[extropy-chat] Re: Public Schools

[Technotranscendence]

On Monday, January 19, 2004 11:58 PM Olga Bourlin fauxever at sprynet.com
wrote:
>> I have never met a homeschooled individual
>> who wasn't a success, though I admit that I've
>> only met a few.
>
> And what do you mean by "success?"  A happy
> person?  A rich person?  A professional person?
>  A compassionate person?  A creative person?
> A responsible person?  A person who grows up
> to be a "home-schooler" (in which case, who gets
> to pay for that person to be able to stay home)?  A
> person who grows up to be a critical thinker (in
> which case, all those religious home schoolers
> are not doing their job, tsk, tsk ...)?
>
> I'm curious - since you brought it up, Dan - what, in
> your view, is a "successful" person?

Happy and pursuing their personal goals.  I've only known a handful of
homeschooled people.  (You were probably expecting me to say they were
wealthy, right?)  I don't personally know any homeschooled person who
has gone on to homeschool his or her children, but that's because the
few homeschooled people I do know are in their teens or twenties.

BTW, I don't know any religious homeschoolers -- not on a personal
level.  My personal sample, as I've pointed out, is biased.  After all,
I believe about 50% of all homeschoolers are religious.  Of course,

>>> My point was that the public school system
>>> must be there as an option as well since
>>> there are many who either can't or won;t
>>> home-school.
>>
>> So the only choice for you is homeschool or
>> send them to public school?  What about
>> private schools or no schooling?
>
> No schooling?  Would this one of the libertarian
> solutions for humankind?  *No schooling?*

I'm just listing all the options.  I know that "no schooling" as an
option is taboo, so perhaps you should not think the unthinkable.  It
hurts, so get that unpleasant thought out of your head -- even if a good
portion of the world's population currently makes it to productive
adulthood without schooling and if this was the condition of humankind
for almost all of its existence.

Also, I do not speak for all libertarians any more than you speak for
all people of your political persuasion.

> Wow, are libertarians typically (1) childless?

I don't know the statistics on libertarians.  I am childless, but that's
because I'm gay.  I, however, know many libertarians who have children,
all of whom school their children.

> or do they (2) stay home from work to watch
> over their unschooled children? ... and party
> like it's 1955? ... no, no, no - make that 1655,
> as public schools of sorts go back a long way
> in our history:
> http://www.goodschoolspa.org/students/index.cfm?fuseaction=history)

Actually, if you read the timeline you sent, you'd see that it wasn't
until the last half of the 19th century that public schooling really got
under way.  It mentions that it wasn't until 1852 that the
"Massachusetts legislature enacts the first compulsory education law
requiring every child to get an education."  That would only apply to
one state.  NY followed, but it wasn't until after the Civil War that it
really got under way -- partly, no doubt, to teach that the Union Cause
was right in the South.  (See _The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham
Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War_ by Thomas J. DiLorenzo.)

>> Wrong.  How did people learn these
>> things before public education?  They
>> learned them because there was an
>> incentive for it.  In a modern economy
>> with the need for these skills, I reckon
>> the incentive will even be stronger to
>> acquire these skills.  I've known illegal
>> aliens who acquire English skills and
>> the like for similar reasons.
>
> A lot of people didn't learn.  Some
> people were *not allowed* to learn.

Of whom do you speak?  If you mean Blacks who were not permitted to
learn to read and write, true, but then this was the government
preventing them.  Laws were passed.  What about the rest of humanity?
It wasn't like people were illiterate and stupid until public schools
came along.  In fact, to stick to America, during its War of
Independence, it was considered the most literate nation on the planet.
America had few public schools at that time.

>> Get rid of it and then there will be no
>> option to live off the productive.
>
> Live off the productive?

Whoa!  If you live off the public dole that means someone else is paying
for you.  You are not being productive, but someone else has to be
productive.  Let me clarify this.  Imagine Joe is living off the public
dole.  He does not work, but he eats, has a roof over his head, buys
clothes, watches TV, etc..  He does this because other people pay taxes
so he can eat, have a roof over his head, etc.  If, say, those other
people all decided to stop paying taxes -- let's say every last one of
them, all of society -- decided they too would live off the dole, then
there would be no dole.  Joe would not have food, a home (well, not for
long), clothes -- unless he started doing something productive.

> People exhibit an array of predispositions.
> Some people are dynamic - some people
> are passive.  Not all people turn out to be
>  "productive" (whatever that means).

I only mean people who produce through work.  If such people did not
exist -- if everyone just hung out all day watching DVDs or strumming
guitar, eventually there would be no stuff to consume.  Imagine the
above example.  Everyone stops working and doesn't do some other
productive activity -- no farming, no pumping oil, no making trinkets,
no whatever -- soon all of us would consume the food, oil, etc. and
things would start to fall apart.

> What do you propose to do with
> "unproductive" people?

I know where you're heading with this.  My point was to get rid of the
public dole.  Get rid of it.  If you want to help people out who are
unproductive -- feeding, clothing, sheltering them, or giving them
money -- fine.  Do it.  Don't force others to.

> People - for whatever complicated reasons
> - are *not* all alike, but all people need a
> few basic things to be able to survive and
> thrive.  Can libertarians deal with this fact?
> How *do* libertarians deal with this fact?

See above.  The libertarians I know, including myself, are not against
charity or helping others.  I am against, however, forcing people to
help others.  The "libertarian solution" is to not have the government
do this and to have all of it done voluntarily.

>>  In truth, though, if you allow people to voluntarily
>> interact, they generally will improve their lot.
>
> Really?  I haven't seen much evidence of that in
> recent U.S. history.  And Martin Luther King's
> words (from his 1963 Letter From Birmingham
> Jail) still ring true today:
>
> "Freedom is never voluntarily given by the
> oppressor, it must be demanded by the
> oppressed."

Did you read my statement above?  People "voluntarily interact[ing]" are
free.  What do you have in mind?  What do you mean by freedom?  People
forced to interact?

> Remember, libertarians did not improve their ... or
> anyone else's - "lot" during the civil rights era.

I'm not sure about this.  First, there were few libertarians during that
time.  The wider libertarian movement we have today was in its infancy.
(I wasn't even born yet, so don't blame me.:)  Second, it's debatable
what was achieved during and after the Civil Rights Era.  Creating an
even bigger welfare state does not seem to have solved much -- save for
waste a lot of tax money while improving few people's "lot."  Third, a
lot of the problems were government caused.  Jim Crow laws and the like
were _laws_ -- not free market phenomena.  You might do well to read
Thomas Sowell's _Preferential Policies: An International Perspective_.
Sowell details how such laws needed to be put into place because freely
interacting people did things like trade with other races.

> I would like to believe:  "if you allow people
> to voluntarily interact, they generally will
> improve their lot," but would like to see
> evidence of this.

The history of humanity.  Where people are more free, they tend to be
more prosperous.  Let me turn the question on you, where's your evidence
for people being forced into improving their lot?  (And by whose
measure?  People pursuing their happiness is freedom, no?  People
coerced into some social engineering scheme is not, right?)

Cheers!

Dan
  See "The Hills of Rendome" at:
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/Rendome.html