven't followed it very closely so I can't say whether it's worked in the UK, but from what I've heard from teachers I know there the main problem is still lack of funding and an emphasis on nation-wide standardized testing as a measurement of success, even at very young ages. The Academy system doesn't really change address these issues. (January 2nd, 2018, 19:32)MJW (ya that one) Wrote: For fun! AZ is a tossup, TX is lean R and Manchin is pretty likely to win in WV. I'd also put ND as a tossup, and UT as a safe R (Romney is going to run). |
