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#61 gumgum

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Posted 04 May 2008 - 07:01 PM

It's so pointless to argue points soaked with what the basis' of each side sees as the moral principals of life. Personally, (and I don't think I'm alone here) I see your perspective as an affront to everything I hold true as what is a civil and moral society. And you need to respect that.

And however much I disagree with your perspective, Davek, because of your passion on the subject, I need to reluctantly accept your perspective must have some validity somewhere. Otherwise you wouldn't have stuck to your guns for as long as you have.

But am I the only one that thinks this thread is like beating a dead horse?

#62 davek

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Posted 04 May 2008 - 08:12 PM

And who would pay for these schools and hospitals in this libertarian free market utopia? Whoever felt like donating, I guess. And if Allan Vanderkerkove and Alex Campbell or whoever was doing the fundraising had a bad year, I guess tough luck for junior's education or grandma's surgery. Hey, survival of the fittest, right?

Well, there's always the church to support charity, right? Except church enrolment is plummeting to historic lows. How is this sustainable? Although the fundamentalist sects are growing. At this rate, they'll be the only powerful religious movement left. But do you really think the foundations of a civil society--education and health care--are best left in the hands of an unaccountable organization that thinks The Flintstones was a documentary?


I've provided plenty of links in previous replies to answer this sort of hysteria and exaggeration, but I've got more. Here is one on schools, and another on
charity, in general.

Of course, even with history, economics, and political science arrayed against them, there are those who prefer our authoritarian regulated market utopia, proven to provide wait lists for health care, schools that are crappy and expensive, jail for people engaging in consensual activities like drug use and prostitution, indiscriminate welfare that destroys families, and all the other delights of a society increasingly dominated by those in authority. Don't ask me why.

#63 davek

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Posted 04 May 2008 - 09:09 PM

... everything I hold true as what is a civil and moral society. And you need to respect that.


I need to respect your right to have those beliefs. I have no need to respect the beliefs themselves. And any belief that argues that a civil and moral society is one in which people should use government force to impose their personal preferences on everybody despite the obvious damage that results gets no respect from me.

And however much I disagree with your perspective, Davek, because of your passion on the subject, I need to reluctantly accept your perspective must have some validity somewhere. Otherwise you wouldn't have stuck to your guns for as long as you have.


I appreciate your open-mindedness. I hope you will visit some of the links I have provided. A great deal of what I say is counter-intuitive, but I came to my current position from one very much like yours.

But am I the only one that thinks this thread is like beating a dead horse?


Participation in the thread is voluntary, so I conclude that everyone reading it and writing it, including you, finds the topic interesting and worth discussing. Interventionism shortens life spans, slows technological growth, denies prosperity, deprives people of their property, destroys the environment, and breaks down the family and civil society. So long as people are willing to publicly debate its merits with me, I will take advantage. It's too important to neglect.

#64 Phil McAvity

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Posted 04 May 2008 - 10:30 PM

Urbanrail, when did I say I am in favour of a user-fee system? I didn't. You and Caramia brought healthcare into the debate and made assumptions about what I believe based on things i've said about public education. In other words, you put words in my mouth. My thoughts on healthcare aren't the same as public education actually. Regardless, that's not the topic.

Caramia, much of what you said was about parenting, not public vs. private education. Also, parents don't have much choice in education when the government forces the curriculum. What the government is doing is saying every student gets vanilla ice cream. They can take their vanilla in the form of a milkshake, a sundae, an ice cream cone or a bar, but everyone gets vanilla ice cream. The flavour's the same, the only difference is the form the ice cream takes. Same **** different pile. I suppose it's better than making every kid attend public school, but it's still not much of a choice. Also, your attitude that parents can be tyrannical towards their kids doesn't match up to my experience at all. Maybe your parents were, but my parents weren't, nor were my friends' parent, at least not that I know of. Virtually every parent i've ever known has loved their kids and only wanted what is best for them, so I'm not sure where that idea came from. I agree with Davek (shocking!) that parents should decide what is best for their kids, not the state.

Holden, that link you provided didn't work. Regardless, I hardly think linking to some crazy fundamentalist (with the emphasis on "mental") religion makes an argument for or against the public funding of schools. Ideally, the parents themselves would pay for their kids education. I don't think that's an unreasonable requirement at all. It's called taking responsibility for your actions which is increasingly becoming an antiquated notion. You also went off topic a bit by mentioning healthcare. As I said, my views on healthcare are not the same as my views on education.

Davek, i'm almost starting to think you're a libertarian. :D

#65 Phil McAvity

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Posted 04 May 2008 - 10:40 PM

Well that was sure redundant redundant of me.

#66 jklymak

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Posted 05 May 2008 - 06:31 AM

It's called taking responsibility for your actions which is increasingly becoming an antiquated notion.


My issue with this is that your kids also have to take responsibility for your actions. If you can't afford to send your kids to school, your kids suffer.

More indirectly, society suffers because your child's lack of upward mobility breeds despair and wastes human potential.

Go to a country without universal education and see what caring parents feel compelled to have their children do in order for the family to survive. If you are poor, you send your kids out to earn money, by begging, or worse. Or just look to the US where there is a huge disparity in public schools.

#67 Phil McAvity

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Posted 05 May 2008 - 03:13 PM

My issue with this is that your kids also have to take responsibility for your actions. If you can't afford to send your kids to school, your kids suffer.


Firstly, what makes you think I have kids? If anything, I have intimated that I don't. Secondly, even if I had kids, what makes you think I would be unable to pay for their education?

More indirectly, society suffers because your child's lack of upward mobility breeds despair and wastes human potential.



As I have said in this thread, society is better off sending children to school. That's not the issue, the issue is the fairness of everyone having to pay for people that have kids, but you, like everyone i've ever taked to on this issue can't seem to understand that, yet it strikes me as a very germane point.

Go to a country without universal education and see what caring parents feel compelled to have their children do in order for the family to survive. If you are poor, you send your kids out to earn money, by begging, or worse. Or just look to the US where there is a huge disparity in public schools.


As i have said ad nauseum, I agree that society is better off sending kids to school. That's not the point. I guess i'll just have to keep saying it over and over and over until someone somewhere eventually understands what i'm saying. Your analogy to the US makes no sense either because the last time I checked, they had public education there too.

#68 jklymak

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Posted 05 May 2008 - 04:10 PM

As I have said in this thread, society is better off sending children to school. That's not the issue, the issue is the fairness of everyone having to pay for people that have kids, but you, like everyone i've ever taked to on this issue can't seem to understand that, yet it strikes me as a very germane point.


Its not that I don't understand your germane point about fairness. It is simply that it is incompatible with universal education. If a poor family has been so irresponsible as to have a child (perhaps they foolishly became poor after the fact), what happens then? Either you have to help pay for them (unfair!), or they don't go to school (crime and pestilence!). In Canada we prefer that they go to school at the expense of some "fairness".

Personally, I think it is perfectly fair for me to educate other peoples' children, because even if I don't have children I still reap the benefits of a generally educated society.

#69 Holden West

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Posted 05 May 2008 - 05:27 PM

Its not that I don't understand your germane point about fairness. It is simply that it is incompatible with universal education. If a poor family has been so irresponsible as to have a child (perhaps they foolishly became poor after the fact), what happens then? Either you have to help pay for them (unfair!), or they don't go to school (crime and pestilence!). In Canada we prefer that they go to school at the expense of some "fairness".

Personally, I think it is perfectly fair for me to educate other peoples' children, because even if I don't have children I still reap the benefits of a generally educated society.


Very well said.
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#70 pseudotsuga

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Posted 05 May 2008 - 09:05 PM

^^Yes, well said.
But I've enjoyed & appreciated davek's points.
Makes me at question some of my assumptions.

#71 Phil McAvity

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Posted 08 May 2008 - 11:05 PM

Its not that I don't understand your germane point about fairness. It is simply that it is incompatible with universal education. If a poor family has been so irresponsible as to have a child (perhaps they foolishly became poor after the fact), what happens then? Either you have to help pay for them (unfair!), or they don't go to school (crime and pestilence!). In Canada we prefer that they go to school at the expense of some "fairness".

Personally, I think it is perfectly fair for me to educate other peoples' children, because even if I don't have children I still reap the benefits of a generally educated society.



Thank you for finally understanding what I was saying. I was really starting to think the whole world was too retarded to grasp what struck me as a fairly simple concept. If people can't afford to have kids, they shouldn't have them, it's that simple, especially when there are something like 13 different types of birth control available to women. While I don't think your hypothetical situation of a family suddenly and inexplicably becoming poor is all that common, it does happen. As I've said, why can't they turn to their friends, spouse, church or family for help? That's the way society used to operate and it operated better than it does today because it encouraged people to take responsibility for themselves. Why is it up to the government to educate everyone's kids? As Davek said, public schools produce very lacklustre results and kids are often indoctrinated in public school with views that fly in the face of their own family's values and beliefs. Also, how can fairness be a principle that society seems to hold so dear, except on this issue for some reason, it doesn't apply? Strange. And why you would want to spend your money educating other people's kids I cannot fathom. :confused: Would you not prefer to keep your money and see people educate their own kids? I certainly would.

#72 Bernard

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Posted 15 July 2008 - 12:54 PM

Alberta - Clever red-necks

Sep 21st 2006 | VANCOUVER
From The Economist print edition
It's not just the economy that is booming; schools are too

MANY eastern Canadians do not think much of Alberta's roaring economic success. They love putting down their wealthy western cousins as loutish rednecks who have the dumb luck to be sitting on pools of oil and natural gas. They do not seem to have noticed that the entire Albertan economy—not just the energy sector—is booming, growing faster than that of any other province. Maybe, with this kind of surging growth year after year, something more than a lucky inheritance is involved. It could be that Albertans are actually doing some things right in building their economy.

Many educators acknowledge that over the past 30 years Alberta has quietly built the finest public education system in Canada. The curriculum has been revised, stressing core subjects (English, science, mathematics), school facilities and the training of teachers have been improved, clear achievement goals have been set and a rigorous province-wide testing programme for grades three (aged 7-8), six (10-11), nine (13-14) and twelve (16-17) has been established to ensure they are met.

It is all paying off. Alberta's students regularly outshine those from other Canadian provinces: in 2004 national tests, Alberta's 13- and 16-year-olds ranked first in mathematics and science, and third in writing. And in international tests they rank alongside the best in the world: in the OECD's 2003 PISA study, the province's 15-year-olds scored among the top four of 40 countries in mathematics, reading and science (see table).

Elsewhere in Canada, especially British Columbia and Ontario, dissatisfaction with public-school standards is increasingly driving parents to pack their children off to private schools. Over the past decade, the proportion of students in such schools has risen by 20% in Canada as a whole, and double that in Ontario. But the private system does not have the same appeal in Alberta, where some 80% of parents say they are happy with the public schools.

This is especially true in the province's capital of Edmonton, which is noted for its innovative system stressing choice, accountability and competition. Funding there is based on the number of students in a school. Each school controls its own budget, spending money on its own educational priorities (such as improving aboriginal-student results), while following the provincial curriculum. Students are free to (and 57% do) attend any school in the city, not just in their own neighbourhood. They can seek out schools specialising in the arts, sports, leadership skills, girls-only education, aboriginal culture, Mandarin, and many other alternative programmes—or simply choose the schools with the best academic results. Students in every grade are tested annually and their scores published.

The results are also used to improve teaching. There is currently a citywide push to ensure that all children in Edmonton can read competently by grade three (88% now can). Far from fearing private-school competition, the city's public system has embraced it: it has already absorbed three private religious schools (two Christian, one Hebrew). “In Edmonton,” says Angus McBeath, the city's recently retired schools chief, “the litmus test is that the rich send their kids to the public schools, not the private schools.”

Another litmus test is the extent to which Edmonton's ideas are being studied by educators from elsewhere (mostly the United States, but some also from Ontario and British Columbia) and are now being emulated. Pilot projects on the Edmonton model have already been launched by school boards in Colorado Springs, Oakland and New York City.

All this is not to say that they have all the answers in Alberta. Their rigorous measurement scheme has revealed that schools still need to do a lot better teaching aboriginal and immigrant children and ensuring that more students finish high school. At present, about 30% of students drop out early, compared with 25% for the country as a whole. That, Alberta's educators admit, is an embarrassing statistic. But in the province's red-hot economy, a 17-year-old with a driver's licence can drop out and easily make C$60,000 ($53,300) a year driving a lorry serving an oil-drilling camp. That's tough competition.

#73 Phil McAvity

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Posted 15 July 2008 - 08:18 PM

I have to assume that that writer is a limey. Who the hell outside of England uses the word, "lorry"?!?!?! Weird.

So Bernard your only point in posting that was to tell us you think that Albertan's are "clever rednecks"? That's it?!?!?!? :confused:

I also don't understand the point about only Albertans having the choice which public schools their kids can go to since I live with a teenager who goes miles out of his way every day to go to Mount Doug rather than going to Belmont. He's a strange kid though, I mean what kind of weirdo would want to go to that school?!?!?! ;)

Regardless, that article proves many of davek's assertions about public schools. With the exception of Alberta's exceptional system, increasingly, parents don't want their kids having anything to do with public education. Further proof kiddies, that socialism doesn't work. Unless of course you don't like having money.

#74 Ms. B. Havin

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Posted 15 July 2008 - 08:36 PM

That wasn't the point at all, Phill.

Of course the article was by a "limey" -- it's from the Economist. London? England? Says so in the headline?

Good for that teenager you know -- the one who's exercising his school choice option. That's one of the measures copied by the BC Provincial gov't from Alberta, to strengthen the healthy parts and starve off the dead-wood.

There are plenty of measures being copied by BC, which the article leaves out.

Chief among them is absolute school choice, down to individual courses.

If you don't like the course delivery for Science 10, or for English 11, or for whatever at your school, you can choose from any other school (including distance ed) in BC to take that course.

Some counselors will discourage you, but that's the law. Your teen could let Belmont be his "school of record" (i.e., the one he graduates from), if he so chose (vs. choosing to make Mount Doug his school of record), but he could literally take whatever other courses he needs from other schools or from online sources.

What that also means is that if Mr. Buckethead at School A has been teaching Math 11 for the same boring way for the past 20 years and alienating students from his class, but refusing to change because "that's how I've been doing it for the past 20 years," then Mr. Buckethead will find his enrollment dwindling -- eventually dwindling to the point where he loses his teaching gig for Math 11 and ends up teaching Shop or HomeEc.
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#75 davek

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Posted 16 July 2008 - 06:01 AM

As far back as 2003, Alberta has been recognized as having more freedom within its public school system than any other province., and by a wide margin. The results were entirely predictable. Giving parents even more control over the disposition of education dollars, either through education tax credits or full privatization, will lead to even better results.

 



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