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Full employment of resources in the market for labor should allocate resources to a corresponding efficiency. Zero percent official unemployment should be an achievable goal under current metrics.
Full compliance with the federal at-will employment doctrine and existing state at-will employment laws are all that is needed to solve poverty in our republic. The mechanism of unemployment compensation already exists in every state.
Under that doctrine, either party can end the employment relationship "for good cause, or bad cause, or no cause at all,"
In my opinion, basic economics and money management skills could be mostly self-taught to a reasonable proficiency without the socio-economic friction in the markets attributable to the command economics employed by a warfare-state. Without a "boom and bust" cycle, money based markets are much more predictable.
Ending the War on Poverty and welfare as we know it, by attrition, could lower our tax burden. Do we really need a public sector administering anything more complicated than a "minimum wage" that pays labor market participants to pursue other opportunity costs than providing labor input to the economy.
Consider this hypothetical scenario: If someone has recourse to a hypothetical unemployment compensation, at-will; that individual would be able to go to school for as long as they want without needing loans while not in official poverty.
We could also improve the standard of living for the stereotypical "starving artist" in the same manner, for the greater glory of Art, and ameliorate commercialization of Art for the sake of mere lucre. It could be considered more moral than subsidizing poverty for less.
In my opinion, such human capital infrastructure development can be considered a promotion and provision of the general welfare of our republic and the reason for which our tax monies are to be raised.
Where to begin.
First of all, please define attrition in the context of ending welfare. I understand the concept as it relates to the workforce.
Second, how will these propositions help fix education in the US (the topic of this forum)?
Third (for now), from the tone of your posts, you don't share the typical American's value for money. Perhaps just ill-gotten gains, I can't tell. Most people want to keep what they earn with the sweat of their own brow unless they are helping the truly needy. They really aren't interested in supporting a zoned-out artist who's keeping rock-star hours and producing Art for the sake of the opinion of zoned-out critics.
This is why capitalism as a social system has been fairly firmly established in the US. Our population does not generally share the socialist "all for one and one for all" ethos that predominates in Europe. Also, Americans tend to consider themselves moral without actually being moral.
I can't tell from your posts how you would structure education. Would you evaluate each child for his strengths and weaknesses and design an appropriate educational plan for each one? Or would you support letting each child pursue the education he or she wanted? Everyone who wanted to be a doctor could go to medical school, even if unqualified? Would you support intentional lack of training, as every person could get unemployment compensation without ever having worked?
Please give some specifics about your ideas so that I might better understand.
Then you must approve of what my school is doing. No one has to lose there. You just keep taking the test over and over and over until you get a high enough score to pass. Don't like the B you got? Take it again and get an A. There's no distinction between the student who got the A the first time and the student who got the A the second or fifteenth time.
What they're trying to do is make everyone a winner. At least to give them the opportunity to be a winner. In reality, this tactic lowers scores because students figure they don't need to study because they can always take it again.
I have been at your school. I fought against, probably the same things you have been (I lasted a little over a year) complaining about since starting there, and 6 years later I see nothing has changed.
The admin there is whacked.
There is a difference between everyone being successful,
And everyone being patronized...
The admin at Your school patronizes its students and parents.
That school also has a TAG program that is several grades Below the students' current performace. (ie, 6th graders doing 4th grade work--but MORE of it--and calling themselves GIFTED?) and the principal CHANGING the grades for TAG students to maintain that 4.00 GPA...
Success is not having the opportunity to do it all over. SUCCESS is being able to learn, have access to the knowledge, and having the opportunity to demonstrate mastery in a realistic manner....
Last edited by zthatzmanz28; 01-04-2010 at 04:49 PM..
I have been at your school. I fought against, probably the same things you have been (I lasted a little over a year) complaining about since starting there, and 6 years later I see nothing has changed.
The admin there is whacked.
There is a difference between everyone being successful,
And everyone being patronized...
The admin at Your school patronizes its students and parents.
That school also has a TAG program that is several grades Below the students' current performace. (ie, 6th graders doing 4th grade work--but MORE of it--and calling themselves GIFTED?) and the principal CHANGING the grades for TAG students to maintain that 4.00 GPA...
Success is not having the opportunity to do it all over. SUCCESS is being able to learn, have access to the knowledge, and having the opportunity to demonstrate mastery in a realistic manner....
They seem to think success is being able to make the grade you want. I don't know but I kind of think it should have something to with LEARNING Unfortunatley, sometimes, success is falling flat on your face and learning how to get back up on your own.
I figure the way I complain I'm on the short list. I don't mind retakes to show you can pass a test but if you didn't study enough and got a B, I think the B should stay. My logic for retakes for failing students is that the objective is to learn the material. While I'd rather they did it the first time, I'll take it later. It's not like I'm giving them an A on the retake. I'm giving them a C-. Surprisingly, most don't do better the second time. They're always shocked.
First of all, please define attrition in the context of ending welfare. I understand the concept as it relates to the workforce.
Second, how will these propositions help fix education in the US (the topic of this forum)?
Third (for now), from the tone of your posts, you don't share the typical American's value for money. Perhaps just ill-gotten gains, I can't tell. Most people want to keep what they earn with the sweat of their own brow unless they are helping the truly needy. They really aren't interested in supporting a zoned-out artist who's keeping rock-star hours and producing Art for the sake of the opinion of zoned-out critics.
This is why capitalism as a social system has been fairly firmly established in the US. Our population does not generally share the socialist "all for one and one for all" ethos that predominates in Europe. Also, Americans tend to consider themselves moral without actually being moral.
I can't tell from your posts how you would structure education. Would you evaluate each child for his strengths and weaknesses and design an appropriate educational plan for each one? Or would you support letting each child pursue the education he or she wanted? Everyone who wanted to be a doctor could go to medical school, even if unqualified? Would you support intentional lack of training, as every person could get unemployment compensation without ever having worked?
Please give some specifics about your ideas so that I might better understand.
Ending welfare as we currently know it by creating a more effective social safety net could be viewed as more ethical than allowing poverty in our more developed political economy.
I am using attrition in the usual sense. Since, in principle, anyone would be able to apply for unemployment compensation at-will, only those that have sufficient need to pass current means tests would opt for something as bureaucratic as welfare, if they had recourse to unemployment compensation for otherwise being naturally unemployed.
I think I share any typical American's value for money in our political-economy. That value is shaped by our current regime that institutionalizes forms of poverty due to a mis-application of morals. There is no need to tolerate forms of wage slavery in our more developed political-economy, where economic discrimination is both legal and socially acceptable; simply because non-religious poverty can be considered immoral to the institution of money based markets (an inherent part of Capitalism). Our War on Poverty will never solve poverty with the morals of warfare-state economics.
In my opinion, structuring primary education along the lines of tertiary education could solve some friction the market for education. Having a relatively standardized core curriculum along with parent elected "electives" could provide a better education "product" for the "consumer" of Statism.
Why would we be worse off if anyone with an interest in education can pursue an education for as long as they want while not in official poverty? Would it be easier or more difficult for anyone to become a doctor if that human capital infrastructure were available? Why wouldn't normal market incentives work to allocate those "resources" more effectively with better employment of those resources in the market for labor?
The same holds for the otherwise starving artist. How many more Michael Angelos would we have had, if they had recourse to that infrastructure which can provide for the general welfare?
Ending welfare as we currently know it by creating a more effective social safety net could be viewed as more ethical than allowing poverty in our more developed political economy.
I am using attrition in the usual sense. Since, in principle, anyone would be able to apply for unemployment compensation at-will, only those that have sufficient need to pass current means tests would opt for something as bureaucratic as welfare, if they had recourse to unemployment compensation for otherwise being naturally unemployed.
I think I share any typical American's value for money in our political-economy. That value is shaped by our current regime that institutionalizes forms of poverty due to a mis-application of morals. There is no need to tolerate forms of wage slavery in our more developed political-economy, where economic discrimination is both legal and socially acceptable; simply because non-religious poverty can be considered immoral to the institution of money based markets (an inherent part of Capitalism). Our War on Poverty will never solve poverty with the morals of warfare-state economics.
In my opinion, structuring primary education along the lines of tertiary education could solve some friction the market for education. Having a relatively standardized core curriculum along with parent elected "electives" could provide a better education "product" for the "consumer" of Statism.
Why would we be worse off if anyone with an interest in education can pursue an education for as long as they want while not in official poverty? Would it be easier or more difficult for anyone to become a doctor if that human capital infrastructure were available? Why wouldn't normal market incentives work to allocate those "resources" more effectively with better employment of those resources in the market for labor?
The same holds for the otherwise starving artist. How many more Michael Angelos would we have had, if they had recourse to that infrastructure which can provide for the general welfare?
What I take from your use of attrition is that people who leave the welfare system would not be replaced by others joining the system.
I'd like to know what you believe a more effective social safety net would be like? The current safety net provides housing, food, medical care, child care, educational grants, monthly cash for incidentals and more if your child has a medical or psychological diagnosis, and now there is even complimentary cell phone service for needy people. I suppose you could argue that this is money that they put back into the economic system, because recipients are not allowed to save their money. So there is a lot of money going into cars, hair, make-up, socializing, and intoxicants, even though it was originally earned by workers who would love to spend it on their own needs for the same. Of course, there are two problems with that: One is that it eliminates large bureaucracies, thus cutting jobs; Two, is that they would likely take a great deal of the money out of circulation by investing for their retirements.
I have known literally thousands of people in families of welfare-dependent families who would not ever be inclined to leave the system. Their lives are spent in bureaucratic offices the way other people's lives are spent in business meetings. Each government aid system has its own bureaucracy. It's not a one-stop shop. To me, it would be easier to just get a job and manage on my own. But that is rational, and many people are irrational.
I think you would be surprised at how many people would opt for comfortable, government-subsidized poverty even with a bureaucratic nightmare if we went to an at-will unemployment model.
As far as unlimited access to education, I believe that academic secondary and tertiary education should be merit-based. I see no value in allowing people to continue their studies on taxpayer money if they are not among the top in their class. I do believe that there are untold numbers of deserving young people who are priced out of our higher education complex. I also see people wasting their money to party instead of studying, both in high school and in college. That is why I believe it should be a merit-based system.
Young people should be able to begin training for a career at the age of 14, when they are beginning middle school. They will make a lot more money with a skilled trade rather than trying to keep an unskilled minimum-wage job because they dropped out of school.
I find that you frequently make statements as facts that seem to be your opinion, and then you do not back them up. For example, what in the world do you mean by "the mis-application of morals?" Whose morals? Explain "the "consumer" of Statism" for me, please.
I personally believe that the institutionalization of poverty is no accident. I further believe that No Child Left Behind is the embodiment of the same ethic as it is applied to the institutionalization of mis-education. What's more, I fear that the ordinary residents of our fine country are not nearly as much in charge are we are led to believe. That includes (y)our freedom to post on forums about what we could to to help fix education in the US.
I think it was zthatzmanz28 who was closest: NO ONE wants education to be fixed. I would only change that to NO ONE IN POWER wants it fixed. Why would they? They pay more than I bring home a year to send each of their own children to school with other children whose parents also pay, not for their children's education, but for their peer groups, their dating pool, and later their spouses and co-workers. They don't call it an elite education for no good reason.
Remember:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
As far as Michelangelo, I believe he worked on commission.
-Get rid of *all* the acronyms, buzz words, hot concepts. NCLB. Differentiated Learning. These things mean nothing in the real world. They don't return education to the way it was from 1900 to the 1970's/mid 80's, where education actually paid off for people, and they could build lives from it. It can't be a gamble anymore or a "maybe".
-Get rid of at least a 1/3 of the bloat in the dept of education, top administrators, etc. You can't get great results from such an out of control, bloated bureaucracy. There has to be much more local control. Parent control must be first. Then *way* on down the line are the testing companies, SAT prep companies, school officials, administrators.
-There needs to be a RADICAL shift in middle school. Instead of funneling everyone into this narrow band of college bound achievers...break it up into the top 10-15%, then top 25 (college bound), vocational/technical. End all of the name calling, labeling, and negative influences at middle school (i.e. you're not called a loser in highschool if you don't go onto college). K-6 provides a good foundation of the basics...reading, writing, math. But then more individuality is needed in grades 7-8. Individuality, self reliance, self indepedence, these are the things that should be taught in 7-8. Then you go from that into highschool.
One of the reasons so many hate highschool is that there's nothing to springboard from. Some subjects should be taken with extreme care, like math, which really screws you up if you dont get it early. Alot more work should be given to teaching math. Too many people are rushed through it and tripped up.
-At least 1/2 of the highschool cirriculum should be foreign/globally based. Basing everything around the US is irrelevant in 2010. Instead of banging out multiple choice tests, students should be banging out important answers about the world.
Why did GM go out of business? Boom, boom, boom. You hit 5 or 6 key concepts. Bloat. Improved foreign competition. Students don't understand concepts that shape the world.Just memorizing answers for multiple choice tests isn't going to do anyone any good.
How did Bernie Madoff scam so many people? Wall St greed, history repeats itself, wall street crooks in the 20's and 30's. I dont think highschool teaches how history can repeat itself.
I think schools could produce a lot of sharp thinkers at the end, with all these concepts in your head...the austrian school of economics, keynsian, different pyschological principles. You become a much better thinker when you start debating and evaulating concepts.
How did Obama become the first black POTUS? That seemed impossible 10-20 years ago. Demographic shifts, larger gen x and y turn out, shifting racial attitudes, shifting economy.
Do we need a Federal Reserve? Are they ruining the economy? Run through the history of Central Banking, the history of Federal Reserve Chairman, gold standard vs fiat currencies. These kinds of debates might get students more involved in politics in their 20's and 30's if they understood what was going on. I think one of the reasons young people don't vote (age 18-35), they dont know whats going on. Schools produced too many passive people in the last 30 years.
-Get rid of *all* the acronyms, buzz words, hot concepts. NCLB. Differentiated Learning. These things mean nothing in the real world. They don't return education to the way it was from 1900 to the 1970's/mid 80's, where education actually paid off for people, and they could build lives from it. It can't be a gamble anymore or a "maybe".
-Get rid of at least a 1/3 of the bloat in the dept of education, top administrators, etc. You can't get great results from such an out of control, bloated bureaucracy. There has to be much more local control. Parent control must be first. Then *way* on down the line are the testing companies, SAT prep companies, school officials, administrators.
-There needs to be a RADICAL shift in middle school. Instead of funneling everyone into this narrow band of college bound achievers...break it up into the top 10-15%, then top 25 (college bound), vocational/technical. End all of the name calling, labeling, and negative influences at middle school (i.e. you're not called a loser in highschool if you don't go onto college). K-6 provides a good foundation of the basics...reading, writing, math. But then more individuality is needed in grades 7-8. Individuality, self reliance, self indepedence, these are the things that should be taught in 7-8. Then you go from that into highschool.
One of the reasons so many hate highschool is that there's nothing to springboard from. Some subjects should be taken with extreme care, like math, which really screws you up if you dont get it early. Alot more work should be given to teaching math. Too many people are rushed through it and tripped up.
-At least 1/2 of the highschool cirriculum should be foreign/globally based. Basing everything around the US is irrelevant in 2010. Instead of banging out multiple choice tests, students should be banging out important answers about the world.
Why did GM go out of business? Boom, boom, boom. You hit 5 or 6 key concepts. Bloat. Improved foreign competition. Students don't understand concepts that shape the world.Just memorizing answers for multiple choice tests isn't going to do anyone any good.
How did Bernie Madoff scam so many people? Wall St greed, history repeats itself, wall street crooks in the 20's and 30's. I dont think highschool teaches how history can repeat itself.
I think schools could produce a lot of sharp thinkers at the end, with all these concepts in your head...the austrian school of economics, keynsian, different pyschological principles. You become a much better thinker when you start debating and evaulating concepts.
How did Obama become the first black POTUS? That seemed impossible 10-20 years ago. Demographic shifts, larger gen x and y turn out, shifting racial attitudes, shifting economy.
Do we need a Federal Reserve? Are they ruining the economy? Run through the history of Central Banking, the history of Federal Reserve Chairman, gold standard vs fiat currencies. These kinds of debates might get students more involved in politics in their 20's and 30's if they understood what was going on. I think one of the reasons young people don't vote (age 18-35), they dont know whats going on. Schools produced too many passive people in the last 30 years.
I have wondered if that is not the unstated aim of NCLB.
I teach my students like this. It's how my favorite teacher taught. We discuss current events, this date in history, and the connections between everything. I use a lot of Socratic method in a quiz bowl style. My goal is to make sure they have the same background knowledge as the students in the elite schools. We cover history, geography, culture, science, and everything else. I show them a lot of images that I consider cultural icons: Chairman Mao, Gandhi, the Last Supper and other famous paintings. I just teach.
Fortunately, the subject I teach is an elective purportedly for college-bound students, so I have a lot of students who like this a lot. Unfortunately, the district puts everyone on a college-bound track unless their parents remove them, so I also have a lot of overage students (18+) with the skills of a fifth-grader who are not interested in anything but their social lives.
Many of these students are not really planning to do anything with their lives. The adults in their lives don't always have jobs. Many households have numerous unemployed adults hanging out socializing 24-7. Passive is an understatement. Oblivious seems to be more accurate.
You make some excellent suggestions. I especially hate cutesy names.
-Get rid of *all* the acronyms, buzz words, hot concepts. NCLB. Differentiated Learning. These things mean nothing in the real world. They don't return education to the way it was from 1900 to the 1970's/mid 80's, where education actually paid off for people, and they could build lives from it.
The acronyms and the buzz words are not the problem. They may or may not all vary in utility, but I agree they are not the solution, either.
The difference between the schools of 1900-1980 or so is the average intelligence of the teachers. It was far higher then than it is now - with the 70's/80's being the point of decline.
Everything else is just attempting to patch a problem that we, societally, have failed to admit, let alone address.
I have wondered if that is not the unstated aim of NCLB.
I teach my students like this. It's how my favorite teacher taught. We discuss current events, this date in history, and the connections between everything. I use a lot of Socratic method in a quiz bowl style. My goal is to make sure they have the same background knowledge as the students in the elite schools. We cover history, geography, culture, science, and everything else. I show them a lot of images that I consider cultural icons: Chairman Mao, Gandhi, the Last Supper and other famous paintings. I just teach.
Fortunately, the subject I teach is an elective purportedly for college-bound students, so I have a lot of students who like this a lot. Unfortunately, the district puts everyone on a college-bound track unless their parents remove them, so I also have a lot of overage students (18+) with the skills of a fifth-grader who are not interested in anything but their social lives.
Many of these students are not really planning to do anything with their lives. The adults in their lives don't always have jobs. Many households have numerous unemployed adults hanging out socializing 24-7. Passive is an understatement. Oblivious seems to be more accurate.
You make some excellent suggestions. I especially hate cutesy names.
Highschoolers should have at least 50-100 concepts bubbling in their head when they graduate.
When I went to school, graduated highschool in 96, we read anne frank, lord of the flies. I think Don Quixote. There were some really tough books, like 500 or 600 pages. Big books, with no context attached to them, make students hate reading. You get the cliff notes.
I remember that history class, I think 9th or 10th grade. The Don Quixote cliff notes were a hot item!
I think students reading skills get worn down if you're just reading a book to pass a test or get a grade. They don't want to read books after they get out of school, they got plenty of that in school.
I think a lot of traditional books in school are too abstract or irrelevant. They're basically thrown at you randomly, with no context or link from one another.
I dont remember many of the books I had to read, the concepts didnt sink in. Took 2 year of french, 2 years of spanish. Why, I dont know? Took econ. But it was charts and micro/macro. Very abstract. If you're not told why you're taking things, or why you're learning this, no wonder you get disinterested. Even for top students!
If the top 30% is disinterested, bored, the bottom is going to be beyond oblivious. I think a lot of the educational policies of the last 25-30 years have been aimed at making the bottom students beyond oblivious.
Why does the district put everyone on a college bound track? Why dont parents and familes have the first say, instead of the otherway around?
-Get rid of *all* the acronyms, buzz words, hot concepts. NCLB. Differentiated Learning. These things mean nothing in the real world. They don't return education to the way it was from 1900 to the 1970's/mid 80's, where education actually paid off for people, and they could build lives from it. It can't be a gamble anymore or a "maybe"
We shouldn't get too hung up on semantics. We had differentiation in the 50's & 60's..... it was called tracking. There were individual tracks, individual classrooms for the differentiated tracks. Now we teachers have to track or differentiate within one classroom! Call it whatever you like: levels; blue birds & red birds; turtles, rabbits & cheetahs; below, at, & above grade level. We have to teach to multifaceted levels. I have students in my class each year who do not even speak English. We have 90 different home languages in our district. Differentiation is not a dirty word; in fact, it's a necessity.
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I don't mind retakes to show you can pass a test but if you didn't study enough and got a B, I think the B should stay. My logic for retakes for failing students is that the objective is to learn the material. While I'd rather they did it the first time, I'll take it later. It's not like I'm giving them an A on the retake. I'm giving them a C-. Surprisingly, most don't do better the second time. They're always shocked. 
