Fife wrote:At first I didn't understand, but I get what you are saying now. It's a reasonable point you are making. It does come with some tough questions, though. How much compulsory education is enough? And on what topics? I certainly expect the state isn't going to hand out vouchers to schools that don't toe the line, whatever the line is.Speaker to Animals wrote:Fife wrote:Redpill me on Uganda. What kind of schools do they have?
I don't really know. I think you understand the point. The point was referring, for example, to those priests who come to my parish once a year to describe what it is like in a Congolese village in the jungle, trying to provide basic literacy and competency to people who live pretty far back in history compared to us.
There exists a kind of polarity here where, at the extremes, nations begin to regress. When the state doesn't have an education policy, expect dark ages soon. When the state gets overly involved in education (like we have now), expect dark ages. There does exist a sweet spot in between those extremes, and I think maintaining probably requires getting government the hell out of providing education directly, but our centralizing the funding of education for the national good. The same is likely true for health care, and probably a few other big ticket items.
When the state controls the schools themselves, then they stop educating people and start indoctrinating. Dark ages cometh. When the state gets out altogether, most citizens lose access to an education. Dark ages cometh.
It's a similar dynamic with health care.
That depends upon what we all agree to.
Personally, I'd like to abolish high schools as we know them and return back to a trade school/university dynamic following a slightly extended middle school. So around what is the tenth grade today, kids go either to a university or to a trade school.
It wasn't until the past century that only adults went to universities. Freshmen used to be like 15 years old.
Doing it this way ensures that every American turns 21 (a better age for adulthood) with a profession and no debt. The reason that you see people fucking around in college campuses is that we are supposed to get married and start families in our early twenties. With college or trade school out of the way, that's entirely possible.
That said, I'd make university discriminatory again. Admissions would be based on merit and qualifications, and the programs so difficult that more than half the population could not even complete them anyway. Lots of jobs we have today don't need college education. A simple IT programmer doesn't need a college education. That's a trade. I'd argue probably most jobs don't require a college education.
STEM fields are pretty much the only areas that require it. The liberal arts programs should be academic tracks. That is, you only go into them because you want to be a professor or an educator of some kind, and the slots are extremely limited and competitive.
