Bleeding Head Ken

As a teacher, what would you say was the original intent of compulsory public education? Why do we have public education in the first place?

aegyptos

This should be good.

SouthernDemocrat

Then why do the majority of public school districts still perform well and many outperform private schools as well? You act as though the majority of public school districts are failures, thats not the case at all. There are certainly school districts that are doing a bad job, but there is a common theme to them, they are almost invariably located in impoverished / high crime / high teen pregnancy areas.

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SouthernDemocrat

What is it with libertarians and conservatives always getting hung up on the original intent of something. As if the reason why we did something a 100 years ago should always be the main purpose today.

Bleeding Head Ken

The argument goes that if we eliminate public education, parents will not provide for the education of their children. There is no historical evidence for this. In fact, the opposite is true. Why do liberals (and most conservatives) think that parents lack the faculties to care for their children and see to their future without being compelled to do so? Or is it a case of parents not being able to choose the right kind of schooling that liberals feel should be the model for all children?

Most people that I speak to on this subject have no knowledge of the history of education and seem to assume that all but a select few were neanderthal knuckle-draggers until the enlightened implemented the public education system.

PeteEU

what a load of...

Parents do not lack the faculties (for the most part) to provide education for their children, but when it stands between food, cloths, and a roof over the their heads, education is put on the back burner, and this is historically proven. Look at the 3rd world... parents choose which children are to get an education (usually the boys) while the rest must work from an early age. Is that the kind of country you want to live in?

Public education was put in place to increase the overall education lvl of the country in question.... and conservatives have historically been against such a things. The Chruch prevented the education of the masses for centuries as did the various conservative regimes throughout history. It seems even today in their blind hatred of anything goverment run (well non conservative goverment run), the conservatives (not only in the US) are willing to frankly piss away a century of improvements for western society. Also the blind backing of religious schools shows the true colours of the conservative movement in many countries... "brainwashing are us".. guess thats the perfect society for conservatives.. a society where no one speaks up against them, because they are too dumb to understand things.

As for fixing public education, not only in the US but in many industrialized nations... money. Our kids are the future and without a basic education of some standard, then our nation as a whole will fall behind.

Now that aint saying we should throw bucketloads of money at public education, but it does mean that a country must set a minimum standard of education that everyone must get. This means standard tests, education plans, regardless if its a public, private or religious school. Anything over that standard is a plus (depending on how you view it, and what type of school).

It also means that the standard of teachers has to be met. Teachers have to go through at least a university level education of some kind to be able to teach. Many countries, including my own, have specialised teacher schools, or have special courses (academic) for people with some sort of a degree, to become a qualified teacher.

One thing that does NOT work, is cutting spending on education and pushing it into the private sphere without any ability for not so well off families to pay for their children's education. That's basicly going back in time, to the Victorian days, where only the rich got an education worth a damn, and that cause huge class issues, and that's not good for a society as a whole.. that after all gave us the socialist movement!

Now saying this does not mean I support public schools whole hearted, as I dont.. Bad public schools need to be closed or have a major revamp period. Bad teachers need to be reeducated or fired. Teachers salaries need to be raised (all countries) so they actually show the contribution that teachers give to society. I also support private schools whole hearted, as I find they have an important benifical effect on the public schools. And yes I went to both a private school and a public school.

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PeteEU

aegyptos

We would probably not agree on what performing well means.

UtahBill

Education is COMPULSORY because the lack of education is known, and not desired. If you want us to slide back into the dark ages, denying the poor a publicly funded education would be the place to start.

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Bleeding Head Ken

So, have you looked up the history of education in the United States or in your own country? I would remind you that we don't live in a 3rd world country, that in fact we have a strong respect for property rights and free trade, unlike countries of the 3rd world.

But if you want to point to the 3rd world, many people in those countries are rejecting the government schools and making great sacrifices to pay for the inexpensive privates schools that are popping up all over.

As for the food and shelter argument, do you think that we should have free housing for everyone who wants it? Why not? It's obviously expensive to provide, so why not provide free housing for everyone who wants it, and food as well?


Where is your evidence for this? In the United States, literacy through the late 18th and up to the implementation of compulsory education was approaching 99% among males and in the 70's for females. This includes the poor. The chief proponents of education, Horace Mann in the United States, Neatby in Canada, etc. advocated for public education as a way to create good government citizens and to get children out of the grip of inexpensive Catholic education which they felt offered too much Popery.

You don't know much about conservatism, which is generally for more authoritarian government and less freedom. Liberalism has been corrupted by the ideal of statism, but historically liberalism has been for more freedom and self-responsibility.

Oh well, please tell us how education has improved for children in the past 150 years that would not have been provided if had not been for the government. Has literacy improved in your country? In mine, functional illiteracy (the ability to read without being able to understand the information) is closing at 27%. I wouldn't call that "improvement" unless your goal is to dumb down the populace.

Red herring aside (as I am not religious), why do you propose that your ideas should be forced on every child that attends public school, but that the ideas of people that you dislike should not be taught? What makes your ideas superior such that you feel it appropriate to shove them down the throat of others? Shouldn't people be able to impart the values and ideas to their own children rather than be forced to have yours aired in front of them?

The amount of money spent on public educaiton is staggering. In my region, it's roughly $13,500 per student, possibly more. The amount has increased 40% in the last 8 years. How much more do you think it will take?

Also, my kid is not your kid. When you say "our", you are insisting that you have jurisdiction over my child.

But that's what we are already doing. Throwing many bucketloads of money for education for each and every child. You are saying that we need even more!

After 150 years, we have lower literacy than we did before this whole thing started. Apparently those minimums aren't working too well.

In other words, your ideas should be forced down the throat of every child, but you'll be damned if those with different ideas get their way. You know what's best for every child and how they should learn and exactly what they should learn.

And how is that working for you? Back in the early days, teachers didn't need to do more than be able to read and write and impart that information at a basic level. Considering the level of literacy, that apparently worked really well. Now we insist on 6 years of university education, and they are having a hard time imparting information to children. We have kids coming out of college who can barely read, but they sure know how to defend public education by calling anyone against it a "hater." Maybe that's the purpose!


You had social class issues because those among the lower classes were not allowed to hold jobs without guild approval. They were prohibited from owning too much property. They were discriminated against on the basis of their birth. People were kept down because of their birth, and yet, they still had higher literacy in the UK before public education was proffered.

I realize that literacy isn't the sole goal of education, but at the very least it ought to be maintained rather than drop. If people can't read, they can't do much else beyond manual labor.

There are no bad schools. Just situations of not enough money being spent. If you say a school is bad you are going to get a great deal of political heat upon you. Politicians don't like that kind of heat.

Just so long, of course, as private schools are forced to teach the ideas that you feel are important.

Bleeding Head Ken

Please cite any historical evidence that in the United States or England that the "lack of education" was known before compulsory education.

The proponents of public education in the 17th and 18th century would have been laughed at for thinking that academics was a government matter and that education to the level that people needed and wanted it was unavailable to any but a very very few.