US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1295

On September 17 2014 20:01 Velr wrote:
Basically every country whiteout a good apprenticeship programm that goes parallel to purely academic education.
France and Ireland come to my mind first (because i know these two), the UK and the US are probably the same.

Sure you can still achieve something whiteout getting a bachelor in these countries. But its way harder than it should be. There are miriads of children/young adults that are just fed up with School at the age of 15-20 and there has to be a way to still let them start a succesfull career whiteout making it unecessary difficult.
There are actually many "children" in switzerland that choose not to go for University and instead make an apprenticeship.

On September 17 2014 18:15 IgnE wrote:
The entire system of higher education in Germany has lost what matters most: the end as well as the means to the end. That education, that Bildung, is itself an end — and not "the Reich" — and that educators are needed to that end, and not
secondary-school teachers and university scholars — that has been forgotten. Educators are needed who have themselves
been educated, superior, noble spirits, proved at every moment, proved by words and silence, representing culture which has grown ripe and sweet — not the learned louts whom secondary schools and universities today offer our youth as "higher wet nurses." Educators are lacking, not counting the most exceptional of exceptions, the very first condition of education: hence the decline of German culture.

What the "higher schools" in Germany really achieve is a brutal training,designed to prepare huge numbers of young men, with as little loss of time as possible, to become usable, abusable, in government service. "Higher education" and
huge numbers — that is a contradiction to start with. All higher education belongs only to the exception: one must be privileged to have a right to so high a privilege. All great, all beautiful things can never be common property: pulchrum est paucorum hominum. What contributes to the decline of German culture? That "higher education" is no longer a privilege — the democratism of Bildung, which has become "common" — too common. Let it not be forgotten that military privileges really compel an all-too-great attendance in the higher schools, and thus their downfall. In present-day Germany no one is any longer free to give his children a noble education: our "higher schools" are all set up for the most ambiguous mediocrity, with their teachers, curricula, and teaching aims. And everywhere an indecent haste prevails, as if something would be lost if the young man of twenty-three were not yet "finished," or if he did not yet know the answer to the "main question": which calling? A higher kind of human being, if I may say so, does not like "callings," precisely because he knows himself to be called. He has time, he takes time, he does not even think of "finishing": at thirty one is, in the sense of high culture, a beginner, a child. Our overcrowded secondary schools, our overworked, stupefied secondary-school teachers, are a scandal: for one to defend such conditions, as the professors at Heidelberg did recently, there may perhaps be causes — reasons there are none.

On September 17 2014 12:28 Nyxisto wrote:
Practically speaking only the kids finishing first tier ("gymnasium") have the qualification to go to university. You can also study if you have learned a trade and a few years of experience, but most people who didn't get their qualification right away will just finish the last two years that you don't have at the two other school forms and get their qualifications that way.

I didn't look up the numbers but practically I guess it's rather unlikely that people who didn't go to the gymnasium right away will start to study.

Edit: @post above:

You basically finish four years of elementary school together with everybody else, then depending on your grades you'll have five years of education at one of the three different types of schools. (Hauptschule/Realschule/Gymnasium). The 'Hauptschule' was supposed to give you a practical education and ideally will lead to people learning a trade, but nowadays it doesn't serve any purpose anymore because the education is just really bad. The 'Realschule' is basically the same thing but a little more difficult, and the 'Gymnasium' is supposed to be the most difficult type with two/formerly three additional years to prepare you for college.

Also most states offer "one school solutions" where everything is combined under one roof. Also every state is a little different, but that's the general concept.

On September 18 2014 02:26 KwarK wrote:

We used a similar system in the UK postwar (not surprising because we created your system at the same time) but found that it quickly became favoured towards the top tier rather than being separate but equal options for children of different talents. Since then we went towards a one school for everyone system which is worse for the people who would have been top tier but better in terms of social mobility and using schools to breed common identity. Although the relationship between school zones and housing prices still lead to good schools and bad, as you'd expect.

Barack Obama applied the brakes to the most critical component of his climate change plan on Tuesday, slowing the process of setting new rules cutting carbon pollution from power plants, and casting a shadow over a landmark United Nations’ summit on global warming.

The proposed power plant rules were meant to be the signature environmental accomplishment of Obama’s second term.

The threat of a delay in their implementation comes just one week before a heavily anticipated UN summit where officials had been looking to Obama to show leadership on climate change.

In a conference call with reporters, the Environmental Protection Agency said it was extending the public comment period on the power plant rules for an additional 45 days, until 1 December.

The delay follows heavy lobby by Republicans and industry lobby groups to delay the rule – or withdraw it outright. Fifteen governors had called on Obama and the EPA to withdraw the proposed regulations, which would cut carbon pollution from existing power plants.

Some electricity companies had argued that the rules were extraordinarily complex, clocking in at about 1,600 pages, and they needed extra time to study the full implications.

But a delay puts the EPA on an even tighter deadline to finalise the rule before Obama leaves office in 2016. Even before Tuesday’s extension, the initial comment period for the new EPA rule was already longer than the norm.

A federal judge in Utah has ruled that a member of a fundamentalist offshoot of the Mormon faith may refuse to answer questions in a child labor investigation as a result of the Hobby Lobby ruling on birth control.

The Sept. 11 decision by U.S. District Court Judge David Sam says Vergel Steed, who belongs to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), doesn't have to comply with a federal subpoena because naming church leaders would violate his religious freedom.

As the basis for his conclusion, the judge cited Hobby Lobby decisions by the Supreme Court and 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which said the Religious Freedom Restoration Act shields people from having to obey laws that substantially burden their religious practices.

"It is not for the Court to 'inquir[e] into the theological merit of the belief in question'," Sam wrote, citing Hobby Lobby. "The Court's 'only task is to determine whether the claimant's belief is sincere, and if so, whether the government has applied substantial pressure on the claimant to violate that belief.'"

The judge was referring to the 1993 statute, which says laws that violate religious liberty be narrowly tailored to meet a compelling governmental interest. The Supreme Court interpreted that law broadly by a 5-4 majority in Hobby Lobby when it said owners of closely held corporations may opt out of a law requiring coverage of contraceptives in their insurance plans.

"[I]t is clear that Mr. Steed has raised the very defenses available under RFRA," Sam wrote in his ruling, arguing that the government did not use the "least-restrictive means" to get what it wanted. The judge said the government may instead acquire the information it seeks about FLDS and Paragon Contractors, which are implicated in a 2012 incident involving children working in a field, by speaking to others "who contracted to manage the pecan ranch."

On September 18 2014 08:40 IgnE wrote:
I'd argue with your implied point that being a "good leader" is more important than the results of the leading.