Re: Edited Edupage, 9 May 1996

["Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>]

As long as this is now CypherCesspit and not CypherPunks, I might as
well play the game.

Doug Hughes writes:
> >If you feel like subsidising education, then by all means, do it.  
> >But why should you stick a gun in my back to do the same?  What if I 
> >do not want to do the same as you?
>
> Then you will be living in a country with lower education standards, 
> increasing illiteracy, and a pretty pitiful base with a declining
> socio-economic structure.

What, like the one we live in NOW?

As I said, things have gotten steadily worse since Horace Mann
invented the modern government socialization institution we call the
"public school". (It was originally created to force the horrible
subhuman Irish and Germans to send their kids to places where good
protestant values would be inculcated into them, not as a way to
increase the literacy rate. Check on your own if you don't believe
me.)

Every year since World War II, expenditures in real dollars have
increased per pupil at the government schools. Every year, average
class size has gone down in the government schools. Indeed, year after
year, the demands of the education mafia are always met. Who, after
all, would dare deny anything to the poor children.

Of course, almost every year, educational quality has declined.

Has it occurred to you that something is probably wrong with your
world model when in spite of the fact that everything the education
mafia asks for is granted they can't deliver the goods?

Maybe if New York City spends $20,000 a year per student instead of
the $10,000 they spend now things will get better? One wonders why the
parochial schools get away with spending only $2500 and yet deliver a
better education.

> >> So, because they live in a poor district they are
> >> not entitled to the same level of education as a rich city suburb? 
> >> The illiteracy rate in Alabama is 40%! This is just plain sick!
> >
> >When I was a kid, everything that had characters printed on it was 
> >readable.  Who is *preventing* them from reading?
> 
> environment, lack of education, lack of money, lots of factors.

I learned to read outside of school. I realize I had a privileged
background -- my parents being literate and all -- but in fact I'll
note that my parents claim that they didn't teach me to read, the
goddamnoisybabblebox did. One day I just started reading at them and
they were shocked as could be.

Perhaps its this sort of thing, and the fact that the literacy rate
was higher BEFORE public education, that lead me to believe that we
don't need any more "assistance" from the friendly neighborhood
government. We need less, a lot less, and as fast as possible.

> Nobody is holding a gun to anybody's head saying "Don't Read". But
> improving literacy is a goal that needs to be undertaken. Do you not
> agree that low literacy is a bad thing and needs to be taken care
> of?

I agree that it is bad that some people do not know how to read, but
the cost is mostly paid for by them except when society decides to
"help the unfortunate". Even then, it is the illiterate who can't get
a job, not me. Literacy is a private good, not a public good.

If you would like to see an improvement in literacy I therefore have a
simple solution. Eliminate public schools. The literacy rate has been
in steady decline since Horace Mann's lovely innovation. With only
private schools available, teachers will live in terror of being fired
for being ineffective. Schools that don't teach children the skills
their poor parents scrimp and save for will lose their
students. Incompetant fools will no longer be tolerated. The schools
will cease to spend time teaching random socialist fluff and will
become businesses hired to inculcate skills like reading, mathematics
and reasoning ability -- or they will be fired.

I live in hope that some day schools will be forced to go begging for
students, and will find themselves faced with questions like "if
Johnson Elementary across town can teach my kid for $500 less a year
and teach him to read a year earlier in a safer environment, why the
hell should I pay incompetant dweebs like you?" I long for the day
when Albert Shanker and the entire teachers union hierarchy is forced
to sweep streets for lack of any other job that anyone will offer
them.

So, yes, I want to see education improved. The answer in my mind is to
fire the entire government.

> I'd have to be convinced that that is a good thing. However, making
> sure everybody has a good education is of paramount importance to
> any society. It's going to cost some tax dollars, but, in my opinion
> it would be money well spent

Housing is of paramount importance to society. Do you feel that you
would like to live in government housing projects over a privately
owned apartment?

Food is of paramount importance to society. Why do we have no
government run feeding stations to replace these evil supermarkets,
then?

Heat is of paramount importance to society -- in New England you can't
survive the winter without it. Why, then, do we not have government
operated and financed oil companies to replace the evil private ones.

Communications are of primary importance to society. Would you swap
our phone system for the phone system in Greece, or even the one in
France, which are publically subsidized and run by the government?

Do you prefer using the U.S. Postal Service, or Federal Express when
you absolutely positively have to get the package there?

If you had a choice, would you go to a V.A."hospital" or see a private
physician?

In short, why do you think the government, which fucks* up everything
it touches, and which has controlled education for a century, is the
answer to fixing the education problem, when it so obviously is the
CAUSE of the education problem?

(*intentionally placed to provide CDA fodder.)

> Some people on this list argue that the current representative govt
> system is bad, and that true democracy is better.

Actually, I believe most people on this list argue for no government
or so little that its decisions hardly matter.


Perry