On Dec 16, 2004, at 8:55 PM, Blake wrote:
>
> I disapprove of the idea. The ability and freedom to exchange is a 
> concept fundamental to human dignity. Children who are not allowed to 
> exchange grow into disgruntled teenagers. Adults who are not allowed 
> to exchange become disgruntled citizens. And typically they focus 
> their anger on the source of their largesse. Indeed, not =demanding= 
> exchange from people is one of the worst things you can ever do to 
> them.
>

Well there's that and the fact that socialized education leads to the 
kind of bureaucratic inertia that plagues the current system in the 
U.S. and elsewhere. Like health care, education can and should be cheap 
-- well within the budget of a modest income family -- and many people 
are more than capable of teaching themselves what is normally taught in 
schools; however, for a variety of reasons this doesn't happen, and 
most of the socialistic "solutions" involve excessive government bloat 
to correct for deficiencies in the society itself which no one wants to 
fix or even acknowledge. A bit like how Microsoft releases a 300MB 
patch for its IE security holes instead of adopting an engineering 
philosophy that prevents the holes from creeping in there in the first 
place.

One of the big problems is that the cachet becomes more important than 
the knowledge the cachet is supposed to represent, a variant of the old 
branding problem: I could have a 200 IQ but still won't get the respect 
(or the job) someone with a Harvard degree gets.

My schooling has taught me these fundamental lessons:

First, the primary things taught in school are how to conform and how 
to be dealt with in a systematic manner which are probably the most 
important skills you need in a corporate environment, whether you work 
for Wal-Mart or for GoldmanSachs.

Secondly, just about anything I can learn, I can teach myself.

I'm in agreement that everyone has a right to get educated, but I 
disagree that everyone has a right to be educated at state bureaucratic 
institutions with taxpayer (i.e., MY) expense footing the bill for all 
that bureaucracy. There are far more economical and effective means of 
dealing with the problem. (We are working on one aspect of them!)

--Jeff