Libertarian ping! Click here to get added or here to be removed or just reply to this post!
Posted on 10/27/2008 7:16:42 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
It is no secret that a centrally controlled economy, in which a centralized government agency makes all major decisions and imposes a one-size-fits-all approach to all of its participants, regardless of individuals' talents, personalities, and interests, does not produce a successful economy. So why would such an approach work with education?
I’m sure I’m not the first person to ponder this question.
Our Tax System Explained:
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten
comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it
would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that’s what they decided to do.
The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the
arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. ‘Since you are
all such good customers,’ he said, ‘I’m going to reduce the cost of your
daily beer by $20.’ Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the
first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But
what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they
divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’
They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted
that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would
each end up being paid to drink his beer.
So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s
bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the
amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued
to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to
compare their savings.
‘I only got a dollar out of the $20,’declared the sixth man. He pointed
to the tenth man,’ but he got $10!’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ exclaimed the fifth man. ‘I only saved a dollar,
too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I got’ ‘That’s true!!’
shouted the seventh man. ‘Why should he get $10 back when I got only
two? The wealthy get all the breaks!’
‘Wait a minute,’ yelled the first four men in unison. ‘We didn’t get
anything at all. The system exploits the poor!’
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks so the nine sat
down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill,
they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money
between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, ladies and gentlemen, journalists and college professors, is
how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the
most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for
being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they
might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics
University of Georgia
For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.
Given what we’ve got now, what’s the problem? I always note how the “education” folks actively campaign against real (e.g., private) schools.
I’ll bite: But where would the funding come from otherwise? If it continues to come from the Feds, then de facto control will always rest with the feds.
It doesn’t work. We have many cuntries to point to, to show the failure of it.
The problem is people don’t THINK. Another problem is that kids from little on in MOST publia schools and later inmost colleges are brainwashed into believing that it CAN work. They indoctrinate the idea that they just haven’t found the right mix of socialism. Of course they don’t say the word “socialism” when they teach this.
Why do you think that YOUNG college kids are some of the Obomination’s most rabid supporters? Also “distinguished” people like this:
Teaching Toward Freedom: Moral Commitment and Ethical Action in the Classroom (Hardcover)
by William Ayers (Author) “The allure of teaching, that ineffable magic drawing me back to the classroom again and again, issues from an ideal that lies directly at its...” (more)
More here:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Bill+Ayers&x=19&y=18
Outcome-based education is in practice solely for that purpose, to encourage group-think and a conditioned response as to have more “compliant” citizens in the future.
Grades, accolades and discipline are based on getting the teacher’s desired results, not if the question is right or wrong.
Like political correctness, which makes people deny truth to keep minorities, homosexuals, women, Muslims, illegal immigrants, etc. placated is the same concept...deny your natural common sense instincts and replace it with a false politeness...part of the ObamaMania we are experiencing is the result of guilty PC white people not wanting to really undertand Barack Obama, and would vote for him out of a conditioned response to “letting the black guy win” which applies to athletics, academia, the workplace and social circles.
I am not an apologist, however, I do know when a PC threshold has been breached. The double-standard of “ni****” is the cause of white firings and the reason for #1 black record sales...
Speaking as a 7th generation white male, this election has at least encouraged the topic of race and society.
In the 1930s, a public school principal pointed out that student performance in school follows the Standard Distribution Curve (or “Bell Curve”). As such, he said, 17% of students will not perform satisfactorily, and the bottom 5% will get nothing out of the education at all. Importantly, no matter what he or the teachers did.
Even then, parents did not appreciate this fact. However, he pointed out, that those who do not succeed in public school are not always the same students, some having good years and some bad years.
But, he concluded, if you have two *different* school systems, many of the students who would fail in one would at least be satisfactory in the other. So never assume students can’t learn.
Now this being said, we may be in the final days of public school as we know it. Its fatal flaw is that it wastes far too much of student time.
So in the future, much of elementary and secondary education will be turned over to interactive, individualized, multimedia presentations. These will work at the best pace of individual students, teach several subjects simultaneously, and teach, evaluate and review all at the same time.
Importantly, teachers will still be needed, but to teach higher levels of education beyond the capability of computers. Students will be in education intranets so that when they have a spurt of interest in a subject, they will be able to pursue that subject as a digression, all through college level if they are able.
And by not wasting student time, study curricula will be two or three times greater than in traditional public schools.
Looks like someone is keyword spamming. I noticed it on another vanity thread as well.
Many of these keywords showing up in the Popular Keywords Sidebar as well.
I’d like to hear what the Libertarian ping list has to say about schools.
Of course it wouldn't work with education either. Homeschooling is demonstrating that with it's spectacular success compared to the centralized public school system.
The problem with one size fits all mentality, is that one size really fits no one.
Mr. mm is reading an excellent book on education called *Disrupting Class* by Christensen.
The sixth chapter is about the most important influence on a child for educational success and it turns out that it’s simply being talked to from birth through about three years of age.
He distinguishes between what he calls business talk, which is commands like “Hurry up”, “Tie your shoes”, “Wash your hands”, etc. and what he calls language dancing, which is really talking to the child as if they are an adult, using adult vocabulary and acting as if they understand what you’re saying.
It has to do with brain wiring at that age. That kind of interaction stimulates the growth of neural connections that facilitate learning. If that time period is missed, the kids will not ever be able to make that up.
It fits with something that I got from Focus on the Family about how to increase the intelligence of your child. They said that the ages of 8 - 18 mos was CRITICAL to your childs future intelligence and that the biggest factor is being home with mom and having a great deal of interaction with her.
Now, homeschoolers don’t have a monopoly on this sort of thing because all this happens before the children attend school, BUT homeschoolers are home, with their kids. The book goes on to say that surrogate parenting doesn’t work as well, either.
Todd Risley and Betty Hart were the researchers who conducted the studies. They wrote a book called Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experiences of Young American Children. In the end notes in the chapter, the author states that other research on this topic can be found at www.lenababy.com
There’s all kinds of interesting developmental stages from infancy to adulthood.
Not too long ago, I was reading how in the first two weeks of life, the infants immune system isn’t fully on line, and this is when they develop their complex intestinal flora, mostly from their mother’s milk. At least 200 different mostly healthy, and some pathogenic bacteria. And since this flora is extremely important to healthy functioning, some women share breast milk, so their children develop very powerful flora.
After the two week period, the colony is established, and is almost as unique as fingerprints, only changing very slowly over the course of years, or with severe trauma, like powerful spectrum antibiotics, toxic chemicals or radiation exposure.
Neurological development is also intense. Not just the interconnection of neurons, but the infant and young child brain has a substantially higher amount of glucose. This provides energy to aid in establishing parameters to reality, like size, shape, perspective, etc., and learning very complex skills like one or more languages.
Back in the late 1970s, one of the first effective antidepressant drugs was developed, called desipramine hydrochloride. It was a shotgun solution to a bb gun problem, and had numerous serious side effects. However, severe depression was so devastating that many people were willing to suffer these side effects. At its height, it was prescribed to over 2M Americans. It is still used by many.
However, after it was approved by the FDA, the Japanese continued to research its neurological effects and made a startling discovery. That the drug softened the neurological parameters of reality.
The power of this was demonstrated with cats, who had an eyelid sewn shut before this drug was injected into the optic center of their brain. In just two weeks, the cats relearned to see, but with just one eye. When the stitches were removed, the other eye functioned and sent signals to the brain, but they were completely ignored.
This is extraordinary, because over 90% of the information sent to our brains from our senses is ignored. We very precisely choose this information and only this information is standard “human” information. Theoretically, we could choose an entirely different 10% of our input to interpret reality, and we would observe a very different reality from every other person.
We are limited to about 10%, though, because any more would be overwhelming, like what is experienced in heroin withdrawl, when the body’s means of dampening sensation is interrupted.
Since it had such widespread use, you have to wonder if it will affect how its users perceive reality.
Finally, until the brain reaches full maturity around 20 years or so, it is much more able to develop permanent addictive behavior. If children can put off as much as possible consumption of caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, and other addictive substances, it is much harder for them to develop serious addictions when they are mature.
So pre-natal to adulthood, so much to learn about the brain.
How about - gasp!! - the Parents!
I have wondered about the statement that some people are born alcoholics. I suspect that there may be more truth to that than people realize, but not because of a genetic predisposition as I had been told but because they really were born addicts.
I've wondered if the smoking or drinking has such a strong impact on the fetus and that it's so susceptible to those chemical influences, that the baby can develop a prenatal addiction very easily. Then later in life when exposed to those substances, the addiction kicks back in.
“How about - gasp!! - the Parents!”
I thinks that’s a simplification of the issue: I would equate the organizational necessity of the education system, flawed as it is, with the necessity of the nation’s greatest training regiment- the military. To say that you would devolve the entire education system to the parents is, at least in this modern era, similar to arguing that you would devolve the modern US military into locally run militias (not that a need doesn’t exist for this on some level). But this ignores the global reach of America and our commitment to world history. Connecting those dots, a local militia and a home schooled community will not produce expertise along the lines of aerodynamic engineers, nuclear physicists, the next generation technology that will maintain our dominance on the global playing field...
But then, the argument as I would read it is how to maintain a public education system with real local controls that is yet still accountable over all.
I’ve no doubt, about alcohol in particular.
Years ago, I knew a top biochemical psychiatrist who bitterly hated alcohol. He remarked that he would work with a patient for six months, carefully adjusting medications for very difficult to treat neurological conditions. Then the patient would go on a bender and absolutely mess everything up. Their balance of well over a hundred neurotransmitters would be chaotic, and he would have to start over.
He said that alcohol was almost unique in being able to affect every single brain chemical in unpredictable ways.
We haven’t even scratched the surface of nicotine, either. There are receptors for nicotine throughout the human body. We are attuned to it though it is not normally part of our diet.
The same with marijuana, that is almost like a skeleton key, in that its component molecules will fit in any number of receptors. Marijuana should in fact be horribly carcinogenic, but it has numerous chemicals that are powerful anti-cancer agents as well.
We are still in the dark ages about so many things.
Institutional K-12 education as it exists today in the U.S. is **grossly** inefficient! Homeschoolers are proving that every day.
My 3 homeschoolers were admitted to college at the ages of 13, 12, and 13, and completed all college general requirements and Calculus III by the age of 15. The two younger children earned B.S. degrees in mathematics by the age of 18. The oldest of these two had a masters in math at 20.
When it comes to the sciences homeschoolers ROCK! :-)
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