[ExI] diversity and private schools

[painlord2k at libero.it]

Il 13/05/2009 6.05, Lee Corbin ha scritto:
> BillK wrote:


>> "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man" is the
>> motto of the Jesuits. Jesuit schools are usually boarding schools to
>> reduce the influence of parents and the outside world.

Remember that you are discussing places and times where there was not 
mass transportation at cheap prices. So it was not easy to travel even 
for few miles every day. Or the school was in a major city or it was 
difficult to have it large enough to make economic sense. I suppose they 
were often located in some Jesuits convent, so this also ask for a place 
large enough to host a convent.

> But it was never like that the Jesuits didn't
> have a lot of government support. You're speaking
> of episodes of history in which any kind of
> schooling for the masses not only was not wealth-
> creating, but would have been forbidden anyway
> (unless it happened to keep to the line of the
> government/religious majorities of the day).

The Jesuits had a lot of government support (and hate) because they were 
good at what they did. Chinese asked Jesuits to cast cannons for them in 
the XVI century, because they didn't know how to do it. They were so 
good that some were in use until late XIX century. The problem is they 
are too much good at what they do.

Then, I must disagree with the fact that mass schooling was not wealth 
creating. Mass schooling was wealth creating already in the Middle Age 
and it happened in the Middle Age. Rodney Star citing Spufford write 
that, from a statistic, in the 1338 in Florence near half of the school 
age population went to school. And the level of instruction of the 
people in Venice, Genoa and Milan was similar. The schooling was needed 
and requested by the local merchants and producers. The standardization 
of the schooling was so good that so many diaries, documents, business 
records are written with similar calligraphy (compare them with today 
attitude with lazy and near illegible calligraphy by physicians and others).

Half of the population of a city is "mass schooling" for me. The problem 
was that 90% of the population lived outside the cities. But given the 
numbers in the main city, I believe that a large part of the people know 
how to read and write and compute at a basic level. They would probably 
learn it in an informal way.


> You will rejoice that indeed, at present, the people
> you agree with for the most part have the government
> power. You'll switch sides expediently enough, I
> reckon, if the tables are turned.

No difference here.
When they are the government all is good, all work well.
Before and after it is only hell.

> Shall we not try to find a principle here?




> How
> about the one that got the west into riches:
> let a thousand flowers bloom (even if that phrasing
> was co-opted by a certain someone else).

He was interested in cutting them out after the blooming.
We are interested in let them growing if they are not harmful to others.



> Clearly, if the people are going to be rotten enough
> to want for the most part to do things you don't
> like individually, then they'll be just as likely
> to do things you don't like collectively.

Or, as Mises wrote:
>> It is not mankind, the state, or the corporative unit that acts,
>> but individual men and groups of men, and their valuations
>> and their action are decisive, not those of abstract collectivities.
>> Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 153



> It also seems to me that you focus overly much on
> very small groups, e.g., schools that would turn
> out professional criminals, or schools that would
> turn out terrorists. Do I sense a subconscious
> need for uniformity?




>> A 'market' has to have a minimum standard to attain and a supervisory
>> administration to stop wrong behaviour. Just like any market, from
>> street markets to Wall Street (we can wish!).

> Yes, a rather totalitarian control is absolutely
> needed to stop all wrongdoing. Mao did manage to
> end prostitution, drug use, and other vices in all
> Chinese cities. But no one, least of all the
> Chinese, would today argue that it was worth it.

Did he really do it? ;-)



> The wrongdoing that needs attention from government
> is that which has effects far, far beyond their
> numbers. So we have laws to protect the weak or
> innocent from the strong or wicked.





> As with so many things, imagining all the things
> that could go wrong in some particular private
> school is relatively easy, while imagining the
> great good that would come about in the myriads
> by individualization is much more difficult. It
> can rarely be done well except by analogy:

Well, a bigger sponsor of public schooling was Hitler, that was a 
socialist. We know how good he did and how successful he was in teaching.

> Aren't we grateful that supermarkets are free to
> innovate and explore new possibilities, and to
> cultivate those world-wide sources of least price?
> Imagine what they'd be like if government run (as
> they were in the USSR), and people were chanting
> "food delivery is too important to be left to the
> free market!".

Let look at the leftist politicians supporting of public schooling and 
where they send their children:

1) They send their children in public schools in wealthy neighbours 
where poor people can not send their children.

2) They send their children in private schools

Anyone know a successful politician that send his/her children to a 
crime ridden / low standard school?

Mirco



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