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You kind of took it off the deep at there with the last sentence. Sure the Trump dept of education has been especially bad, but you can't blame all of the past

by cactus2093 6y ago

You kind of took it off the deep at there with the last sentence. Sure the Trump dept of education has been especially bad, but you can't blame all of the past decades of US public education mediocrity on corporate interests. Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.

klyrs 6y ago
You might want to do a deep dive on the politics of textbooks, standardized tests, and the economics of charter schools. Corporate interests run deep, and it isn't limited to trump or either party.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  I wouldn't call examining the controversy over school text books as a "deep dive" into anything. As far as education topics go, it's as shallow as a google search. I've been to a few thousand school board meetings in my day. There are a lot of unmined topics there.
  - klyrs 6y ago
    You're right, a deep dive does involve more than a single google search. Read multiple stories, dig up references, find what google's filter bubble isn't showing you, figure out what people on "both" (but usually several) sides are saying; maybe hunt down some podcasts if you're into that. And, y'know, reading past the first comma in somebody's comment to notice that multiple topics were listed. I'd love to hear what you consider to be unmined topics.
reaperducer 6y ago
Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. Or unions. While teachers unions have been great for teachers, they've been lousy for teaching.
- a1369209993 6y ago
  Teachers unions are only great for bad teachers; for good teachers they are at best grossly inadequate (see klyrs's response), and often outright harmful (for much the same reasons they're harmful to teaching).
- pjmlp 6y ago
  As European it is hard to grasp the US hate on unions. I love our European unions, which support anyone across the company, including software developers. Want to make a slave out of me? Talk to the hand.
  - Ensorceled 6y ago
    Plenty of hate for unions here in Canada too. Some how, in North America, we've convinced a large percentage of people who should belong to unions that unions will destroy society.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Which is quite sad, given how relevant both countries were in giving birth to them during the early days of industrial revolution.
  - cactus2093 6y ago
    As an American, I think it is just decades of seeing the problems caused by unions. In the worst case look at our police unions, it is now pretty well accepted that they are a large part of the problem with police brutality and killings here. It's now a growing mainstream belief that they should be disbanded, and after seeing time and time again how they protect murderers and abusers it's hard not to agree. In other industries the stakes are not life and death in the same way, but it seems like the same principles hold. If a small percentage of employees in an industry are corrupt or negligent, and the unions defend them and prevent them from ever being fired or facing any negative consequences, they can do a lot of damage. Also, in the US a lot of benefits that unions provide for their members go against the interests of broader society. Unions are some of the biggest opponents of nationalized healthcare, for example. As far as the upsides, I think unions were more useful when governments were much smaller and weaker than they are today. In that world, the upsides outweighed the downsides because people had no other protections. With how incredibly wealthy the US is now, a functioning government should be able to provide the benefits for every citizen that unions provide for their members, while avoiding the downsides of the fierce "us vs them" dynamic that unions can create which has ended up dividing society in many instances. (Obviously there's a big asterisk there on "functioning" government, but many unions don't seem to be functioning very well either as I mentioned earlier, so it's a tie on that front. If we can't get our large bodies to function better than they are these days, we're screwed no matter what).
Ensorceled 6y ago
Why did you assume a general statement about the public education system was an attack against the current Administration instead of a complaint about decades of neglect? Education is mostly a state/local matter. Also, Devos is publicly in favour of eliminating public schools in favour of private schools / voucher systems and has attempted to drastically reduce her own portfolios budget; so the malice is openly on display here.
wwright 6y ago
The education system literally exists to serve corporate America.
- vmh1928 6y ago
  Pretty sure the education system exists to serve the education system. Big Ed is an industry unto itself, you don't need the nefarious corporate America behind it to make it a money-extracting cabal. $120k in student loans and a liberal arts degree in French Literature from a big-name college? The college bears no risk if the consumer of their product cannot pay on the loan. Hard to see how that serves corporate America.
  - wwright 6y ago
    I was thinking primarily of the public education system (through high school). I think you are right that the university system is more sel-serving. However, even there I think it is mostly a servant of the neoliberal economic machine. The insane loans indenture the professional class to the banking class.

klyrs 6y ago

You might want to do a deep dive on the politics of textbooks, standardized tests, and the economics of charter schools. Corporate interests run deep, and it isn't limited to trump or either party.

reaperducer 6y ago
I wouldn't call examining the controversy over school text books as a "deep dive" into anything. As far as education topics go, it's as shallow as a google search. I've been to a few thousand school board meetings in my day. There are a lot of unmined topics there.
- klyrs 6y ago
  You're right, a deep dive does involve more than a single google search. Read multiple stories, dig up references, find what google's filter bubble isn't showing you, figure out what people on "both" (but usually several) sides are saying; maybe hunt down some podcasts if you're into that. And, y'know, reading past the first comma in somebody's comment to notice that multiple topics were listed. I'd love to hear what you consider to be unmined topics.

reaperducer 6y ago

Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. Or unions. While teachers unions have been great for teachers, they've been lousy for teaching.

a1369209993 6y ago
Teachers unions are only great for bad teachers; for good teachers they are at best grossly inadequate (see klyrs's response), and often outright harmful (for much the same reasons they're harmful to teaching).
pjmlp 6y ago
As European it is hard to grasp the US hate on unions. I love our European unions, which support anyone across the company, including software developers. Want to make a slave out of me? Talk to the hand.
- Ensorceled 6y ago
  Plenty of hate for unions here in Canada too. Some how, in North America, we've convinced a large percentage of people who should belong to unions that unions will destroy society.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Which is quite sad, given how relevant both countries were in giving birth to them during the early days of industrial revolution.
- cactus2093 6y ago
  As an American, I think it is just decades of seeing the problems caused by unions. In the worst case look at our police unions, it is now pretty well accepted that they are a large part of the problem with police brutality and killings here. It's now a growing mainstream belief that they should be disbanded, and after seeing time and time again how they protect murderers and abusers it's hard not to agree. In other industries the stakes are not life and death in the same way, but it seems like the same principles hold. If a small percentage of employees in an industry are corrupt or negligent, and the unions defend them and prevent them from ever being fired or facing any negative consequences, they can do a lot of damage. Also, in the US a lot of benefits that unions provide for their members go against the interests of broader society. Unions are some of the biggest opponents of nationalized healthcare, for example. As far as the upsides, I think unions were more useful when governments were much smaller and weaker than they are today. In that world, the upsides outweighed the downsides because people had no other protections. With how incredibly wealthy the US is now, a functioning government should be able to provide the benefits for every citizen that unions provide for their members, while avoiding the downsides of the fierce "us vs them" dynamic that unions can create which has ended up dividing society in many instances. (Obviously there's a big asterisk there on "functioning" government, but many unions don't seem to be functioning very well either as I mentioned earlier, so it's a tie on that front. If we can't get our large bodies to function better than they are these days, we're screwed no matter what).

Ensorceled 6y ago

Why did you assume a general statement about the public education system was an attack against the current Administration instead of a complaint about decades of neglect? Education is mostly a state/local matter. Also, Devos is publicly in favour of eliminating public schools in favour of private schools / voucher systems and has attempted to drastically reduce her own portfolios budget; so the malice is openly on display here.

wwright 6y ago

The education system literally exists to serve corporate America.

vmh1928 6y ago
Pretty sure the education system exists to serve the education system. Big Ed is an industry unto itself, you don't need the nefarious corporate America behind it to make it a money-extracting cabal. $120k in student loans and a liberal arts degree in French Literature from a big-name college? The college bears no risk if the consumer of their product cannot pay on the loan. Hard to see how that serves corporate America.
- wwright 6y ago
  I was thinking primarily of the public education system (through high school). I think you are right that the university system is more sel-serving. However, even there I think it is mostly a servant of the neoliberal economic machine. The insane loans indenture the professional class to the banking class.