What Libertarians Do

[hadespussercats]

Why should extraordinary students be held back and obstructed in their educational pursuits by legions of below-average to mediocre students who require far more than their "fair share" of teacher time? Why shouldn't schools pick and choose based on academic performance and charge more for advanced curricula for advanced students? All that does is induce children to work harder and achieve academically rather than drifting along in the least-common-denominator classrooms of the Frankfurt School Marxist schools.

Where did you get the idea that I don't support this?

I wrote a letter to the editor when I was in ninth grade, explaining why heterogeneous grouping in classrooms was generally a terrible idea, and ineffective to boot.

This doesn't change the fact that I think society is better served if everyone who can be educated is. How best to go about it is my question.

Incidentally, I don't think tossing the autistic kids in a holding cell because they're too expensive to teach is the best way to go about it.

[hadespussercats]

duplicate

[Warren Dew]

So, evidently the answer is to subject all children to shitty schools by force, so that there will be "equality" of crappy education?

hadespussercats has a young child, so issues about education are probably of more than abstract political interest to her. It might be worthwhile taking her questions as good faith questions and providing your best reasonable answer, rather than assuming she has an ulterior motive.

Here's a question-- don't private schools maintain their chosen standards in part by controlling who gets to attend? Will any school have to accept all comers? If not, what happens to the students no school wants?

Perhaps your view of private schools has been shaped by high end prep schools? They get a lot of press, but they aren't the typical private school. Most private schools operate on pretty much a first come, first served basis.

Also- @Warren-- do you know... when there is a per-student tuition breakdown given for public schools, are special needs kids, whose expenses for education may be higher, included in that average?

The way the per student cost is calculated varies somewhat by source. I imagine that some of the higher numbers include the special needs children. That said, while some special needs children cost school systems a lot of money on a per student basis, it's still not a large fraction of their overall budget. Special needs children are a fraction of all children, and most are dealt with as students in the regular school system with an IEP prepared at parent teacher meetings. It's only the fraction of a fraction of students with parents who hire expensive lawyers who end up getting the public school systems to fork out money for private schooling.

I'd also note that sources from the early 1990s also say the average per student cost is higher at public schools, and that was before special needs situation got to where it is today.

[hadespussercats]

Thanks for the feedback, Warren. You're right that my image of private schools is high-end, mostly-- particularly since my dad went to a pretty chi-chi boarding school, back in the day, and a lot of the boys I went to school with left our public high school to go to an expensive private one nearby. Plus, here in NY the sense I get is that most private schools cost the same as college-- with the only cheaper option being parochial schools (which I worry about, in terms of science education and free thought and so forth.)

I've been mentally banking on Sprog making it into a good charter school. Every day it seems I'm hearing about another school closing on the news.

[MrJonno]

What American schools do need is compulsory uniforms kick the individuality worship out of them and remind them that they are part of something bigger than themselves. Would be a good cure to the disease of libertarianism

[surreptitious57]

an EDUCATION SYSTEM is the best investment society can make for its economic future. It does NOT have to be a public
education system financed through taxes and controlled by the state

Even if one accepts the idea ( and not a bad idea ) that it is compulsory that children be educated in the interests of a better more economically and socially robust society there is no reason why the state must be responsible for providing that education and many reasons why it should not be allowed to do so, the most important of which is that state directed education is far too often used as a tool of political indoctrination

If we assume that taxing everyone to pay for education of children is a good idea it s far better to simply allocate those tax monies to the students ( through their parents ) by giving them vouchers that may be used for tuition at ANY school of the parents choice The vast majority of parents are going to choose a school that is academically superior for their children ( in any advanced culture ) in order to give their children the best education and chance for prosperity in the future as adults The numbers of people who will choose to give their children inferior educations are quite small in civilized countries ( by which I mean countries not like Afghanistan Iran or other countries that make a deliberate choice to deny education to girls or boys for religious reasons ) and most parents want the best for their kids

Using private school free market principles combined with taxation for education and vouchers that allow the money to follow the student to any educational institution competition and free-market forces quickly weed out inferior schools and teachers and the overall quality of education improves as schools and teachers compete for student s money

Not only does this provide a better, higher-quality education for the children it ensures that the government cannot use public schools as tools of political indoctrination which is absolutely necessary for the prosperity and liberty of a free people

Political ideological driven education never provides a good education because the focus is always on the political indoctrination and conformity not on the individual success of the student

This is why public schools should be outlawed entirely and education should be left up to the parents who will most often do right by their children because they of anyone are most likely to have their best interests at heart

Just a couple of things to be noted about this
First you need to have a geographical limitation
on where parents can send their children to school
Otherwise they shall all opt for the best and that can
not work practically : I do not know if you have league
tables pertaining to performance in America but we have
them here in England and no one would send their child to a
badly performimg school if they could not : hence the need for
these limitations : but as the state generally educates majority
of children there should be no bad schools : may be ones which are
worse than others but all should be of an acceptable standard though
Finally even if parents choose to opt out of the public system the exams
their child takes will be the same as other children so there cannot be too
much deviation from the curriculum : what is this ideological indoctrination
that you are constantly referencing : is it political correctness or something else

[MrJonno]

Personally anyone who uses the word tyrant or 'marxist' shouldnt be let within 10 miles of any child never mind a school

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Personally anyone who uses the word tyrant or 'marxist' shouldnt be let within 10 miles of any child never mind a school

And what's wrong sweeping, and inappropirate, generalization in the support of carpet-chewing fanaticism please?

[amused]

It's easier to be happy when you've adopted the Fuck Everybody! attitude.

[Drewish]

It's easier to be happy when you've adopted the Fuck Everybody! attitude.

Fucking people sounds like a great way to stay happy!

[Drewish]

Personally anyone who uses the word tyrant or 'marxist' shouldnt be let within 10 miles of any child never mind a school

You don't have to worry. It's the poor, uneducated, and religious who keep pumping out kids. And they'll vote Jesus Marx every time. But way to be a condescending dick

[amused]

It's easier to be happy when you've adopted the Fuck Everybody! attitude.

Fucking people sounds like a great way to stay happy!

[hadespussercats]

Personally anyone who uses the word tyrant or 'marxist' shouldnt be let within 10 miles of any child never mind a school

And what's wrong sweeping, and inappropirate, generalization in the support of carpet-chewing fanaticism please?

I don't know-- I'm a big fan of carpet-chewing, myself.

[hadespussercats]

Personally anyone who uses the word tyrant or 'marxist' shouldnt be let within 10 miles of any child never mind a school

These are important terms historically. How are kids supposed to learn what they mean if no one can say them in school?

[Seth]

Why should extraordinary students be held back and obstructed in their educational pursuits by legions of below-average to mediocre students who require far more than their "fair share" of teacher time? Why shouldn't schools pick and choose based on academic performance and charge more for advanced curricula for advanced students? All that does is induce children to work harder and achieve academically rather than drifting along in the least-common-denominator classrooms of the Frankfurt School Marxist schools.

Where did you get the idea that I don't support this?

I wrote a letter to the editor when I was in ninth grade, explaining why heterogeneous grouping in classrooms was generally a terrible idea, and ineffective to boot.

This doesn't change the fact that I think society is better served if everyone who can be educated is. How best to go about it is my question.

Incidentally, I don't think tossing the autistic kids in a holding cell because they're too expensive to teach is the best way to go about it.

I don't either, but then again I don't see why they should get any more public money than anyone else does. Our law here in Colorado requires an "adequate and uniform" education for all students, and "adequate" does not mean "adequate outcome by individual student" and "uniform" does not mean that some students get more resources than others, it means that the state sets the overall standards and gives all students the same opportunity to receive that adequate education as every other student.

What a student does, or can do with that uniform education is up to the student. They can make good use of the system and put forth effort and benefit from it, or they can piss it away, or they can be unable to benefit from it due to disability, but the state's obligation ends with providing the same level and quality of education TO each student, it does not include making sure that each student gets an equal OUTCOME from that education.

Or that's how it SHOULD be interpreted. Unfortunately, the socialists and progressives in Colorado have managed to persuade at least one court that it's "equality of outcome" that is meant by "adequate and uniform." And in another case, a complaint that some rural schools in southeastern Colorado have not been able to provide an "adequate and uniform" education has resulted in a ruling by another judge saying that the state legislature does not have authority to determine what "adequate and uniform" means, but rather a single judge does, and that the judge can require the legislature to ignore state constitutional tax limitations enacted by the people and can order the legislature to spend nearly 80 percent of the entire state's budget on education in order to meet the judge's definition of "adequate and uniform." That case is going to the state Supreme Court.

This sort of judicial overreach would literally bankrupt the state and cause the shutdown of almost every other program in the state, and it would force the imposition of new taxes in express violation of our Taxpayer Bill of Rights which is a Constitutional amendment that prohibits the imposition of any new taxes without a public vote. That's unconstitutional, but the judge just ignored that small fact.