[geeks] education systems around the world

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Sat, 25 Oct 2008, Mike Meredith wrote:

> On Fri, 24 Oct 2008 23:19:03 -0500 (CDT), Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
>> Somehow "Elementary education shall be compulsory" stands alongside
>> "No one may be compelled to belong to an association", "No one shall
>
> It doesn't say you'll be forced to send children to a state school.
> It's more like if you don't make arrangements for your children's
> education they'll be forcibly sent to a state school.

Contingent force is still a threat of force.

> Ignoring the rights for now, elementary education is usually regarded as
> a pretty good thing ... basic literacy and numeracy are effectively
> essential tools in a modern society.

Good ideas have a way of selling themselves without having to be forced on
people.  I assume you have a flush-toilet?  A refrigerator?  A bed,
perhaps?  Presumably, none of those items was forced upon you.

> In fact you could say that an education is the foundation on which the
> exercise of one's rights is based ... if you don't know your rights and
> can't read about them, you can't exercise them.

I'm not saying training is a bad thing.  I'm just saying good ideas don't
need to be forced on people.

Furthermore, I'm also implying that the way government schools are run in
the US is not conducive to a functioning society.  Ask any professor who
teaches 100-level courses at college and university what he thinks of the
calibre of student he's received over the last five years compares to
those he had ten or fifteen years ago.

We have a system of schooling that assumes everyone wants or needs to
attend college.  The pure and simple fact is that not everyone is
college-bound.  Some folks are better with their hands than their heads,
and God bless them.  I'm no craftsman, and I want the trade schools filled
with people who lean that way, because I want to be able to pay people to
build and fix the things I'm unable to do myself.  I've seen folks who can
take a cutting torch and arc welder and build -amazing- things out of
metal.  Those folks don't need to be wasting their time in college doing
academic stuff they hate!  They have gifts to use to benefit society!

Some folks aren't good with either.  That's fine, too, really!  Manual
labor isn't fun, and I won't insult folks who perform it by saying
"programming gets tedious, too" because I know it's a different world.
Just the same, there are folks who are -excellent- at the manual effort of
building roads, laying brick, cooking, or whatever, and, God bless them!
I don't want to have to do that stuff, and they do a better job than I
could, anyhow.

Yet, step into any high school classroom for grade 8 and above and you'll
hear the steady mantra of "college, college, college".

And what happens when you convince a bunch of folks that they need to go
to college instead of vocational school, business school, or into the
workforce?

>> be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home
>
> Not being subject to "arbitrary interference" is not no interference.

Arbitrary is subjective.  I learned more from sitting at home reading and
asking my parents and grandparents to teach me than I did from school
until approximately the 8th grade.  I entered Kindergarten being able to
read, write, and perform arithmetic.  Outside of sentence diagramming and
a bunch of history lessons, I don't think I was actually taught anything I
didn't already know until algebra and biology in grade 8.

For those first 8 years of compulsory education, the entire exercise was
purely arbitrary.  My teachers knew it, and we spent 8 years annoying each
other.

I fully realize the infinite blessing I have of a family that was willing
to indulge my intellectual pursuits at that age, and I will always be
grateful for them.  A system that assumes that parents won't take care of
their own (and that, should they want to, MUST follow some sort of
government-approved curriculum) is an insult to the parents that have a
level of responsibility above being gamete-donors.

In light of my childhood memories, I would -love- to help fund a school
for gifted students who are just bored to tears for years and years.  You
know, those school taxes I'm forced to pay could go to something like
that....

>> Forcing my children to attend anything is an interference in my family.
>
> So what? As far as I'm concerned the rights of an individual trump the
> rights of an organisation (which a family is) every time.

If the child wants to attend, fine.  Otherwise, I'll teach my own.

By what right does an external organization (which the state and the
school are) have to state otherwise?

>> compensation, they are held in slavery; if others are expected to
>> surrender the fruits of their labor to compensate these teachers, they
>> are held in slavery.
>
> Now that's one of the dumbest and probably one of the most insulting
> things that anyone has ever said on this list. Just ask a former slave
> about how taxation compares to slavery.

Ask anyone in jail for tax evasion how taxation compares to slavery.  Ask
anyone who has lost his right to property for back taxes how taxation
compares to slavery.  Ask anyone who's gotten out of jail for tax evasion
and not yet had his civil rights reinstated how taxation compares to
slavery.

> Surrendering the fruits of one's labours is something nobody is happy
> with, but the phrase itself implies that one is entitled to the fruits
> of one's labours.

This is THE fundamental human right.  We have rights to our bodies because
we OWN them.  Our bodies and our lives and our thoughts are the only
things we directly own, which can only be taken from us via severe
trauma.  We expend bits of our life energy (time, effort, frustration) in
labor and leisure to obtain happiness and the essentials we need to
continue life.

If you command that I MUST labor or face trauma, you are, in essence
asserting a right to a portion of my life.  THAT is slavery, even if it's
temporary.  Even if it's interleaved with free time of my own (which
slaves, at least in the US had), it's still slavery.

On the other hand, should I willfully expend my very limited time on this
planet to create something useful, which someone else purchases (be it
efforts of my mind, a device of some sort, or the labor to move a pile of
rocks), that is a situation in with both parties are in a better place
than before.

> A slave has no rights; he or she is property to be treated as the owner
> wishes.

Please describe how this scenario is different than a government whom I
must repeatedly pay off to avoid having my goods stolen and violence
visited upon me.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke | "There is more to life than increasing its speed."
Elgin, TX         |                                   --Mahatma Gandhi
USA               |