The Glade 4.0

Khross, you realize you have fanboi's now, yes?

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

and fangrrls, his hair is metal after all.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

How long before they start developinging into wanktards?

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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's assuming they weren't wanktards to begin with.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Aizle:

The simplest answer I can give you is that Education in America is a symptom of a larger socioeconomic blindspot in the phenomenology of contemporary American liberalism. Namely, contemporary American liberalism is incapable of considering the economic consequences of egalitarianism.

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Can you go into what those consequences are?

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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."

I <3 this thread. Everyone is hanging on Khross' every word like he is Moses coming down the mountain lol.

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Those should be pretty obvious, Diamondeye: the two income household and declining economic value of post-secondary education, to say the least. Declining educative standards are also a significant consequence of the push to homogenize social progress.

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Ok, so that is what you think is wrong with Education. How would you design a system to correct those concerns?

Aizle:

Can't address those concerns without fixing broader social values first. I've been mulling over this for 24 hours; and that's the only real answer I can give you. I understand the appeal of parity and equality, but economic reality trumps such things without individual restraint. If you want to fix education, you must first fix the flawed assumptions that are tearing this nation apart.

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Yup, I get that is your position. So how do you fix that? Or if you don't have an answer for that, then let's for argument sake assume that is already fixed. Just layout what your assumptions are for the socioeconomic landscape, and then what the ideal education system would look like to you.

It is quite obvious on an intuitive level, but I was hoping to hear someone else's laying-out of the process by which the consequences arrive.

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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."

Aizle:

Well, until such a time as human beings master matter reorganization on the level of Star Trek replicators, it means a socioeconomic landscape pretty similar to the latter half of the 1950s. Single-earner households, less than 10% of the population with any post secondary degrees, and a blanket realization that society has need for ditch diggers, garbage collectors, and dung sweepers.

I am not opposed to any equality of opportunity, but egalitarianism as practiced is about the equality of outcome. And when you shift in that direction, you homogenize standards for the lowest common denominator. I have made the statement in the past, and it is true, that the explosion of female employment and college access in the 60s and 70s were both handled very poorly. Indeed, the external shift in labor supply has led to a systematic decline in individual economic leverage since. It's not that women working is bad, it's that doubling the labor supply in 6 years without consideration of the long term consequences is bad; and that's not even considering the foolishness of migrating to a wealth depleting economic model in the first place. Economies where services exceed production and manufacturing will always implode when the debt machine is incapable of perpetuating paper wealth.

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Ok, so we're transported back to the "golden age" of the US.

So what does your school system look like? In particular, I'm interesting in understanding the why's behind any particular structure and what you think is important about it.

Yeah, but it's difficult to argue with success.

Unfortunately, one can't close Pandora's box. Success in the future will be predicated on the ability to kowtow to reality.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Aizle:

State run education systems in the 1940s and 1950s were generally not bad. The key, however, is that they were primary state run and accreditation was handled by regional agencies as opposed to national or Federally regulated agencies. Education wasn't commoditized to the point it is now. Ideally? Parents would home school their children and the quality of that education would be determined by acceptance to various post-secondary training programs, jobs, or colleges. It would be market driven.

I don't believe or support Federal education mandates. I believe in community competition and the freedom of individuals to associate as they choose. I also believe that the freedom of movement is key to success of any education system, as loose as that system may be.

It is one thing for a community to build a school, hire teachers, and collectively send their children to school. It is another for the government to mandate everyone send their children to school following federal parameters. At the very least, we need to decentralize the system.

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So basically you support educational Darwinism? Only the strong (those driven, priviledged, lucky enough) survive?

I'm also curious as to what you define a community as. i.e. how large does a collection of people need to be before it's no longer a community, and therefore should not be dictating how schools are build/run/etc.

I guess that depends on how you define success.

In order for that system to work you would need to freeze scientific and societal advances since you are saying you would educate your child for a particular field/career. However, if I had a child in the 50's-70's I would have been grooming them for a manufacturing job, in the 80's I would have been grooming them for Telecom or in the 90's I would have been prepping them for IT work. All of these industries have since imploded.

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The IT industry has not imploded. The dot.com industry imploded, but that is not the entirety of IT.

This isn't really true at all. You should look into the most common degree fields among CEOs between 1970 and 1995. It's rather enlightening.

Aizle:

It't not educational Darwinism in the least. There have always been opportunities for the truly gifted to excel. What I support is placing the burden back on families for the educational success of their children. Indeed, I support placing a lot of burdens back on families for a lot of successes. As for a community? We're probably talking no more than 500 or 600 families. I'm not even opposed to state mandates, but that's pretty much as high as I'm willing to support government intervention in education. Federal mandates and open enrollment destroy educative competition and force LCD systems into place. We need to avoid that. The exceptional need to be allowed and compelled to excel; the average need to be prepared. No composite federal system can achieve this end in the United States. Social heterogeny generally defeats top down mechanisms.

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Thanks for your responses Khross.

Aizle:

There's really not simple solution except that the Federal government harms far more than it helps. Schools need competition in a lot of areas: academics, athletics, outcome, etc. Without these things, schools don't work.

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I completely agree that schools need competition.

Aizle:

Right, but Federal Mandates eliminate competition in any real sense. The States should be competing with each other for citizens, jobs, businesses, etc. as well. The supremacy of the Federal government post Civil War ... well, that's kinda bad.

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