Should education be mandatory?

[Undesired Walrus]

We've all heard plenty about new legislation constraining liberty, whether it be recent health care legislation in the United States, or even the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But I have never heard of mandatory education being targeted as being unfree. If freedom means choice, as President Bartlet said in a memorable episode of West Wing, how can education be compulsory in a free society?

Or is the gift of education emancipating children from shackles, installing them with something that is as integral to a free society as is protected speech?

[drkitten]

We've all heard plenty about new legislation constraining liberty, whether it be recent health care legislation in the United States, or even the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But I have never heard of mandatory education being targeted as being unfree. If freedom means choice, as President Bartlet said in a memorable episode of West Wing, how can education be compulsory in a free society?

For the same reason that paying taxes and serving on juries is compulsory. A "free" society is not an anarchy, and people still need to play by the rules of society. In the case of a democracy or other participatory government, society at large needs to have the capacity to actually participate. Since people weren't developing that capacity in their children, it was found necessary to make it legally mandatory.

Indeed, there's still a tension -- for example, the American Amish tend not to want to have their children attend mandatory school, and also tend not to want to participate in government. While democracies tend to be relatively robust to small communities of non-participatory isolationists, you can imagine what would happen if this were widespread....

[Puppycow]

Is education in fact mandatory?

Can't parents just choose to "home school" or even "unschool" their children?

[drkitten]

Is education in fact mandatory?

Can't parents just choose to "home school" or even "unschool" their children?

In most jurisdictions, home-schooled children are still assessed periodically to make sure they're learning age-appropriate material; typically this involves either sitting a standardized exam or submission of a portfolio of work completed during the year. (See the Ohio regulations here (http://www.hslda.org/laws/analysis/Ohio.pdf), for example.)

A parent who refuses to follow the assessment regime can and will be forced to send their children to an appropriate school.

[Chaos]

For the same reason that paying taxes and serving on juries is compulsory. A "free" society is not an anarchy, and people still need to play by the rules of society. In the case of a democracy or other participatory government, society at large needs to have the capacity to actually participate. Since people weren't developing that capacity in their children, it was found necessary to make it legally mandatory.

And THAT is the core argument. People need to know "the rules", or rather need to be taught the skills they need to get to know the rules (such as reading, for example), and the skills and knowledge needed to participate - so that they can choose for themselves whether to participate or not.

Beyond that, I think if not mandatory, it is at least a very very good idea to teach people the skills they need to participate in (non-political) society and the marketplace - notably, basic critical thinking skills, basic math and basic statistics and science literacy.
Teaching the actual facts of science or history may not actually be all that important, as long as you give people the skills and motivation to look it up themselves.

[jiggeryqua]

For the same reason that paying taxes and serving on juries is compulsory. A "free" society is not an anarchy, and people still need to play by the rules of society. In the case of a democracy or other participatory government, society at large needs to have the capacity to actually participate. Since people weren't developing that capacity in their children, it was found necessary to make it legally mandatory.

Indeed, there's still a tension -- for example, the American Amish tend not to want to have their children attend mandatory school, and also tend not to want to participate in government. While democracies tend to be relatively robust to small communities of non-participatory isolationists, you can imagine what would happen if this were widespread....

You can imagine all sorts of things - chocolate teapots, UFOs, the FSM, all manner of woo. Imagining that anarchy must be chaos is woo. Nobody tells the apex of a heirarchy what to do - how does s/he manage to be an anarchist? The same way any other anarchist does, by taking responsibility for their own decisions and actions.

I tend to suspect that those who imagine anarchy would be chaos are people who would enact chaos with nobody to tell them what to do.

More specifically on-topic, 'education' should be widely and freely available, to supplement the learning that any sentient creature will be undertaking naturally. But you cannot make it compulsory. You can make attendance at school compulsory - if you can afford to provide it. You can make tests of the ability of both teachers and pupils compulsory - but you cannot make anyone learn.

[drkitten]

And THAT is the core argument. People need to know "the rules", or rather need to be taught the skills they need to get to know the rules (such as reading, for example), and the skills and knowledge needed to participate - so that they can choose for themselves whether to participate or not.

Well, there's also the simple morality argument. To compel a person to do good -- or at least, not to do evil -- does not actually impinge upon their freedom very much, especially when we're talking about a form of evil that is uncontroversial. Laws against cruelty to animals, for example, are something that is very common even in a "free" society, precisely because the freedom "to be cruel to animals" isn't one that many people value very highly. (Or indeed at all.) On a more personal note, I've seen far too many brushfires to believe that the freedom to burn autumn leaves instead of bagging them is worth protecting.

The freedom to condemn your children to a life of ignorance, poverty, and lack of opportunity is also not one that many people approve of. Even the Amish, who tend (as I said) to oppose mandatory schooling do not approve of ignorance, poverty, want, and lack of opportunity. They work damn hard to make sure their children have everything they need. They simply consider that formal schooling isn't a very good path to getting those things as a low-technology farmer, and that a twelve-year-old Amish boy would be better served learning how to fix a fence and deliver a piglet than learning algebra and the capitals of Africa.


Beyond that, I think if not mandatory, it is at least a very very good idea to teach people the skills they need to participate in (non-political) society and the marketplace - notably, basic critical thinking skills, basic math and basic statistics and science literacy.

Well, certainly your children are likely to thank you when they can afford to buy their own place and move out of your basement.

Your wife may thank you as well.

[drkitten]

You can imagine all sorts of things

I can. I can also imagine a chocolate teapot sitting next to an anarchist with a sensible argument for his political beliefs. I fear I'll see the first before the second.


I tend to suspect that those who imagine anarchy would be chaos are people who would enact chaos with nobody to tell them what to do.

... or historians.

We've seen chaos without anarchy literally thousands of times in history. Funny, but the closer we get to anarchy, the greater the chaos becomes.

I love how anarchists think that the Somalians would suddenly spontaneously self-assemble into a peaceful utopia if only we could sweep away that last vestige of formal government and leave the warlords to do as they saw fit.

[Doghouse Reilly]

Since people weren't developing that capacity in their children, it was found necessary to make it legally mandatory.



Do you have evidence for the contention that children weren't developing the capacity to participate in society? I know that some feared this would be the case, but is their proof that it was actually so?

[drkitten]

Do you have evidence for the contention that children weren't developing the capacity to participate in society? I know that some feared this would be the case, but is their proof that it was actually so?

Yes, although most of the proof was from England/Scotland, which is where the modern mandatory schooling movement actually got its start in the 17th century. The local county councils and whatnot were starting to have difficulty finding people qualified to do what needed to be done.

In particular, the Parliament of Scotland found, as early as 1496, that it was having trouble finding judicial administrators, and passed a law that obliged all nobility and gentry to school their heirs; the reason given is explicitly (http://www.rps.ac.uk/trans/A1496/6/4) "so that they may have knowledge and understanding of the laws, through which justice may reign universally throughout the realm, so that those who are sheriffs or judges ordinary under the king's highness will have the knowledge to do justice [and] that the poor people should have no need to seek our sovereign lord's principal auditors for each small injury."

Of course, the tradition of relying on the local gentry to serve as legal administrators wasn't available in the colonies, which had no local gentry (and had in many cases been founded to avoid that); Massachusetts passed the first mandatory education law in 1647, about the same time that Scotland strengthened its mandatory education law to include all people and not just th nobles.

[Drachasor]

This is not that different from asking "should nutrition be mandatory?"

Parents do NOT have complete dictatorial control over their kids, nor should they. The kids have their own rights, independent of the parent's, but we all acknowledge that kids aren't experienced enough to make informed decisions about many things which is part of why the State steps in to help out if necessary.

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

"Education" of some sort is inevitable, barring death in the obstetric ward. Compusory attendance at school is a fairly recent policy, and is neither inevitable nor beneficial. Singapore did not compel attendance at school prior to the early 1990s.

The welfare-economic case for tax subsidization of school attendance is shakey, and the case for a policy which restricts parents' options for the use of the taxpayers' education subsidy to schools operated by dues-paying members of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel is non-existent.

Consider a schools in a voucher-subsidized environment. Compulsory attendance statutes mean nothing unless the law compels some school to accept students everywhere else. Call these default-option schools "the public school system". Likely, these schools would cost more, per pupil, to operate than schools which assembled their enrollment through mutual agreement between schools and parents. From the examples of Hong Kong and Ireland, I expect that schools in such an environment would enroll about 10% of the student population. The State could put the contract to operate these "default-option" schools out to bid periodically, to combat the evolution of predatory coalitions like the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel.

(Walrus): "I have never heard of mandatory education being targeted as being unfree."
Read John Holt (Why Children Fail) or Ivan Illich (Deschooling Society).
Compulsory, unpaid labor is slavery, black or white, male or female, young or old.
(Walrus): "If freedom means choice, as President Bartlet said in a memorable episode of West Wing, how can education be compulsory in a free society?"
(Kitten): "For the same reason that paying taxes and serving on juries is compulsory. A 'free' society is not an anarchy, and people still need to play by the rules of society. In the case of a democracy or other participatory government, society at large needs to have the capacity to actually participate. Since people weren't developing that capacity in their children, it was found necessary to make it legally mandatory."

Ummm, no.

The "whereas" preface to the first compulsory attendance statute in the British colonies of North America ("That Old Deluder, Satan" Act, 1647) gives as justification for compulsory attendance that parents were not indoctrinating their children into the (Massachusetts Congregationalist) State religion. Prior to the American Revolution, most polities in the British colonies of North America either did not compel attendance at all or subsidized attendance at Church-operated schools of the parents' choice. When waves of Catholic immigrants came ashore in the early decades of the 19th century, the wealthier resident Protestant majority faced a dilemma: raise taxes on themselves and keep per-pupil budgets constant or keep taxes constant and see the budgets of their children's schools fall. They choose neither. They passed legislation which restricted tuition subsidies to schools operated by government employees. These schools taught that part of the Christian religion which was common to all Christian faiths. They used an English-language bible, and, not to impose one creed, insisted that students decide the meaning for themselves. This was Protestant doctrine: Catholics took their Bible in Latin and salvation required the intercession of a priest. The Catholics bailed. Problem solved.

In Massachusetts, Horace Mann rode a wave of anti-Catholic bigotry to a position of control over his own pet bureaucracy. The US State-monopoly school system originated in religious indoctrination, anti-Catholic bigotry, and bureaucratic empire-building .

By a somewhat different route, the Hawaii schools also originated in Congregationalist indoctrination and anti-Catholic bigotry. Protestant missionaries preceeded Catholic missionaries to Hawaii. The kingdoms of Hawaii did not compel attendance at school prior to the arrival of Protestant missionaries. Protestants had the ear of the Ali'i (hereditary rulers) when a recession on the US mainland (1837) reduced contributions to overseas missions. The Protestant missionaries persuaded the Ali'i to subsidize their schools and to exclude Catholic schools from the subsidy. The missionary Richard Armstrong became the second Superintendant of Schools. Later, plantation owners won legislation which compelled parents to pay school fees in currency, driving native Hawaiians out of the subsistence economy into the wage economy.

The reason we have compulsory attendance policies is because theocratic zealots wanted them 180 or more years ago and because, today, current recipients of the US taxpayers 700+ billion per year K-PhD subsidy lobby stridently in defense of their incomes.

[drkitten]

"Education" of some sort is inevitable, barring death in the obstetric ward. Compusory attendance at school is a fairly recent policy, and is neither inevitable nor beneficial. Singapore did not compel attendance at school prior to the early 1990s.

Yeah. Third world countries don't need compulsory schools to maintain third-world economies and third-world lifestyles. That's why the Amish object as well.

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

"Education" of some sort is inevitable, barring death in the obstetric ward. Compusory attendance at school is a fairly recent policy, and is neither inevitable nor beneficial. Singapore did not compel attendance at school prior to the early 1990s.Yeah. Third world countries don't need compulsory schools to maintain third-world economies and third-world lifestyles. That's why the Amish object as well.Singapore was most definitely NOT "third world" in the 1990s. The Amish enjoy a high standard of living. They train their youth on the job. They won the freedom to do so (after 8th grade) in court.

[Chaos]

Well, there's also the simple morality argument. To compel a person to do good -- or at least, not to do evil -- does not actually impinge upon their freedom very much, especially when we're talking about a form of evil that is uncontroversial. Laws against cruelty to animals, for example, are something that is very common even in a "free" society, precisely because the freedom "to be cruel to animals" isn't one that many people value very highly. (Or indeed at all.) On a more personal note, I've seen far too many brushfires to believe that the freedom to burn autumn leaves instead of bagging them is worth protecting.


But... but... you´re taking away our freedom! Responsible adults should have the rights to responsibly start brush fires! If something bad happens, the charred corpses of their victims can always sue them in the charred ruins of the court afterwards.


The freedom to condemn your children to a life of ignorance, poverty, and lack of opportunity is also not one that many people approve of. Even the Amish, who tend (as I said) to oppose mandatory schooling do not approve of ignorance, poverty, want, and lack of opportunity. They work damn hard to make sure their children have everything they need. They simply consider that formal schooling isn't a very good path to getting those things as a low-technology farmer, and that a twelve-year-old Amish boy would be better served learning how to fix a fence and deliver a piglet than learning algebra and the capitals of Africa.

So the Amish do not actually oppose education but advocate a different kind of education? Works for me.

Well, certainly your children are likely to thank you when they can afford to buy their own place and move out of your basement.

Your wife may thank you as well.

I may thank myself for that, first and foremost.

Scammers, televangelists and political ratcatchers are going to hate me, though.

[UNLoVedRebel]

But I have never heard of mandatory education being targeted as being unfree.I picked up a non-fiction Ayn Rand book (I think it was Capitalism or some stupid ****), at the book store. I opened it up and the first sentence I read was a statement saying something along the lines of public education being unfree. I put the book down and never read another Ayn Rand book again.

[JJM 777]

Methinks that literacy is an essential skill, would be child abuse not to teach it to children.

[Undesired Walrus]

Perhaps the argument could be made that mandatory education curbs the abuses of authoritarian parents, therefore liberating the child. After all, any decision about whether a kid should or shouldn't go to school wouldn't be made by the four year old but by the parent.

[Yeggster]

Is education in fact mandatory?

Can't parents just choose to "home school" or even "unschool" their children?

In Canada they can.

[Cainkane1]

When I was in school and I imagine its the same today there was a type of "student" who learned nothing and as soon as they reached 16 it was goodbye school. I'm sure some of these people were unable to read or write and were apparently uninterested in even trying.

I'm of the opinion that this type of persons best interests and the best interests of the other students and staff that they be allowed to leave school and do something else.

[drkitten]

When I was in school and I imagine its the same today there was a type of "student" who learned nothing and as soon as they reached 16 it was goodbye school. I'm sure some of these people were unable to read or write and were apparently uninterested in even trying.

I'm of the opinion that this type of persons best interests and the best interests of the other students and staff that they be allowed to leave school and do something else.

Shrug. Opinions differ. As Drachasor pointed out, education is little less a necessity than nutrition. If you starved your child, you would face charges for neglect and child abuse. But by the same token, if you 'enabled' your child by allowing him to eat only junk food to the point that he was suffering from malnutrition or something, you'd similarly face charges. (There's a rather famous case from earlier this year where a 14-year old boy reached nearly 600 pounds, and yes, the parents were charged.)

I don't think it's in anyone's best interests that they be 'allowed' to decide at age 14 that they want to be morbidly obese. I also don't think that it's in anyone's best interests that they be allowed to decide they want to be illiterate.

[drkitten]

Perhaps the argument could be made that mandatory education curbs the abuses of authoritarian parents, therefore liberating the child. After all, any decision about whether a kid should or shouldn't go to school wouldn't be made by the four year old but by the parent.

It's not usually an issue with four year olds, but with students of what I would term "apprenticeship age." For example, allowing your twelve-year old to drop out of school and get a job/work the farm.

[JJM 777]

I'm sure some of these people were unable to read or write (...) this type of persons best interests (...) that they be allowed to leave school and do something else.
Assuming that we are not talking about the lowest 5% of IQ scale, who just possibly cannot learn to read and write, I would like to hear what else would be in the best interests of an illiterate person than sitting at school learning to learn and write, as long as it ever takes.

Persons who cannot cope with the learning speed of mainstream population are usually put in separate special classes, that is in everyone's interests too.

[Syntaxvorlon]

Mandatory education is a rather interesting innovation in general. The idea that you would take children whose parents had no money, or even had no parents, and teach them to read and do arithmetic and give them an idea of how to be good citizens is fairly revolutionary. The founders of the US might have argued, being Enlightenment nobs, that education is necessary for people to be good citizens. But then, when the country began citizen meant landowning white man, and such men could already send their male children to school or educate themselves.

When the country industrialized and had, first male, then racial, then female suffrage, essentially all adults were citizens, even if they were discriminated against locally. But at this point it becomes necessary to have a public system of free schools if you want to fulfill that mandate that all citizens know how to interact with their government, that they have the opportunity to have agency in their society.

So should education be mandatory? Yes. Education is a way for our society to ensure the development, in its citizens of an understanding of how our society works at all levels. Parents might be able to provide such an understanding, but just because some parents can it is not a guarantee. The public school system attempts to guarantee that all children have the opportunity to gain access to this knowledge.

Of course, we can ask the question, is education necessary for good citizenship? And how much? And we can ask the further question, does citizenship matter in a society as large as ours? Consider the comparative size of elected bodies and the number citizens when the nation was founded with the current state. Each senator is, on average today, beholden to something like 3 million citizens. Each representative to some hundreds of thousands. But these questions begin to escape the scope of education.

[drkitten]

Of course, we can ask the question, is education necessary for good citizenship? And how much? And we can ask the further question, does citizenship matter in a society as large as ours?

Of course it does. As Tip O'Neill is famously supposed to have put it, "all politics is local"; the most influential government is the town or city in which you live. That's the one that affects you on a daily basis, deciding when your garbage will be picked up, whether or not there's a bar across the street from where your children wait for the school bus, and how fast cars are allowed to drive through the park.

While national issues get all the "national" press, the simple fact is that most of your quality of life is determined by the local government, which is responsible only to you and your neighbors.

[Chaos]

Of course, we can ask the question, is education necessary for good citizenship? And how much?

Not just good citizenship - ANY citizenship.

How can you be a citizen if you can´t vote because you can´t read the ballot?
On a slightly more advanced level, how can you be a citizen if you haven´t been taught the simplest logic, or don´t know 2 from 3, and thus can´t figure out if a politician is making sense or is trying to con you?

And we can ask the further question, does citizenship matter in a society as large as ours? Consider the comparative size of elected bodies and the number citizens when the nation was founded with the current state. Each senator is, on average today, beholden to something like 3 million citizens. Each representative to some hundreds of thousands. But these questions begin to escape the scope of education.

I don´t think that really matters. One particular individual´s education is less important to the whole than it used to be - but a mass of illiterate gullible peasants is a problem, no matter if they´re one thousand per representative or five hundred thousand per representative. So, if the education isn´t there to turn the masses into citizens, the society suffers, no matter how large or small the number of people per representative.

[drkitten]

How can you be a citizen if you can´t vote because you can´t read the ballot?
On a slightly more advanced level, how can you be a citizen if you haven´t been taught the simplest logic, or don´t know 2 from 3, and thus can´t figure out if a politician is making sense or is trying to con you?

To be fair, "uneducated" and "illiterate" are different than "dumb." The jury system has worked more or less successful in English Common Law since time immemorial,... and since well before the codification most formal written laws. While a random peasant may not know how to decline agricola, he most certainly knows 2 from 3 (otherwise he'd have a hard time keeping track of his cows) and may well have more experience spotting liars and cheats than most people.

[Chaos]

To be fair, "uneducated" and "illiterate" are different than "dumb." The jury system has worked more or less successful in English Common Law since time immemorial,... and since well before the codification most formal written laws. While a random peasant may not know how to decline agricola, he most certainly knows 2 from 3 (otherwise he'd have a hard time keeping track of his cows) and may well have more experience spotting liars and cheats than most people.

Okay, I´ll admit the 2 and 3 thing was an exaggeration. But I´m sure you´ll agree that a certain degree of knowledge of math and statistics is very useful, and in many cases necessary, to avoid falling victim to scams or the financial and statistical sleight-of-hand practiced by certain kinds of businesses and politicians.

And, sure, a random peasant may have experience spotting the merchant who sells rotten apples or the laborer with a lousy excuse for slacking off - but can he spot the snake oil salesman who is offering all-natural essence of quantum doodoo? Or the politician who is selling him the latest "do lots of favors to this special interest group, and everyone will be better off for it" policy? Can he spot the gaping holes in the "logic" of a Freeman on the Land, or a Birther, or a Truther?

[sadhatter]

If you don't think education should be mandatory, take 2 years off of your current job and work in a call center. Seriously.

When you talk to so many people, from so many different areas of the united states, and see so many basic mistakes being made, very low basic level english abilities ( "what the **** is a statement, i need my bill!" for example.) , and in general a " If someone else knows it i don't have to." logic, you quickly see that knowledge should be a requirement.

People get angry because they don't know, and because they don't know they don't care. And because they don't care, they don't want to know. On and on, in an endless cycle.

Should it be mandatory? Well, do want the country to succeed? Do you want people to be able to better make decisions? Or is the concept that everyone has a right to screw up their children's lives however they want something that you feel trumps this?

Screw the children, a good portion of parents don't have the mental capacity to make a proper decision in this regard. And this is just going to lead to their children having the same handicap. The only way to stop the cycle is to attempt, in the best way available, to make sure the children are educated.

I think that at least a year in any customer service job that deals with the common folk of the entire country ( be it us or canada. WE are no smarter here, trust me. ) would go a long way to show people that the world is not as smart as you , or your friends, or even your dumbest friend, may be. ( and by this i am speaking of anyone who is likely to be reading this message. You, your friends, and acquaintances , are not a good representative example of the population. Something that you don't find out until being able to talk with a good portion of the rest of the population. )

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Again: NOT ("education" = "attendance at a part-time juvenile detention facility") and NOT ("public education" = "compulsory attendance at part-time juvenile detention facilities operated by dues-paying members of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel"). These false equations persist throughout the above discussion, and the policies which ensue from their widespread acceptance inflict enormous harm on students, families, and taxpayers.

[Jeff Corey]

How educational.

[blauney]

Children are not granted the same level of freedoms as adults in any society, even free societies. Compulsory education is not inconsistent with other restrictions placed on children. The cost benefit analysis is so heavily in favor of compulsory education, that I am unsure as to whether this topic can really be the subject of much debate.

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Children are not granted the same level of freedoms as adults in any society, even free societies. Compulsory education is not inconsistent with other restrictions placed on children. The cost benefit analysis is so heavily in favor of compulsory education, that I am unsure as to whether this topic can really be the subject of much debate."Education" is inevitable. Threats by the goons with the guns (the State) to compel "education" mean as much as threats to compel children to acceelerate Earthward with a force proportional to the product of the their masses, divided by the square of the distance between them. As to "(t)he cost benefit analysis is so heavily in favor of compulsory education, that I am unsure as to whether this topic can really be the subject of much debate": if by "education" you intend "compulsory attendance at school", we disagree. It's far from obvious that society as a whole benefits when the State compels parents to surrender their children to strangers. Gandhi opposed compulsory attendance at school.

[Jeff Corey]

Cherry picking again? Here's my pick, "Gandhi’s critique of Western, particularly English, education was part of his critique of Western civilization as a whole. There is a story that, on arriving in Britain after he had become famous, someone asked him the question: 'Mr Gandhi, what do you think of civilization in England?' to which he replied 'I think that it would be something worth trying!'"
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-gand.htm

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Cherry picking again?Hardly. In his autobiography, Gandhi says that parents are the natural teachers of children.

[AnnoyingPony]

I don't think that school should be mandatory. Children who want to learn on their own should be able to ask for rights to go to a public school, however.

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

I don't think that school should be mandatory. Children who want to learn on their own should be able to ask for rights to go to a public school, however.You raise an interesting point. Discussions of education and compulsory schooling usually involve the creation of alternatives to State-operated schools, that parents may select. What about making parent control the default position and allowing children to "opt out" of parent control? The law allows for "emancipated minors", after all. Children can divorce their parents in some jurisdictions, I believe.

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

...The cost benefit analysis is so heavily in favor of compulsory education, that I am unsure as to whether this topic can really be the subject of much debate.Albert Einstein
"Autobiographical Notes"
Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, Paul Schilpp, ed.It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry, especially if the food, handed out under such coercion, were to be selected accordingly.Marvin Minsky
Interview
Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery 1994-July...the evidence is that many of our foremost achievers developed under conditions that are not much like those of present-day mass education. Robert Lawler just showed me a paper by Harold Macurdy on the child pattern of genius. Macurdy reviews the early education of many eminent people from the last couple of centuries and concludes (1) that most of them had an enormous amount of attention paid to them by one or both parents and (2) that generally they were relatively isolated from other children. This is very different from what most people today consider an ideal school. It seems to me that much of what we call education is really socialization. Consider what we do to our kids. Is it really a good idea to send your 6-year-old into a room full of 6-year-olds, and then, the next year, to put your 7-year-old in with 7-year-olds, and so on? A simple recursive argument suggests this exposes them to a real danger of all growing up with the minds of 6-year-olds. And, so far as I can see, that's exactly what happens.
Our present culture may be largely shaped by this strange idea of isolating children's thought from adult thought. Perhaps the way our culture educates its children better explains why most of us come out as dumb as they do, than it explains how some of us come out as smart as they do.Roland Meighan
"Home-based Education Effectiveness Research and Some of its Implications"
Educational Review, Vol. 47, No.3, 1995.The issue of social skills. One edition of Home School Researcher, Volume 8, Number 3, contains two research reports on the issue of social skills. The first finding of the study by Larry Shyers (1992) was that home-schooled students received significantly lower problem behavior scores than schooled children. His next finding was that home-schooled children are socially well adjusted, but schooled children are not so well adjusted. Shyers concludes that we are asking the wrong question when we ask about the social adjustment of home-schooled children. The real question is why is the social; adjustment of schooled children of such poor quality?
The second study, by Thomas Smedley (1992), used different test instruments but comes to the same conclusion, that home-educated children are more mature and better socialized than those attending school...
So-called "school phobia" is actually more likely to be a sign of mental health, whereas school dependancy is a largely unrecognized mental health problem...Linda Darling-Hammond
American School Board Journal, September 1999....(M)any well-known adolescent difficulties are not intrinsic to the teenage years but are related to the mismatch between adolescents' developmental needs and the kinds of experiences most junior high and high schools provide. When students need close affiliation, they experience large depersonalized schools; when they need to develop autonomy, they experience few opportunities for choice and punitive approaches to discipline...Clive Harber,
"Schooling as Violence"
Educatioinal Review p. 10, V. 54, #1."...It is almost certainly more damaging for children to be in school than to out of it. Children whose days are spent herding animals rather than sitting in a classroom at least develop skills of problem solving and independence while the supposedly luckier ones in school are stunted in their mental, physical, and emotional development by being rendered pasive, and by having to spend hours each day in a crowded classroom under the control of an adult who punishes them for any normal level of activity such as moving or speaking."Clive Harber
"Schooling as Violence"
Educatioinal Review, p. 9 V. 54, #1.
Furthermore, according to a report for UNESCO, cited in Esteve (2000), the increasing level of pupil-teacher and pupil-pupil violence in classrooms is directly connected with compulsory schooling. The report argues that institutional violence against pupils who are obliged to attend daily at an educational centre until 16 or 18 years of age increases the frustration of these students to a level where they externalise it.E.O. Wilson
Naturalist , p. 11-12Why do I tell you this little boy's story of medusas, rays, and sea monsters, nearly sixty years after the fact? Because it illustrates, I believe, how a naturalist is created. A child comes to the edge of deep water with a mind prepared for wonder....Hands-on experience at the critical time, not systematic knowledge, is what counts in the making of a naturalist. Better to be an untutored savage for a while, not to know the names or anatomical detail. Better to spend long stretches of time just searching and dreaming.

[drkitten]

You raise an interesting point. Discussions of education and compulsory schooling usually involve the creation of alternatives to State-operated schools, that parents may select. What about making parent control the default position and allowing children to "opt out" of parent control?

Because children, almost by definition, generally lack the ability to make such judgments.

The law allows for "emancipated minors", after all.

It does, but usually only by court order and subsequent to a finding that the specific child in question has the ability to assume adult-level responsibilities and make adult-level judgments. Even so, there's usually an explicit minimum age (14 in most jurisdictions).

Do you mind if we encourage children to stay in school at least until age 14?

[JoeTheJuggler]

We all benefit from having a mostly literate populace that has received a basic education.

Similarly, even people without children have to pay for free public education because it benefits us as well.

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

(JoeTheJuggler): "We all benefit from having a mostly literate populace that has received a basic education."
True. We all benefit, also, if skilled people continue to breathe, but no laws compel breathing.
(JoeTheJuggler): "Similarly, even people without children have to pay for free public education because it benefits us as well."
No. We pay for school because parents in the theocracies of pre-Revolutionary British North America neglected the religious instruction of their children (I guess the parents decided that there were more valuable things to do with their children's time, and I agree), and, later, waves of poor Catholic immigrants provoked an allergic reaction in the wealthier Protestant majority, and, later still, a politically effective coalition of recipients of the taxpayers' pre-college education subsidy lobby for the current system.
Taxpayers support the State-monopoly school system because the alternative is to spend time in prison.

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

...Do you mind if we encourage children to stay in school at least until age 14?Parents are more representative of the population at large than are State (government, generally) employees. What democratic theory implies that the public at large benefits when legislators mandate that parents surrender their children to State employees? This is NOT a rhetorical question.

Within broad limits nearly every expansion of parent control will benefit students, parents, real teachers, and taxpayers. My ideal is repeal of compulsory attendance laws, child labor laws, minimum wage laws, and tax support of school, repeal of all anti-discrimination laws applied to private-sector employers, and enactment of an anti-discrimination policy for State agencies which would forbid State (government, generally) agencies from conditioning employment or promotion upon a transcript.

I'll settle for:
1. Legislation that exempts from compulsory attendance children who are at or above age-level expectations on standardized tests of reading vocabulary, reading comprehension (any language) and Math
and
2. Legislation that requires schools to offer, at any age and at any time of year, credit-by-exam for all courses required for graduation (students who test out of, say, 11th grade US History could spend the free period in the library or hang with the Auto Shop teacher)...
and
3. Legislation that requires school districts to administer, at any age, an exit exam (the GED will do) and to subsidize...
3.1 Post-secondary tuition at any VA-approved post-secondary institution...
or
3.2 A wage subsidy that students may apply to any qualified private-sector employer...
at some fraction 1/2 < a/b < 1 of the district's regular-ed per pupil budget (current expenditures+capital expenditures+pension obligations).

[Chaos]

Parents are more representative of the population at large than are State (government, generally) employees. What democratic theory implies that the public at large benefits when legislators mandate that parents surrender their children to State employees? This is NOT a rhetorical question.

Within broad limits nearly every expansion of parent control will benefit students, parents, real teachers, and taxpayers. My ideal is repeal of compulsory attendance laws, child labor laws, minimum wage laws, and tax support of school, repeal of all anti-discrimination laws applied to private-sector employers, and enactment of an anti-discrimination policy for State agencies which would forbid State (government, generally) agencies from conditioning employment or promotion upon a transcript.

I'll settle for:
1. Legislation that exempts from compulsory attendance children who are at or above age-level expectations on standardized tests of reading vocabulary, reading comprehension (any language) and Math
and
2. Legislation that requires schools to offer, at any age and at any time of year, credit-by-exam for all courses required for graduation (students who test out of, say, 11th grade US History could spend the free period in the library or hang with the Auto Shop teacher)...
and
3. Legislation that requires school districts to administer, at any age, an exit exam (the GED will do) and to subsidize...
3.1 Post-secondary tuition at any VA-approved post-secondary institution...
or
3.2 A wage subsidy that students may apply to any qualified private-sector employer...
at some fraction 1/2 < a/b < 1 of the district's regular-ed per pupil budget (current expenditures+capital expenditures+pension obligations).

Do you also volunteer to pay the crapload of money that your ideas are going to cost?

[AvalonXQ]

Do you also volunteer to pay the crapload of money that your ideas are going to cost?

Doesn't seem like the ideas will cost much money. States already have proficiency exams, and most schools already require teachers to give semester- or quarter-cumulative final exams for most subjects.
States already pay for post-secondary enrollment for school-age students as well.
And the wage supplement reflects less money than the school district would otherwise be paying to educate the child. Assuming that the budget is modular enough that the school can actually reduce their budget by the appropriate amount, the school should save money.

[themusicteacher]

By all means, let's let every crank, fundamentalist and just plain anti-education person out there choose to not school their child. However, if they can't prove that they are in some way providing some sort of legitimate training in civics, government and job related skills, they have to pay double the tax to deal with their ignorant offspring. Or, better yet, let's trade them to a country that has kids that would LOVE to have an opportunity at a good education. I hear Somalia has many interesting lines of work for those uninterested in doing things like paying taxes, exercising civic responsibility, earning an education and, above all, living past the age of 30.

[themusicteacher]

Double post

[themusicteacher]

Parents are more representative of the population at large than are State (government, generally) employees. What democratic theory implies that the public at large benefits when legislators mandate that parents surrender their children to State employees? This is NOT a rhetorical question.

Within broad limits nearly every expansion of parent control will benefit students, parents, real teachers, and taxpayers. My ideal is repeal of compulsory attendance laws, child labor laws, minimum wage laws, and tax support of school, repeal of all anti-discrimination laws applied to private-sector employers, and enactment of an anti-discrimination policy for State agencies which would forbid State (government, generally) agencies from conditioning employment or promotion upon a transcript.

I'll settle for:
1. Legislation that exempts from compulsory attendance children who are at or above age-level expectations on standardized tests of reading vocabulary, reading comprehension (any language) and Math
and
2. Legislation that requires schools to offer, at any age and at any time of year, credit-by-exam for all courses required for graduation (students who test out of, say, 11th grade US History could spend the free period in the library or hang with the Auto Shop teacher)...
and
3. Legislation that requires school districts to administer, at any age, an exit exam (the GED will do) and to subsidize...
3.1 Post-secondary tuition at any VA-approved post-secondary institution...
or
3.2 A wage subsidy that students may apply to any qualified private-sector employer...
at some fraction 1/2 < a/b < 1 of the district's regular-ed per pupil budget (current expenditures+capital expenditures+pension obligations).

I'm sure none of this has to do with creating yet another pool of cheap, unskilled labor and soldiers? Let me guess: it's all about freedom, choice and equality, right? If your half-baked plan went through, we'd be an even more unequal society than we already are. Then again, you're probably okay with that so long as you can claim, quite smugly no doubt, that people are "free to choose" any path they desire. How many kids from low-income families do you think you'll skim off the top on a plan like this that will volunteer fro military duty or work at McDonalds for minimum wage (oh, wait, you're against minimum wage) without complaint? A few million every year probably. Did you get this straight from a libertarian website or is this just a riff on some really bad ideas?

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Do you also volunteer to pay the crapload of money that your ideas are going to cost?It would save money, obviously. Unless you believe that it costs more to house a student for an hour a day, five days a week, 36 weeks a year, and to pay someone to instruct that student, than it does to grade a bubble-in exam form.

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

By all means, let's let every crank, fundamentalist and just plain anti-education person out there choose to not school their child.Looks like we have a government school teacher here. For many parents, "school(ing) their child" means trashing their future. Consider Detroit schools.
(Musicteacher): "However, if they can't prove that they are in some way providing some sort of legitimate training in civics, government and job related skills, they have to pay double the tax to deal with their ignorant offspring."
In Hawaii, the juvenile arrest rate falls when school is not in session. Reported burglaries fall when school is not in session. Juvenile hospitalizations for human-induced trauma fall when school is not in session. Looks to me like taxpayers should ask the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel to return the $500 billion+ per year it takes from taxpayers.
(Music teacher): "Or, better yet, let's trade them to a country that has kids that would LOVE to have an opportunity at a good education. I hear Somalia has many interesting lines of work for those uninterested in doing things like paying taxes, exercising civic responsibility, earning an education and, above all, living past the age of 30."
You really believe that government schools in the US deliver "a good education"?

[AnnoyingPony]

Children can divorce their parents in some jurisdictions, I believe.

Why hasn't anyone told me this before? :eek:

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

I'm sure none of this has to do with creating yet another pool of cheap, unskilled labor and soldiers? Let me guess: it's all about freedom, choice and equality, right?...And accountability. If it's fraud for a physician to charge for the treatment of a healthy patient and if it's fraud for a mechanic to charge for the repair of a functional motor, then it's fraud for a teacher, school, or school district to charge for the instruction of a student who does not need our help.

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Children can divorce their parents in some jurisdictions, I believe.Why hasn't anyone told me this before?It's uncommon. As Dr. Kitten observes, the process involves lawyers and courts. It usually arises when child actors discover that their parents are robbing them.

[Arthur Mann]

No system to educate people should ever be mandatory. Even so, you can't stop people from learning, even profoundly stupid people.

[Arthur Mann]

If it's fraud for a physician to charge for the treatment of a healthy patient and if it's fraud for a mechanic to charge for the repair of a functional motor, then it's fraud for a teacher, school, or school district to charge for the instruction of a student who does not need our help.

It's most especially fraud when physicians demand anything in exchange for helping people. Note, though, the professions you describe, they all require "education", but not in an objective sense. Physicians are taught by pharmaceutical companies, mechanics are "certified" by and sold essential tools by the manufacturers. It's all set up as a scam, more or less.

The "education" system we have access to is little more than daycare and social indoctrination, with obedience training mandatory.

[AnnoyingPony]

It's most especially fraud when physicians demand anything in exchange for helping people. Note, though, the professions you describe, they all require "education", but not in an objective sense. Physicians are taught by pharmaceutical companies, mechanics are "certified" by and sold essential tools by the manufacturers. It's all set up as a scam, more or less.

The "education" system we have access to is little more than daycare and social indoctrination, with obedience training mandatory.

Physicians need to make money to feed themselves and their families, just like everyone else. It's not out of greed, it's out of a desire to keep themselves alive. Nothing wrong wit that.

Physicians are taught at medical schools attached to universities, not pharmaceutical companies. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physician#Education_and_training)

[Arthur Mann]

Physicians need to make money to feed themselves and their families, just like everyone else. It's not out of greed, it's out of a desire to keep themselves alive. Nothing wrong wit that.

Physicians are taught at medical schools attached to universities, not pharmaceutical companies.

In reverse order:

Whether through corruption or institution, pharmaceutical companies exert tremendous controls over medical schools. The schools rely on research money, the companies rely on the schools to provide the paperwork to pass their drugs. The relationships are very incestuous and readily corruptible.

Recently Senator Charles Grassley, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has been looking into financial ties between the pharmaceutical industry and the academic physicians who largely determine the market value of prescription drugs. He hasn’t had to look very hard.

Take the case of Dr. Joseph L. Biederman, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and chief of pediatric psychopharmacology at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital. Thanks largely to him, children as young as two years old are now being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with a cocktail of powerful drugs, many of which were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for that purpose and none of which were approved for children below ten years of age.

It's a common misconception that money feeds people. In the United States, machines do over 99% of the work to get food onto our tables. Even the machines don't run on money. To say that physicians aren't motivated by greed is to suggest they operate somehow outside the confines of the monetary system. We know this isn't the case. Very few doctors will work for free. OB/GYN's routinely c-section women so they can get to the golf course before sundown or so they don't have to stay up all night with the mother. The breast cancer industry creates hysteria pushing women to get mammograms, while mammograms (and all x-rays) are known to increase cancer risk.

[JoeTheJuggler]

(JoeTheJuggler): "We all benefit from having a mostly literate populace that has received a basic education."
True. We all benefit, also, if skilled people continue to breathe, but no laws compel breathing.

What a nonsensical thing to say.

[Arthur Mann]

What a nonsensical thing to say.

I think I understand what he was saying. Basically he was saying some things don't require legislation to exist or to give great benefit to all. The example given is the air, or maybe he meant the ability to respire. We live in the information age. We don't worry about laws governing the quality of wagon wheels, wagon wheels are obsolete. This idea of herding children into a dead boring environment and forcing them to sit down, line up and repeat after me all day, it's antique, and more than that, it's barbaric and destructive to a growing mind. Do you really want some d-bags shoving your kids around from class to class all day at the insistence of a ringing bell in a building that's built like a prison and has the same security system installed?

Who here would argue that their kid's social studies teacher knows more than their child can discover for themselves using a web search? Children are sponges for information and skill acquisition. They need to be taught critical thinking, and the scientific method, and the horror that is bias and superstition combined. They need to be in the world, experiencing every second of it, not memorizing a list of the world's billionaires or the various economic classes or Presidents' names or over a hundred names of atoms that already have uniquely identifying numbers. This is the twenty-first century, we should all start acting like it. We could be living like the Olympians, but instead we're playing Monopoly with people's lives. Does that make more sense?

[Flo]

(JoeTheJuggler): "We all benefit from having a mostly literate populace that has received a basic education."
True. We all benefit, also, if skilled people continue to breathe, but no laws compel breathing.
(JoeTheJuggler): "Similarly, even people without children have to pay for free public education because it benefits us as well."
No. We pay for school because parents in the theocracies of pre-Revolutionary British North America neglected the religious instruction of their children (I guess the parents decided that there were more valuable things to do with their children's time, and I agree), and, later, waves of poor Catholic immigrants provoked an allergic reaction in the wealthier Protestant majority, and, later still, a politically effective coalition of recipients of the taxpayers' pre-college education subsidy lobby for the current system.
Taxpayers support the State-monopoly school system because the alternative is to spend time in prison.


Would somebody tell me why almost every single country in the World have adopted compulsory education ? As far as I know, France or Japan didn't fear waves of poor uneducated catholic immigrants ...

[Arthur Mann]

Would somebody tell me why almost every single country in the World have adopted compulsory education ? As far as I know, France or Japan didn't fear waves of poor uneducated catholic immigrants ...

Wasn't kindergarten invented by the National Socialists in Germany? I could be wrong, but that's what I've always heard. This scam of "public education" is nothing more than social and economic indoctrination. Kids are sent to school to learn their place; their socioeconomic class, their career opportunities, their obedience training, the life choices that are deemed acceptable and so on. Above all is obedience to self-appointed authority, though. Also it keeps them occupied so they don't learn enough to be dangerous to the established power structures and institutions but know only enough to make a useful slave.

[Flo]

Wasn't kindergarten invented by the National Socialists in Germany? I could be wrong, but that's what I've always heard.

You've heard wrong. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindergarten#History).

This scam of "public education" is nothing more than social and economic indoctrination. Kids are sent to school to learn their place; their socioeconomic class, their career opportunities, their obedience training, the life choices that are deemed acceptable and so on. Above all is obedience to self-appointed authority, though. Also it keeps them occupied so they don't learn enough to be dangerous to the established power structures and institutions but know only enough to make a useful slave.

I've read Yvan Illich too, when I was a rebellious teenager who believed I was so smart and would end up on top of the World if only I was allowed to make my own education. Since then, I've learnt a bit about the times and reasons why public education has been introduced in various countries. You should do that too, it might save you years of merely repeating ideological rants.

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

I think I understand what he was saying. Basically he was saying some things don't require legislation to exist or to give great benefit to all...Nailed it. Thanks.

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Would somebody tell me why almost every single country in the World have adopted compulsory education ? As far as I know, France or Japan didn't fear waves of poor uneducated catholic immigrants ...State governments in the US demostrated to governments everywhere what a successful scam government-operated schools could be. That's my guess, anyway. Singapore did not compel attendance at school until the early 1990s.

[Arthur Mann]

You've heard wrong. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindergarten#History).

That suits me fine, actually. I think I always suspected that was just propaganda.

Since then, I've learnt a bit about the times and reasons why public education has been introduced in various countries. You should do that too, it might save you years of merely repeating ideological rants.

The fact that "kindergartens" were not invented by national socialists does not mean that the public education systems we have are not vile social indoctrination.

Clearly you have some emotional need to defend the public education system. I can only conclude you're a part of it.

[Phrost]

If people are going to get the exact same value applied to their ballots as mine, I expect they should be educated at least to the level of a functional member of the society about which they're "helping" to make decisions.

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

If people are going to get the exact same value applied to their ballots as mine, I expect they should be educated at least to the level of a functional member of the society about which they're "helping" to make decisions.Perhaps. Why suppose that the largest dealer in interpersonal violence in your neighborhood (the State) will deliver that education in your or society's interest? This is NOT a rhetorical question. Whence comes this reflexive recourse to the tool of organized violence? It makes as much sense as reaching for a 1 1/2 inch wood chisel for every job when a normal person would select a hammer for a nail, a screwdriver for a screw, a paintbrush for a can of varnish and a plank, and a tile knife for linoleum. To me, this looks insane.

[Cavemonster]

Perhaps. Why suppose that the largest dealer in interpersonal violence in your neighborhood (the State) will deliver that education in your or society's interest? This is NOT a rhetorical question. Whence comes this reflexive recourse to the tool of organized violence? It makes as much sense as reaching for a 1 1/2 inch wood chisel for every job when a normal person would select a hammer for a nail, a screwdriver for a screw, a paintbrush for a can of varnish and a plank, and a tile knife for linoleum. To me, this looks insane.

Because there are only really four tools in existence when you apply the concept broadly.

1) You can do things yourself. Not an option here, since most parents don't have the time, education, inclination and resources to educate their own kids entirely, especially those who are poor and undereducated themselves.
So this tool is a bad fit.

2) You can trust industry to do it. This costs money and inefficiencies in the market are subject to catastrophic failures. If they can't make money, they cease to exist, regardless of the level of service they were providing. There's no incentive to a business to provide quality education to those who can't pay for it. In rural locations with a smaller market base, there may be no incentive to open a for-profit school, or only enough students to support one. This means there will be no competition, and without competition, the market loses its only force that makes it serve customers well.
So this tool is a bad fit.

3) You can wait for charity to accomplish it, but I wouldn't hold your breath.
So this tool is a bad fit.


4) This leaves government, which for all its flaws, is does not have the deadly flaws of the other tools.

[Phrost]

I think the phrase you were looking for Malcom was that the Government has a "monopoly on force".

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

(Phrost): "If people are going to get the exact same value applied to their ballots as mine, I expect they should be educated at least to the level of a functional member of the society about which they're "helping" to make decisions."
(Malcolm): "Perhaps. Why suppose that the largest dealer in interpersonal violence in your neighborhood (the State) will deliver that education in your or society's interest? This is NOT a rhetorical question. Whence comes this reflexive recourse to the tool of organized violence? It makes as much sense as reaching for a 1 1/2 inch wood chisel for every job when a normal person would select a hammer for a nail, a screwdriver for a screw, a paintbrush for a can of varnish and a plank, and a tile knife for linoleum. To me, this looks insane."Because there are only really four tools in existence when you apply the concept broadly.
Okay. Let's consider this...
(Cavemonster): "1) You can do things yourself. Not an option here, since most parents don't have the time, education, inclination and resources to educate their own kids entirely, especially those who are poor and undereducated themselves.
So this tool is a bad fit."
We disagree. It does not take 12 years at $12,000 to teach a normal child to read and compute. Most vocational training occurs more effectively on the job than in a classroom. Parents would have more resources to devote to education if the State did not take $500 billion+ per year from the private economy and pour it down the K-12 rathole. Parents do not need to know everything; there are these amazing resources which experts call "books". Finally, parents have access to an invaluable educational resource to which the State's agents do not: love. Young children will work their hearts out for the love of Mom.
Marvin Minsky
Communications of the Association for Computing MachineryMinsky:...the evidence is that many of our foremost achievers developed under conditions that are not much like those of present-day mass education. Robert Lawler just showed me a paper by Harold Macurdy on the child pattern of genius. Macurdy reviews the early education of many eminent people from the last couple of centuries and concludes (1) that most of them had an enormous amount of attention paid to them by one or both parents and (2) that generally they were relatively isolated from other children. This is very different from what most people today consider an ideal school. It seems to me that much of what we call education is really socialization. Consider what we do to our kids. Is it really a good idea to send your 6-year-old into a room full of 6-year-olds, and then, the next year, to put your 7-year-old in with 7-year-olds, and so on? A simple recursive argument suggests this exposes them to a real danger of all growing up with the minds of 6-year-olds. And, so far as I can see, that's exactly what happens.
Our present culture may be largely shaped by this strange idea of isolating children's thought from adult thought. Perhaps the way our culture educates its children better explains why most of us come out as dumb as they do, than it explains how some of us come out as smart as they do.
(Cavemonster): "2) You can trust industry to do it. This costs money and inefficiencies in the market are subject to catastrophic failures. If they can't make money, they cease to exist, regardless of the level of service they were providing. There's no incentive to a business to provide quality education to those who can't pay for it. In rural locations with a smaller market base, there may be no incentive to open a for-profit school, or only enough students to support one. This means there will be no competition, and without competition, the market loses its only force that makes it serve customers well.
So this tool is a bad fit."
School can be expensive. Education is potentially cheap. Whatever features of this objection apply to independent schools apply with equal strength to State (government, generally) schools. Furthermore, while the "rural" objection is weak to begin with, the internet makes it weaker yet.
Gerard Lassibile and Lucia Navarro Gomez
"Organization and Efficiency of Educational Systems: some empirical findings"
Comparative Education, Vol. 36 #1, 2000, Feb. , pg. 16Furthermore, the regression results indicate that countries where private education is more widespread perform significantly better than countries where it is more limited. The result showing the private sector to be more efficient is similar to those found in other contexts with individual data (see, for example, Psucharopoulos, 1987; Jiminez, et. al, 1991). This finding should convince countries to reconsider policies that reduce the role of the private sector in the field of education.(Cavemonster): "3) You can wait for charity to accomplish it, but I wouldn't hold your breath.
Please don't.
(Cavemonster): "So this tool is a bad fit."
The argument for State assumption for the production of charity as a public good has a generally unnoticed gap in the reasoning. Corporate oversight is a public good, and the State itself is a corporation, so oversight of State functions is a public good which the State itself cannot provide. State assumption of responsibility for the provision of the public good of charity transforms the free rider problem at the root of "public goods" analysis but does not eliminate it.
(Cavemonster): "4) This leaves government, which for all its flaws, is does not have the deadly flaws of the other tools."
It has all of them, and more. The government of a locality is the largest dealer in interpersonal violence in that locality (definition, after Weber). People do not become smarter, more altuistic, better-informed, or more capable (except in their access to the tools of organized violence) when they enter the State's employment rolls.

[Cavemonster]

Okay. Let's consider this...
(Cavemonster): "1) You can do things yourself.
...
So this tool is a bad fit."
We disagree. It does not take 12 years at $12,000 to teach a normal child to read and compute. Most vocational training occurs more effectively on the job than in a classroom. Parents would have more resources to devote to education if the State did not take $500 billion+ per year from the private economy and pour it down the K-12 rathole.


The lowest earners are actually not paying any income tax, and generally not much property tax, so stopping public education funding doesn't improve their ability to educate their kids very much. This also doesn't really address the time issue, since many low income families have two working parents, there simply is no one to do this job.

Parents do not need to know everything; there are these amazing resources which experts call "books". Finally, parents have access to an invaluable educational resource to which the State's agents do not: love. Young children will work their hearts out for the love of Mom.

They need to know which books to use. And trust me, as guy with a lot of teacher friends, developing a curriculum that's effective, challenging and age appropriate is not a trivial task for amatuers. And I assure you, as nice as love is, it does not negate these many practical issues.


School can be expensive. Education is potentially cheap. Whatever features of this objection apply to independent schools apply with equal strength to State (government, generally) schools. Furthermore, while the "rural" objection is weak to begin with, the internet makes it weaker yet.

Actually, the need for profit does not apply to public schools equally. That's definitional. Calling the rural argument weak is not the same thing as refuting it, and you obviously have not lived in a rural environment, or you'd know that many parts of the country have no access to high speed internet.

I could go on and on with the flaws behind "they can just be educated from the computer". You've obviously never set foot into an elementary school room or read a single contemporary book on education if you think this even approaches a solution.

Comparative Education, Vol. 36 #1, 2000, Feb. , pg. 16(Cavemonster): "3) You can wait for charity to accomplish it, but I wouldn't hold your breath.
Please don't.
(Cavemonster): "So this tool is a bad fit."
[QUOTE]The argument for State assumption for the production of charity as a public good has a generally unnoticed gap in the reasoning. Corporate oversight is a public good, and the State itself is a corporation, so oversight of State functions is a public good which the State itself cannot provide. State assumption of responsibility for the provision of the public good of charity transforms the free rider problem at the root of "public goods" analysis but does not eliminate it.

This has no relation to the point I made.

(Cavemonster): "4) This leaves government, which for all its flaws, is does not have the deadly flaws of the other tools."
It has all of them, and more.

I can't believe that you would read what I wrote and say this, I was specific about the flaws of each tool that most clearly don't apply to a public system. A school does not shut down by being unprofitable, it hires trained professionals who are paid to be there all day, and it is guaranteed. If you aren't going to actually read my points then I must be wasting my time.

[Arthur Mann]

1) You can do things yourself. Not an option here, since most parents don't have the time, education, inclination and resources to educate their own kids entirely, especially those who are poor and undereducated themselves.
So this tool is a bad fit.

Assuming what you say is true, the reason "most parents don't have..." could very well be because they've been indoctrinated using severe social and mental conditioning practices disguised as education and now they're so wrapped up in the "money game" that they can't see the reality in front of them.

When parents teach their children, the child learns what the parents want them to learn. When governments indoctrinate children into a rigid social structure designed to enslave them, those children learn only to become slaves (or rebels, criminals and so on).

[ETA -

It wasn't uncommon for "house slaves" 200 years ago to staunchly defend the practice of slavery. "Where will we get our fancy clothes and fine food if not from the massah, we house niggahs is coo."

]

[Cavemonster]

Assuming what you say is true, the reason "most parents don't have..." could very well be because they've been indoctrinated using severe social and mental conditioning practices disguised as education and now they're so wrapped up in the "money game" that they can't see the reality in front of them.


"the money game" aka paying bills?

So without this conditioning every family would have a stay at home parent? Every family would have the expertise to design a curriculum, and the skills to implement it?


That's a bit utopian isn't it?

[Arthur Mann]

"the money game" aka paying bills?

Yes.

So without this conditioning every family would have a stay at home parent?

While we could quibble over your exact wording there, that's essentially correct. Before these institutions of indoctrination and social conditioning existed, parents reared their children, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Even if they weren't counting every single day and marking it on an attendance sheet.

Every family would have the expertise to design a curriculum, and the skills to implement it?

You seem to have some very bizarre notions about children. Children are sponges for information. They will learn whatever they are exposed to. If they're exposed to twelve years of sitting in a desk all day long shuffling paper as per instructions, raising your hand for permission to speak, being told cooperation is cheating, lining up, eating lunch and then going to recess, that's all they're going to learn in that twelve years. What a waste.

Let's assume everything else was the same but there were no schools, no daycare, people had to take their children to work with them. It's not a desirable model, given most occupations that exist today that we sure don't have any compelling need to perpetuate, but let's just say children go with their parents to work,and parents must work to "pay the bills". What is that child going to learn in that same twelve years? For starters, everything they need to know to do that job, and from the rated and studied potential of children to learn, they'd quickly wind up better at it than their parents were. Just look at parents who have to ask their children to set the time on the VCR. What's a VCR? Get a DVD player that connects to the internet, Pops, it'll set its own time.

What would the long-term presence of children at all work places encourage? Making the workplace safe enough for children. Clearly that has obvious benefits to ALL workers, particularly the adults actually DOING the work. If a job isn't safe and suitable for a child, it's not suitable for an adult, we need to change the way we do things.

[A Laughing Baby]

I'm enjoying picturing a world where a low-wage-earning single mother who works 14 to 16 hours a day has the time or ability to also teach her kids the basics of pre-algebra.

[Cavemonster]

I'm enjoying picturing a world where a low-wage-earning single mother who works 14 to 16 hours a day has the time or ability to also teach her kids the basics of pre-algebra.

Oh, but apparently if she just brings the kid to work, he'll absorb everything he needs to know.

I can't even begin to address everything that's wrong with Arthur's last post.

[Arthur Mann]

I'm enjoying picturing a world where a low-wage-earning single mother who works 14 to 16 hours a day has the time or ability to also teach her kids the basics of pre-algebra.

That is indeed a bizarre world you picture, where mothers are apparently encouraged to "work" 14 to 16 hours a day instead of raising their children. Work doing what, serving you coffee, doing your laundry, or counting beans in some store somewhere?

[Arthur Mann]

I can't even begin to address everything that's wrong with Arthur's last post.

That certainly explains your lack of rebuttal, you can't address what you can't identify. If you don't see anything wrong you can't explain what's wrong.

[Cavemonster]

That certainly explains your lack of rebuttal, you can't address what you can't identify. If you don't see anything wrong you can't explain what's wrong.

No, I can very clearly identify what's wrong. It's just that there's so much that it would be too much wasted effort trying to explain to someone who would post that in the first place.

As a starter, your contention that kids could just hang out behind the counter of the 7-11, on the factory floor, or alongside their mom cleaning hotel rooms and magically absorb all the knowledge they need to be literate, numerate and useful members of society is batcrap insane. Not to mention that most employers, especially in an economy like this would never allow such a thing.

I could go on for a page about every sentence you wrote and still not touch on everything wrong.

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

(Cavemonster): "1) You can do things yourself....So this tool is a bad fit."
(Malcolm): "We disagree. It does not take 12 years at $12,000 to teach a normal child to read and compute. Most vocational training occurs more effectively on the job than in a classroom. Parents would have more resources to devote to education if the State did not take $500 billion+ per year from the private economy and pour it down the K-12 rathole."
The lowest earners are actually not paying any income tax, and generally not much property tax, so stopping public education funding doesn't improve their ability to educate their kids very much. This also doesn't really address the time issue, since many low income families have two working parents, there simply is no one to do this job.If you buy groceries, you pay corporate income taxes as well as sales taxes. If you pay rent, you pay your landlord's property taxes. Corvee labor is a tax, so all families pay a tax equal to the opportunity cost of the time their children spend in school. The growth of government has coincided with the participation of women in the workforce.

(Malcolm): "Parents do not need to know everything; there are these amazing resources which experts call "books". Finally, parents have access to an invaluable educational resource to which the State's agents do not: love. Young children will work their hearts out for the love of Mom."
(Cavemonster): "They need to know which books to use. And trust me, as guy with a lot of teacher friends, developing a curriculum that's effective, challenging and age appropriate is not a trivial task for amatuers. And I assure you, as nice as love is, it does not negate these many practical issues."
a) Parents can buy a high-quality curriculum from the Calvert school or buy the Singapore Math sequence. American Math textbooks stink. If government control of school is so wonderful, why is this?
b) The State of Alaska subsidizes homeschooling through enrollment in correspondence schools. Homeschooled children of parents with no schooling beyond high school outperform the students of the college-educated teachers in Alaska's conventional schools. Ben Franklin attended school for two years, between age 10 and 12. Abraham Lincoln attended school for a total of about two years. Robert FitzRoy attended the Admiralty school for twenty months and went to sea at 14.

(Malcolm): "School can be expensive. Education is potentially cheap. Whatever features of this objection apply to independent schools apply with equal strength to State (government, generally) schools. Furthermore, while the "rural" objection is weak to begin with, the internet makes it weaker yet."
(Caveman): "Actually, the need for profit does not apply to public schools equally."
This misses the point. Education is potentially cheap.
(Caveman): "That's definitional. Calling the rural argument weak is not the same thing as refuting it, and you obviously have not lived in a rural environment, or you'd know that many parts of the country have no access to high speed internet."
The rural argument is weak. Alaska initiated its correspondence school progam initially to address the costs of providing conventional schools to rural families. Since any school organization could mail a curriculum to parents, this rural consideration does not imply government provision of school. James Buchannan (Nobel laureate, economics) attributed his success, in part, to education in a rural, one-room schoolhouse. The teacher set the older students loose on their books and dealt with the youngsters. Any parent could do this.
(Cavemonster): "I could go on and on with the flaws behind 'they can just be educated from the computer'. You've obviously never set foot into an elementary school room or read a single contemporary book on education if you think this even approaches a solution."
(Cavemonster): "3) You can wait for charity to accomplish it, but I wouldn't hold your breath. ...So this tool is a bad fit."
(Malcolm): "The argument for State assumption for the production of charity as a public good has a generally unnoticed gap in the reasoning. Corporate oversight is a public good, and the State itself is a corporation, so oversight of State functions is a public good which the State itself cannot provide. State assumption of responsibility for the provision of the public good of charity transforms the free rider problem at the root of 'public goods' analysis but does not eliminate it."
(Caveman): "This has no relation to the point I made."
You don't see the point. What do you imagine motivates government actors? Either material compensation ("profit" or something like it) or "psychic income" (altruism). The government is just a bunch of guys who make their living through extortion (not that that's a bad thing). The education business is outside their area of expertise.

If you aren't going to actually read my points then I must be wasting my time.

[Arthur Mann]

As a starter, your contention that kids could just hang out behind the counter of the 7-11, on the factory floor, or alongside their mom cleaning hotel rooms and magically absorb all the knowledge they need to be literate, numerate and useful members of society is batcrap insane.

This is a straw man, I didn't make these specific claims, and I didn't say that learning was to "magically absorb all the knowledge". I also didn't suggest that most jobs involve any knowledge, literacy, counting or any of the other useful inventions of the human mind. Most jobs don't. That needs to be changed.

Not to mention that most employers, especially in an economy like this would never allow such a thing.

Most "jobs" are superfluous and banal, and contribute nothing but waste. We can also eliminate those jobs, then the people doing them now can just mind their kids instead of "paying bills".

[Cavemonster]

This is a straw man, I didn't make these specific claims, and I didn't say that learning was to "magically absorb all the knowledge". I also didn't suggest that most jobs involve any knowledge, literacy, counting or any of the other useful inventions of the human mind. Most jobs don't. That needs to be changed.



Most "jobs" are superfluous and banal, and contribute nothing but waste. We can also eliminate those jobs, then the people doing them now can just mind their kids instead of "paying bills".

Oh, so you're proposing a system that would work if we changed many of the most fundemental things about modern society, gotcha.

[Cavemonster]

(Cavemonster): "1) You can do things yourself....So this tool is a bad fit."
(Malcolm): "We disagree. It does not take 12 years at $12,000 to teach a normal child to read and compute. Most vocational training occurs more effectively on the job than in a classroom. Parents would have more resources to devote to education if the State did not take $500 billion+ per year from the private economy and pour it down the K-12 rathole."
If you buy groceries, you pay corporate income taxes as well as sales taxes. If you pay rent, you pay your landlord's property taxes. Corvee labor is a tax, so all families pay a tax equal to the opportunity cost of the time their children spend in school. The growth of government has coincided with the participation of women in the workforce.
...

If you'd like me to reply, please reform this with actual nested quote tags and line breaks so it becomes legible.

[Arthur Mann]

Oh, so you're proposing a system that would work if we changed many of the most fundemental things about modern society, gotcha.

In fact I'm not proposing a system, I'm proposing the dismantling of systems that are toxic and unsustainable and that try to reduce human beings to the state of cattle. While we're at it we can stop treating cattle like cattle. Have you heard of cows self-milking? It turns out if you provide an attractive enough station for cows to go and be milked by an automated machine, they will go to the machine whenever they have a load of milk to drop. This is the model we should adopt in the education of our children, and in many avenues of life. All we need do is make the tools irresistible to the curious mind of a child and they will always run to those tools when they have a problem to solve. A good tool for educating people is not described by the following: "sit down, raise your hand, stand up, line up, eat lunch, go to recess" then repeat X 180 days a year for 12 years.

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

In fact I'm not proposing a system...Quite right.
Imagine the following scenario:...
You see me walking through the park, randomly hitting kids with a stick. You run up to me and say "Stop that!" and I say "What's the alternative?" How do you respond?

The alternative is to stop hitting kids with a stick. If you treated 20 adults the way we routinely treat kids, you'd be lucky if all they did was punch you out and torch your car.

[Flo]

State governments in the US demostrated to governments everywhere what a successful scam government-operated schools could be. That's my guess, anyway. Singapore did not compel attendance at school until the early 1990s.

In other words, you don't have a clue, aren't going to "educate" yourself on the subject, but will nevertheless put the blame on a hypothetical influence of the wicked USA government. Conspiration theories are thataway ----------->

That suits me fine, actually. I think I always suspected that was just propaganda.

But you didn't take the time to find out, too happy with spreading this slur in order to support your ideological rantings ...

Clearly you have some emotional need to defend the public education system. I can only conclude you're a part of it.

Your power of deduction, as well as your ability for reading minds, are astounding (NOT).

[Arthur Mann]

But you didn't take the time to find out, too happy with spreading this slur in order to support your ideological rantings

That's exactly right, and I even added a disclaimer suggesting I wasn't sure if that was right or not, so you don't really know if I genuinely believed it or if I was just trying to slam kindergerten (or Germany, or both). What a conundrum! Well in any case, now I've been corrected. I like the way it feels, which is why I said that suits me just fine. It makes me giddy when I learn something true, and it gives me a chance to admit I made a mistake and prove I can learn.

I'd always suspected that, though kindergarten is a german word, and germans invented kindergarten, that it was specifically a National Socialist invention. Say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, but at least it's an ethos. Nihilists believe in nothing.

[Flo]

It makes me giddy when I learn something true, and it gives me a chance to admit I made a mistake and prove I can learn.

It isn't very apparent from what I've read from you so far ...

[A Laughing Baby]

That is indeed a bizarre world you picture, where mothers are apparently encouraged to "work" 14 to 16 hours a day instead of raising their children. Work doing what, serving you coffee, doing your laundry, or counting beans in some store somewhere?

Yes, actually, that is exactly the type of work they would be doing. The 21-year-old single mother that I went to high school with works 13-16 hours a day serving drinks to people at a casino and as a hostess at a restaurant. She has to leave her child with her unemployed friends.

[Chaos]

Yes, actually, that is exactly the type of work they would be doing. The 21-year-old single mother that I went to high school with works 13-16 hours a day serving drinks to people at a casino and as a hostess at a restaurant. She has to leave her child with her unemployed friends.

It is a bizzare world Arthur Mann lives in, where the money single mothers need to be able to stay at home and raise their kid(s) full time apparently just falls from the sky.

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

(Malcolm): "State governments in the US demostrated to governments everywhere what a successful scam government-operated schools could be. That's my guess, anyway. Singapore did not compel attendance at school until the early 1990s."
In other words, you don't have a clue, aren't going to "educate" yourself on the subject, but will nevertheless put the blame on a hypothetical influence of the wicked USA government. Conspiration theories are thataway ----------->Other people's motives are always a matter of speculation. "Haven't a clue" is not at all accurate. I'd be happy to match reading and original research into the relation between structure and performance, and reading into the history of the US school system against your work. Since I tutor Math, this must be a sideline with me, but I would be interested in the politics that got compulsory schooling into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example. I read somewhere that Kemal Ataturk consciously copied the US compulsory schooling model. I've been reading A History of the Ancient Near East, which mentions schools for scribes, in Second Millenium (b.c.) Mesopotamia, variously operated by rulers and under contract with wealthy parents. I expect farmers and potters learned their trades on the job. What "clue" do you have? If you'd care to offer something other than insults, enlighten us, please. Otherwise,

(Mann): "Wasn't kindergarten invented by the National Socialists in Germany? I could be wrong, but that's what I've always heard."
(Flo): "You've heard wrong..."
(Mann): "That suits me fine, actually. I think I always suspected that was just propaganda."
(Flo): "But you didn't take the time to find out, too happy with spreading this slur in order to support your ideological rantings..."
So you answer his humility with insults.
(Flo): "Your power of deduction, as well as your ability for reading minds, are astounding (NOT)."

Observe the compassion and tolerance for a difference of opinion demonstrated by advocates for compulsory schooling. Send your kids to this? I don't think so.

[mike3]

Most "jobs" are superfluous and banal, and contribute nothing but waste. We can also eliminate those jobs, then the people doing them now can just mind their kids instead of "paying bills".

So how do you propose that people acquire food, housing, etc. without needing to work to get money? Have the Government provide it all? :confused:

[Chaos]

Observe the compassion and tolerance for a difference of opinion demonstrated by advocates for compulsory schooling. Send your kids to this? I don't think so.

Observe the lack of solid arguments and lack of knowledge of relevant facts and overabundance of biased terminology demonstrated by opponents of compulsory schooling. Now, what does this tell us...?


We can´t read your minds to see how much you know or how smart you really are. Therefore, we will have to make do with reading your posts and inferring from that, which leads us to the results presented. If you don´t like those results, give us something that leads to more positive conclusions.

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Observe the lack of solid arguments and lack of knowledge of relevant facts and overabundance of biased terminology demonstrated by opponents of compulsory schooling. Now, what does this tell us...?That you are indifferent to informed and reasoned argument. Say "lack of solid aregument" all you like; where do you disagree? We can´t read your minds to see how much you know or how smart you really are. Therefore, we will have to make do with reading your posts and inferring from that, which leads us to the results presented.Results? All you offer is ad hominem. Refer to the thread "Public Education is a Socialist Monopoly, which I joined around page 10. I supported the claim that Milton Friedman, in Reason magazine, advocated an unsubsidized market in education services. I have provided links to peer reviewed work (E.G. West) and quotes from peer-reviewed literature on the harmful effects of school.If you don´t like those results, give us something that leads to more positive conclusions.No matter what I provide, you can always jam your fingers in your ears, clench your eyes shut, and chant "Nyaaah, nyaaah, I can't hear you."

This (http://www.flickr.com/photos/11952459@N08/) is what the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel's shills defend.

Clive Harber
"Schooling as Violence"
Educatioinal Review, p. 9 V. 54, #1.
Furthermore, according to a report for UNESCO, cited in Esteve (2000), the increasing level of pupil-teacher and pupil-pupil violence in classrooms is directly connected with compulsory schooling. The report argues that institutional violence against pupils who are obliged to attend daily at an educational centre until 16 or 18 years of age increases the frustration of these students to a level where they externalise it.

[Arthur Mann]

So how do you propose that people acquire food, housing, etc. without needing to work to get money?

it's not really on topic, but it's as simple as abandoning the monetary system and all forms of competitive trade for differential advantage. Competition is vile and will never outperform cooperation. We can leave everything else standing, tear down all banks tomorrow, and never skip a beat.

Have the Government provide it all? :confused:

Certainly not, since the government doesn't provide any benefits now, why should that change? In fact, I propose we abandon the concept of government, as it is non-useful, unless your goal is to rear a population of idiot slaves.

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Go here (http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/111188/) and extend this principle throughout the entire K-PhD sequence.

[Cavemonster]

it's not really on topic, but it's as simple as abandoning the monetary system and all forms of competitive trade for differential advantage.



Ah, of course! abandon the monetary system and institute cooperation instead of competition.


Certainly not, since the government doesn't provide any benefits now, why should that change? In fact, I propose we abandon the concept of government, as it is non-useful, unless your goal is to rear a population of idiot slaves.

And yes, we must abolish competition without government! It's so clear to me now.

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

In fact, I propose we abandon the concept of government, as it is non-useful, unless your goal is to rear a population of idiot slaves.I recommend this:...
Randall G. Holcombe
Government: Unnecessary but Inevitable (http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_08_3_holcombe.pdf)
The Independent Review Volume 8 Number 3 Winter 2004

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

it's not really on topic, but it's as simple as abandoning the monetary system and all forms of competitive trade for differential advantage. Competition is vile and will never outperform cooperation. We can leave everything else standing, tear down all banks tomorrow, and never skip a beat.And the leopard shall lie down with the lamb and the lion shall eat straw.
Rather elementary evolutionary theory suggests that this is impossible. Defection (cheating) offers great advantages in a world without retaliation. As P.J. O'Rourke observed, evolution doesn't work on things that don't die (a good argument against delivery of education services by State-monopoly enterprises, to return to our topic). The evolution of defection detection mechanisms depends on differential reproduction. Without differential reproduction, life on this planet would not have evolved even to the level of photosynthetic algae.

[JoelKatz]

Competition is vile and will never outperform cooperation.Competition is the most organized and efficient form of cooperation known. We need competition because the information needed to make the best cars or run the best grocery stores cannot be utilized if it does not exist. Competition is the only known way to generate this information.

If you think about it, it should be intuitively obvious that competition with rules is a form of cooperation. Say you want to get people to cooperate to produce the best chess players you can. How would you do it? I'm betting a significant part of your plan would be organized competitions.

[Yeggster]

Competition is the most organized and efficient form of cooperation known. We need competition because the information needed to make the best cars or run the best grocery stores cannot be utilized if it does not exist. Competition is the only known way to generate this information.

If you think about it, it should be intuitively obvious that competition with rules is a form of cooperation. Say you want to get people to cooperate to produce the best chess players you can. How would you do it? I'm betting a significant part of your plan would be organized competitions.

NICE ... I like it :) ... and I will use it too :)

[wellwhatif]

Yeah..And dropping out should be flexible..
Like the age and all :P