Bevin, I'm aware - keenly - how important a solid education is for someone to have. I see the results of that not happening multiple times a day...and I live in Austin, a city that has one of the largest public universities in the world. This is one reason why I oppose state-financed, state-run, and state-regulated schools and school systems: I think they simply, more often than not, suck at what they (were) supposed to do.
But far more importantly, there is the greater problem of taxing people to pay for "everyone's" education. I submit to you that this is outright robbery committed on a statewide basis. That it has a nominally good purpose is beside the point. You (and the vast majority of everyone else) are demanding that I hand over money to pay for Little Johnny's K-12 education. I could live with that demand, but you go way beyond that and warn if I don't, you'll send the police after me, put me on trial for not paying my taxes, and try to seize my assets to pay for what I "owe." In a sane society, this would be lambasted as criminal, yet it is I who gets slapped with that label. You want to talk about the consequences of bad education? The fact that what I've just written causes blank stares or emotion-laden knee-jerk responses among so many people is a perfect example.
Therefore, I sympathize with those people who have earned (or owned) enough to cross some measure of wealth (picked arbitrarily by a bunch of legislators who had little to do with the production of that wealth) that says they, by the fact that they have more wealth, ought to and will be forced to pay more than everyone else. Bullshit like that doesn't fly at McDonald's, yet it is endorsed again by significant numbers of Americans. Another great example of bad educations negatively affecting us. Yes, I sympathize with them when they complain about tax rates that exceed 30%. Shit, my tax bracket is less than that and I still complain about it.
On the other hand, I don't see a school as some training institution that is supposed to pump out diligent little workers every summer. If the quality and depth of a graduate's knowledge is lacking, it isn't MY responsibility to cough up the cash so future generations might benefit (and I emphasize the "might"; the correlation between money spent on public education and the quality of that education is tenuous indeed). I'd place the bulk of the blame on one of two things: bad educational inputs or the student's unwillingness to focus on learning. After graduating from high school in 1998, I'd say the latter is the biggest problem. In passing, partly because it's a massive topic completely on its own, but the former plays a crucial role as well.
This is, of course, related to the very free-riding mentality that "free" public education helps foster. If the kids think they'll be coddled, helped, assisted, and have their needs met by the nanny state if they screw up down the road, then they have less of an incentive to get off their asses, put away the TV, hang up the phone, and open a damn book to not only read but understand it.
I get the impression you missed the identifying sentence at the top right of this webpage. I am an anarchist, so when you complain that my ideal solution will put more pressure on the welfare system I'll respond right back that the welfare system should be abolished along with the public education system. You are right: taxpayers should not have to pay for other folks' employment failings. Now just take that idea and apply it elsewhere. Taxpayers shouldn't have to:
For the children of parents who don't care about them, they ought to be free to simply walk away, ask for the assistance of others outside the family, or learn on their own. Most entry-level jobs don't require knowledge of ancient France, how to find the area of a circle, or when it is proper to use a semi-colon. There are plenty of jobs that consist of manual, repetitive labor that anyone with a functioning mind can do. Of course, today, in a shameful shrugging off of responsibility, most employers rely almost entirely on a diploma or a GED to signal the level at which a person is. Because of this merging of business and government, people without those special papers are at a serious disadvantage in the labor market...even if they are intelligent, wise, and capable of grasping new concepts and integrating them into their body of knowledge.
Can't you see that the implication of your argument is that we ought to subsidize the operating expenses of businesses not satisfied with those who apply for their jobs? Surely you'd oppose using tax money to cover the administrative costs IBM faces when it runs out of stationary, just as I hopefully suppose you'd oppose a local bakery getting tax money to repaint its worn facade.
No, rather than just continue on the same immoral and ineffective path of theft and mediocrity, I say we just end the damn system and let individuals exchange freely and voluntarily in an open market for education.
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that felt good.
Posted by: somasoul on May 30, 2005 01:03 PM