Thread: Palin: Man and Dinosaur Existed at Same Time

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.)