Where is the US economy headed?

@georgeob1,

Quote:

The AFT's most recent gift to the District of Columbia was a well funded campaign to defeat the Mayor who hired Michelle Rhee as school superintendent and who beiefly brought some progress and improvement to that unfortunate city's public schools, Sadly that is over now.

I suppose you are unaware that Rhee has been found to have overseen a great deal of fraud, in the test scores that supposedly proved she knew what she was doing?

I suggest you look into it, because the lady - and her supporters - have quite a bit of egg on their faces at the moment.

Re: Catholic schooling, I think there is also a little bit of selection bias at play here. Parents who care enough to send their kids to a special school, that they are paying extra for, care enough to ensure that their children are studying and doing their homework. Think about your own kids. If they had gone to public school, you certainly would have cared about their performance and taken steps to ensure it was good, regardless of the atmosphere, no?

Parental involvement is THE most determinative factor in a child's education quality.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Re: Catholic schooling, I think there is also a little bit of selection bias at play here. Parents who care enough to send their kids to a special school, that they are paying extra for, care enough to ensure that their children are studying and doing their homework. Think about your own kids. If they had gone to public school, you certainly would have cared about their performance and taken steps to ensure it was good, regardless of the atmosphere, no?

Parental involvement is THE most determinative factor in a child's education quality.

Cycloptichorn

I agree with all of that. That's why it is folly to imagine the solution for ithe absence of this indispensable factor can be found in pouring endless sums into a unionized permanent self serving public bureaucracy that actively resists the very thing that is needed most.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Re: Catholic schooling, I think there is also a little bit of selection bias at play here. Parents who care enough to send their kids to a special school, that they are paying extra for, care enough to ensure that their children are studying and doing their homework. Think about your own kids. If they had gone to public school, you certainly would have cared about their performance and taken steps to ensure it was good, regardless of the atmosphere, no?

Parental involvement is THE most determinative factor in a child's education quality.

Cycloptichorn

I agree with all of that. That's why it is folly to imagine the solution for ithe absence of this indispensable factor can be found in pouring endless sums into a unionized permanent self serving public bureaucracy that actively resists the very thing that is needed most.

Well, what we need are more effective ways to get parents to realize the importance of their involvement. But, I don't see how the Conservative recommendations - pouring money into charter schools, who have no greater record of success than public schools and who have very little consistency from school to school - accomplishes that goal any more so than what the Dems recommend.

I suspect that the true goal of these schools is not to, in any fashion, solve the problem; but instead to create enclaves for parents to send their kids to, in hopes of keeping them from having to interact with those who they in their hearts consider to be their lessers.

Cycloptichorn

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Left wing recommendations of pouring more money into government
schools and their associated unions has put this country far behind others.

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@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

I suspect that the true goal of these schools is not to, in any fashion, solve the problem; but instead to create enclaves for parents to send their kids to, in hopes of keeping them from having to interact with those who they in their hearts consider to be their lessers.

Cycloptichorn

Now you shift the argument to impugne the motives of those parents who chose to get involved - the very thing you yourself noted earlier as the most determinative of educational success. Which form of parental behavior do you then recommend?

The fact is that all of life, biological, social and economic is competitive. The worst thing we can do for those who are now marginally competitive is to hide the results and consequences from them, or tell them it isn't their fault. I can think of no better way to destroy their competitive spirit or to hold them in an inferior position. That is the real failure of what you advocate.

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@georgeob1,

Quote:

That is the real failure of what you advocate.

Just to be clear, what is it that you think I'm advocating?

Re: parental motives, my point is that the act of creating enclaves doesn't address the problem as a whole in any fashion. It's not an attempt to improve the system, it's an attempt to sidestep the issues. This may have some success for individuals, but the idea that our system should be reformed along such lines - such as is promoted by that now-exposed fraud Rhee - is foolish.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

My Catholic secondary school had no time for parents. If parents matter to education one might wonder what schools are for.

Quote:

The fact is that all of life, biological, social and economic is competitive.

That's a Darwinian position George. We act against the facts of life. Rules are unnecessary unless they are countermanding some fact of life.

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

I really don't know what you are advocating because you have been so variable and inconsistent in your arguments.

It appears to me that you have (1) asserted that active parental involvement in the education of their children is the factor most determinative of their success in school. Then (2) you went on to impugne the motives of parents - often economically deprived ones - who choose to put their children in charter schools (which generally encourage such involvement), and who do so as a direct consequence of that involvement. So in effect you propose that the government - in defiance of the wishes of the mosty involved and successful parents - actively oppose the very activities you acknowledge as most determinative of success, and instead look for another (as yet undiscovered) way - apparently so as to deprive the losers in the game of the experience of loss - itself a very good way to keep them at the bottom of the heap.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

Quote:

Then (2) you went on to impugne the motives of parents - often economically deprived ones - who choose to put their children in charter schools (which generally encourage such involvement), and who do so as a direct consequence of that involvement.

I should make myself clearer - I'm not concerned with the acts of individual persons so much as the Conservative push to increase charter schooling by sucking money out of the public system to pay for it. I don't think that this push has anything to do with greater parental involvement whatsoever, and I don't think it will be effective in solving our overall problem.

Cycloptichorn

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@Cycloptichorn,

Taking money out of the government school system is part of the solution

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@Cycloptichorn,

There are all sorts of charter schools. I interviewed at a school where The Fountainhead was required reading. I was rather relieved to see the school folded a year after the interview.

The corporate schools concern me as well. Their track record isn't good and neither is their marketing. They generally come into a community, fire all the teachers but often hire more than 50% of them back and then claim they re-organized the schools . . . whatever that means.

I am alarmed at what my students don't know. Yet, when you look into the curricula, they were allegedly taught about major historical events like the Bubonic Plague.

I do blame the parents. Some of them have very strange ideas about what and how a school should teach.

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@Cycloptichorn,

Itsn't it an obviously beneficial choice in a finite world to put more money in something that works and less into something that doesn't ?

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@H2O MAN,

What government school system? The school systems of municipalities throughout the nation?

I would like to see stricter standards adopted. I was certified at a time when left wing students were stressing that teachers ought to study the subject(s) they wish to teach and not education. At that time, to be certified in Michigan, an English teacher had to take upper level classes in Shakespeare, American Lit 1830-65, grammar and expository writing in addition to 30 hours of various literature classes. That's a standard that should become the national standard.

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

I should make myself clearer - I'm not concerned with the acts of individual persons so much as the Conservative push to increase charter schooling by sucking money out of the public system to pay for it. I don't think that this push has anything to do with greater parental involvement whatsoever, and I don't think it will be effective in solving our overall problem.

Cycloptichorn

A charter school system, substantially funded by government percapita stipends set well below the average cost/pupil in the official public school system, is itself an alternate form of a public school system - merely one free of the sclerosis of the failed self-serving bureaucratic/union system that so frustrates the public. Moreover it leaves the official system with more money per capita with which to educate their remaining students.

The real issue here is the self interest of a non-performing educational establishment that resists objective measurement of performance, accountability and active parental involvement at all costs. We all know from our own experiences (and certainly any coach in competitive sports knows) that these are precisely the determinative factors for success. Why would anyone believe that institutions that so bitterly resist them are capable of reform at any achievable cost?

1 Reply

@spendius,

spendius wrote:

My Catholic secondary school had no time for parents. If parents matter to education one might wonder what schools are for.

Yeah but you're a Brit. As my father told me, the only people in Europe who never overthrew their aristocracy - the last outpost of the slaves who still love their chains, as he said. (Just finished reading Kipling's account of his trip from India across the Pacific to San Francisco. He even visited a club here I have habituated for a long time. Didn't like it or us though.)

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@georgeob1,

Georgeob1 do not watch this video and be intellectually honest with yourself because it will be very scary!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01mTKDaKa6Q&feature=player_embedded

1 Reply

@reasoning logic,

I know Norway quite well and have travelled there both before the North Sea petroleum wealth transformed it and since then. They don't accept extensive immigration and enjoy a very monolithic culture. As noted they also enjoy by a fairly wide margin the highers GDP per capita in the world.

Disneyland is nice too.

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@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

They don't accept extensive immigration and enjoy a very monolithic culture.

11.4% of the total Norwegian population (in 2010) are immigrants. Of the total 552,000 with immigrant background, 232,000 have Norwegian citizenship (42.1%).The cities or municipalities with the highest share of immigrants are Oslo (27%) and Drammen (22%).
[Sources: see the related wiki entry.

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@georgeob1,

When I visited Norway last year, I did a quick search of the per capita income, and found it was in the $60,o00-range. I also noted that the cost of living in Norway is very high; an average cost of dinner with wine will run $100; beer is $10/glass, and wine is $14/glass. Their tax on goods runs about 25%, and 17% on food.

What I observed were many contradictions; if their average income is $60,000 at those tax rates, why are so many in Norway able to frequent all those bars and restaurants? Most were crowded every day in the Bryggen Wharf area of Bergen.

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@cicerone imposter,

Bergen is a very charming town. I do know the Norwegians like to drink, but they tax it heavily perhaps because of that.

A $12 -$15 dollar glass of good wine isn't an uncommon price here either. It is very hard to get a reservation at the Bolevaurd in San Francisco on Friday night as well. Contradictions are everywhere.

1 Reply

Where is the US economy headed?

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