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Are public schools socialism?

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Catawba said:
That's my point, your idea has never worked in any other first world nation.
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The model size is wrong and the solution the government created is not workable. You would need to localize the solution towards individuals or smaller areas making it easier to control the cost. This way of doing it would also increase competition naturally.
 
Henrin said:
The model size is wrong and the solution the government created is not workable. You would need to localize the solution towards individuals or smaller areas making it easier to control the cost. This way of doing it would also increase competition naturally.
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That's what I said, it has never worked for any first world nation.
 
Catawba said:
That's what I said, it has never worked for any first world nation.
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What I just said would have nothing to do with the past.
 
Quote Originally Posted by Hard Truth View Post
Most of those tax payer funded services work out pretty well most of the time.

AlabamaPaul said:
Really? How much waste and fraud do you think there is in the system? Anytime benefits are offered for nothing, it brings out the worst in many...
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The benefits are not exactly offered for nothing, they are paid with taxes. There is certainly some waste and fraud in government provided services, but there is waste and fraud when businesses provide services also. When a government service is not provided properly citizens can make an issue with it with their elected officials. If the elected officials are not responsive, they can vote for someone else or even run for office or a do a ballot measure. If a business fails to provide a service properly you can try complaining, but the business has no obligation to respond. Depending on the type of business, you may have the ability to use another service provider, but there is no guarantee that the competition will be better. You may get told that their quality of service is just standard practice, as happens with airlines and banks, for example.
 
Henrin said:
No, it a matter of how capitalism works to solve problems.
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Yet you cannot show where it has worked to develop water and wastewater systems in a single first world nation in the world.
 
It doesn't really matter if schools are socialism or not.
What matters is if they're achieving universal goals of providing high end education to the children.

In my opinion, and I'm pretty hard core libertarian on this issue, they do not.
I believe that schools primary objective is to institutionalize children, so they become passive adults.
It's a sort of brainwashing, education is secondary.

When education was made compulsory and when the feds got involved, the majority of the population was not uneducated.
So to assume that sans government involvement, that people would be uneducated is incorrect.

Today, schools largely function as a baby sitting service for parents, education comes next, as least from the parents perspective.
 
Henrin said:
Meh.. there is always naysayers. If you guys desire free education than I will do what I can to provide it while still being able to make a profit. That is not to say the request isn't stupid and childish, but if I feel that I have an idea to pull it off there is no reason to not do it.
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What makes you think that I am interested in free education? We no longer have school age children but if we did I wouldn't be interested in free education? As a matter of fact we vote for most school bond issues. We don't want free education we want good education for all of our kids.
 
pbrauer said:
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What makes you think that I am interested in free education? We no longer have school age children but if we did I wouldn't be interested in free education? As a matter of fact we vote for most school bond issues. We don't want free education we want good education for all of our kids.
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So you don't agree with the arguments that people keep using saying that private education is too expensive and that they are only interested in profits? In the past I have offered up ideas that would cost people almost nothing, but still, people kept saying that the poor couldn't afford it. The only possible thing they could want then is free education, so like the good little capitalist I came up with a solution to give them that. Now apparently I'm being told it wasn't free education they wanted, but just simply good education?? If that is the case then there doesn't appear to be a problem.
 
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Socialism tends to bring things down to the lowest common denominator so I do think our public education system is socialist, sure its free and everyone gets the same education but what that really means is they get the same low quality education.
 
sawyerloggingon said:
Socialism tends to bring things down to the lowest common denominator so I do think our public education system is socialist, sure its free and everyone gets the same education but what that really means is they get the same low quality education.
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How do you explain countries with more socialistic systems than our having better educational outcomes?
 
Catawba said:
How do you explain countries with more socialistic systems than our having better educational outcomes?
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I don't know how other countries school systems work I just know ours doesn't and we need to get rid of the dept of education. We need to let each state decide how it educates its kids and the feds should have absolutely no say on any aspect of it. Some of the socialist countries you are talking about are as small as one of our states so in a way you prove my point, keep education local.
 
Catawba said:
How do you explain countries with more socialistic systems than our having better educational outcomes?
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The old Soviet Union turned out very smart children, but those children had to succeed or they would go nowhere. The alternative for failure would be a lifetime of working in a factory making nothing as far as wages. Also, children who didn't study and try hard, were severely punished. Russian schools used this fear of severe punishment to force the children to apply themselves. How do I know this? I used to work with a Russian, who grew up in the Soviet Union. He is now an American citizen, very smart, I might add, but who told me horror stories of his life in the Soviet school system.
 
sawyerloggingon said:
I don't know how other countries school systems work I just know ours doesn't
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Yes, it does, for anyone who truly wants to become educated.

Socioeconomic inequality among U.S. students skews international comparisons of test scores, finds a new report released today by the Stanford Graduate School of Education and the Economic Policy Institute. When differences in countries' social class compositions are adequately taken into account, the performance of U.S. students in relation to students in other countries improves markedly.

Based on their analysis, the co-authors found that average U.S. scores in reading and math on the PISA are low partly because a disproportionately greater share of U.S. students comes from disadvantaged social class groups, whose performance is relatively low in every country. As part of the study, Carnoy and Rothstein calculated how international rankings on the most recent PISA might change if the United States had a social class composition similar to that of top-ranking nations: U.S. rankings would rise to fourth from 14th in reading and to 10th from 25th in math. The gap between U.S. students and those from the highest-achieving countries would be cut in half in reading and by at least a third in math.
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Poor ranking on international test misleading about US student performance, researcher finds

There's some other good information in the article as well.

We need to let each state decide how it educates its kids
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We already do. *shrug*

and the feds should have absolutely no say on any aspect of it.
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I'm pretty certain they don't have nearly as much power as you think they do...but if you don't do as the fed asks, you don't get fed money. So you have to decide if you want the money or not.
 
The free market needs an informed consumer to operate efficiently.
 
Yes. We need loads of private and charter schools...
 
bicycleman said:
The old Soviet Union turned out very smart children, but those children had to succeed or they would go nowhere. The alternative for failure would be a lifetime of working in a factory making nothing as far as wages. Also, children who didn't study and try hard, were severely punished. Russian schools used this fear of severe punishment to force the children to apply themselves. How do I know this? I used to work with a Russian, who grew up in the Soviet Union. He is now an American citizen, very smart, I might add, but who told me horror stories of his life in the Soviet school system.
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We don't have to look back that far, or under those conditions.

"Despite our long history of educational leadership and the historic gains from investing in education, the United States has been falling behind. Today, the skill sets that many Americans possess make them less competitive both at home and internationally. Despite spending approximately $3,000 more per student than the OECD average across primary, secondary and postsecondary education, the United States scores below the OECD average in mathematics, and no better than average in science and reading."

scores_country_large.png


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Harry Guerrilla said:
It doesn't really matter if schools are socialism or not.
What matters is if they're achieving universal goals of providing high end education to the children.

In my opinion, and I'm pretty hard core libertarian on this issue, they do not.
I believe that schools primary objective is to institutionalize children, so they become passive adults.
It's a sort of brainwashing, education is secondary.

When education was made compulsory and when the feds got involved, the majority of the population was not uneducated.
So to assume that sans government involvement, that people would be uneducated is incorrect.

Today, schools largely function as a baby sitting service for parents, education comes next, as least from the parents perspective.
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I disagree. Public education has played a large role in our ascent to first world status, and we are much better educated today than 200 years ago.

Public schools are very good.
 
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