Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Please kindly take the time and at least cite a quote or something from "Wealth of Nations" in which, Adam Smith, discusses the value of public school education. Can you do that much for me?
Can you do anything for yourself? Please open your copy of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, and refer to Book 5, Chapter 1, Part 3, Article II, entitled Of the Expense of the Institutions for the Education of Youth. Tell me if you see these words...
But though the common people cannot, in any civilised society, be so well instructed as people of some rank and fortune, the most essential parts of education, however, to read, write, and account, can be acquired at so early a period of life that the greater part even of those who are to be bred to the lowest occupations have time to acquire them before they can be employed in those occupations. For a very small expense the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education.
In the sections following, Smith will call for the establishment in every parish or district of a little school where the children of the common laborer might be taught for fees so small that any parent could afford it. All of this comes, of course, against the background of the times, wherein only the sons of rich families received any formal education at all, and that rather briefly by our standards. Smith himself had entered the University of Glasgow at a somewhat advanced age...fourteen. Per the above, Smith does intend that the salary of the tutors at these public schools should be paid in some small part by parents, so that they themselves might be invested in the project, and so that tutors might have an incentive to teach well. The balance needed to recruit and retain such tutors in their endeavors was to come from the public revenue. It would not be until 70 years after Smith's death that England would follow his advice and establish a system for universal public education, but there is little question over whether he favored the idea.
Now you, being as much brighter than the rest of us as you claim yourself to be, might have learned all this on your own. Somehow, you failed of accomplishing that. This is not the first such failure that has been noted...
How could a company stay in business that doesn't meet the needs of the parents, if the parents pay the salaries of the business, and there is competition?
The answer is that there will not be competition...corporate school operators will flee competition via consolidation. If privatized, K-12 education would become a multi-billion dollar market waiting to be gobbled up, a market in which consumers are compelled to consume by law. No one will choose to compete for this market. Competition is bad for profits. The slightly larger fish will gobble up the slightly smaller fish until at least local/regional oligopolies emerge. Unless re-regulated, these oligopolies will make all decisions regarding price and quality. Parents will retain control of pretty much nothing in this scenario.
Ok Mr. Doom & Gloom.... your crystal ball needs to be repolished. As long as the cost of entry remains low, there's nothing stoping competition. You continue to ignore that because it doesn't suit your end goal. I guess every business in America is owned by a multinational corporation because competition is bad. I suppose every private college or university is owned by a mega corporation as well, because there's so much money to be made in higher education...
Quote:
No doubt, but it has nothing to do with why the market went from hundreds of smaller outlets to a dozen or so much larger ones. Deregulation did that. Public schools are currently owned and operated by government. You can't get much more regulated than that. Privatization would be the deregulation of all deregulations. There are currently more than 15,000 locally elected school boards managing public K-12 education. Within a decade of privatization, you would be lucky to have 15 unelected corporate boards of directors making those decisions. Parental input? Forget about it.
And you can't get less competition than that. The thing you feel is bad, consolidation, already exists. Parental input today consists of elected leaders, and what's the percentage of people who vote in local elections? Voting in a free market occurs every time someone writes a check. Your statements all hinge on a weak argument that there would be no choice.
Quote:
The thread topic is about junking the public model and replacing it with a privatized system, and privatization very much does replace any interest in children with an interest in profits. The ability of corporations to dominate a mandated market will drive profit, not student outcomes or parental satisfaction. The all but guaranteed results of any privatization scheme are higher costs and lower performance.
Yes, profits are part of the equation... but part of the government equation is eliminating any competition... and it's done such a wonderful job at educating our youth that I would hate to see companies motivated to do a better job by profits. Why do I choose to do business with the vendors that I purchase goods and services from on a weekly basis? Because their profits rely on me being satisfied with either value or quality. The notion that the children are going to suffer because someone is making a profit is a farce, especially when that profit relies on customer satisfaction.
Okay, this was pretty funny, but thank you for posting an article, thats main point describes how government intervention has helped increase college tuition cost for consumers. Wow, another well informed poster thinks they're some how "showing me who is boss" by posting an article, that directly goes along with my position, which is anti-big government (eg government has no business intervening in certain aspects of peoples life.)
Old Gringo, great post and very funny. Anyway, do understand the point of the article? Okay, if you do, you must have realized my position on government interferring in the private market? Yes or No? If you understood those two things why would you post this article, than attempt to attack me when the article supports my position? Seriously, this might have taken the cake on how upstagging someone can quickly back fire and make you look extremely silly.
Yes, you called my bluff big time dude haha. You sure showed me who was boss by posting an article, that described how government intervention in the free-market via grants has added static to the information of price, which has given Universities the incentive to rapidly raise tuition prices haha. Okay, i needed that one thanks for the laugh.
Here's how it works OG
1. Colleges can rise price on students (because big government is subsidizing student to a greater extent then it should. All on the backs of tax payers)
2. College students reciving aid or grants from the Federal Government or State have no clue how much prices are rising, because they are not paying the cost directly, so they have no incentive to demand lower prices.
3. Colleges being smart business people realize they can take advantage of the free money (subsidies) given to their students by the government, so they continually increase price way beyond inflation. They are recieving an over supply of money for the gran programs, so why not raise the price of tution if our students are going to be subsidized at someone elses expense? No incentive for them to lower cost.
4. Government finally realizes, because they intervened to to such a great degree, they have helped escalate the cost of college tution. Remind you of the oil spike in the 1970's? If government would have allowed the free-market to function on its own with no susidies colleges in an effort to maintain students would have lowered prices to compete with other schools. Oh wait, as usual government now realizes the folly of their ways, so they blame colleges for taking advantage of their stupidity. Basically government flooded the education system with too much grant money, so it gave univeristies the incentive to raise prices and take advantage of the additional free money floating around. Blame government not Universities. I could not have found a better example of how government intervention in the free-market to a greater degree than needed has hurt consumers. Thanks Gringo for obviously unknowingly helping my position. I'll give you a rep point maybe hahaha, after i stop laughing. Thanks for calling me out bro!!
Yes Old Gringo you sure showed me!
Why don't you continue to show me please more articles, they just help support my position. I'd invite everyone to read OG's article. It is very similiar to Soko's article in which, complete blame is on the shoulders of big government, yet they blame the smart business people for taking advantage of inept government policies, management, and interference in the free-markets. Kudos!!!
So, you can read. That's good.
But you can't comprehend. That's not good.
It's obvious that you're not going to "discuss" the topic of your thread. You're just using it as an excuse to post insults and deflections. You've already been completely outclassed by a handful of posters on your own thread.
Well hey then, lets just fire all teachers and send kids to a building of books and say go figure some stuff out. I'm sure those kids don't need any help at all if teachers are so useless as you imply. That'd save a bunch money. Or lets just have each parent educate their child the amount they feel is necessary!
I realize this was meant to be sarcastic, but there are a lot of people who are reaching these same conclusions and aren't happy about it.
There are several books about the decline in our public schools and what some of the causes are.
Here's just a few:
The War Against Excellence: The Rising Tide of Mediocrity
("Yecke is a former U.S. Department of Education Commissioner for Minnesota. Her volume is the latest in a stream of books by a multitude of authors in recent years exposing unpleasant truths about government schools.
This stream is fighting a broader current. School districts and employee unions invest mightily in public relations to keep parents, taxpayers and politicians convinced that "public education" is doing wonderfully, but just needs more money. "The War Against Excellence" pulls back the curtain to reveal that over the last 20 years or so, middle schools — usually sixth grade to eighth grade — have been infested with an alarmingly anti-academic mindset.") The War Against Excellence [Michigan Education Report]
Angry Parents, Failing Schools
("Synopsis: Something's happening in our nation's schools. Test scores are down. Some students can't read, write, or do math. Angry parents are forming activist groups. Administrators are stonewalling. How did we get in this mess?") Amazon.com: Angry Parents, Failing Schools: Books: Elaine K. Mcewan
Class Warfare: Besieged Schools, Bewildered Parents, Betrayed Kids and the Attack on Excellence
("...offers a first-hand account of the Great American Education War being waged from coast to coast, including the reading wars, math wars, testing wars, and other schoolyard scuffles reported almost daily by the nation’s media. Martin Rochester takes the reader on a field trip that begins with his own upper-middle class suburban school district in St. Louis and then moves on to inner-city locales and some of the best private schools, in showing how “pack pedagogy†has steamrolled parent resistance in promoting disasters such as whole-language, fuzzy math, multiple intelligences theory, teacher-as-coach, the therapeutic classroom, and all the other latest fads found in today’s schools.
A college professor, Rochester became deeply involved in public education as a result of his children’s misadventures in the classroom. After several years of trying to improve the status quo as a dogged volunteer, he graduated from involved parent to informed critic of a system in which “progressive†educators continue to assault the techniques of traditional schooling (ability-grouping, grades, homework, etc), allow nonacademic diversions to crowd out academic study, and subordinate a commitment to excellence to an obsession with “equity.†As a result of his experiences, Rochester concludes that all children are being victimized, not only the most gifted, but especially “average†students and those lower achieving kids whose needs are now supposedly driving the entire curriculum.
Martin Rochester began as a concerned parent and wound up creating a fever chart of what is wrong in our nation’s classrooms.") Amazon.com: Class Warfare: Besieged Schools, Bewildered Parents, Betrayed Kids and the Attack on Excellence: Books: J. Martin Rochester
Ed School Follies: The Miseducation of America's Teachers
("In seeking reasons for the dismal state of contemporary education in the United States, Kramer focuses on teacher training. During the 1988-89 school year, she visited 14 schools of education in New York, Tennessee, Michigan, Southern California, Washington, and Texas, observing classes and interviewing students and professors. In this account, she concludes that most students are idealistic and eager, but are being misguided. She found students woefully ignorant of subject matter, while sometimes lacking in communication skills. Kramer maintains that new students are forced to abandon the instruction of information and knowledge in favor of theories in developing pupil self-esteem, indiscriminate passing, and reforming society. This will certainly be a controversial book. It presents a critical viewpoint and should be required reading for all school administrators, professors of education, prospective teachers, and concerned parents.") Amazon.com: Ed School Follies: The Miseducation of America's Teachers: Books: Rita Kramer
Parents who are actively involved and paying attention to what is going on in their children's education are becoming increasingly fed up with the status quo.
Can you do anything for yourself? Please open your copy of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, and refer to Book 5, Chapter 1, Part 3, Article II, entitled Of the Expense of the Institutions for the Education of Youth. Tell me if you see these words...
But though the common people cannot, in any civilised society, be so well instructed as people of some rank and fortune, the most essential parts of education, however, to read, write, and account, can be acquired at so early a period of life that the greater part even of those who are to be bred to the lowest occupations have time to acquire them before they can be employed in those occupations. For a very small expense the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education.
In the sections following, Smith will call for the establishment in every parish or district of a little school where the children of the common laborer might be taught for fees so small that any parent could afford it. All of this comes, of course, against the background of the times, wherein only the sons of rich families received any formal education at all, and that rather briefly by our standards. Smith himself had entered the University of Glasgow at a somewhat advanced age...fourteen. Per the above, Smith does intend that the salary of the tutors at these public schools should be paid in some small part by parents, so that they themselves might be invested in the project, and so that tutors might have an incentive to teach well. The balance needed to recruit and retain such tutors in their endeavors was to come from the public revenue. It would not be until 70 years after Smith's death that England would follow his advice and establish a system for universal public education, but there is little question over whether he favored the idea.
Now you, being as much brighter than the rest of us as you claim yourself to be, might have learned all this on your own. Somehow, you failed of accomplishing that. This is not the first such failure that has been noted...
Sangnista, great post! I'm sure I could read and debate whether he was talking about public school or private, but for now i'll just say thanks for posting the information. Anyway, i'm going to bow out of this forum. You know my position as well as other posters. I see no need in continuing to present it. Anyway happy posting who knows maybe we'll ended up in a thread where were actually agreeing on something. Um, I know my chances of winning a date with Jessica Alba are probably much better, but who knows, the world is round, so our ideological ships are bound to cross paths at some point. Later
The dumbing down of the curriculum is a significant factor in what has gone wrong in our country's K-12 education. Alarmingly, the dumbing down may have been intentional social engineering - not just to 'reach' the lowest common denominator, but to 'equalize' educational outcomes in order to equalize incomes with the end goal of redistributing our country's wealth.
This has happened under the ideology of social justice education and educators' desire to reform society into one in which nearly everyone's educational levels and income levels are equal so that privileged or disadvantaged members of society no longer exist.
In order for the vast majority to reach the same educational level, that level would have to be quite a bit below average so that much more than 50% of the population could realistically reach that educational level.
Where does the idea of equalizing educational outcomes come from?
Just two examples:
Education and Social Cohesion: Recentering the Debate, The Peabody Journal of Education, Vanderbilt University, 76(3&4), 1-6 (2001)
The premise is depicted (as Figure 1) in the Journal article as follows:
"Educational Outcomes Equality => Income Equality => Social Cohesion"
and explained as:
"Put simply, countries with education systems producing more equal outcomes in terms of skills and qualifications are likely to have more equal distribution of income, and this in turn promotes social cohesion."
and...
Professor Paul George (University of Florida) has stated that middle schools should become "the focus of societal experimentation, the vehicle for movement toward increasing justice and equality in the society as a whole... Schools are not about taking each child as far as he or she can go. They're about redistributing the wealth of the future." (emphasis mine)
Educators believe they are doing the right, moral, ethical thing by thwarting advanced students' efforts to develop their potential. They are convinced that it isn't fair or just that some students will be able to reach higher levels of achievement than others. Unfortunately this has resulted in our best students' lack of competitiveness with their international peers.
Educational leveling to promote income leveling to promote social cohesion. Noble intention, but what has gone horribly wrong in this 'social leveling' scheme is that the world has evolved into a global economy in which one's marketable skills are now facing worldwide competition in the global arena - and other countries' students are kicking our students' butts.
I thought this thread was primarily about Grade School, Middle Schools, High Schools - Public Schools. How did it morph into a discussion about colleges and universities - where there are a lot of private higher education centers already?
My question is - what is best for the CHILDREN??? Where can the CHILDREN get the BEST education?
It seems much of the discussion is about turf wars -
(1) What makes you think that our current system isn't mismanaged? Profit has nothing to do with it, a subsidized monopoly has everything to do with it. Theyr'e holding your money hostage with little recourse.
(2) What happens when you send your kid to XYZ Academy and you feel that their education is suffering because profit is a motivating factor beyond the education of your child? YOU MOVE THEM TO A DIFFERENT SCHOOL, one that better aligns with what you are looking to achieve.
(3) Why is there this huge misconception that the private sector is completely mismanaged?
(1) I've never said it wasn't. In fact, my position is that families have greater public school choice.
(2) Children can't be switched from school to school the way people switch banks or dry cleaners or internet service providers. Children need continuity in their daily, weekly and monthly education. They cannot and should not be subject to the whims of market forces.
(3) Because there is a wide variety of evidence that our private sector institutions are mismanaged in one form or another. Our automotive institution hemorrhages jobs; billions in profits; and devastates communities when they're in crisis. This is due to poor management, forethought and vision.
Our mortgage institution is in crisis--and as a result, so are Americans--due to mismanagement and corruption.
I could go on and on about the mismanagement of the institutions that matter most to Americans.
Thus, the private sector is NOT the sector to which we parents with children should turn over their education.
I thought this thread was primarily about Grade School, Middle Schools, High Schools - Public Schools. How did it morph into a discussion about colleges and universities - where there are a lot of private higher education centers already?
My question is - what is best for the CHILDREN??? Where can the CHILDREN get the BEST education?
It seems much of the discussion is about turf wars -
I think because the OP suggests that private sector grade schools could function like the private college and university system.
And while that's not the best thing for chidren, it's the best thing for political ideology.
I think because the OP suggests that private sector grade schools could function like the private college and university system.
And while that's not the best thing for chidren, it's the best thing for political ideology.
The way I look at things is, I don't give a damn about the teachers unions, the administrators per se - I do give a damn about the kids - and to me, whatever it takes to do the best for the kids - DO IT
Let me give you just one, currently on going, example:
There is a family we are working with who has a child with multiple mental and physical impairment. The public school he is "assigned" to (determined by residence) does not have the where with all to deal with him. BUT, they will bus him to another public school who can "handle" him - but, they are not fully equipped with educational methods to fully help him. PLUS, this school is some 15 miles away.
There is a private school that deals with children with this young mans disabilities a couple of miles away. What the parents have asked for, and so far been denied, is a voucher, to help defray the cost of sending their son to this specialized school. Make no mistake - the parents will be paying a lot out of their pocket as well.
Even though the school district will not have to bus this young man, will not have to "deal" with him - and even though the young man would get a better education for his needs - the district says "no can do".
The parents are going to litigate the issue - and they should not have to. There is every reason to believe that the parents will be successful. As a result, the taxpayers are also now going to have to foot the bill for the district to defend this suit and, assuming the parents are successful, pay damages as well.
My position is - give the parents the voucher! Let this child get the education he deserves!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
