[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Otep wrote:
So here’s my problem here, lifty. It seems as if you’re arguing two different things. The first is that our education system serves the goal of political and social indoctrination.
lifty wrote:
State mandated education is intended to turn out unquestioning “patriotic” robots. It is just one more tool in the State’s fog creation arsenal.
Elsewhere, you advocate that public, mandated education is bad because some people were just born inferior and should not have resources wasted on them trying to make them better.
lifty wrote here:
Some people are better of taking a job instead of cluttering up classrooms and distracting the children with a greater potential to excel.
I fail to see how the first point applies to science and math classes. Remember, you’re arguing against mandated public education, not America’s mandated public education.
In the second point, I would challenge you to develop a method of determining whose gonna grow up to be rocket scientists and whose gonna grow up to be janitors before any effort is invested into the education process. It sounds like what you’re advocating is a caste system, where the wealthy send their kids to school because they can afford it and the poor who can’t, don’t, and thus continue a cycle of inter-generational poverty.
This strikes me as betraying the ideals of a meritocracy.
Now, I agree with you in the larger sense, that education is not a right. It is not the governments responsibility to provide education. But it can and should, in the interests of developing the intellectual capacities of it’s citizens. To put bluntly, it is an investment a smart government will make, and a poor government will not.
The argument I am trying to make is two-fold:
-
Education is not a right – you seem to get that point so I will leave it at that.
-
Government is actually incapable of providing quality education on any level because it does not know better than parents what will suit their children. In a public school setting teachers cannot focus on the individual needs and aptitudes of children. I will state for the record that the first and foremost needs of any child to progress in school is a solid foundation of reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Most children vary in aptitude in regard to all of these skills. I happened to be much better suited to math and needed tutors for the other two when I got to high-school because I was sort of left behind in the system. During grade school my parents were of the opinion that the teachers knew better than they did how to educate so they never questioned the system. To them, I was doing bad because I neither cared nor wanted to make an effort, etc. Had my parents been directly paying for my education maybe they would have started asking questions to the school why I was doing so poorly. In public schools it is always either the parents or the child who is to blame because teachers are “incapable” of being horrible at their jobs.
Furthermore, public school curriculum is geared toward making good little citizens who are incapable of questioning the system. For example, when we become adults we see the injustices of government and we silently complain, shaking our fists on our way to the polls but we are incapable of conceiving any other way society could possibly organize itself. This is, in part, thanks to mandated civics courses.
We are taught to feel guilt when we don’t wish to participate in the corrupt system. We incorrectly are made to believe that we deserve the government we get when in all actuality there is no such government that anyone deserves. They are all evil and they all tend toward corruption – democracy being the worst form of government ever.[/quote]
Only one point to disagree with, I don’t believe Demcracy is the worst form of government, just the version currently being used in our country. This jazzed up special interest everyone is special and gifted and the world owes them something version.
I think if run correctly a truly capitolistic democracy can work very well, but children need to learn in their own way not to be little sheep of the educators or the government.
As seen in history, how many totally idiotic politicians are there, and how many are forced out of office and not at the next election cycle.
The government is supposed to work for the people and for too long we have been working for the government. And it is about to get 10x worse, hope I am worng about that.