School for poor kids??

Reply

mr_anonymous replied on Fri, Nov 7 2008 2:29 PM

rated by 0 users

Donny with an A:

S'ok, I lived with a Chem-E in college, and so hung out with a bunch of his engineering friends pretty regularly; great people, those ones.  They do love their math, though.

Haha, its true..

Reply

MacFall replied on Sat, Nov 8 2008 8:55 PM

rated by 0 users

Rubén:

And what is the point of having so many people in the workforce by age 15?

Expanding the division of labor, which is an important factor in economic development. And enabling people who are capable of producing something (and so desiring) to choose to do so, instead of incarcerating them in compulsory education which may or may not benefit them.

That would increase the rate of unemployment

Why would you assume that? Unemployment is the result of state-imposed regulation for some and privilege for others. It is not a feature of a free market.

and it would deprive teens from a few years of extra education that would benefit them in the long run.

Could benefit them. Might. May. Not would. I can't speak for every victim student of compulsory schooling, but I didn't learn one thing that was useful to me until my 2nd year out of high school. Not one damn thing. The reading, writing, and arithmetic I know I learned before I went to school, and everything else occurred after my graduation - even the math, history, and language arts I now know. And the school which I attended is widely recognized as one of the best in the State.

I spent a year of my post-school life unlearning most of what was perpetrated upon my mind in school. The years following have been a sort of intellectual detoxification program for me, wherein I have learned how to think, how to reason, how to research, and most importantly, how to love learning.

I lost 12 years of my life to compulsory schooling. Don't tell me that if that period had been abbreviated that I would be any the worse for it, because my education didn't even begin until the summer after it ended.

But even placing all that aside, I still believe in freedom of choice. If a youth wants to work instead of learn, let him work. If he is old enough to carry out that decision, he is an adult - even if it is the wrong decision. It's nobody's business but his own.

Reply

thompsonisland replied on Sun, Nov 9 2008 10:23 AM

rated by 0 users

I have only scanned the replies, so my apologies if this is redundant.

Read your Gatto.  Yes, it's a bit of a slog, at times, but it will completely disabuse anyone of the notion that the government schools (and the private schools that mimic them) are meant to provide what we would consider an "education."  They are not evil, but they are not incompetent, either.  They are effectively pursuing the explicit social agenda of cultivating "well-adjusted" children, which certainly makes things much smoother for the little bureaucratic minds that wield enormous power when loosely agglomerated into that faceless entity: the state.  This is not conspiracy in the Dr. Evil sense, but rather the common pursuit of an openly-stated mission of academic institutions, public and private. 

Poor people have the MOST to lose from government schooling, because it is the most effective means of perpetuating class distinctions.  What does it mean to start work at 15?  It probably does NOT mean punching the clock for Carnegie or Ford, but mowing lawns, watching the neighbor's kids, working the farm - exactly the kind of entrepeneurial activity that BEST prepares a person for a rich life.  And the suggestion that poor people are incapable of taking responsibility for feeding eager minds is a basic bias that pervades the limousine liberal elite, simmering beneath the pc-exterior.  I wouldn't be surprised to learn, for instance, that Obama loathes the American blacks suffering in the ghettos - if he really identified with these people, really cared about them, wouldn't he end the War on Drugs, end the Imperial exercise that sweeps so many into its machine by cynically preying on their desire for a way out , end the War on Poverty which destroys their communities, end the labor laws which dramatically reduce their options for productive employment?

But I digress...Anyway, an end to government education would be the best thing that could happen to young folks, rich and poor.