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"Oh no, I understand your argument full well. I just think it's extremely shallow." Maybe you should poke around the rest of the comments for the article, beca

"Oh no, I understand your argument full well. I just think it's extremely shallow." Maybe you should poke around the rest of the comments for the article, because I've gone into a lot of detail about it. "Parents and students have plenty of time to research important aspects of their lives" I've addressed this elsewhere in the thread, but this assumption penalizes the children of parents who are poor, working multiple jobs, or dealing with health issues. It penalizes single parents as well. Basically, if you put the onus on parents to do the research, parents with more disposable time will make better decisions for their children, thus exacerbating the existing inequalities in the system. The whole point of the public education system is to level the playing field; what you're suggesting will increase the gap between the haves and the have-nots. "...starting with the experiential reality of the school they're subjected to for several years. One of your argument's shortcomings is the implication that only an a priori decision making process is possible for the over-a-decade process of going to school." What you're suggesting is that it's okay to have a system where parents and students make the decision about whether or not schools are good or bad by spending time at them. That is a ludicrously impractical suggestion. What happens if your kid hates their first day of school? Their first week? Their first month? How do you decide when they can make decent decision about it? What if they just hate going to school? Are you going to go sit in the classroom and watch the teacher for hours or days at a time? Experiential data is not particularly useful on an individual basis; There are so many kids who just have a bad time at school no matter what, often for reasons that don't implicate the school directly as good or bad. And there are plenty of kids who have a great time at school precisely because they're not getting a very good education. (IE they're ignored, the work is too easy, etc.) Their experience is going to be fantastic, and they will enter college completely unprepared. I'm not arguing that the EXISTING methods for measuring school performance are perfect; I am arguing that theoretically, the best possible version is mass-collection and analysis of data. Relying on individual decisions based purely on experience is a recipe for chaos; Kids would be begging their parents to change teachers and schools all the time, and how would parents have any idea if the kids were right? I didn't complain that your response was the bare minimum, I complained that it was LESS than the bare minimum. And my 4chan comment was about the downvoting, not about your comment. Please read more carefully.

ultrarunner 7y ago
As these things tend to do, the issues balloon and it becomes impractical to respond to every point. The idea that parents who don't care are penalized is simply a fact of life. Should we make the same argument about diet— that the state has the resources to appoint Top Dietitians and mandate a uniform State Diet? In fact, the experts that the state has hired have been corrupted by players like the corn and dairy lobbies and the nutritional advice they've given in the past has been roundly derided as terrible. Further, obesity has gotten worse since that advice has been given. Why would we think that the same state mandating institutional assignment would produce better results? Apparently, according to you, because other State education departments in other cultures and parts of the world have had comparatively more success by state-reported metrics? Again, I'm unimpressed at this justification for property taxes. "What you're suggesting is that it's okay to have a system where parents and students make the decision about whether or not schools are good or bad by spending time at them" In part, Yes! The way every other cooperative voluntary arrangement works! Do you even have children? I do. I have had babysitters that have made me uncomfortable on the first day. Yes, I have fired them and made the necessary decisions for my children. Why you think I should be legally prevented from doing that in the case of decades of dubious-quality education is a complete mystery to me at this point. Experiential data are extremely useful on individual bases. Children who enjoy school because they don't have to do anything have been taught that education is painful. Anyone without that supposition would simply be bored, which would be a negative complaint rather than a positive review. The fact that we culturally accept common utterances like "school sucks" should tell you everything you need to know about a one-size-fits-all approach to educating a population. The argument here is to walk back the do-this-or-lose-your-house force-based approach and move toward a competitive and innovative approach toward improving individuals' quality of life. Your argument against this seems to be that, while it hasn't worked here, it theoretically (under some theory you've yet to elucidate) could, because infinite resources by fiat magically translate to infinite productivity and efficiency in real life. I don't think you've just done a poor job at defending that claim, I think you've simply done the best job you could of defending a bad idea. Now what's that they say about ideas being so good the have to be mandatory?
- swivelmaster 7y ago

ultrarunner 7y ago

As these things tend to do, the issues balloon and it becomes impractical to respond to every point. The idea that parents who don't care are penalized is simply a fact of life. Should we make the same argument about diet— that the state has the resources to appoint Top Dietitians and mandate a uniform State Diet? In fact, the experts that the state has hired have been corrupted by players like the corn and dairy lobbies and the nutritional advice they've given in the past has been roundly derided as terrible. Further, obesity has gotten worse since that advice has been given. Why would we think that the same state mandating institutional assignment would produce better results? Apparently, according to you, because other State education departments in other cultures and parts of the world have had comparatively more success by state-reported metrics? Again, I'm unimpressed at this justification for property taxes. "What you're suggesting is that it's okay to have a system where parents and students make the decision about whether or not schools are good or bad by spending time at them" In part, Yes! The way every other cooperative voluntary arrangement works! Do you even have children? I do. I have had babysitters that have made me uncomfortable on the first day. Yes, I have fired them and made the necessary decisions for my children. Why you think I should be legally prevented from doing that in the case of decades of dubious-quality education is a complete mystery to me at this point. Experiential data are extremely useful on individual bases. Children who enjoy school because they don't have to do anything have been taught that education is painful. Anyone without that supposition would simply be bored, which would be a negative complaint rather than a positive review. The fact that we culturally accept common utterances like "school sucks" should tell you everything you need to know about a one-size-fits-all approach to educating a population. The argument here is to walk back the do-this-or-lose-your-house force-based approach and move toward a competitive and innovative approach toward improving individuals' quality of life. Your argument against this seems to be that, while it hasn't worked here, it theoretically (under some theory you've yet to elucidate) could, because infinite resources by fiat magically translate to infinite productivity and efficiency in real life. I don't think you've just done a poor job at defending that claim, I think you've simply done the best job you could of defending a bad idea. Now what's that they say about ideas being so good the have to be mandatory?

swivelmaster 7y ago