Public School Education System Thread

[C-Mag]

Elections are a majority state and local affair, with only small oversight at federal level. No department of elections required.

Since you're saying education is about the same, we can get rid of the DOE and not lose anything.

Get rid of government schools, period.

The Founding Fathers were for Limited Public Funding for Education and 'Extreme Decentralization' of Education. Bullet points on their thoughts.

- Public Funding of Education for 3 years
- Private Funding thereafter
- Scholarships for the one best, pauper student for further education
- Staunch Proponents of Control at the local level
- Counties can vote to opt out of having Public Schools
- The right to vote should not be granted to people who cannot demonstrate basic literacy skills

Good enough for me.

https://www.libertarianism.org/publicat ... ion-part-1

[Speaker to Animals]

What if the government didn't get involved in it at all?

We actually had good education before the government got involved.

First of all, most people don't need college. Fact.

Second, most people need a trade, and most "professional" jobs like IT are really trades. You should not need a college degree to maintain a fucking server.

Thirdly, the amount of money government takes from us from the county, state, and federal levels to fund this brainwashing jobs program people call "public schools" is more than enough to fund good, real schools for everybody.


My proposal:

Shut down government secondary schools. More private trade schools. Local communities can easily fund them. Destroy the academic industry in the university by (1) vacating student loans and (2) getting rid of all government grants and subsidized loans. Universities can start accepting teens again (from about age 14).

The entire system is flawed and pointless. Burn it all down and start over -- without the government.

The other problem is women. It comes down to their choices once again. Most of them are happier at home, and women going out to work (and being miserable at it) only fucks up the family and forces children into the open arms of the government employees. We need to be honest about differences between the sexes, and the unhappiness that the choices women are making fosters in them.

[Speaker to Animals]

Oh.. and instead of unions, we should switch back to the guild system, and let the guilds handle their own certification, testing, and even training.

Guilds can fund their own trade schools.

In other words, the ENTIRE system is fucked up and has to change. All of it.

Less power to the government. More power to private guilds and people in general.

[C-Mag]

You make some good points Doc.
IMO, the first thing we need to do is understand that Education is an Industry, and costs Billions of dollars. The rising costs of education are literally putting people off their land. When they can't pay the taxes to maintain the local Education Industry. The Industry is so powerful they lobby Congress for more and more regulation to cause the demand for more education.

Everyone knows we need serious education reforms in the US. But we have a massive government agency ensuring the status quo, backed by public employee unions. Definitely far afield from the founders intent. The main issue we face is that we've allowed the Federal Government to set the mandatory standards for education and control it from Washington. We need to get back to local control of education.

I'd like to stick to the founders intent. Locally funded 1-8 education. Kindergarten and Head Start have to go. I like the guild system, I've gone through the process and achieved Journeyman status, it works, and meets the Founders Intent.

[Fife]

Elections are a majority state and local affair, with only small oversight at federal level. No department of elections required.

Since you're saying education is about the same, we can get rid of the DOE and not lose anything.

Get rid of government schools, period.

The Founding Fathers were for Limited Public Funding for Education and 'Extreme Decentralization' of Education. Bullet points on their thoughts.

- Public Funding of Education for 3 years
- Private Funding thereafter
- Scholarships for the one best, pauper student for further education
- Staunch Proponents of Control at the local level
- Counties can vote to opt out of having Public Schools
- The right to vote should not be granted to people who cannot demonstrate basic literacy skills

Good enough for me.

https://www.libertarianism.org/publicat ... ion-part-1

The key to understanding the history, IMNSHO, is examining how state-approved education became compulsory.

Here's a quick and dirty freebie: Education: Free and Compulsory

[T]he system relies on compulsion instead of voluntary consent.

Certain consequences follow. The curriculum is politicized to reflect the ideological priorities of the regime in power. Standards are continually dumbed-down to accommodate the least common denominator. The brightest children are not permitted to achieve their potential, the special needs of individual children are neglected, and the mid-level learners become little more than cogs in a machine. The teachers themselves are hamstrung by a political apparatus that watches their every move.

A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state

By enforcing certification for minimum standards, the State effectively, though subtly, dominates teh private schools and makes them, in effect, extensions of the public school system. Only removal of compulsory schooling and enforced standards will free the private schools and permit them to function in independence.

p. 16.

. . .

The individualist tradition on this matter was well presented in the early nineteenth century by Thomas Jefferson. Although an ardent advocate of public schools to aid the poor, Jefferson squarely rejected compulsion:

It is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings and ideas by the forcible transportation and education of the infant against the will of the father.

p. 42.

. . .

Some Americans pride themselves that their educational system can never be tyrannical, because it is not federally, but state, controlled. This makes very little difference, however. Not only does this still mean the government, whether state or Federal, but also the educationists, through national associations and journals, are almost completely coordinated. In actuality, therefore, the school systems are nationally and centrally controlled, and formal Federal control would only be the crowning step in the drive for national conformity and control.

Another important source of tyranny and absolutism in the school system is the fact that the teachers are under Civil Service. As a result, once a formal examination is passed—and this has little relation to actual teaching competence—and a little time elapses, the teacher is on the public payroll, and foisted on the children for the rest of his working life. The government bureaucracy has fostered Civil Service as an extraordinarily powerful tool of entrenchment and permanent domination. Tyranny by majority vote may be unpleasant enough, but at least if the rulers are subject to democratic checks, they have to please the majority of the voters. But government officials who cannot be voted out at the next election are not subject to any democratic check whatever. They are permanent tyrants. “Taking something out of politics” by putting it under Civil Service certainly does “increase the morale” of the bureaucracy. It elevates them into near-perpetual absolute rulers in their sphere of activity. The fact that teachers are under Civil Service is one of the most damning indictments against the American compulsory system of today.

pp. 48-49.

[Fife]

Here's some more radical stuff: Milton Friedman and Conservatives: Wrong on Education

Once upon a time, some conservatives used to call for the abolition of the U.S. Department of Education. Lamentably, conservatives today celebrate when a “free-market advocate” like multimillionaire Betsy DeVos is appointed U.S. Secretary of Education, and they get terribly excited when she speaks at conservative conferences.

Meanwhile, even while conservatives continue to pronounce their allegiance to their favorite mantra — “free enterprise, private property, limited government” — they continue to embrace not only public schooling itself but also their favorite public-schooling fix-it program, school vouchers.

. . .

Friedman and conservatives have been proven wrong on education. There is only one solution to the educational morass in which Americans find themselves: Separate school and state, just as our ancestors separated church and state. Repeal all school compulsory-attendance laws and school taxes and sell off the school buildings. End all government involvement in education, including licensing of schools. Establish a total free-market educational system.

[nmoore63]

Abolish the Federal Department of Education immediately.

[C-Mag]

Abolish the Federal Department of Education immediately.

IMO, that's step one.
Just turn the dollars over to the states.

[Ph64]

You make some good points Doc.
IMO, the first thing we need to do is understand that Education is an Industry, and costs Billions of dollars. The rising costs of education are literally putting people off their land. When they can't pay the taxes to maintain the local Education Industry. The Industry is so powerful they lobby Congress for more and more regulation to cause the demand for more education.

Everyone knows we need serious education reforms in the US. But we have a massive government agency ensuring the status quo, backed by public employee unions. Definitely far afield from the founders intent. The main issue we face is that we've allowed the Federal Government to set the mandatory standards for education and control it from Washington. We need to get back to local control of education.

I'd like to stick to the founders intent. Locally funded 1-8 education. Kindergarten and Head Start have to go. I like the guild system, I've gone through the process and achieved Journeyman status, it works, and meets the Founders Intent.

I'd be for that. It's to societies advantage to at least educate enough so kids can read (signs, laws, etc) and have enough math skills to do basic math (make change, pay taxes, etc), and history/civics to understand rights and how the country was formed... Enough of a foundation to function as citizens, and if they choose to go farther that's on them.

[DBTrek]

So ... abolishing mandatory education of the citizenry strikes you guys as a good idea, in a world where technology driven economies will rule the day?

I’m not seeing how fewer educated citizens helps us compete ... and I’m on the record as being highly critical of public education and teacher unions. So it’s not like I have a soft spot for the SoE. But less education sounds like a one-way ticket to irrelevance and destitution to me. Take a gander at the nation’s with poor education and low literacy rates and where they stand i. The world.

That’s where you want to go?