Off topic: Education
Jeffrey T. Read
bitwize at snet.net
Fri Dec 17 02:30:06 UTC 2004
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
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