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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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 Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2010 10:18 am Post subject: |
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| Gwangjuboy wrote: |
Education is the key. The gap between state and private education needs to be narrowed, and there are two ways of doing this: Firstly, you need to pump more money into state education, especially in poor catchment areas. |
LA spends 30k per student and can only graduate 50%. DC and poor areas of NJ spend more than affluent suburbs in surrounding areas. There is no evidence that money = smart kids.
Bad students make for bad schools. A generation of people in Canada were educated in single room, poor as hell rural schools and went on to great success. LA is building cathedrals to education but nothing will change. Good school = good students.
http://www.calwatchdog.com/2010/08/20/lausd-spends-30k-per-student/
At some point in we are going to have to accept that about half of kids (maybe even 3/4 of boys) in the United States need vocational training and not academics from a very early age. Assuming we are all equally able to complete (and in need of) soft education is very bad policy.
People need to be able to support themselves in the economy. This focus on graduating (meaningless ceremony and credentialism) and university/college degrees is not serving the interests of half the population. They don't need credentials from institutions they need skills to take to employers. |
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Gwangjuboy
Joined: 08 Jul 2003
Location: England
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| Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2010 10:27 am Post subject: |
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| Wai Mian wrote: |
| Unfortunately I don't think education can be fixed if parents don't get involved. There is absolutely no recourse for the instructors or admin if the parents don't care, and a lot of them don't. My sister is a HS English teacher in Chicago PS, and she ended up fostering a student she used to teach who was homeless because her parents were both bipolar, alcoholic and unemployed. She was almost better on the streets than with her parents. |
These cases represent the most extreme examples of inter-generational poverty and parental neglect. That's the one problem that is almost insurmountable: people who should never have had children. A more independent and tailored education in the poorest catchment areas may reduce inter-generational poverty and where parents are a nefarious influence, it is evident that the state must assume care of the children, as it does in the UK, or find for those children foster parents.
You can only try to save as many as possible, but your implication is right in that irrespective of what you do, you can't ultimately 'save' everyone. Still, I vehemently believe that inter-generational poverty can be reduced by prescribing a more tailored and versatile education. The status quo is simply not working effectively enough.
Last edited by Gwangjuboy on Mon Sep 20, 2010 10:35 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Gwangjuboy
Joined: 08 Jul 2003
Location: England
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| Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2010 10:33 am Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
LA spends 30k per student and can only graduate 50%. DC and poor areas of NJ spend more than affluent suburbs in surrounding areas. There is no evidence that money = smart kids.
Bad students make for bad schools. A generation of people in Canada were educated in single room, poor as hell rural schools and went on to great success. LA is building cathedrals to education but nothing will change. Good school = good students.
http://www.calwatchdog.com/2010/08/20/lausd-spends-30k-per-student/
At some point in we are going to have to accept that about half of kids (maybe even 3/4 of boys) in the United States need vocational training and not academics from a very early age. Assuming we are all equally able to complete (and in need of) soft education is very bad policy.
People need to be able to support themselves in the economy. This focus on graduating (meaningless ceremony and credentialism) and university/college degrees is not serving the interests of half the population. They don't need credentials from institutions they need skills to take to employers. |
I agree with everything you said, and I think you may have missed the point I made about needing to combine money and a more versatile approach to education. In fact, I don't think I could agree more with your final paragraph here, and that is what I explicitly said myself: the education needs to be geared toward the needs of the labour market and not result in debt-laden 'meaningless credentialism' as you rightly call it.
The best prescription for breaking inter-generational poverty is an education that is tailored to the demands of the labour market and the needs of the community. If one generation breaks the cycle, then they are also more likely to be able to provide their own children with what they themselves didn't have, rather than condemn generation after generation to a world of nothingness and dispair. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2010 10:50 am Post subject: |
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Right. There's nothing wrong with being a welder or a mechanic. I think a problem here is that the elite look down on people who actually work and see the tracking of kids into vocations as disparaging their snowflake like capabilities. Not everybody can be a lawyer. That's ok. Some people need to fix/build/upgrade cars. Mechanics earn a fine income.
To break the cycle of poverty you don't push kids into that which they are unprepared. That is skipping generational steps.
Unfortunately, our economic philosophy centers around the so called knowledge economy. I posted a link a while back to an economist who spoke with a senior US Treasury official who, when asked about what America's comparative advantage would be once all manufacturing was gone, said that the US would be the "capital allocator to the world". 300 million people, with a comparative advantage that begins and ends with advanced financial management. The underclass gets screwed from every direction.
Here's an example of how neoclassical economics (the dominant paradigm) and how it sees the economy:
http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2010/09/building-f-35s-in-southey-sk.html
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Building F-35s in Southey, SK
A must read by Andrew Coyne - Of jobs and jets. The whole "Build the F-35s in Canada to keep jobs" arguments misses two key points:
1. Jobs are a cost, not a benefit.
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Will Easterly says:
http://aidwatchers.com/2010/09/growing-cars-in-iowa/
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Here�s the detailed technology by which you grow cars in Iowa:
First you plant seeds, which are the raw material from which automobiles are constructed. You wait a few months until wheat appears. Then you harvest the wheat, load it onto ships, and sail the ships eastward into the Pacific Ocean. After a few months, the ships reappear with Toyotas on them. |
No concern for jobs. None. What is a kid from some poor area to do? Shall he open a venture capital start up that discovers statistical arbitrage in credit markets? Maybe it would be best if the economy actually created middle class or even lower class jobs for the 'strong back' types. We wouldn't have to worry so much about students who don't do well in traditional academics if our society created opportunity that reflects reality. |
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Koreadays
Joined: 20 May 2008
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| Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2010 5:56 pm Post subject: |
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look how Korea transformed it self in the past 30 years.
just look at the past 15 years. pre 95 no kids really went to hakwons.
now every child goes, keeps the teenagers off the streets and keeps the kids busy.
If America adopted a similar policy where children were forced to enter this hakwons after schools and for the next 30 years were all forced to study until 10 or 11pm.. the nation would become a very different place.
Americans have to much freedom and for a ethnic diverse nations it needs to be controlled in a more communist socialist style to regain order.
the nation is spirally out of control! |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2010 10:35 pm Post subject: |
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| Koreadays wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| America has its problems. Those problems are as of yet no where near bad enough to pick up a gun and harm another human being over, and anyone willing to "violently revolt" based on the status quo would be totally untrustworthy to form a new government if their revolt were somehow beyond all odds successful. |
been following the news ? IRAQ or Afghanistan ring a bell. |
Yes, they do. I oppose our current military activity in those regions, but I don't think American citizens need to go to arms with one another over it. This is an issue that can be resolved at the ballot box. |
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young_clinton
Joined: 09 Sep 2009
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| Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2010 5:16 am Post subject: |
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| Gwangjuboy wrote: |
| There needs to be a revolution of sorts: against the financiers who ruined us. |
Yeah make the GOP extinct by voting for the Democrats. In your case vote Labor. |
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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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| Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2010 7:43 am Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Koreadays wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| America has its problems. Those problems are as of yet no where near bad enough to pick up a gun and harm another human being over, and anyone willing to "violently revolt" based on the status quo would be totally untrustworthy to form a new government if their revolt were somehow beyond all odds successful. |
been following the news ? IRAQ or Afghanistan ring a bell. |
Yes, they do. I oppose our current military activity in those regions, but I don't think American citizens need to go to arms with one another over it. This is an issue that can be resolved at the ballot box. |
Lets start a violent revolution because we don't like war. Either the post was a bad joke or well... |
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El Exigente
Joined: 10 Sep 2010
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| Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2010 9:54 am Post subject: |
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| Leon wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| Koreadays wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| America has its problems. Those problems are as of yet no where near bad enough to pick up a gun and harm another human being over, and anyone willing to "violently revolt" based on the status quo would be totally untrustworthy to form a new government if their revolt were somehow beyond all odds successful. |
been following the news ? IRAQ or Afghanistan ring a bell. |
Yes, they do. I oppose our current military activity in those regions, but I don't think American citizens need to go to arms with one another over it. This is an issue that can be resolved at the ballot box. |
Lets start a violent revolution because we don't like war. Either the post was a bad joke or well... |
Kill, kill, kill for peace! |
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