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I have friends who send their children to Montessori schools (private). Other friends send their kids to Waldorf schools (private, too). Others have been homesc

I have friends who send their children to Montessori schools (private). Other friends send their kids to Waldorf schools (private, too). Others have been homeschooling (the ultimate private). They would consider it deeply unjust to seek to abolish their schooling alternatives. I consider it driven by a nasty, Platonic impulse. Leave parents to make decisions about the education of their kids. Give schools more flexibility, encourage local innovation, and we'd see a variety of interesting outcomes. For example Marva Collins [1] had an amazing impact on the students she was allowed to work with. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marva_Collins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marva_Collins

trukterious 8y ago
>I consider it driven by a nasty, Platonic impulse I wouldn't say it's necessarily nasty. There's always been a wish (possibly romantic) for children to be raised in common. e.g. "It takes a village to raise a child". e.g. from Assemblywomen by Aristophanes, as summarised in Wikipedia: >She proposes banning all ownership of private wealth and establishing equal pay for all and a unified standard of living. She further explains that people will no longer have a need for personal wealth as all basic needs will be met by the common fund. She further adds that men and women will be free to sleep with anyone they want, so long as they first sleep with the uglier members of the opposite sex. Parental responsibilities will be shared by the community as children will no longer know their fathers There's also the fact that we made it through the Stone Age and other prehistoric times in small roving bands with presumably no formal education. Yet the scraps of knowledge of how to hunt and survive were passed down effectively. People lived more intuitively then and in some sense there was more equality. Yet that isn't the alternative that's being proposed. What is being proposed is a top-down bureaucratically-controlled system applied to all children regardless of their or their families' wishes. It would inevitably be the most expensive option quite apart from being a giant zombie factory and propaganda machine for the future powers-that-be.
- ilove_banh_mi 8y ago
  You seem to misunderstand the collectivism in Assemblywomen -- it is used as an absurdist foil to criticize contemporary Athens, not as some kind of ideal.
  - trukterious 8y ago
    Though he used it for comedic purposes, my point is that the author knew of the impulse in other people, over 2000 years ago!
notacoward 8y ago
> They would consider it deeply unjust to seek to abolish their schooling alternatives. There's plenty of deep injustice to go around. Other parents might consider it deeply unjust that the only schools they can afford are hellholes where no real teaching occurs and the classrooms aren't even adequately cleaned/heated/ventilated. Does that injustice not matter too?
- yellowapple 8y ago
  So instead of actually fixing the hellholes, let's abolish the non-hellholes. Yep, totally just.
  - notacoward 8y ago
    False dichotomy. I guess some of those private schools don't teach rudiments of logic and debate. The idea is that we would have more resources and motivation to fix the hellholes, which should never have been allowed to become such in the fist place. Also, not every public school is a hellhole. The public high school in my town beats most elite private schools by any measure. Points to you and your friends for consistency of messaging, though. Guess you all read the same websites.
    - yellowapple 8y ago
      "I guess some of those private schools don't teach rudiments of logic and debate." I actually went to public school all my life (with the exception of a Montessori school in kindergarten, my memories of which are fuzzy at best). Good try, though :) "The idea is that we would have more resources and motivation to fix the hellholes" That's a nice idea in theory, but in practice there will be more motivation to take that money otherwise spent on private schools and put it toward moving into the boundaries of a non-hellhole public school, leaving the hellhole schools to rot since they're still out of sight/mind. Best-case scenario, the rich families do end up pouring more resources/motivation into improving their own local public schools, possibly making a handful of public schools in wealthy areas non-hellholes (or keeping them from becoming hellholes) while - again - leaving the hellhole schools to rot since they're still out of sight/mind. This already happens quite often, and will only intensify. "which should never have been allowed to become such in the fist place" Agreed. "Also, not every public school is a hellhole. The public high school in my town beats most elite private schools by any measure." I never said all public schools are hellholes, and while my high school wasn't super rich/fancy by any means, it wasn't really a hellhole, either.

trukterious 8y ago

>I consider it driven by a nasty, Platonic impulse I wouldn't say it's necessarily nasty. There's always been a wish (possibly romantic) for children to be raised in common. e.g. "It takes a village to raise a child". e.g. from Assemblywomen by Aristophanes, as summarised in Wikipedia: >She proposes banning all ownership of private wealth and establishing equal pay for all and a unified standard of living. She further explains that people will no longer have a need for personal wealth as all basic needs will be met by the common fund. She further adds that men and women will be free to sleep with anyone they want, so long as they first sleep with the uglier members of the opposite sex. Parental responsibilities will be shared by the community as children will no longer know their fathers There's also the fact that we made it through the Stone Age and other prehistoric times in small roving bands with presumably no formal education. Yet the scraps of knowledge of how to hunt and survive were passed down effectively. People lived more intuitively then and in some sense there was more equality. Yet that isn't the alternative that's being proposed. What is being proposed is a top-down bureaucratically-controlled system applied to all children regardless of their or their families' wishes. It would inevitably be the most expensive option quite apart from being a giant zombie factory and propaganda machine for the future powers-that-be.

ilove_banh_mi 8y ago
You seem to misunderstand the collectivism in Assemblywomen -- it is used as an absurdist foil to criticize contemporary Athens, not as some kind of ideal.
- trukterious 8y ago
  Though he used it for comedic purposes, my point is that the author knew of the impulse in other people, over 2000 years ago!

notacoward 8y ago

> They would consider it deeply unjust to seek to abolish their schooling alternatives. There's plenty of deep injustice to go around. Other parents might consider it deeply unjust that the only schools they can afford are hellholes where no real teaching occurs and the classrooms aren't even adequately cleaned/heated/ventilated. Does that injustice not matter too?

yellowapple 8y ago
So instead of actually fixing the hellholes, let's abolish the non-hellholes. Yep, totally just.
- notacoward 8y ago
  False dichotomy. I guess some of those private schools don't teach rudiments of logic and debate. The idea is that we would have more resources and motivation to fix the hellholes, which should never have been allowed to become such in the fist place. Also, not every public school is a hellhole. The public high school in my town beats most elite private schools by any measure. Points to you and your friends for consistency of messaging, though. Guess you all read the same websites.
  - yellowapple 8y ago
    "I guess some of those private schools don't teach rudiments of logic and debate." I actually went to public school all my life (with the exception of a Montessori school in kindergarten, my memories of which are fuzzy at best). Good try, though :) "The idea is that we would have more resources and motivation to fix the hellholes" That's a nice idea in theory, but in practice there will be more motivation to take that money otherwise spent on private schools and put it toward moving into the boundaries of a non-hellhole public school, leaving the hellhole schools to rot since they're still out of sight/mind. Best-case scenario, the rich families do end up pouring more resources/motivation into improving their own local public schools, possibly making a handful of public schools in wealthy areas non-hellholes (or keeping them from becoming hellholes) while - again - leaving the hellhole schools to rot since they're still out of sight/mind. This already happens quite often, and will only intensify. "which should never have been allowed to become such in the fist place" Agreed. "Also, not every public school is a hellhole. The public high school in my town beats most elite private schools by any measure." I never said all public schools are hellholes, and while my high school wasn't super rich/fancy by any means, it wasn't really a hellhole, either.