The Glade 4.0

Aye, but that's the distinction I'm getting at. Is the goal for people to appreciate and value what they have, or is the goal simply to make sure they have it? Sure, people today take civil rights (and medical advancements, and technological improvements, and tons of other things) for granted and generally fail to appreciate how good they have it. But no one would suggest that society would be better off if we lost all those things and went back to having to fight and scrape for everything. So why make that argument regarding education?

I would counter by saying that the sorry state of public high schools best illustrates what happens when you force everyone through a system. Students don't care, parents don't take interest and the few who would benefit from the system have valuable resources (time, money, materials) diverted to people who have no use for them.

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Because no one is making the argument that we should get rid of education. In the case of both education and healthcare, people are saying you should have to get it yourself; it should not be an entitlement.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That would make a much stronger point if the level of "education" obtained by those who have little-to-no interest or stake in obtaining it amounted to a hill of beans. If today's public school educational system can be used as an example of what post-secondary education would become, it's not a pretty picture. Now, if actual aptitude were taken into account (sorry, you're not going to get into the gov't system for a bachelor's degree, as you've barely tested into a custodial level program...), then I would feel better about the whole thing.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Nice age Vindi.

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This is more accurate, Vindicarre.

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Point taken, Khross.

I was surprised it let me do it, Hopwin.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

In many of the classes I've had to take, I've found that there are far too many people who should not be in college. I often wonder how some of these imbeciles ever made it past the 8th grade.

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"I've got twenty ways to tell you shut the f*ck up / nineteen of them are twenty-four bars long / the other one goes: SHUT THE F*CK UP" - Aesop Rock
"There is no God higher than truth." -- Gandhi
Formerly: Tulamian

Anecdotally speaking:

My uncle just retired as a college professor from Tri-C (community college). One semester he implemented a rule that if you missed all of the classes in the first two weeks he withdrew you from the course rather than failing you. He did it to be nice. But when he implemented this he got his *** chewed out by all of the students that he withdrew because it cut off several of their government aid programs. It didn't matter if they failed or passed they just had to be enrolled to get extra foodstamps, childcare subsidies and welfare.

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This. Holy crap, this.

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The Dude abides.

I'm sympathetic to the sentiment, but is it really true? I mean, the same could be said of universal elementary school - many of the kids in public elementary schools are basically in day care at this point. But would society really be better off if we ditched universal education completely so that large swaths of the public never even entered a classroom in their lives? I seriously doubt it. Now, that said, there's likely a happy medium somewhere, and while I think universal high school is worthwhile, I would definitely agree that universal college education goes too far, at least at this point in time.

I just don't believe it follows that "college should be a sacrifice". Based on the conversation so far, I suspect what you mean by that (correct me if I'm wrong) is that increasing the level of sacrifice required would be a useful means to the end of limiting college to those who really want to be there. Greater sacrifice isn't a goal unto itself for you, right? I mean, ideally, we'd want to keep the slackers out but make it as easy as possible for those who truly want/value their education to go, yes?

Correct.



This statement holds much conflict for me.
Sometimes "slackers" need a wake-up call; sometimes "slackers" are just bored with the tedium and mindless busywork they've encountered in school so far...
I'll have to do some thinking as to why, but the phrase "make it as easy as possible for" just whispers "danger" to me.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

In terms of elementary school, you have a point. however,t he problem is that we A) try to mix kids of wildly varying aptitudes together from Kindergarten through Twelfth Grade in the mistaken hope that the smarter ones will drag the weaker ones up to their level and B) that because of that we're pushing information later and later.

Even 25 years ago when I was in 4th Grade we had to review basic, single digit addition, subtraction, multiplication and so forth - essentially a condensed Grades 1-3 of math - at the beginning of the year because some kids didn't understand it.

That's bad for the kids that do understand it because they get bored, and bad for a lot of other kids because they're essentially being told they can brain-dump it and someone will review it later. The pattern is one where each year and each subject exists almost in a vaccuum, and nothing fromt he past can be called upon in the future unless its reviewed.

We should be pushing more difficult material earlier, and we should be segregting out those kids that can't perform, and those that perform superlatively. Or, to put it another way, we should leave some children behind (in the sense that they move a lot more slowly) so that others can sprint ahead. A High School diploma doesn't mean anything if getting it is expected as a matter of course in life; only truely unmotivated dregs don't have one. An average student should have to put forth effort beyond the level of token to get one. A student with low native ability should have to work hard, and by low native ability, I mean anyone in the bottom 50%. Kids with high ability shouldn't be skating either; they should be doing harder things.

Kids should be told from the first day of kindergarten "You can get all the help you need, but you will make the effort or you will be gone" as in, you'll never be graduated.



Sacrifice is not an end, no, but it's pretty much a necessity. It's not just a useful means, its an inherently necessary means. Even if a particular individual can appreciate the necessity for an education when its ahnded to him, sacrifice teaches its own lessons.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."