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It's not. One of the top reforms I'd like to give to schools is to provide "student senates" and the like with actual, meaningful sums of money somehow so that

It's not. One of the top reforms I'd like to give to schools is to provide "student senates" and the like with actual, meaningful sums of money somehow so that they can legitimately practice governance. Playing token figurehead really doesn't teach them anything I want them to learn. I say this as someone who ended up being friends with a lot of these people throughout my life. While in community college, the senate actively pursued agendas, it would be more accurate to describe them as a students' union than a senate. Valuable, but still not actually a senate of any kind. Most of these friends who were in these positions? They were doing it because it would look good on the resume. Oh, that wasn't the only reason, and they were all good people whose character and intentions I'd vouch for. But still. And this, frighteningly, is the strongest similarity to adult politics: public office as stepping stone to industry status.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
It seems to me that both in business and in politics, bad intentions drive out good intentions. If you're trying to make an actual, honest change you quickly get outcompeted/outvoted by people who see the field as a stepping stone to their other goals (be it making themselves rich or gaining high status), and who don't give a damn about how much damage they leave behind - just as long as they get what they want and escape the fallout.
- saraid216 12y ago
  Well, that's one difference between the child's world and the adult's world; bad intentions appear to be pretty rare, but even the best intentions are stymied by ineffectuality. That might be an idealization of the under-18 crowd, though. My strategy can be summed up as, if you teach kids real civics, you provide stronger support for those with good intentions. I can't speak for other countries, but in America, I think that the knowledge of civics is rare to none; even on Hacker News, supposedly a bastion of intelligent and experienced people, you find egregious mistakes on basic constitutional theory. That's not really their fault: they've been trained to misunderstand how government works by, well... politicians with bad intentions.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

It seems to me that both in business and in politics, bad intentions drive out good intentions. If you're trying to make an actual, honest change you quickly get outcompeted/outvoted by people who see the field as a stepping stone to their other goals (be it making themselves rich or gaining high status), and who don't give a damn about how much damage they leave behind - just as long as they get what they want and escape the fallout.

saraid216 12y ago
Well, that's one difference between the child's world and the adult's world; bad intentions appear to be pretty rare, but even the best intentions are stymied by ineffectuality. That might be an idealization of the under-18 crowd, though. My strategy can be summed up as, if you teach kids real civics, you provide stronger support for those with good intentions. I can't speak for other countries, but in America, I think that the knowledge of civics is rare to none; even on Hacker News, supposedly a bastion of intelligent and experienced people, you find egregious mistakes on basic constitutional theory. That's not really their fault: they've been trained to misunderstand how government works by, well... politicians with bad intentions.