4 ms·

"Libertarians in the United States have often claimed that the public school system (which has more than 90% of the students) is a disaster." The Libertarian a

by pmorici 16y ago

"Libertarians in the United States have often claimed that the public school system (which has more than 90% of the students) is a disaster." The Libertarian argument isn't that public schools are a disaster. Their argument is that the federal government shouldn't be involved in education and it should instead remain a local or state issue where people have more direct control over the system.

lotusleaf1987 16y ago
And then Texas would refer to slavery as the "triangular trade system" see here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/16/texas-schools-rewrites-us-history http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/16/texas-schools-re...
- pmorici 16y ago
  So you are assuming then that your preference over their preference would win a majority vote in congress? Local control protects liberal leaning policies as much as nutty ones.
  - lotusleaf1987 16y ago
    I'm not defending liberal leaning policies at all. I'm pointing out are that there are education standards for a reason. Sorry you don't like facts but that's the reality of the situation.
    - cema 16y ago
      Having schools conforming to educational standards may be important, but there is a difference between even a country-wide system that proposes (and tests, etc) educational standards, on the one hand; and, on the other hand, government's involvement in education. These two may be completely independent. Indeed, the former (standards) may exist without the latter (government-controlled education). And, please, avoid ad hominem attacks.
      - lotusleaf1987 16y ago
        Sorry libertarianism may be popular on HN, but it's almost undoubtedly not the solution to our education problems. I am all for standards, but never once brought up government controlled education or defended it. Please don't attribute an argument to me that I didn't make, which is exactly what the OP did by inferring that I defend liberal education policies. There are massive problems in our education system, my mom's a teacher and tells me about them almost every time we talk, but they aren't problems that will be solved by the government stepping back and letting the locals take control. In fact, that'd make things much worse. Teachers are barely accountable for teaching and are pretty much glorified baby sitters for the most part (my mom says this). The kids who do well go to charter schools, or have parents who give them homework, or go to tutors, or go to private school. The kids who don't do well or perform below grade-level have single-parent families, probably living in poverty, and for the most part slip through the cracks in the "system." I think the first step to the problem is stop throwing away money on things that don't work-- STAR, SAT9, etc standardized testing. The only people benefiting from this are the people who make/sell the tests. Teachers end up forming their curriculum around the tests and it becomes their singular goal to meet/exceed expectations which are based around the last years results. So what you lose are art, music, PE, auto-shop, computer lab classes-- anything that isn't specifically tested. So what happens? Kids hate school because all they're doing is memorizing a bunch of stuff that won't help them in life. I think some steps in the right direction would be: -make teachers more accountable for their students success and make tenure based on that -bring back vocational schools or specialized school (people in the 70s who went to these types of schools could get jobs at Lockheed Martin and Boeing building planes) -quit wasting time on standardized tests -make school fun -- music, art, photography, PE, computer lab are the classes I remember looking forward to, it keeps you going to school instead of ditching. Possibly even use these classes as an incentive. -get rid of GATE, it's a self-fulfilling prophesy. -Teachers should be paid according to how well their students perform/improvements made. This way the best teachers would have an incentive to take on those students struggling instead of the way it currently is where the best teachers teach "honors classes" and have kids with parents who also help teach them while at home or hire tutors. That's my two-cents and I'll get off my soapbox, but I still think standards are generally a good thing and do more good than harm.
- dctoedt 16y ago
  Texas's extremely-conservative state board of education will be changing soon, because at least one of the hard-line board members who pushed the "reforms" mentioned in the Guardian article was subsequently voted out of office in favor of a more-moderate candidate. (I think two of the hard-liners got the boot.)
_delirium 16y ago
That's one of the philosophical arguments (though many libertarians don't think state or local governments should be doing schools either), but it's also quite common for libertarians to argue that one reason people should support their view is that the current public schools are a failure and thus need major reform.
- pmorici 16y ago
  I think people may be conflating corporatism with libertarianism.
- doyoulikeworms 16y ago
  There are two types of libertarians, consequentialist libertarians and natural rights libertarians. They come to more or less the same conclusions, but for entirely different reasons. The former's argument appeals to the efficiency and productivity perceived to be afforded by a libertarian society. The latter has everything to do with whether or not the existence of, say, public schools is just. Either side will tend to argue that you, luckily, don't have to choose between prosperity and justice, but always fall back to their philosophical roots.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    That reminds me of an interesting counterfactual that I believe Ilya Somin proposed (he's a libertarian law professor born in the USSR). Most market advocates believe communism, and especially the USSR's version of central-planning, strong-state authoritarian communism, was wrong as a matter of principle. But what if the USSR had managed to keep a high standard of living, comparable to how it did quite well in science? And let's say it also avoided some of the worst bouts of mismanagement, like the large famines. Even libertarians who argue that central planning is inefficient might grant that it's at least hypothetically possible that the USSR could've turned out much better / less badly than it did, had a few things and personnel been different. What would people think of it then? His guess (iirc) is that, unfortunately from his viewpoint, the USSR is as unpopular as it is basically because it "didn't work": it had a lower standard of living than the capitalist west, large famines, etc. If it were authoritarian but "worked", so East Germans and Muscovites had the same televisions and cars as West Germans and Parisians, he fears the anti-communism consensus would not really be strong at all.
mmt 16y ago
Even more broadly, we[1] argue that the government shouldn't control[2] education, but, rather, that the parents should. This could well include even the decision of whether education is enough of a public good to be supported by taxes. Personally, I think it is, so I strongly favor a system that allows parents to pay for private schools with public money, such as vouchers. [1] I can't speak for the Libertarian Party, whom I consider a tad extreme, though I consider myself a small-L libertarian [2] Involvement at all would be too all-encompassing a proscription.
spoiledtechie 16y ago
I think the author actually mispoke and meant to say Liberals, not libertarians...
- towelrod 16y ago
  No, he already said that Liberals like to say that public schools are bad so the government can spend more money on them. He has a strawman argument for conservatives, too.
jacoblyles 16y ago
Libertarians also point out that school spending has been rising over time with no corresponding rise in national test scores. http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/chart-of-the-day-federal-ed-spending/ http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/chart-of-the-day-federal-ed-s... I would be surprised if these international test scores showed any correlation to changing spending either.

by pmorici 16y ago

lotusleaf1987 16y ago

And then Texas would refer to slavery as the "triangular trade system" see here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/16/texas-schools-rewrites-us-history http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/16/texas-schools-re...

pmorici 16y ago
So you are assuming then that your preference over their preference would win a majority vote in congress? Local control protects liberal leaning policies as much as nutty ones.
- lotusleaf1987 16y ago
  I'm not defending liberal leaning policies at all. I'm pointing out are that there are education standards for a reason. Sorry you don't like facts but that's the reality of the situation.
  - cema 16y ago
    Having schools conforming to educational standards may be important, but there is a difference between even a country-wide system that proposes (and tests, etc) educational standards, on the one hand; and, on the other hand, government's involvement in education. These two may be completely independent. Indeed, the former (standards) may exist without the latter (government-controlled education). And, please, avoid ad hominem attacks.
    - lotusleaf1987 16y ago
      Sorry libertarianism may be popular on HN, but it's almost undoubtedly not the solution to our education problems. I am all for standards, but never once brought up government controlled education or defended it. Please don't attribute an argument to me that I didn't make, which is exactly what the OP did by inferring that I defend liberal education policies. There are massive problems in our education system, my mom's a teacher and tells me about them almost every time we talk, but they aren't problems that will be solved by the government stepping back and letting the locals take control. In fact, that'd make things much worse. Teachers are barely accountable for teaching and are pretty much glorified baby sitters for the most part (my mom says this). The kids who do well go to charter schools, or have parents who give them homework, or go to tutors, or go to private school. The kids who don't do well or perform below grade-level have single-parent families, probably living in poverty, and for the most part slip through the cracks in the "system." I think the first step to the problem is stop throwing away money on things that don't work-- STAR, SAT9, etc standardized testing. The only people benefiting from this are the people who make/sell the tests. Teachers end up forming their curriculum around the tests and it becomes their singular goal to meet/exceed expectations which are based around the last years results. So what you lose are art, music, PE, auto-shop, computer lab classes-- anything that isn't specifically tested. So what happens? Kids hate school because all they're doing is memorizing a bunch of stuff that won't help them in life. I think some steps in the right direction would be: -make teachers more accountable for their students success and make tenure based on that -bring back vocational schools or specialized school (people in the 70s who went to these types of schools could get jobs at Lockheed Martin and Boeing building planes) -quit wasting time on standardized tests -make school fun -- music, art, photography, PE, computer lab are the classes I remember looking forward to, it keeps you going to school instead of ditching. Possibly even use these classes as an incentive. -get rid of GATE, it's a self-fulfilling prophesy. -Teachers should be paid according to how well their students perform/improvements made. This way the best teachers would have an incentive to take on those students struggling instead of the way it currently is where the best teachers teach "honors classes" and have kids with parents who also help teach them while at home or hire tutors. That's my two-cents and I'll get off my soapbox, but I still think standards are generally a good thing and do more good than harm.
dctoedt 16y ago
Texas's extremely-conservative state board of education will be changing soon, because at least one of the hard-line board members who pushed the "reforms" mentioned in the Guardian article was subsequently voted out of office in favor of a more-moderate candidate. (I think two of the hard-liners got the boot.)

_delirium 16y ago

That's one of the philosophical arguments (though many libertarians don't think state or local governments should be doing schools either), but it's also quite common for libertarians to argue that one reason people should support their view is that the current public schools are a failure and thus need major reform.

pmorici 16y ago
I think people may be conflating corporatism with libertarianism.
doyoulikeworms 16y ago
There are two types of libertarians, consequentialist libertarians and natural rights libertarians. They come to more or less the same conclusions, but for entirely different reasons. The former's argument appeals to the efficiency and productivity perceived to be afforded by a libertarian society. The latter has everything to do with whether or not the existence of, say, public schools is just. Either side will tend to argue that you, luckily, don't have to choose between prosperity and justice, but always fall back to their philosophical roots.
- _delirium 16y ago
  That reminds me of an interesting counterfactual that I believe Ilya Somin proposed (he's a libertarian law professor born in the USSR). Most market advocates believe communism, and especially the USSR's version of central-planning, strong-state authoritarian communism, was wrong as a matter of principle. But what if the USSR had managed to keep a high standard of living, comparable to how it did quite well in science? And let's say it also avoided some of the worst bouts of mismanagement, like the large famines. Even libertarians who argue that central planning is inefficient might grant that it's at least hypothetically possible that the USSR could've turned out much better / less badly than it did, had a few things and personnel been different. What would people think of it then? His guess (iirc) is that, unfortunately from his viewpoint, the USSR is as unpopular as it is basically because it "didn't work": it had a lower standard of living than the capitalist west, large famines, etc. If it were authoritarian but "worked", so East Germans and Muscovites had the same televisions and cars as West Germans and Parisians, he fears the anti-communism consensus would not really be strong at all.

mmt 16y ago

Even more broadly, we[1] argue that the government shouldn't control[2] education, but, rather, that the parents should. This could well include even the decision of whether education is enough of a public good to be supported by taxes. Personally, I think it is, so I strongly favor a system that allows parents to pay for private schools with public money, such as vouchers. [1] I can't speak for the Libertarian Party, whom I consider a tad extreme, though I consider myself a small-L libertarian [2] Involvement at all would be too all-encompassing a proscription.

spoiledtechie 16y ago

I think the author actually mispoke and meant to say Liberals, not libertarians...

towelrod 16y ago
No, he already said that Liberals like to say that public schools are bad so the government can spend more money on them. He has a strawman argument for conservatives, too.

jacoblyles 16y ago

Libertarians also point out that school spending has been rising over time with no corresponding rise in national test scores. http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/chart-of-the-day-federal-ed-spending/ http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/chart-of-the-day-federal-ed-s... I would be surprised if these international test scores showed any correlation to changing spending either.