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On April 19 2012 01:44 TheAngryZergling wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2012 00:13 Talin wrote:On April 19 2012 00:00 Equity213 wrote:On April 18 2012 23:53 LaNague wrote:
studying should be free, thankfully it basically is in my region in germany, just got to pay some fee that everyone has to pay that pays for social stuff like food and transportation.
The teaching part of a university is NOT expensive, buy one cruise missile less and you payed it for a few thousand people for a year.
look at this... "lucky to go to college", sounds like medieval times oO Socialists (i dont mean that as an insult) always defend their programs by saying "its better than guns and bombs". Well thats true, but it still doesnt make it right. Its still selfishly squandering the resources of this world, stealing from society to build things THEY think are good. Your just offering up the lesser of two evils. I just can't wrap my head around how having your population properly educated translates to selfishly squandering resources of the world and an "evil" in yours. Equating "properly educated" with going to a 4 year college would definitely lead to massive resource squandering.
That's a fair point, however the quality of pre-college education is rather poor as well, so either way the money to have your people "properly" educated (however you define it) would have to go somewhere and come from somewhere - so in the end you have the same problem you need to solve.
Also relative to how resources are being squandered and what they're being squandered on, no investment in education, no matter how irrational, would be deserving of that label.
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The real problem with education comes from having a state monopoly on K-12. First of all I think it's very easy to educate yourself without relying on an institution to do the heavy lifting for you. One can easily obtain the work of any significant thinker online or @ a book store. But having a government monopoly on primary and secondary education leads to terrible results. Virtually all schools have the same authoritarian model. Kids sit @ a desk and listen to a teacher talk, scribble notes furiously and do BS assignments. They are punished if they are not totally obedient and subservient to the teacher. Whatever merit this model may have for conditioning us towards obedience and becoming little solider / worker drones it certainly does not unleash the inherent creative capacity we are all born with. What we should have is choice and competition. Have tons of different schools with tons of different approaches to how the kids are taught, what they are taught, the structure etc. This would result naturally if there were a free market in education instead of a government monopoly. We understand implicitly that the government is incapable of handling the food supply, that if we had a government monopoly on food people would starve to death or at least eat moldly bread that you have to wait in line for. The same thing happens in education, children starve intellectually.
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On April 19 2012 01:51 mcc wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2012 01:27 FabledIntegral wrote:On April 18 2012 20:16 -_-Quails wrote:On April 18 2012 18:51 FabledIntegral wrote:On April 18 2012 18:34 screamingpalm wrote:
Someone posted a great video in another thread that talked about the issues with our education system. One of the problems is the increased vocationalized assembly line with a graduation (see: manufacture) date, rather than liberal arts and critical thinking, preparing students for jobs that do not exist, and filled with corporate interest influence. It is no wonder that such a system is seen as overpriced- I would ask for a refund too.
And Talin is right. American society is all about me, myself, and I. Greater good and educated society be damned. lol. All I've seen is advocation for punishing those who did their work, while rewarding those who didn't. It depends how you look at it. Then again, that's how I've been trained to look at it, as a Business Economics major. What I see is someone proposing a bill that might just make university education less of a risk for people that haven't had the opportunity to 'do their work' and save up. But then I've lived in an area where there was youth unemployment at rates above 40% before the crisis, where some of the people in my class were primary breadwinners for their families by 16. How were the kids working 30 hours a week on top of high school to pay rent supposed to save up for college? What were the 40% of kids who wanted to work but couldn't get a job supposed to do more? Commute 4 hours per day to work in the next city at the cost of 2 hours of wages? Luckily for people in that area, their government has already put in place a system to eliminate punitive debt associated with higher education. Even though they don't have savings or parental savings to support them, they will graduate with a low total amount of debt which will gather interest at a low rate and will only have to make repayments proportional to their income. One idea behind measures like this is that a university education will on average make a person more valuable to the economy by enough that it is worth educating them, and that debt or the fear of debt drives away the people whose value would most be increased by the education more than any other group. If you haven't saved up, then you shouldn't go to college. Your fault. Who says you need to go to college as soon as you graduate high school? If you haven't planned ahead, then start now. My roommate now started college at 23. How is that a big deal? He has a scholarship full ride to law school now and was a friggin' poli sci major. On April 18 2012 14:54 Takkara wrote:On April 18 2012 14:50 FabledIntegral wrote:
People that end up with 100k+ in debt are fucking retarded. Or are in law school. (Including the good ones) I should have clarified. I meant for undergrad. If you want to go to law school and don't have the money, then you should get a job after you graduate, make money for 3-4 years, THEN go back to law school. What bothers me is all the people that think they should be able to go to school for however many ridiculous years and not have to pay the costs of doing so. As I said, I took out extra loans to party my ass off in college. TONS of people do this. TONS of people don't have jobs. What the hell is with the mentality of (mostly Europeans, from what I've seen) that think you shouldn't have to work while in school... Mentality is about making starting conditions for people as equal as possible. And after that let life/society/market distinguish them by their accomplishments. Point is to have a system where what you earn when adult is not related to where you were born, but to your abilities. Meritocracy. And as far as empiric data go, quality public education including university level seems to be a good way to go compared to US system. Students will pay what they get from state in taxes back anyway. That of course assumes well designed education system, where college/university degrees are required for jobs where it makes sense, so basically far below what many western systems are designed for. Point of this law should be to transition to a better educational system altogether, but that would be hoping too much. As it is it should not be permanent leeching off the state by some students and not others. They should just give some kind of amnesty for current students and offer state-sponsored, but still profitable (or at least not with a loss) loans to the students and make it possible to get rid of those loans by bankruptcy.
It's a completely different story if education is free, or highly subsidized by the state for everyone, as in Europe. Unfortunately, the topic of debate is not that at the moment, but rather, those who paid their way get fucked while those who were lazy are rewarded. I mean sure, it would benefit me, as I've stated twice before, I took out more loans than I needed to party hard. But I think it's utterly absurd to state I shouldn't pay back that money that I directly borrowed. Not through taxes, but through direct repayment of what I borrowed.
I can't say I'm a fan of the European system (I don't hate it either, just not a fan), but overall, it's a lot more fair in my eyes than having our system then forgiving loans.
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On April 19 2012 01:57 Talin wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2012 01:44 TheAngryZergling wrote:On April 19 2012 00:13 Talin wrote:On April 19 2012 00:00 Equity213 wrote:On April 18 2012 23:53 LaNague wrote:
studying should be free, thankfully it basically is in my region in germany, just got to pay some fee that everyone has to pay that pays for social stuff like food and transportation.
The teaching part of a university is NOT expensive, buy one cruise missile less and you payed it for a few thousand people for a year.
look at this... "lucky to go to college", sounds like medieval times oO Socialists (i dont mean that as an insult) always defend their programs by saying "its better than guns and bombs". Well thats true, but it still doesnt make it right. Its still selfishly squandering the resources of this world, stealing from society to build things THEY think are good. Your just offering up the lesser of two evils. I just can't wrap my head around how having your population properly educated translates to selfishly squandering resources of the world and an "evil" in yours. Equating "properly educated" with going to a 4 year college would definitely lead to massive resource squandering. That's a fair point, however the quality of pre-college education is rather poor as well, so either way the money to have your people "properly" educated (however you define it) would have to go somewhere and come from somewhere - so in the end you have the same problem you need to solve. Also relative to how resources are being squandered and what they're being squandered on, no investment in education, no matter how irrational, would be deserving of that label.
His point was correct in the sense that current trends of college for everyone would be a waste of resources. But the point of having cheap higher public education is to have a system where access to higher education is based on ability not on the wealth. So even if you are not planning on having everyone with college degree, it is still essential to have higher education "free" and restrict access based on abilities. Also if you do so you do not run high risk of the funds not getting back to the state as people who finish the school will have high probability of actually getting high paying job and thus paying high taxes.
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On April 19 2012 01:57 Talin wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2012 01:44 TheAngryZergling wrote:On April 19 2012 00:13 Talin wrote:On April 19 2012 00:00 Equity213 wrote:On April 18 2012 23:53 LaNague wrote:
studying should be free, thankfully it basically is in my region in germany, just got to pay some fee that everyone has to pay that pays for social stuff like food and transportation.
The teaching part of a university is NOT expensive, buy one cruise missile less and you payed it for a few thousand people for a year.
look at this... "lucky to go to college", sounds like medieval times oO Socialists (i dont mean that as an insult) always defend their programs by saying "its better than guns and bombs". Well thats true, but it still doesnt make it right. Its still selfishly squandering the resources of this world, stealing from society to build things THEY think are good. Your just offering up the lesser of two evils. I just can't wrap my head around how having your population properly educated translates to selfishly squandering resources of the world and an "evil" in yours. Equating "properly educated" with going to a 4 year college would definitely lead to massive resource squandering. That's a fair point, however the quality of pre-college education is rather poor as well, so either way the money to have your people "properly" educated (however you define it) would have to go somewhere and come from somewhere - so in the end you have the same problem you need to solve. Also relative to how resources are being squandered and what they're being squandered on, no investment in education, no matter how irrational, would be deserving of that label.
You are quite right.
My personal (and absurd) point of view is that in order to make big investments in education pay off we would first need an effort to try to shape public opinion to have more value placed on stronger relationships between parents and their children (more investment of parents' discretionary time into their kids lives primarily, but not exclusively, in regards to education). Unsurprisingly, I don't have half a clue what to suggest to improve that but I'd happily accept a tax rate of 70% if needed to implement a solution to that issue.
On April 19 2012 02:01 TheGeneralTheoryOf wrote:
The real problem with education comes from having a state monopoly on K-12. First of all I think it's very easy to educate yourself without relying on an institution to do the heavy lifting for you. One can easily obtain the work of any significant thinker online or @ a book store. But having a government monopoly on primary and secondary education leads to terrible results. Virtually all schools have the same authoritarian model. Kids sit @ a desk and listen to a teacher talk, scribble notes furiously and do BS assignments. They are punished if they are not totally obedient and subservient to the teacher. Whatever merit this model may have for conditioning us towards obedience and becoming little solider / worker drones it certainly does not unleash the inherent creative capacity we are all born with. What we should have is choice and competition. Have tons of different schools with tons of different approaches to how the kids are taught, what they are taught, the structure etc. This would result naturally if there were a free market in education instead of a government monopoly. We understand implicitly that the government is incapable of handling the food supply, that if we had a government monopoly on food people would starve to death or at least eat moldly bread that you have to wait in line for. The same thing happens in education, children starve intellectually.
Except that thankfully there isn't a state monopoly on K-12. I have always planned on homeschooling my kids.
There is also different models Montessori amongst others.
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On April 19 2012 02:05 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2012 01:51 mcc wrote:On April 19 2012 01:27 FabledIntegral wrote:On April 18 2012 20:16 -_-Quails wrote:On April 18 2012 18:51 FabledIntegral wrote:On April 18 2012 18:34 screamingpalm wrote:
Someone posted a great video in another thread that talked about the issues with our education system. One of the problems is the increased vocationalized assembly line with a graduation (see: manufacture) date, rather than liberal arts and critical thinking, preparing students for jobs that do not exist, and filled with corporate interest influence. It is no wonder that such a system is seen as overpriced- I would ask for a refund too.
And Talin is right. American society is all about me, myself, and I. Greater good and educated society be damned. lol. All I've seen is advocation for punishing those who did their work, while rewarding those who didn't. It depends how you look at it. Then again, that's how I've been trained to look at it, as a Business Economics major. What I see is someone proposing a bill that might just make university education less of a risk for people that haven't had the opportunity to 'do their work' and save up. But then I've lived in an area where there was youth unemployment at rates above 40% before the crisis, where some of the people in my class were primary breadwinners for their families by 16. How were the kids working 30 hours a week on top of high school to pay rent supposed to save up for college? What were the 40% of kids who wanted to work but couldn't get a job supposed to do more? Commute 4 hours per day to work in the next city at the cost of 2 hours of wages? Luckily for people in that area, their government has already put in place a system to eliminate punitive debt associated with higher education. Even though they don't have savings or parental savings to support them, they will graduate with a low total amount of debt which will gather interest at a low rate and will only have to make repayments proportional to their income. One idea behind measures like this is that a university education will on average make a person more valuable to the economy by enough that it is worth educating them, and that debt or the fear of debt drives away the people whose value would most be increased by the education more than any other group. If you haven't saved up, then you shouldn't go to college. Your fault. Who says you need to go to college as soon as you graduate high school? If you haven't planned ahead, then start now. My roommate now started college at 23. How is that a big deal? He has a scholarship full ride to law school now and was a friggin' poli sci major. On April 18 2012 14:54 Takkara wrote:On April 18 2012 14:50 FabledIntegral wrote:
People that end up with 100k+ in debt are fucking retarded. Or are in law school. (Including the good ones) I should have clarified. I meant for undergrad. If you want to go to law school and don't have the money, then you should get a job after you graduate, make money for 3-4 years, THEN go back to law school. What bothers me is all the people that think they should be able to go to school for however many ridiculous years and not have to pay the costs of doing so. As I said, I took out extra loans to party my ass off in college. TONS of people do this. TONS of people don't have jobs. What the hell is with the mentality of (mostly Europeans, from what I've seen) that think you shouldn't have to work while in school... Mentality is about making starting conditions for people as equal as possible. And after that let life/society/market distinguish them by their accomplishments. Point is to have a system where what you earn when adult is not related to where you were born, but to your abilities. Meritocracy. And as far as empiric data go, quality public education including university level seems to be a good way to go compared to US system. Students will pay what they get from state in taxes back anyway. That of course assumes well designed education system, where college/university degrees are required for jobs where it makes sense, so basically far below what many western systems are designed for. Point of this law should be to transition to a better educational system altogether, but that would be hoping too much. As it is it should not be permanent leeching off the state by some students and not others. They should just give some kind of amnesty for current students and offer state-sponsored, but still profitable (or at least not with a loss) loans to the students and make it possible to get rid of those loans by bankruptcy. It's a completely different story if education is free, or highly subsidized by the state for everyone, as in Europe. Unfortunately, the topic of debate is not that at the moment, but rather, those who paid their way get fucked while those who were lazy are rewarded. I mean sure, it would benefit me, as I've stated twice before, I took out more loans than I needed to party hard. But I think it's utterly absurd to state I shouldn't pay back that money that I directly borrowed. Not through taxes, but through direct repayment of what I borrowed. I can't say I'm a fan of the European system (I don't hate it either, just not a fan), but overall, it's a lot more fair in my eyes than having our system then forgiving loans.
I am not complete fan of where current European systems are heading either. They took the "socialist" approach of not basing education on income, but then decided that "university degrees for everyone" is a good idea. Which is a rather bad combination as there is nothing to regulate it. In market system market regulates (even though slowly and not really efficiently contrary to popular belief) the education system. Whereas in public system that does not weed out students hard enough based on abilities, there is nothing to regulate it and it becomes nonsensical expensive mess. And corrupt politicians then argue that the system is broken because it is public and therefore it needs to privatized(ideally to their friends).
As I noted in the second paragraph I think the proposed law is flawed exactly because it is unequal patch and pointed out what I would like instead/changed.
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Except that thankfully there isn't a state monopoly on K-12. I have always planned on homeschooling my kids.
Yes there is. Everyone is forced to 'buy' public education. You can homeschool or send your kids to private schools, but you still have to 'buy' public education. If the government forced you to buy a Chevy, you wouldn't really have the option of getting a Toyota too, unless you were super rich. That's why 90% of students go to public school. If 90% of people bought Chevy's we would call that a monopoly.
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On April 19 2012 02:29 TheGeneralTheoryOf wrote:Show nested quote +Except that thankfully there isn't a state monopoly on K-12. I have always planned on homeschooling my kids.
Yes there is. Everyone is forced to 'buy' public education. You can homeschool or send your kids to private schools, but you still have to 'buy' public education. If the government forced you to buy a Chevy, you wouldn't really have the option of getting a Toyota too, unless you were super rich. That's why 90% of students go to public school. If 90% of people bought Chevy's we would call that a monopoly.
Paying for education is not receiving education.
One of the poorest families I know homeschooled all 6 or 7 of their kids. The results vary from receiving full academic scholarships to Duke University before going on to doctoral studies to merely receiving run of the mill public university education while pursuing very profitable hobbies. If the proper education of your kids is important to you no dearth of money will stop you from doing so. Its just a question of priorities.
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On April 19 2012 02:01 TheGeneralTheoryOf wrote:
The real problem with education comes from having a state monopoly on K-12. First of all I think it's very easy to educate yourself without relying on an institution to do the heavy lifting for you. One can easily obtain the work of any significant thinker online or @ a book store. But having a government monopoly on primary and secondary education leads to terrible results. Virtually all schools have the same authoritarian model. Kids sit @ a desk and listen to a teacher talk, scribble notes furiously and do BS assignments. They are punished if they are not totally obedient and subservient to the teacher. Whatever merit this model may have for conditioning us towards obedience and becoming little solider / worker drones it certainly does not unleash the inherent creative capacity we are all born with. What we should have is choice and competition. Have tons of different schools with tons of different approaches to how the kids are taught, what they are taught, the structure etc. This would result naturally if there were a free market in education instead of a government monopoly. We understand implicitly that the government is incapable of handling the food supply, that if we had a government monopoly on food people would starve to death or at least eat moldly bread that you have to wait in line for. The same thing happens in education, children starve intellectually.
There is extremely important role public mandatory schools play in society beside actual education. One is socialization, it is I would argue as important aspect of schools for society as the education that happens there. Second is that what you call "learning to be slaves" is a good skill to have in all real societies (compared to the magical ones you are proposing). Nearly all people will be employees of some kind later in their life and having good working habits for future work (which for most people will be doing BS assignments at least from time to time) is extremely important.
Another important part is children are not capable of deciding what is good for them and many parents are even worse at that. Also standard school system has no significant effect on "inherent creative capacity we are all born with".
Your proposal is basically a recipe for many parents to destroy their kids lives and some kids to destroy theirs. The second part is I would say ok in your world of complete responsibility for your actions, the former does not even follow that.
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On April 19 2012 02:20 TheAngryZergling wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2012 01:57 Talin wrote:On April 19 2012 01:44 TheAngryZergling wrote:On April 19 2012 00:13 Talin wrote:On April 19 2012 00:00 Equity213 wrote:On April 18 2012 23:53 LaNague wrote:
studying should be free, thankfully it basically is in my region in germany, just got to pay some fee that everyone has to pay that pays for social stuff like food and transportation.
The teaching part of a university is NOT expensive, buy one cruise missile less and you payed it for a few thousand people for a year.
look at this... "lucky to go to college", sounds like medieval times oO Socialists (i dont mean that as an insult) always defend their programs by saying "its better than guns and bombs". Well thats true, but it still doesnt make it right. Its still selfishly squandering the resources of this world, stealing from society to build things THEY think are good. Your just offering up the lesser of two evils. I just can't wrap my head around how having your population properly educated translates to selfishly squandering resources of the world and an "evil" in yours. Equating "properly educated" with going to a 4 year college would definitely lead to massive resource squandering. That's a fair point, however the quality of pre-college education is rather poor as well, so either way the money to have your people "properly" educated (however you define it) would have to go somewhere and come from somewhere - so in the end you have the same problem you need to solve. Also relative to how resources are being squandered and what they're being squandered on, no investment in education, no matter how irrational, would be deserving of that label. You are quite right. My personal (and absurd) point of view is that in order to make big investments in education pay off we would first need an effort to try to shape public opinion to have more value placed on stronger relationships between parents and their children (more investment of parents' discretionary time into their kids lives primarily, but not exclusively, in regards to education). Unsurprisingly, I don't have half a clue what to suggest to improve that but I'd happily accept a tax rate of 70% if needed to implement a solution to that issue. Show nested quote +On April 19 2012 02:01 TheGeneralTheoryOf wrote:
The real problem with education comes from having a state monopoly on K-12. First of all I think it's very easy to educate yourself without relying on an institution to do the heavy lifting for you. One can easily obtain the work of any significant thinker online or @ a book store. But having a government monopoly on primary and secondary education leads to terrible results. Virtually all schools have the same authoritarian model. Kids sit @ a desk and listen to a teacher talk, scribble notes furiously and do BS assignments. They are punished if they are not totally obedient and subservient to the teacher. Whatever merit this model may have for conditioning us towards obedience and becoming little solider / worker drones it certainly does not unleash the inherent creative capacity we are all born with. What we should have is choice and competition. Have tons of different schools with tons of different approaches to how the kids are taught, what they are taught, the structure etc. This would result naturally if there were a free market in education instead of a government monopoly. We understand implicitly that the government is incapable of handling the food supply, that if we had a government monopoly on food people would starve to death or at least eat moldly bread that you have to wait in line for. The same thing happens in education, children starve intellectually. Except that thankfully there isn't a state monopoly on K-12. I have always planned on homeschooling my kids. There is also different models Montessori amongst others.
I could somewhat understand homeschooling if there is not any decent public school in reach (although moving elsewhere seems to be better solution), but if there is even half-decent school it is a bad idea to homeschool. Are you at least a teacher, do you have good (as in college level) konwledge of math, physics, chemistry ? If not, you would be doing your kids a disservice. Or maybe US schools are terrible, but you can still help your kids after school if that is the case.
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All debts need to be forgivable. I see it as equitable to medical expenses - you cannot have your life and future prospects essentially end simply because something bad happened to you, or even because you made an irresponsible decision. That is not the mark of a civilized society.
Those who argue that allowing student loans to be forgiven would simply lead to irresponsible decision making have never been through bankruptcy. It doesn't just impact your credit score - it makes it harder to find work, a place to live, good insurance. It appears on your background check. It ain't a walk in the park.
The reason we are seeing such atrocious rates of default on student loans has to do with the absurd price of college more than it does with some epidemic of irresponsibility or too many people going to school. Universities around the country have lost a huge portion of their state funding, which has led to a necessary increase in tuition. Ironically enough, the same people who argue for this decrease in state funding (anti-tax folk) frequently received degrees from colleges during a period in which tuition was affordable. The degree to which tuition has skyrocketed cannot be attributed to natural causes such as inflation - I had 4 years of college funding saved in the early 2000s, and by the time I graduated my entire savings was about enough for a year and a half, if that.
In spite of what is frequently said, higher education is incredibly important in this country, if only as a standard for finding lucrative work. Maybe that's not the way it should be, but that's the way it is. It is nigh-impossible for a young person now to find a career (not work, but a career) without some form of higher education. Arguing about its objective value is a waste of time when faced with this fact.
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I'm all for young people developing marketable skills. There are two really important things that should happen to accomplish this - #1 the elimination of the minimum wage #2 - young people joining the work force sooner. The best way to learn how to work a job is by working a job. Unfortunately child labour has become stigmatized and criminalized, as part of the agitation by labour unions who do not want competition for their jobs. The notion that some government planner who has never even met the child in question is more capable then the parent or the child in deciding what form that child's education should take is nonsense. Every person is unique we should not attempt to force them all into a uniform mold.
When I went to school, how it was for me was we spent virtually all our classroom time at a desk listening to a teacher talk. This conditions you towards passivity and obedience to authority. It doesn't promote independent thinking and creativity. It encourages you to sit down, shut up, stop thinking and pay attention to what the authority figure is telling you to do. The end result is people who are conditioned to being slaves.
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On April 19 2012 02:53 TheGeneralTheoryOf wrote:
I'm all for young people developing marketable skills. There are two really important things that should happen to accomplish this - #1 the elimination of the minimum wage #2 - young people joining the work force sooner. The best way to learn how to work a job is by working a job. Unfortunately child labour has become stigmatized and criminalized, as part of the agitation by labour unions who do not want competition for their jobs. The notion that some government planner who has never even met the child in question is more capable then the parent or the child in deciding what form that child's education should take is nonsense. Every person is unique we should not attempt to force them all into a uniform mold.
When I went to school, how it was for me was we spent virtually all our classroom time at a desk listening to a teacher talk. This conditions you towards passivity and obedience to authority. It doesn't promote independent thinking and creativity. It encourages you to sit down, shut up, stop thinking and pay attention to what the authority figure is telling you to do. The end result is people who are conditioned to being slaves.
All people are unique to a degree and have other things in common with basically all other people. Well designed public education should recognize this and work accordingly. Your objection is not argument against it, it is argument for reforming it.
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On April 19 2012 02:48 mcc wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2012 02:20 TheAngryZergling wrote:On April 19 2012 01:57 Talin wrote:On April 19 2012 01:44 TheAngryZergling wrote:On April 19 2012 00:13 Talin wrote:On April 19 2012 00:00 Equity213 wrote:On April 18 2012 23:53 LaNague wrote:
studying should be free, thankfully it basically is in my region in germany, just got to pay some fee that everyone has to pay that pays for social stuff like food and transportation.
The teaching part of a university is NOT expensive, buy one cruise missile less and you payed it for a few thousand people for a year.
look at this... "lucky to go to college", sounds like medieval times oO Socialists (i dont mean that as an insult) always defend their programs by saying "its better than guns and bombs". Well thats true, but it still doesnt make it right. Its still selfishly squandering the resources of this world, stealing from society to build things THEY think are good. Your just offering up the lesser of two evils. I just can't wrap my head around how having your population properly educated translates to selfishly squandering resources of the world and an "evil" in yours. Equating "properly educated" with going to a 4 year college would definitely lead to massive resource squandering. That's a fair point, however the quality of pre-college education is rather poor as well, so either way the money to have your people "properly" educated (however you define it) would have to go somewhere and come from somewhere - so in the end you have the same problem you need to solve. Also relative to how resources are being squandered and what they're being squandered on, no investment in education, no matter how irrational, would be deserving of that label. You are quite right. My personal (and absurd) point of view is that in order to make big investments in education pay off we would first need an effort to try to shape public opinion to have more value placed on stronger relationships between parents and their children (more investment of parents' discretionary time into their kids lives primarily, but not exclusively, in regards to education). Unsurprisingly, I don't have half a clue what to suggest to improve that but I'd happily accept a tax rate of 70% if needed to implement a solution to that issue. On April 19 2012 02:01 TheGeneralTheoryOf wrote:
The real problem with education comes from having a state monopoly on K-12. First of all I think it's very easy to educate yourself without relying on an institution to do the heavy lifting for you. One can easily obtain the work of any significant thinker online or @ a book store. But having a government monopoly on primary and secondary education leads to terrible results. Virtually all schools have the same authoritarian model. Kids sit @ a desk and listen to a teacher talk, scribble notes furiously and do BS assignments. They are punished if they are not totally obedient and subservient to the teacher. Whatever merit this model may have for conditioning us towards obedience and becoming little solider / worker drones it certainly does not unleash the inherent creative capacity we are all born with. What we should have is choice and competition. Have tons of different schools with tons of different approaches to how the kids are taught, what they are taught, the structure etc. This would result naturally if there were a free market in education instead of a government monopoly. We understand implicitly that the government is incapable of handling the food supply, that if we had a government monopoly on food people would starve to death or at least eat moldly bread that you have to wait in line for. The same thing happens in education, children starve intellectually. Except that thankfully there isn't a state monopoly on K-12. I have always planned on homeschooling my kids. There is also different models Montessori amongst others. I could somewhat understand homeschooling if there is not any decent public school in reach (although moving elsewhere seems to be better solution), but if there is even half-decent school it is a bad idea to homeschool. Are you at least a teacher, do you have good (as in college level) konwledge of math, physics, chemistry ? If not, you would be doing your kids a disservice. Or maybe US schools are terrible, but you can still help your kids after school if that is the case.
I appreciate your concern. My wife went to a 4 year uni for Elementary education. I have a college level grasp of math & physics. Regardless of these qualifications I believe homeschooling is better because mass education can't compete with 1 on 1 interaction where the teacher has a huge personal investment in the results of their efforts.
Perhaps it is true that US schools are terrible and Czech schools have achieved the order of magnitude greater efficiency and efficacy required overcome to distinction I listed. I've only seen what happens in and the results of US schools. I certainly think US schools are terrible to the point where I view their merits as only minimally more than being a daycare.
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Im sorry but this is redicoullous. all this bill will do is encourage the prevailing trend of students going to university for useless programs (art history etc) and rack up huge debt learning stuff that isn't useful in a work environment. And no, sounding cool at Starbucks while you make cofee doesnt count.
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On April 19 2012 02:48 Vega62a wrote:
All debts need to be forgivable. I see it as equitable to medical expenses - you cannot have your life and future prospects essentially end simply because something bad happened to you, or even because you made an irresponsible decision. That is not the mark of a civilized society.
While I like the notion that we should have forgiveness for bad things happening, taking on a student loan is not like all medical expenses. If for no other reason than student loan is a choice, college education is a choice. Not everyone needs it, not all jobs require it. Some medical conditions is outside of personal control, there we should be forgiving, it is a bad draw, not the fault of a person. But forgiving the expenses an obese person with a diabetes seems to be unfair to those people who ensure somewhat healthy living standards.
Forgiving is too generous. There are consequences to irresponsible decisions. People have to learn to live with those consequences. That said, there is something fundamentally broken here. The debt collection/recovery of student loan is beyond what is necessary and fair (not a lawyer, but the only two things I know that you can't bankrupt yourself out of are student loans and alimony; you can blame med students for the loan problem). That needs to be fixed.
There should be better warning ahead of time (let's not kid ourselves, there is a clear difference between degree from some low tier university and attending an ivy league school. Students need to become more aware of their future potential from wherever they are going. Lending agents should be willing to work with graduates to come up with a realistic payback plan. And there needs to be better data because I swear, the 1 million dollar value of a college degree varies massively depending on the school and the major.
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On April 19 2012 02:53 TheGeneralTheoryOf wrote:
I'm all for young people developing marketable skills. There are two really important things that should happen to accomplish this - #1 the elimination of the minimum wage #2 - young people joining the work force sooner. The best way to learn how to work a job is by working a job. Unfortunately child labour has become stigmatized and criminalized, as part of the agitation by labour unions who do not want competition for their jobs. The notion that some government planner who has never even met the child in question is more capable then the parent or the child in deciding what form that child's education should take is nonsense. Every person is unique we should not attempt to force them all into a uniform mold.
When I went to school, how it was for me was we spent virtually all our classroom time at a desk listening to a teacher talk. This conditions you towards passivity and obedience to authority. It doesn't promote independent thinking and creativity. It encourages you to sit down, shut up, stop thinking and pay attention to what the authority figure is telling you to do. The end result is people who are conditioned to being slaves.
You want the market to dictate the value of students yet you want don't want people to be "slaves". People are nothing more then dollar signs and a statistic.
You also deride on the statist concept and yet the country leading the world in economy (EDIT- soon to be leading) and education is heavily statist. You're just derailing this thread with annoying generalizing and ramblings (surprise...).
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On April 19 2012 03:00 zhenherald wrote:
Im sorry but this is redicoullous. all this bill will do is encourage the prevailing trend of students going to university for useless programs (art history etc) and rack up huge debt learning stuff that isn't useful in a work environment. And no, sounding cool at Starbucks while you make cofee doesnt count.
Social studies are necessary. There is much to learn there about people, about history, about culture, things that are useful for society and personal development As for stuff that's being useful in work environment, I majored in economics and chemistry. I worked as a business analyst for 3 years, there was very little I learned at school that was applicable to work. The ability to analyze and think critically are the most important skills you'll get out of college (there's something to be said for communication, social skills, but that was never my strongest points).
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On April 19 2012 02:59 TheAngryZergling wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2012 02:48 mcc wrote:On April 19 2012 02:20 TheAngryZergling wrote:On April 19 2012 01:57 Talin wrote:On April 19 2012 01:44 TheAngryZergling wrote:On April 19 2012 00:13 Talin wrote:On April 19 2012 00:00 Equity213 wrote:On April 18 2012 23:53 LaNague wrote:
studying should be free, thankfully it basically is in my region in germany, just got to pay some fee that everyone has to pay that pays for social stuff like food and transportation.
The teaching part of a university is NOT expensive, buy one cruise missile less and you payed it for a few thousand people for a year.
look at this... "lucky to go to college", sounds like medieval times oO Socialists (i dont mean that as an insult) always defend their programs by saying "its better than guns and bombs". Well thats true, but it still doesnt make it right. Its still selfishly squandering the resources of this world, stealing from society to build things THEY think are good. Your just offering up the lesser of two evils. I just can't wrap my head around how having your population properly educated translates to selfishly squandering resources of the world and an "evil" in yours. Equating "properly educated" with going to a 4 year college would definitely lead to massive resource squandering. That's a fair point, however the quality of pre-college education is rather poor as well, so either way the money to have your people "properly" educated (however you define it) would have to go somewhere and come from somewhere - so in the end you have the same problem you need to solve. Also relative to how resources are being squandered and what they're being squandered on, no investment in education, no matter how irrational, would be deserving of that label. You are quite right. My personal (and absurd) point of view is that in order to make big investments in education pay off we would first need an effort to try to shape public opinion to have more value placed on stronger relationships between parents and their children (more investment of parents' discretionary time into their kids lives primarily, but not exclusively, in regards to education). Unsurprisingly, I don't have half a clue what to suggest to improve that but I'd happily accept a tax rate of 70% if needed to implement a solution to that issue. On April 19 2012 02:01 TheGeneralTheoryOf wrote:
The real problem with education comes from having a state monopoly on K-12. First of all I think it's very easy to educate yourself without relying on an institution to do the heavy lifting for you. One can easily obtain the work of any significant thinker online or @ a book store. But having a government monopoly on primary and secondary education leads to terrible results. Virtually all schools have the same authoritarian model. Kids sit @ a desk and listen to a teacher talk, scribble notes furiously and do BS assignments. They are punished if they are not totally obedient and subservient to the teacher. Whatever merit this model may have for conditioning us towards obedience and becoming little solider / worker drones it certainly does not unleash the inherent creative capacity we are all born with. What we should have is choice and competition. Have tons of different schools with tons of different approaches to how the kids are taught, what they are taught, the structure etc. This would result naturally if there were a free market in education instead of a government monopoly. We understand implicitly that the government is incapable of handling the food supply, that if we had a government monopoly on food people would starve to death or at least eat moldly bread that you have to wait in line for. The same thing happens in education, children starve intellectually. Except that thankfully there isn't a state monopoly on K-12. I have always planned on homeschooling my kids. There is also different models Montessori amongst others. I could somewhat understand homeschooling if there is not any decent public school in reach (although moving elsewhere seems to be better solution), but if there is even half-decent school it is a bad idea to homeschool. Are you at least a teacher, do you have good (as in college level) konwledge of math, physics, chemistry ? If not, you would be doing your kids a disservice. Or maybe US schools are terrible, but you can still help your kids after school if that is the case. I appreciate your concern. My wife went to a 4 year uni for Elementary education. I have a college level grasp of math & physics. Regardless of these qualifications I believe homeschooling is better because mass education can't compete with 1 on 1 interaction where the teacher has a huge personal investment in the results of their efforts. Perhaps it is true that US schools are terrible and Czech schools have achieved the order of magnitude greater efficiency and efficacy required overcome to distinction I listed. I've only seen what happens in and the results of US schools. I certainly think US schools are terrible to the point where I view their merits as only minimally more than being a daycare.
It should not be regardless of those qualifications. Without them it would just be a bad idea. It still is suspect idea as homeschooling does not serve in other functions beside academic education that schools should provide. And considering stories from people going on "exchange" programs to US high schools I am inclined to believe that some US schools may be so terrible.
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EPT
