Private Sector Education vs. Government Monopoly Education

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Shade, Feb 18, 2010.

  1. Sweden has the best education system in the world.

    It's solely payed with public funds.

    The US has a very different situation, no doubt, but once again, isn't this subject too complex and demands too many sources and less opinions?

    I think so. Private education is for the wealthy. Consequently, I disagree.

    Elend.
     
  2. I'm not down for anything that makes you wear a uniform and doesn't pay you for it.
     

  3. Oh i don't know, i kinda like uniforms;)
     
  4. I know its politics and all but...



    [​IMG]
     
  5. I really don't get it. The majority of the poorest children in third world areas go to private school. How does that make private school exclusive to "rich elite". Again, this assertion is fallacious. Why is that so hard to come to terms with.

    A = A. A does not equal B, no matter how much you think it does.

    Who judges what is best or better? The individual. There's no set standard or rule by which to judge a teacher or even a job. Some teachers may value the higher wage more than anything else--are those really the teachers you want teaching you anyhow? Other teachers may value the actual action of teaching, or perhaps there's a certain subject or curriculum they'd rather teach, or perhaps there's certain extracurricular considerations to make which they value above a few extra thousand dollars a year.

    A great teacher for one student may be a terrible teacher for another student. This idea that everything is definitively, universally, and objectively valued the same way across the board is absurd.

    What points? The only 'point' I see being made is "OMG RICH ELITES!!" which apparently isn't a point at all in the reality of a situation. If a majority of the poorest children in third world areas are being sent to private school as opposed to public school, that means that this whole "rich elite" argument is simply untrue.

    When you consider the fact that "rich elites" comprise a minority of any society, anywhere, you have to also consider the extensions of that fact--the majority of those societies are comprised with either middle-class citizens or lower-class citizens. Thus, it stands to reason that there would be a higher demand for middle-class schools in a privatized system, and therefore more middle-class schools than "rich elite" schools. Will "rich elite" schools still exist? Probably. Why shouldn't they, if there's demand for them? I'm sorry we can't all attend Harvard or Yale or Princeton or any of these other ivy league schools (cry more)... But does the existence of these ivy league schools undermine other universities of respectable standing? No.

    Source? And by what standard?

    Except... it's not.
     
  6. Who said private schools are for the rich indeed because i clearly say in the part of my post you didn't fish that the UK is trialing the system so i'm left wondering what you are going on about, especially when the thread started by you is centered on the USA.
    As to who decides the best teachers are, well i'd guess that would be the kids and you would see that from the grades they got in that class. As the UK has league tables for schools it is easy to see which areas perform well and poaching has already been an issue over here.

    Deal struck to stop UK poaching teachers - Education News, Education - The Independent

    As to the rest of your post if the only point you can see being made is as you say 'OMG RICH ELITES' then it is because your mind is closed to any opinion other than your own.
     
  7. Yes, yes... It's MY mind that's closed. That must be it. :rolleyes:
     
  8. #28 Indica Kid, Feb 19, 2010
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 20, 2010
    Hey Shade,

    I think I'll probably be the only one in this thread to have a legitimate discussion with ya. So I'm not too well informed on the issue of education, but I do have a base knowledge and have some questions for ya.

    The idea of a federally run school program MIGHT work out in a country the size of Rhode Island (as it has worked relatively well in some smaller nations like Sweden), but because our nation spans both cultural, industrial and agricultural differences, a cookie cutter school program is bound from the start to fail miserably. I think we can both agree on that.

    Now we can take it into the 10th amendment ball-field; state-run school systems. We're slightly leveling the playing field by bunching like areas and making the size a bit more manageable/modifiable. While I think that in concept you could make this work, there is one fundamental flaw that, especially right now, leaves it prone to federal control: the lack of responsibility in state spending. "No Child Left Behind" illustrated this better than I ever could. What we see is the federal government imposing grossly inefficient regulation because they still hold the proverbial "purse strings". These regulations undeniably have lead to: teaching to the test, teachers/districts cheating on tests, states "dumb-ing down" their tests, poor teachers being passed around till they land in poor school districts, etc etc etc.

    So then we take it all the way into private industry. The fundamental flaw I see with running private schools (and I very well could be wrong) is that because wealth is divided so unevenly in regard to geographic and populous areas, I could see poor private schools having to go without technology or putting far more kids per classroom than is really viable. Now shade you seem like a pretty sharp dude who has had several more years of study than myself so I would really appreciate it if you'd point out any fundamental flaws I am assuming here.

    This is why I tend to favor the Friedman "voucher" idea in which a parent can put their child in whichever school they want and the school will receive a set amount of money per student. Yes it is redistribution of wealth *gasp* but I dont really see any other way around it, if you completely privatize education, you'd have whole areas that just have REALLY shitty schools.

    The problem I see with the voucher method is that it still leaves the system prone to government regulation, in that the government would still inevitably say "you must do x y and z to get money"; we've seen how poorly the results are from state run testing. I dont think any case can be made for government mandated/instated/created tests because the two most successful standardized tests out there are, you guessed it, the privately run SAT and ACT. I think that in the absence of mandatory state tests, private lower-education testing agencies would spring up and quickly gain reputations as good or bad, the good ones growing widespread while the bad ones fade and die out.

    People against the privatized system will be quick to point out that in order to find out initially if a school or testing agency is well run, we must have a few "casualties". I would thoroughly agree with this statement, that doesn't mean that it is worse than the system we have now. You'd be hard pressed to find a system with more casualties, more spending, and more abuses of power than the one we have right now.

    Shade, I agree with most of the logistical aspects of having a privatized school system, but the fundamental piece of the argument that I don't yet understand is how you would prevent whole areas from going without school or having shitty schools with no technology and poor teaching materials.
     
  9. Yeah, that's why the Swedish argument doesn't really hold weight with me. Sweden is a small community compared to the US, and as you mentioned is not nearly as diverse in terms of cultural demographics. This is actually a common refutation to the idea that "if it works in Sweden it should work here" with regard to schooling.

    It's worth mentioning that the 10th amendment grants unexpressed powers to either the states or the people. And I think the reasoning for that distinction is important. And yes, "No Child Left Behind" is a proven, abysmal failure, and just another example of gross government inefficiency and incapability.

    I hold no illusions about the fact that in a purely privatized schooling market, there would definitely be various differences between each class of school, and even difference withing the same class of schools. But I really don't believe the cheaper, or lower class, schools will be grossly inadequate for several reasons.

    1. With purely government funding comes government control. We're seeing examples of this even now as Obama implements his "spending freeze" which partly consists of cutting educational funding. Or we can also look at this from a health angle, with M. Obama's new food prohibition initiative. These schools now have to forcibly scale back on resources, ranging from teachers to equipment to books, because the government decided to cut spending. As for the food prohibition, fund raising efforts in the form of bake sales may very well be eliminated, or at the very least, suffer a tremendous blow--which is the primary source of funding for the extracurricular activities of many, many schools.

    If these schools were privatized, they'd have much better and efficient management of available funds and budgeting, and they'd certainly not randomly obfuscate one of their primary sources of extracurricular income.

    2. To come back to government inefficiency; it is approximated in a report (which I linked just the other day in another thread, I'll see if I can track it down again) that for every dollar of public welfare the government spends, 70 cents of that dollar is absorbed before it reaches its destination, leaving a total of 30 cents of every dollar spent on welfare actually reaching the intended recipients. A 70/30 split.

    In another study from 2004, though admittedly this study deals exclusively with government expenditure on health care services, the government typically spends 3 times as much as they get back in health care goods and services; the remaining two thirds likely being absorbed in the same way the 70% above is absorbed through government inefficiency. There's no reason to believe, as far as I know, that this same deficiency does not take place in education expenditures as well.

    But then, this makes sense, from a certain angle. Government isn't in the business of making profits, or having a balanced budget. Quite the contrary, Keynesian economics (which is what the government operates on), calls for consistent deficit spending.

    Private industry does not operate in the same way at all, which is why the efficiency gap is generally closed in the private sector. The private sector is interested in making profits, and thus they will subsequently make better use of the money spent to deliver goods and services to the consumer. So considering this, I think it is more than safe to say that while there will still be some variance between different classes and types of schools, schools will not be overwhelmed by despotism of any kind.

    Further, we have to remember these are private schools tasked with meeting consumer demands. If the school is not providing necessary resources or adequate environments for the purpose of education, consumers will simply stop purchasing their educational services for their children in favor of sending their children to another competing school. Thus, schools will necessarily have to operate efficiently and adequately, even amongst the lower classes, to stay in business, let alone keep up with competition.

    I think the voucher idea may be a good stepping stone to a larger, more reform-oriented goal, but I wouldn't settle on this for any extended period of time, personally. I could see some negative externalities arising from this system while schooling is still controlled by the government as you go on to mention.

    This is a reasonable assumption, and I don't personally see any reason why this wouldn't happen; though this would necessarily require that not only the federal government was out of the schooling industry, but the states would also have to largely withdraw from it as well.

    "Growing pains" will be an invariable given in any sort of reform; things typically get worse before they get better. The issue now is that we've been dealing with perpetual pains without any growth--due to the state.

    Economic reform would be no different. The talking heads and political frontmen claim that had we not bailed out all these big banks, we'd have been in a dire situation--what they fail to realize is that dire situation is going to come one way or another, and it is in fact necessary to endure for the sake of economic reform. The hole has been dug too deep, and the longer and deeper we keep digging, the more painful the eventual correction will be.

    This same logic applies to many types of reform; though I will say it may be possible to guard against some of these "growing pains" if a clear and definitive path to reform is set and executed properly. But this is never the case, our politicians, being short-term, are more interested in short-term bandaid fixes and applications and not long-term reform.

    It's really a simple question of demand, as I touched on earlier. If there is demand for a current good or service which can be offered in the private sector, and if that demand is enough to justify investing in the necessary capital to deliver those goods or services to satisfy the demand, the demand will be satisfied to one degree or another.

    Look at higher education, for example. I'm currently taking classes in community college, which is the proverbial low-rung of the ladder when it comes to higher education. Incredibly cheap, and only good for certifications and associates degrees. But it's still more than adequate. I didn't have the grades to go to a big university (a side effect of going to a grand total of two weeks out of your entire senior year in HS), but I'm ok with that even though I do want to pursue a greater degree when I'm done with community college. I have a 4.0 GPA atm. My CC has some great teachers, some great programs and departments, and tons of students... It's not perfect; I may not be getting an ivy league education right now, but I'm also not paying for one either.

    After CC you have more specialized institutions: technical colleges. I hear many good things about these as well.

    Then you have the middle-class universities.

    Then you have the specialized universities, like Full Sail--which I hope to get into after I'm done with CC.

    Then you have the ivy league.

    Plenty of diversity to meet the demands of different incomes and different valuations of education.

    Why wouldn't it work for lower education as well?
     
  10. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypeRphyB2Os]YouTube - John Stossel - 2010-02-18 - Part 1 of 6: Teachers' Unions and US Education[/ame]

    [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogo_c0Lvask&feature=related]YouTube - John Stossel - 2010-02-18 - Part 2 of 6: Teachers' Unions and US Education[/ame]

    [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_dYsOnW68A]YouTube - John Stossel - 2010-02-18 - Part 3 of 6: Teachers' Unions and US Education[/ame]

    [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HET-NVBSsjk&feature=related]YouTube - John Stossel - 2010-02-18 - Part 4 of 6: Teachers' Unions and US Education[/ame]

    [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_fvkSV5r9Q&feature=related]YouTube - John Stossel - 2010-02-18 - Part 5 of 6: Teachers' Unions and US Education[/ame]

    [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCxuP2-8PR8&feature=related]YouTube - John Stossel - 2010-02-18 - Part 6 of 6: Teachers' Unions and US Education[/ame]

    :smoking:
     
  11. crap, videos no longer work
     
  12. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q97tFyqHVLs]YouTube - ‪Noam Chomsky speaks at UTSC on Academic Freedom and the Corporatization of Universities.‬‏[/ame]

    Sorry guys but fuck everything about privatizing the school system.
     
  13. Fuck, I thought Shade was back.

    Damn you thread-necro'ing bastards!
     
  14. Compulsary education should be mandatory, i think. Government education? I dont think so. It should be available nationwide but private education should be far more accessable because right now it further perpetuates the rich get rich and poor stay poor system. Homeschooling is sketchy to me cuz in some places they teach creationism biology and shit. i feel bad for the kids. Im not very knowledgable about home schooling tho so idk.
     
  15. #35 Arteezy, Jul 2, 2011
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 2, 2011
    What's so bad about privatizing the school system? Competition? Allowing people to choose what school they (or their children) attend (or don't attend)?

    Forgive me for not listening to Chomsky's 90 minute talk. I don't really take him seriously anymore.

    Remember that within a "private" or "privatized" system, there can still be communities with "public" school systems where taxes fund the "public" schools. The difference is that no one is forced to participate in these communities with taxes and public schools just because they live within a territory with an area in excess of several hundred thousand square miles.
     
  16. Personally, I don't believe in doing away with public schools. But the system needs some serious reforms. Dumping unfair union protections and allowing more competition for state funds (for voucher systems) would help.

    I spent time in both public and private institutions learning. Earlier on I was in private schools and I moved towards public schools for college. I wish I had stayed in the private system.

    This Stossel piece chronicles and highlights the inefficiency of public schools, and how private schools operating on a fraction of a public school's budget, produces smarter students:

    [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx4pN-aiofw]YouTube - ‪Stupid in America‬‏[/ame]
     
  17. I can' really complain with my education. Though I'll say it wasn't great.

    It should be noted that the literacy rate in this country was deplorable before public schools.
     
  18. I'm not sure what exactly this adds. Literacy rates don't really mean much in this day and age and as far as I can tell this is a discussion on schooling in the present-day, not 100+ years ago. I'm not even convinced that they meant a lot back "before public schools". Remember, correlation doesn't imply causation.
     
  19. when i was in high school i got so pissed about having to go and get indoctrinated with shit i new was false, almost daily
    som sophomore year i started dual enrollment where i'd go one day to the local high school and one day to governments online indoctrination, k12
    and then my senior year i said, the hell with this bullshit and did most of my classes via freedom project, a private online school that focus' on constituional studies, etc
    and then one class with k12 somply because i couldn't find it elsewhere
    for all our money we put in it, we put put more than almost every other ocuntry in the world into education, we are still only 23rd in the world for test scores, so it's obviously not working very well
    besides being ineffective, the whole system bothers me a lot because
    1) governemnts as a whole throughout history have always eventually taken freedoms from the governed until there is no more to take, all have done so through re education of some form, so the fact that the government is even INVOLVED in education is scary, if they can control what we are taught, then how the hell do we defend our liberty
    the first thing that hitler and stalin both did was rewrite history to fit their agenda, something that may well be happening now, all they have to do is change a few small things every generation and when kids tell their parents most will be, well i thought it was this but you know its been a while, maybe you're right, before you know it, our freedoms may be gone completely
    2) IT'S NOT "FREE" I DON'T KNOW ANY TEACHERS WHO WORK FOR FREE, AND SINCE THEY ARE GETTING PAID, THAT MONEY MUST COME FROM SOMEWHERE, AND GUESS WHERE THAT IS? YOUR POCKET, MY POCKET, THE LITTLE OLD LADY DOWN THE STREET WHO CAN'T AFFORD GROCERIES BECAUSE SHE IS TOO HEVILY TAXED AND HER RETIREMENT MONEY'S ALL GONE, WE ARE PAYING FOR OUR CHILDREN TO BE INDOCTRINATEDits paid for wiht tax dollars, or as i like to call it stolen money
    this money is taken by force, like a schoolyard bully, if you don't pay up you face prison, lack of privacy fro mthe IRS, and possibly more serious consequences, if thats not bullying me out of my money, i don't know what is
    3) societal issues spread more quickly, higher levels of unreasonable drug ABUSE, less responibility as a whole, increased abortions, more people who are not only permiscuous(sry for the spelling) but are turning to the same sex for pleasure, and more and more problems that would exist regardless but i beleive they are increased through the influence children get through public schools(now i'm not trying to start anything or be a dick to anyone on this site, this is simply observation)

    i wholeheartedly beleive that with out this education system, we would have many mroe freedoms than we currently do
     
  20. #40 MasterShake2153, Jul 2, 2011
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 2, 2011
    You can't degrade the public education system without noting it's merits.
    less than 50% of our population could read before our government started mandating education.
    I don't see why you say literacy rates don't mean much. In every part of the world literacy rates and poverty are very closely correlated. You should know that it is practically impossible to prove causation in the real world too than.
    Also, what makes you think we are any different than our ancestors?
     

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