Re: Why is it outdated? Stop blathering nonsense
MrFarstrider Send a noteboard - 08/01/2014 02:26:50 AM
It, presuming you refer to summer vacation, is the default state of affairs. It does not need to serve a purpose, as human beings have natural rights to liberty. It does not need to serve a purpose any more than days off from one's job if one has sufficient resources to survive without working. The implicit assumption of your statement here is kind of monstrous - that human beings are the property of the state who must justify their time away from the state's control. Much worse, when you consider we are discussing children, here.
At one point, "The Earth is flat" was the status quo. Doesn't make it right and there are always good reasons for trying new things.
Children and the parents of are required to justify their time away from school the other 8 months of the year. They're called truancy laws. Children are not recommended to attend school during that time frame. They're required to by the state. I'm not sure what you would find so "monstrous" during the other 4 months of the year.
No, your language is empty and devoid of genuine substance, phrased in such a way as to negate the idea of alternatives to the implicit assumptions. That makes it rhetoric. Whether for a worthy cause or correct mindset makes no difference.
There are a lot of valid points in here. You're just choosing to ignore them and then refer to my comments as rhetoric.
Applied to the criminal justice system, this line of thinking is "guilty until proven innocent." There is no need for empirical data to prove a negative, and there is no moral reason why people have to justify their lack of production or activity or leisure to do as they please.
When taxpayer money is being spent inefficiently and ineffectively, there is valid reason to justify lack of production or activity. It happens every day in the media and at the GAO. We're talking about public institutions not private homes. Don't confuse the liberties applicable to each.
That has never been my experience, as a student or a teacher. And even if it were true, you have not made any sort of case for why people should be compelled to retain their "training" (as if they are animals - this is the place you start going when you think of human beings as assets of the state, whose free action must be justified in the interests of the state). Another point you are not addressing is whether or not avoiding the need for "retraining" is sufficient grounds to justify year-round schooling. Considering how much useless activity goes on in schools, the value of being retrained all on its own is a highly dubious proposition.
I've already made this point in regards to truancy laws. Children are required to be educated for the sake of themselves and society and the state. You can liken them to animals all you want to cheapen the requirement but the law still states that children must attend school. My experience as a student and an educator states that children DO take a month to recoup important lessons they've forgotten over the summer.
Almost any activity or action requires greater effort to begin. That does not mean there is no reason to stop. By your logic, airplanes should never land, given the disproportionate energy and fuel needed to get them back into the air.
Pretty sweet red herring you've got there. Yes, the method and function of an airplane is exactly like a school and a child's education. NOT!
Furthermore, if that anecdotal theory about needing to overcome the inertia of the break WERE correct, it could just as easily suggest that schooling itself is an unnaturally stressful environment and activity. Why do you have to pound individuals into a special mode of behavior for an archaic educational model? It certainly has nothing to do with anything worthy later in life. Self-discipline and independent thought are far more useful virtues to develop, than accustoming oneself to the routine of a second-rate educational method.
Kids like to eat sugar, play with knives, put their hands in blenders etc. They like to sit and play video games all day. Kids (for the most part) do not enjoy education. So yes, you do need to pound them into a special mode simply because it is in their best interest and contrary to what they would otherwise prefer to do. I know this flies into the face of your libertarian points of view, but some times it is good to compel people to do things they don't like to do even though its good for them. Particularly in the case of children.
How many dual incomes would be necessary without the expenses of schools, including taxes and the higher costs of clothing and feeding the students during the school day? And in any event, dual income homes have other ways of child supervision when school is not in session (normal people tending to work longer days than school teachers). The expansion of such methods might be far more cost effective than the extreme expenses to the community of increasing the overhead, salaries and administrative costs of running schools for longer periods of time.
I honestly cannot follow your logic here. What happens to parents who want to work simply because they want to work? I would think your libertarian views would back that up. Now you're forcing them to stay home because you can't figure out how to teach children in a brick and mortar building? And if other people are watching my kid while they're being educated, how is that different than a teacher? Except now 25 different parents need to pay 25 different babysitters to babysit their kids while they work and then still pay taxes to pay the teacher who teaches via electronic distance learning. Sounds a lot more efficient and cheaper for the parents/ taxpayers. <-- That's sarcasm for you.
The reality of teachers being glorified babysitters is generally considered an argument AGAINST the educational establishment, anyway.
The alternative is to just pay somebody else to do it while both parents work and no services are provided other than making sure the kid doesn't hurt themselves. That doesn't make sense at all.
Who the fuck's business is it what children do with their time? That such an idea could be entertained or voiced in public policy is a symptom of serious distortion of priorities and perspectives vis a vis the relationship between government and citizens.
Like I said, the same people who's business it is what they do the other 8 months of the year. Also, the same people who pay taxes and don't get the results they expect. And the same people who get these kids later on as poorly educated adults in society. The education of children impacts society as a whole and not just the child's liberties of play time and video gaming.
The better question should be, what is there to gain from sending kids off to an overpriced, glorified day-care system at enormous expense to the public?
Arguably, a better education and better adults down the road.
And air conditioning is free and magic in a world where the government is compelling people to use more efficient light bulbs, in the same of energy scarcity?
It's not free, but neither is heating during the winter months. Now that it exists, its not a good excuse to take time off during the summers. And cost as a justification to not use air conditioning makes as much sense as cost to not use heating. I suppose we should take off November to April as well to save money on energy costs. Poorly chosen argument on your part sir.
Which is exactly my point. Kids from families like that are already fucked, and forcing them to spend more time in school will not alter their situations. Much less forcing students from good families to spend more time away from their positive influence, so the minority from bad families can get practice for their inevitable prison time.
I disagree with parts of this. I agree a family's makeup has a lot to do with their success. Family influence on education is way more complex than a simple X-Y graph of grades vs time spent with family. The part I don't agree with is that more time in school isn't beneficial to both good schools and bad schools.
Too bad we have a 13th Amendment and are not a totalitarian dictatorship to make something like that a thing. Are you even looking at what you are writing here?
I have no idea what you're talking about but if you're likening directing employees to where they're needed most (all the while paying them a wage) to slavery, then you have very much confused this conversation. I can't even adequately reply to this because it doesn't make sense. If you meant to express a different idea, then I need a more thorough explanation before I can reply.
and providing the worst schools with the best funding from the property taxes paid by the richest home owners. However, since people like to keep their money in their neighborhood,
If you think you're going to attract the best teachers to the worst districts without paying them a lot more, you're gravely mistaken. Abbott districts do the exact opposite of that. Where all of that extra money is funneled is beyond me. Something ridiculous like special interest programs to put distance learning in homes would be my guess.
I know blindly pouring money into schools won't fix things. But if pouring money into teacher's salaries at those schools attracts better teachers, then let's do it! That is NOT what's happening in Abbott districts.
Parenting is far and away a more important influence on children's lives and development, and sorry to say to such a state-obsessed person (as I must consider someone who speaks of ordering human lives to serve the interests of the state as you do in this post)
I agree but if you think the state doesn't direct people for the good of the state, you are living in a different country or world. Again, I reference truancy laws. Or laws in general. But I expect I will get some kind of libertarian response on this fact as well.
but there is no bureaucratic, administrative or legislative fix for problems in those areas, and the most perfect and caring school system in the world will do little good against the bad influence of a parent, even if you force the kid to attend 45 weeks out of the year. Anyway, that hypothetical super school is just a dream,and equally unlikely to be fixed by any sort of public policy. We have no way to reliably create such an institution, and the amount of good it could do is highly suspect, and certainly negligible on a cost-efficiency basis considering what the expense would be.
That is your pessimistic point of view. I refuse it and recommend we try something new in an attempt to correct it.
Your idiotic speculation about the possibility of diverting resources to poorer schools, is per Abbott and numerous similar decisions around the country, only the policy and status quo of the last 30 years or so, to little or no improvement, and often regression.
That's because Abbott relies on more money = better results. I am contesting more money, better teachers, and more time in school = better results.
Public schools are a joke compared to the effectiveness of private education, especially considering the absurdly greater amount of money spent per student in a public school district, compared to a private school, whose students and read, write and figure in circles around the public schools'.
Private schools typically only have students who come from better families and higher incomes. Again, they get the best teachers, have the best students, and come from the best families. I believe you will see private schools are on par with the best public schools because they share the same high quality resources.
Increasing the school year will drastically increase the amount of money needed for the public school system, put undue burdens on the institution that is actually helping the children with any realistic future (the family), and do nothing more than expose the children to an institution characterized by mismanagement, waste, regimentation and litigious mentalities, where they encounter petty crime, peer violence and premature exposure to illicit activity and substance abuse, while learning to value social interaction and peer approval over individual thought and self-determination. They will learn at a rate paced to the least-capable students, and assigned to educational environments on the basis of factors such as age or demographics, rather than ability.
This is all true of what takes place during the other 8 months of the year and what happens in both public and private schools. The only alternative to your complaints here are to do away with any group education (both public and private) and home school each and every kid.
But people like you go around demanding by what rationale do people go about their lives as they please instead of turning those lives over to these moribund institutions of what are optimistically and euphemistically called "learning."
If by "people" you mean children, then yes, I do recommend parents and the state guide them and force them if necessary into a highly educated adulthood. You caught me, I'm guilty.
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