Education

[Jake]

6, 7, and 8

[Storebought]

I found only one stated reason apropos:

To teach students job specific skills for future employment

That would be true for any job, from dressmaker to physician.

Socialization skills (in normal English, "home training") is not something adequately done in schools nowadays.

Indoctrinating the youth to national culture is admirable, but no longer possible, what with the current lot of already indoctrinated leftwing drones pumped out from university departments of education.

And the other reasons were quite silly -- "self-actualization", what garbage.

[Storebought]

Without a common basis of facts and experiences it's hard to engage in any classroom training at all, let alone training a student for independent thought. If you'd like to hire an expert private tutor for each student, perhaps one can have truly individual learning plans. Otherwise, an important goal of early primary eduaction must be to provide students with a firm grounding in a common set of facts that will be the basis of later education. If that means some rote learning in education, I'm for it.

In physics, I expect graduate students to be able to think their way through complex problems, anticipate critical questions, and synthesize methods to test hypotheses. Before I can help guide those graduate students they need a firm foundation of problem solving skills, and examples of basic techniques. Without that they can learn a script, but rarely create new research.

Where do the physics students get that foundation. Of course it comes from earlier education. In college, physics majors will learn a lot of relationships, memorize equations, and repeat time-tested old experiments. To learn at that level, they need a vocabulary of mathematical facts, and the ability to think critically about the world they see around them. That takes them back to earlier education, and a cycle of rote knowledge becoming the basis for deeper understanding.

Of course, physics is nothing like an ordinary profession.

To be merely competent in that field requires logical skills -- particularly, the ability to apply old mathematical and physical models to new problems -- that most people simply do not possess. And even then, the highways are littered with kids who changed majors in college, or failed their qualifiers in grad school.

Yes, there is plenty of brute memorization in physics. The same four subjects, namely classical and quantum mechanics, electrodynamics, and thermo/statistical mechanics are taught year in and year out from high school, through undergraduate physics, continuing to grad school. The only thing that changes are the textbooks -- they become more and more unreadable.

Even then, after the four warhorses are thoroughly ridden to death, specialized areas like general relativity, optics, particle physics, etc., are introduced at a basic level even in grad school.

To be able to retain all of those facts, and regurgitate them on demand, requires intelligence in itself.

And not's let speak of the math that involved. A diligent physics student learns, and uses, more branches of math than math majors (Did you know that you can get a B.A. in mathematics without ever having seen a differential equation?)

So, yes, a physics education really does prepare one for a career in something technically related, if not academic research, but it's so self-selecting that only people with a large-capacity brain pan can even make it through a physics B.S. I know I sure couldn't.

[Speed of Sound]

2, 5, 8

[Bono]

I'm not going to explain basic economics to someone with no brain.

In other words, you can't even explain it to yourself.

As I'm in a contrarian mood, I'll give you a halfway decent arguement  in favor of privatizing education.  I consider it important to understand different sides of an issue, so I enjoy presenting alternate points of view now and then, especially when their proponents have difficulty making decent arguements.

Three big problems plague the school systems - Bureaucracy, burnout, and boredom.

Contrary to popular opinion, there are corporations which are able to look past the next quarterly report.  They could make a fortune off this, even without the dismantling of the public school system.  (consider the case of UPS and FedEX, which competed with the USPS - providing superior service and forcing the USPS to get with the times and compete as well).

Public school systems have a lot of middle management.  Given how much paperwork needs to be created, filed, colated, cross referenced, refiled, reviled, recovered after the apropriate time frame, shredded, and disposed of - no great suprise there.  But the technology for such is stuck back in the mid 20th century.   Plus you often get school boards who are elected by the few people who actually pay attention to local government often pushing their own odd agendas, or basking in taxpayer funded 'retreats'.

We could cut down on the bloated middle, and focus staffing on the front lines - better student teacher ratios, smaller more localized middle and high schools and more investment on educational tools and technology.

A corporation which is sufficently forward looking could see many long term benefits from their venture - first pick of the best and brightest before they even start looking elsewhere, trade outs with major food producers in exchange for brand name placement,  and a bunch of consumers who are favorable disposed toward you if you did the job right.  In addition, the well educated tend to make more, and thus spend more, and thus become bigger consumers in general.

Then there's burnout.  You've all seen it - teachers who don't want to be there, but will blow their pension if they leave.  Well done privitization could cut down on some of the worse stressors (mountans of paperwork, excessive class size), and give emplyees a chance to opt out and take their 401k with them rather than depending on the whims of the state for their retirement.   Those who simply want to work in a different location can seek to transfer without worrying about losing their position on the pay scale.

Finally, there's boredom.   Much of this comes from the ancient outdated factory model of education which continues to be frequently used, and part from the excessive political correctness (from both left and right) which keeps classes from exploring many issues in depth.  If parents vote with their dollars in which school to use, they can tacitly approve of more interesting instruction or move their kids elsewhere.


.....

Or we could just work to improve the public system.   From what I see here you don't seem to be getting your parent's tax dollars worth Philip - but remember that with work you can succeed even despite your education.    There are a lot of bright people here, and I suspect you have a lot of potential despite your closed mind.

Give intellegent rational thought a try.  You might just like it.

Scott Scheule, in his guide for policy makers, has adressed the logical falacy you are using now:

[T]here are two proper requirements to be fulfilled before implementing a policy. I will state them first casually, then in more precise economic terms.

To justify a policy you must show:

   1. Something is wrong.
   2. There is a way to fix it.

Now, in economic terms. You must show:

   1. The private market is erring.
   2. The political marketplace will yield a result that fixes the corresponding private market error.

The second requirement is usually ignored. In fact, it was for a long period of time assumed that the government was a perfect actor with perfect information. These assumptions were wrong. Once this was realized, the field of public choice economics emerged, which discussed in detail why the political marketplace has its own errors. I believe the second requirement has never once been fulfilled in the history of mankind, and that is why I am an anarchist.

The readings we’ve been assigned have a sort of “gotcha” feeling to them. Empirical study comes out, shows that people significantly overvalue risk when it’s widely publicizied, and the statists cry, “Gotcha! The private sector erred, capitalism has failed here.” Requirement one, satisfied. Time for the government to fix the problem.

Ah, but what of number two?

Irrationality will arise just as surely in the political marketplace as the private one. Every datum offered for a failure of neoclassical assumptions applies just as easily to the political marketplace. Yet the latter extension is ignored. Government is presumed perfect; requirement two is glossed over.

Classic example. It is generally presumed that monopolies are bad. Many prescribe antitrust laws administered by the government to prevent the formation of monopolies in the marketplace; without realizing that the government itself is a monopoly, and one backed up by far more force than any software giant. The market was bad because it was monopolistic, and antitrust proponents assume that an even larger monopoly will be able to fix the initial ill.

Economics is not a game of “Gotcha.” It is the study of how people make choices. And how do they do that? A person picks the most preferable of his options.
So, with regards to the big picture, it is not enough to say the market is flawed. Everything is flawed. One must satisfy the second requirement; they must provide a less flawed alternative; we have the entire field of public choice to show why government is not such an alternative.

The same thing applies to "public schools.". Even if the market for schooling was failing, which it wasn't, it would be encesary to show that the government would do a better job replacing it, which clearly it hasn't, given that even the literacy rate is lower now in some places than it was before the public schools system was created, which wasn't surprising, given that the public schools in america weren't created to educate, but to "integrate" the Irish immigrants.

Unlike most other errors in economics, this is one that is all too frequently made by professional economists with fancy degrees and lots of letters after their names. Why?
The best explanation for this failure is touched upon in the following two articles: “Do Pessimistic Assumptions About Human Behavior Justify Government?“, by Benjamin Powell and Christopher Coyne, and “Do We Really Ever Get Out Of Anarchy?“, by Alfred G. Cuzan. Many of us think of the government as “conceptually external,” exogenous to the overall social system.

The founder of public choice, James Buchanan, made this critical error when he wrote, in The Limits of Liberty:

The state emerges as the enforcing agency or institution, conceptually external to the contracting parties and charged with the single responsibility of enforcing agreed-on rights and claims along with contracts which involve voluntarily negotiated exchanges of such claims.

Yet, if public choice theory has taught us anything at all, it is that governments are composed of men – the very same breed of men who compose markets – and therefore governments must be conceptually internal, endogenous to the social system. Buchanan himself seemed to recognize this fact, observing that

There is no obvious and effective means through which the enforcing institution or agent can itself be constrained in its own behavior. Hence, as Hobbes so perceptively noted more than three centuries ago, individuals who contract for the services of enforcing institutions necessarily surrender their own independence.

ahem

[opebo]

I found only one stated reason apropos:

To teach students job specific skills for future employment

That would be true for any job, from dressmaker to physician.

Your response is quite correct for the working class, who under our system are doomed to a life of incessant servile toil.  Of course the scions of the owning class may be educated in hedonistic enjoyment of all that society's produce can provide!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Of course the scions of the owning class may be educated in hedonistic enjoyment of all that society's produce can provide!

You will come to a sticky end. Probably literally.

[opebo]

Of course the scions of the owning class may be educated in hedonistic enjoyment of all that society's produce can provide!

You will come to a sticky end. Probably literally.

Life never ends well, Al.  That is perhaps its most important lesson.

[Citizen James]

ahem

Need a cough drop?

Ok, ok - that is a good example of someone making an honest attempt at arguing in favor of the privitization or elimination of the educational system.

I'm not sure what specific logical flaw you are pointing out, though as my effort was sophistry I probably let a few slide through.  The author's efforts are far better than Philips lazy ad homenem attempt.

However, as with many blogs and opinion sites, this one relies on the usual incestual reliance on other blogs and opinion sites which hold similar views.  His claim that literacy was higher before manditory education only links another site with the same opinion, rather than an authoritative source (Such as the census bureau, or at least the history department of a major university).

Personally, I usually prefer to do my own work rather than cutting and pasting someone else's arguement verbatum.  (If you are, in fact, Scott Schedule, I apologize for the implication).   You did at least provide a link back, so it isn't malicious pagerism, though if I understand 'fair use' provisions correctly you are only supposed to post a snippet of a few paragraphs coupled with a link back, rather than the whole thing.

[J. J.]

3, 5, 6.

[??????????]

I love it how in every argument James42 tries to make himself better then anyone else. Especially those "closed minded" conservatives with obvious pyschological problems. lol

[Alcon]

I love it how in every argument James42 tries to make himself better then anyone else. Especially those "closed minded" conservatives with obvious pyschological problems. lol

I don't see him saying that anywhere.  It's not really fair of you to accuse him of using Republican stereotypes that he hasn't actually used.

His argument seems perfectly reasonable and free of personal attacks, at least to me.

[Bono]

ahem

Need a cough drop?

Ok, ok - that is a good example of someone making an honest attempt at arguing in favor of the privitization or elimination of the educational system.

I'm not sure what specific logical flaw you are pointing out, though as my effort was sophistry I probably let a few slide through.  The author's efforts are far better than Philips lazy ad homenem attempt.

However, as with many blogs and opinion sites, this one relies on the usual incestual reliance on other blogs and opinion sites which hold similar views.  His claim that literacy was higher before manditory education only links another site with the same opinion, rather than an authoritative source (Such as the census bureau, or at least the history department of a major university).

Personally, I usually prefer to do my own work rather than cutting and pasting someone else's arguement verbatum.  (If you are, in fact, Scott Schedule, I apologize for the implication).   You did at least provide a link back, so it isn't malicious pagerism, though if I understand 'fair use' provisions correctly you are only supposed to post a snippet of a few paragraphs coupled with a link back, rather than the whole thing.

Wow, you wasted all that with attacking the form of my argument. I'll take that as an admissions that the substance was correct and you have nothing against that.

[??????????]

Bump for James42's response.

[Inverted Things]

To keep kids busy. Nothing more.