Thread: Palin: Man and Dinosaur Existed at Same Time

The states are capable of determining which information is most vital to its residents far better than the federal government

This makes no sense. Education is education. There isn't "Georgian education" where anarchism works or "Texas education" where legal theory as we know it is incorrect and instead consists of my penis.

I support education being opened to a free market, so there's no real need to continue this discussion.

No, you support giving individual states the ability to choose what teachers can teach, which makes no sense since education is the same for everyone. If a state fucks up education, the entire nation suffers from either a stupid modification or an inefficient/wrong one. Not to mention that states rights has also been used as a way of keeping reactionary laws in place (which is why it died about 60 years ago) and assumes that the state itself is evil, but individual small states are totally awesome and free, which makes no sense.

Ironically, you'd probably favor the USSR system more where it was a Union of independent Republics which at times had their own semi-independent foreign policy within said Union. It was much easier to leave the Union, too (as evidenced by 1991) and there were awesome things like "National Communism" (basically an Islamic and evidently nationalist version) that the Bolsheviks had to encourage in the Central Asian SSRs because secular education was seen as evil.

As a note about the constitution, wouldn't education fall under the general welfare principle of the preamble? Never heard of it having to do with the commerce clause.

Originally Posted by Atmosfear

The purpose of education is to improve the productivity of workers.

Bullshit. I didn't study math for years and years so that I could be a better cog in the corporate wheel. If I wanted that, I would have studied business, welding, or some other trade. I studied math because I enjoyed it and because it was a good intellectual exercise. You seem to be conflating "education" and "training". They are different words for a reason.

Originally Posted by Atmosfear

While some disciplines may improve productivity universally, some states have economies that lean heavily on one industry, and more advanced training for that industry would be more beneficial. The states ought to determine this, not the federal government. There's no point in training farmers if your state is filled with factories.

Yeah, I see your point, but on the other hand, exposing kids to some amount of agricultural education is good, otherwise
1) They won't have any idea where the food in the grocery store comes from
2) They'll never have the opportunity to discover if they really would like farming, even if it means they'll have to move elsewhere to pursue it

That doesn't mean that every school in the country has to have a 100 acre farm and a charter ag department with it, but offering some amount of ag to all kids isn't a bad thing.

Originally Posted by Atmosfear

Likewise, some states can train certain professions at lower marginal cost than others. It is more efficient if they focus on training those professions than others. The current system has deadweight loss.

The point of education isn't to be as efficient as possible in getting jobs for students. It is to offer students opportunities to do what they want with their lives, and to enrich themselves intellectually. By your logic, no school should offer any arts or music, since almost nobody ever makes a living at them. And forget about athletic programs, or even PE classes.

Originally Posted by Atmosfear

If the federal government makes a stupid modification, the whole nation suffers. I'd rather have those close to me make the decision than a large government far away.

Yes, which is why you would hope that the federal rules would have the flexibility to adapt to local conditions, and why you try to incorporate only the best curricula you can at that level.

Edit: But your second sentence is curious - why do you prefer to be fucked over by someone in your own town, instead of someone from another town? Why does proximity imply benevolence?

Originally Posted by Atmosfear

Everything falls under the commerce clause.

If it applies to everything, then it applies to nothing. You might want to reconsider your own logical fallacies.

Originally Posted by Atmosfear

Applying principals you learn in mathematics makes life much easier. This in turn leads to improved happiness, which leads to productivity. This can be applied to the arts (art appreciation is a potential source of happiness) and many other of the disciplines you would deem worthless for their lack of direct effect.

Well wait, are you saying that our goal in educating people is to make them better workers (which sounds almost, I don't know, Stalinist or something), are you saying that you achieve that improvement in efficiency through happiness from education, or are you saying that the goal is to make the people happier, which we hope will also lead to increases in efficiency?

I have to say, I'm not sure that happiness always leads to efficiency.

Originally Posted by Atmosfear

Who better to decide than the states which can best determine the necessary level. Or wait, how about the free market so that parents can decide what level of agricultural education will best prepare their children?

What's with the fixation on states? We have 50 states, whose populations range from the size of a medium sized city to bigger than many countries. They aren't somehow the perfect size to determine these things, because they are very different sizes. Many states are comprised of many different regions and sub-cultures, as well, making the same problems as you see at a national level.

I think I addressed some problems with parents deciding everything in my post above. You didn't reply to any of what I wrote about protecting kids from ignorant or fanatical parents, or about the lack of viable options for a good marketplace in many situations.

Nor did you address my concern that many states are still very backwards on the whole, and that the education of their children can suffer if only the state or local governments determine what is taught.

Originally Posted by Atmosfear

Again, you seem to be under the impression that workplace productivity is the result solely of direct training. Many other external factors can improve productivity.

You seem to be under the impression that most employers give a shit if their employees are happy, fulfilled people. I promise you that just about any successful company would prefer miserable drones to happy, empowered employees, if the drones are better for the bottom line.

Originally Posted by Atmosfear

More red tape! Perfect!

I'm pretty sure there is already enough red tape. The point would be to make the red tape we already have work better.

Originally Posted by Atmosfear

Because someone close to me is liable to be making the same cost-benefit analysis as I am. The information impacting the decision is more likely to be imperfect as the distance and scope increases. A more local source is likely to have closer-to-perfect information and, assuming both sources are equally rational, will produce a better decision.

Okay, that's an interesting thought. I'm not sure I share your love of proximity, though. I grew up near some pretty stupid fuckers. The last thing I'd want is for many of them to have any say in my life or education.

Originally Posted by Atmosfear

Which logical fallacy is that again?

Ah, that was mostly a rhetorical comment. You were complaining about someone's logical fallacy in the same section as you said "Everything falls under the commerce clause", so I jumped on it and made a somewhat tenuous connection. But I'll explain what I meant.

You know how when you say that every little kid is special, you actually dilute or destroy the meaning of special (because if everybody is "special", then "special" loses its meaning of being something not everybody does or has)? In fact, it has almost become cliche' to say "if everybody is special then nobody is special". Same idea here - if you try to apply one clause to every situation, then you make the clause meaningless, because it doesn't specify anything. Get it?

Originally Posted by Atmosfear

some states have economies that lean heavily on one industry, and more advanced training for that industry would be more beneficial. The states ought to determine this, not the federal government. There's no point in training farmers if your state is filled with factories.

Well yes, I'll agree with that and was actually considering showing it as an exception, but I'm pretty sure no one is going to be opposed to a state controlling this aspect. Also we're talking about science.

If the federal government makes a stupid modification, the whole nation suffers.

What is more likely to fuck up science in this case? The federal government, which I'm going to assume has more contact with 'concerned officials' (scientists, etc.) or a state with a strong creationist/'alternative medicine'/whatever lobby?

Creative logical fallacy, there... maybe if you blame states rights for enough other things, you'll undermine this one.

Maybe if states rights wasn't such an idealistic concept I wouldn't have to undermine it.

Also, a state or the state makes little difference except in efficiency and foot-dragging. Look at Quebec, a province in Canada which actually has some legitimacy towards their separatist arguments and is bigger than I'm going to assume most US states. The whole "WE SHALL FREE OURSELVES FROM YOUR TYRANNYYYYYYY!!!!" falls flat when people realize it wouldn't last long as an independent state.

Not relevant, but lets see what the USSR did. The USSR developed the economies of each SSR to an extent that they could viably declare independence. That is why every single SSR that was in the USSR came out as a fully independent state in 1991. (Granted, I know a Republic isn't the same as if the USSR was a bunch of huge states)

Originally Posted by gismo

Yea and they were and many still are fucking crapholes, poorest places in Europe with thousands each year trying to come to the UK to have a decent crack at life because their countries are too shit to let them.

Well yeah, that's because the USSR treated most Republics as colonies post-50's. This was also when socialism in the USSR ended. COINCIDENCE?

As opposed to, say, the 1920's and 30's, where great progress was made. (The Turkmen didn't exist as a unified nation before, but the Soviets made it so and got them out of nomadic living, and even had a variant of Communism known as 'National Communism' for a while in those areas which unsuccessfully tried to merge Islam, nationalism and socialism)

http://www.oneparty.co.uk/html/book/ussrchap24-26.html (look at chapter 26 on that page)

"Soviet authorities have reinstated Georgian as the official language of Soviet Georgia after demonstrations there last week over a proposed new constitution which had eliminated the language as the republic's official tongue.

The demonstrations occurred on Friday in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, when several hundred university students apparently marched from the campus about a mile through the city centre to the steps of the Government's buildings where the Georgian Supreme Soviet was meeting to adopt the new constitution...

Georgians, who comprise most of the population, apparently interpreted this change to mean further 'russification' of their republic".

("Moscow Bows to Georgians in State Language Row", in: "The Guardian", April 19th., 1978; p. 7).

Yeah, great way to promote internationalism.

Also if you're talking about Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Russia and Moldova then you're an idiot because these were the most favorited areas when it came to industrialization and aren't shitty compared to the Central Asian Republics.

Originally Posted by Atmosfear

1. This is based on the assumption that the state ought to have any influence on education. Other than requiring some form of education (which would be best managed with permits the way that carbon dioxide emissions are), no government ought to determine what is and isn't taught in schools, much less an over-reaching federal government. There's no constitutional authorization (except liberal interpretation of the Commerce Clause.) The states are capable of determining which information is most vital to its residents far better than the federal government, if someone outside the market has to decide.

I support education being opened to a free market, so there's no real need to continue this discussion.

I in theory agree with less government control, but the problem with basic education not being government funded is quality and type. You seriously believe that some public schools would opt to not teach science and only teach creationism, while some schools teach science, and some in between, people from different parts of the country would be arguing with each other moreso than now, education must be controlled. You can't just teach kids whatever the fuck you want to. As soon as someone with the wrong agenda gets in power, than all of the sudden there is a school teaching that the holocaust never happened, and that the KKK are hero's.

Of course once you out of highschool than education is free market for the advanced stuff, because they can self-regulate due to people with a basic education knowing the difference between a crazy school and a real one.

Originally Posted by MrTroy

I in theory agree with less government control, but the problem with basic education not being government funded is quality and type. You seriously believe that some public schools would opt to not teach science and only teach creationism, while some schools teach science, and some in between, people from different parts of the country would be arguing with each other moreso than now, education must be controlled. You can't just teach kids whatever the fuck you want to. As soon as someone with the wrong agenda gets in power, than all of the sudden there is a school teaching that the holocaust never happened, and that the KKK are hero's.

Of course once you out of highschool than education is free market for the advanced stuff, because they can self-regulate due to people with a basic education knowing the difference between a crazy school and a real one.

Well, from a theoretical standpoint, having education more locally controlled has (at least) two benefits:

1) More different pedagogical approaches get tried out and evaluated in different places, and you might discover something that really works well that never would have been a first choice nationally.

2) You can cater to local populations. A curriculum that addresses the needs and local personality of some hillbillies and coal miners in West Virginia might not be suitable for street thugs in LA. And neither's curriculum is likely to maximize the learning potential of a bunch of rich snots in an exclusive neighborhood of Connecticut.

And I'm not clear exactly why you make an arbitrary cutoff between high school and college. Couldn't you just as easily claim that once you're out of middle school, you know which high schools are run by crackpots? Of course, we don't get as much choice in high schools as we do in colleges, and even if we did, any high school that is local enough to attend is likely to be under the same guidelines as any other school within range. But even colleges have to get accredited, and I'm willing to bet that that fosters some level of uniformity even on the college level.

BUT, practically speaking, these benefits are mostly outweighed by the fact that there are still a lot of scary fuckers out there who want to control local school systems, and they can do so a lot more easily if the schools are less centrally controlled. There are still places in the South that have prayer in the schools - and this is, what, 40 years after that was explicitly declared unconstitutional? Every now and then you hear a story on NPR about some new biology teacher in Alabama or rural Utah getting called into the principal's office and questioned about his or her religious beliefs, and told that the Bible is the only textbook that's really necessary. Do you really want to trust Cletus with deciding what gets put into your kid's biology or geology curriculum? Christ, I had a physics teacher in high school who had never even had calculus. That's a little like teaching Shakespeare without ever having learned anything about poetry. (Well, that's a bad analogy, but I'm tired, so cut me some slack.) And a free market only works if there are good options available. A little southern town with one school, no nearby alternatives, and a populace that doesn't much care to be told how to teach their young 'uns about the world really isn't an ideal marketplace. Hell, the entire state of Kansas almost adopted an intelligent design curriculum, because some fundies got onto the state board of education. Even a whole state can end up with backwards policies. So yes, as patronizing as it is, sometimes folks in some places need a little kick in the ass to nudge them into the 21st century. Or at least into the latter half of the 20th. And that requires some external oversight.

And there's the issue of the kids' rights, as well. It won't be the kids who decide what school to attend, or what beliefs to be indoctrinated with. It'll be their parents who decide that, either based on their beliefs, or based on what's most convenient to them. We don't let parents keep their kids out of school entirely (they must at least homeschool), we don't let them deprive their kids of necessities like food or medical care, and we don't let them abuse their kids, why would we let them send their kids to some crackpot school run by Scientologists, militants, or fundamentalist Christians who just teach that Jesus is coming back by the end of the year (or next year at the latest), so there's no point in learning anything other than Bible verses? Part of the point of mandatory education is to ensure that every kid in the country gets some basic level of competence in reading, writing, math, and critical thinking, so that he won't be a drain on society, and so that he can learn and make decisions for himself, rather than just being brainwashed by his family and community.

Further, if we're going to provide public education for every kid in the country, and require that every kid either take advantage of it, or get a private education instead, shouldn't there be some effort to make sure that every one of those kids - all across the country, not just on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis - gets some minimal level of competence in that education? This implies at least some rough guidelines on a national level that every school must follow. It's hardly fair if every kid from Kansas is at a disadvantage, because their schools had to teach thinly-disguised creationism.

My favorite bit in this whole thread, though, is Atmosfear decreeing that since he supports free market schools, no more discussion is necessary. I got quite a kick out of that. (Yeah, I know that's not a charitable interpretation of what he wrote, but it still made me giggle.)