[ExI] libertarians and inheritance

[Damien Broderick]

At 11:38 PM 5/10/2009 -0700, Lee wrote:

>Ever thought about what our
>education system would look like in
>twenty-five years or so if completely
>privatized (with, vouchers, say, for
>the time being, utilized)? The innovations
>dreamed up, and the customization to
>particular kids would become extraordinary.

I don't have to imagine it, I was "schooled" in a series of working 
class Catholic schools, paid for entirely privately, in the days 
before the Australian electorate agreed to give Catholics back some 
if not all the tax quantum they'd paid for education. Bad majority of 
bigoted voters, yes. But the private "education" I got was appalling, 
full of repression, ignorance and a measure of violence, sexually 
weird (all boys' schools, e.g.), incompetent. It might be retorted, 
"Oh, but look, you turned out okay, you have a doctorate and a bunch 
of books to your name." Not because of those schools, trust me. I 
turned out so academically fucked up at 17 that it took me 5 years to 
not quite get a degree (I caught up eventually); when I entered 
university I had *almost no cultural capital* outside a lot of rote 
instantly forgotten principal-exports-of-Peru crap and Irish Catholic 
godswallop. That's what "completely privatized" can do for a kid. At 
the age of 12 I was being treated as if my IQ was 50 or 60 points 
lower than it really was.

You can find awful tales of govt schools that are as dismal, I know. 
Barbara spent some time teaching allegedly ineducable kids and did so 
brilliantly with several of them that she was fired by the slackarse 
incumbents. It's a crap shoot, maybe. How marvelous to be raised in a 
$cientology school, say, or a madras. Right, so much more liberating 
than those statist govt schools.

Damien Broderick