UKIP Idiocy

[Ken B]

I suppose it depends on the country where one resides, but I am not familiar with arguments supporting the notion that the state should determine which schooling is best, or that it should enforce a standard curriculum on all schools.  Public schools should be managed by the state.  Private schools should be not.  Home schooling should not.  Private schools and home schooling parents ought not to receive any direct public funding, though.  By direct funding, I mean grants or vouchers.  If a school is prepared to accept public funds, then such a school must be prepared to accept interference by the state.

Why? If a child has some sort of right to get an education paid for by the state why does that right come with the proviso it can only be in a state controlled and operated school?

If we want the most effective school system, why can that only be a monopoly? Do you have an argument that education is a natrual monopoly?

[Todd]

Why? If a child has some sort of right to get an education paid for by the state why does that right come with the proviso it can only be in a state controlled and operated school?

If we want the most effective school system, why can that only be a monopoly? Do you have an argument that education is a natrual monopoly?

You are confusing concepts here.  I did not mention a monopoly, natural or otherwise.  Private schools should be free to operate and offer competition to state run schools.  There is no monopoly in education, nor should there be.  It is a question of how public funds are allocated.

As a taxpayer, and a voter, I expect the state to take an active role in managing how funds are spent.  If private schools accept funds, then I expect the state to actively measure progress, and make sure that all institutions comply with established practices, and properly penalize institutions that do not comply.

To be honest, the conservative arguments for vouchers are anti-conservative.  (I'm talking US conservative.)  People who want vouchers are simply asking for a handout; that is, they seek a preferential form of welfare, just as assuredly as so-called "pro-choice" advocates want unrestricted money for their favored behavior, and (investment) bankers want public backing without public regulation.  People who want private education should pay for it out of their own pockets.

[Ken B]

You are confusing concepts here.  I did not mention a monopoly, natural or otherwise.  Private schools should be free to operate and offer competition to state run schools.  There is no monopoly in education, nor should there be.  It is a question of how public funds are allocated.

As a taxpayer, and a voter, I expect the state to take an active role in managing how funds are spent.  If private schools accept funds, then I expect the state to actively measure progress, and make sure that all institutions comply with established practices, and properly penalize institutions that do not comply.

To be honest, the conservative arguments for vouchers are anti-conservative.  (I'm talking US conservative.)  People who want vouchers are simply asking for a handout; that is, they seek a preferential form of welfare, just as assuredly as so-called "pro-choice" advocates want unrestricted money for their favored behavior, and (investment) bankers want public backing without public regulation.  People who want private education should pay for it out of their own pockets.

Well that's not a response to my questions though. Consider just the first. Say I believe that the state should pay for a child's education (to whatever extent). Why can that only be done through a publicly operated school? I think the state should pave the roads. Does that mean they should be paved with gravel from state owned quarries? Say I think the state should pay for policeman's uniforms. Does that mean they should have to wear uniforms woven in state factories using state grown cotton? If the child has a right, or moral claim, to the provision of schooling, why should it be so encumbered?

I am a taxpayer. I have no kids in school. I want my tax dollars in the school system used better than they are now. I want poor parents in Detroit to be able to select better schools, and use my taxes for that. How exactly am I "simply asking for a handout"?

If I am a tax payer I too want a "say" in how monies are spent. But I don't want to get a full accounting of every penny every day, it's not possible. I want mechanisms in place to help ensure sensible spending. Unlike say, no-bid contracts on roads or fighter aircraft. Like, say, a market mechanism to enforce responsibility in the purchase of gravel for roads, uniforms for policemen, or the school system.

[Moonfish]

Infrastructure, yes. State-run education I'm not so sure --- it very easily and oftenly degenerates into propaganda and brainwashing.

No, never. Many thanks for pointing him out to me.

That is total BS. It can be brainwashing regardless if the state runs the school or not. Many private schools have succeeded well in that enterprise (brain washing). States can do well in that enterprise as well. However, I think it is a higher probability that many heads together can create a school that works rather than a small board in a private school. Besides, learning has all to do with the individual (and access to resources) and not the school.

The flavor of liberalism you are pushing for in these posts smells of tyranny even though you color it with the banner of liberalism. I think I have to stop reading this thread as I sense that your posts have almost NOTHING to do with freedom nor equality. They are just becoming a long thread of political sarcasm. 

Flor & Ken:
Could you provide an example of a nation that has succeeded in your flavor of "liberalism"?

[Todd]

Well that's not a response to my questions though. Consider just the first. Say I believe that the state should pay for a child's education (to whatever extent). Why can that only be done through a publicly operated school? I think the state should pave the roads. Does that mean they should be paved with gravel from state owned quarries? Say I think the state should pay for policeman's uniforms. Does that mean they should have to wear uniforms woven in state factories using state grown cotton? If the child has a right, or moral claim, to the provision of schooling, why should it be so encumbered?

I am a taxpayer. I have no kids in school. I want my tax dollars in the school system used better than they are now. I want poor parents in Detroit to be able to select better schools, and use my taxes for that. How exactly am I "simply asking for a handout"?

If I am a tax payer I too want a "say" in how monies are spent. But I don't want to get a full accounting of every penny every day, it's not possible. I want mechanisms in place to help ensure sensible spending. Unlike say, no-bid contracts on roads or fighter aircraft. Like, say, a market mechanism to enforce responsibility in the purchase of gravel for roads, uniforms for policemen, or the school system.

First of all, I did answer your questions.  You falsely stated that education as it exists is a monopoly.  It is not.  The better economic model to use would be the dominant firm model, though even that is insufficient since education is a public good.  And if you really want to make an economic argument out of it, I would have thought that you would bring in marginal benefit, and how that influences people's choices.  But you didn't, and you didn't for a reason, and that reason is because you're not really interested in economic arguments.  That makes sense since education is more than merely economic in nature.

Now, to the bolded items, in particular, the first is a platitude - unless you can demonstrate that their people who don't support this idea - and the second is a straw man - who ever stated that would be a good idea, or is possible?  The answer, of course, is no one.  The remainder of your examples are dubious.

What you favor is reallocating public money to private institutions for their gain, and presumably, though not definitely, for the benefit of students.  I'm not quite sure how much oversight you would want the state to have under such a set up in the event a private institution fails to live up to its promise, or even what types of measurements of achievement you would find acceptable.  Simply arguing that it would be the choice of parents is wholly unacceptable when public funds are involved. 

There is one thing that is definitely lacking in your arguments: the potential beneficiaries.  Using history and data as a guide, reallocating public funds for private use would be a tax expenditure, and it is very hard to see how such a tax expenditure would not end up being like almost all other other tax expenditures in its distribution; that is, per the CBO, roughly 70% of current tax expenditures benefit the top quintile, and the people most likely to benefit from this new type of tax expenditure would likely be the same group of people, those who know how to use the benefits, and those who would be able to use a voucher and throw their own money into the mix to send their children to even "better" schools.  While the rhetoric of helping the poor, of improving schools, sure sounds good, I remain unconvinced that they would be the biggest beneficiaries; I see this as primarily another handout to the upper middle class, the people who need it the least.  (1%-ers would be unaffected since they have even more options.)  This of course is US centric, but vouchers don't seem as popular in a lot of the rest of the world.

[Florestan]

Looks like you and I are the only "cosmopolitan liberals" here Florestan. Sigh.

Oh yes, my friend, it really looks like we are the only ones! Alas! 

(Disclosure: I was born in, and I have lived my first 18 years in, a. (nominally) socialist country (The Socialist Republic of Romania); besides that, for 25 years now I've been living in an endless "transition",  during which the former communists turned mainly into EU Socialists. Therefore I might be biased, but whenever I hear the words "common", "public", "national", "EU" etc I am very diffident, to say the least... )

Now, about education.

Just what has the state got to do with it?

"The state" is only an abstraction; "the state" is not a person, and it has no reason, will and feeling of its own. What we mean by "the state" (someones like me mean it with the utmost disdain and diffidence, someothers unlike me mean it with the utmost awe and confidence) is only a bunch of people born, raised and educated exactly in the same society and manner that I was, yet who pretend to know much better than me what I and my family need and, especially, what my kid needs to learn, and how, and when; and if my kid does not fulfil their arbitarily-established standards, he will not be awarded am arbitrarily-established diploma of their own making, and thus he will not qualify for performing tasks they arbitrarily assigned for people arbitrarily earning their arbitrarily-established diploma. 

I stand by what I said before: a really smart person does not need a state-certified paper in order to really be a smart person. I absolutely deny the state, any state, any right to interfere with, and have a say about, the education of any child, other than providing the parents, ionly if need be, with the means for educating their kid(s) as they see fit.

[Todd]

"The state" is only an abstraction; "the state" is not a person, and it has no reason, will and feeling of its own.

True(-ish).

What we mean by "the state" (someones like me mean it with the utmost disdain and diffidence, someothers unlike me mean it with the utmost awe and confidence) is only a bunch of people born, raised and educated exactly in the same society and manner that I was, yet who pretend to know much better than me what I and my family need and, especially, what my kid needs to learn, and how, and when; and if my kid does not fulfil their arbitarily-established standards, he will not be awarded am arbitrarily-established diploma of their own making, and thus he will not qualify for performing tasks they arbitrarily assigned for people arbitrarily earning their arbitrarily-established diploma.

False.

[Ken B]

First of all, I did answer your questions.  You falsely stated that education as it exists is a monopoly.  It is not.  The better economic model to use would be the dominant firm model, though even that is insufficient since education is a public good.  And if you really want to make an economic argument out of it, I would have thought that you would bring in marginal benefit, and how that influences people's choices.  But you didn't, and you didn't for a reason, and that reason is because you're not really interested in economic arguments.  That makes sense since education is more than merely economic in nature.

Now, to the bolded items, in particular, the first is a platitude - unless you can demonstrate that their people who don't support this idea - and the second is a straw man - who ever stated that would be a good idea, or is possible?  The answer, of course, is no one.  The remainder of your examples are dubious.

What you favor is reallocating public money to private institutions for their gain, and presumably, though not definitely, for the benefit of students.  I'm not quite sure how much oversight you would want the state to have under such a set up in the event a private institution fails to live up to its promise, or even what types of measurements of achievement you would find acceptable.  Simply arguing that it would be the choice of parents is wholly unacceptable when public funds are involved. 

There is one thing that is definitely lacking in your arguments: the potential beneficiaries.  Using history and data as a guide, reallocating public funds for private use would be a tax expenditure, and it is very hard to see how such a tax expenditure would not end up being like almost all other other tax expenditures in its distribution; that is, per the CBO, roughly 70% of current tax expenditures benefit the top quintile, and the people most likely to benefit from this new type of tax expenditure would likely be the same group of people, those who know how to use the benefits, and those who would be able to use a voucher and throw their own money into the mix to send their children to even "better" schools.  While the rhetoric of helping the poor, of improving schools, sure sounds good, I remain unconvinced that they would be the biggest beneficiaries; I see this as primarily another handout to the upper middle class, the people who need it the least.  (1%-ers would be unaffected since they have even more options.)  This of course is US centric, but vouchers don't seem as popular in a lot of the rest of the world.

Todd, if the bolded bits are platitudes or strawmen it's yours, repeated back to you. "As a taxpayer, and a voter, I expect the state to take an active role in managing how funds are spent." 

Second what I want is public money diverted to students or to those in loco parentis for their education. If I believed in paying for university and grad school I would support a mechanism where the choice is made by the student.

Yes I support using public money in ways that enrich private interests. I support buying graval and cement for public roads on the open market, not just from publicly run quarries. I support buying good textbooks, enriching private publishers and private authors.

No I did not state education is a monopoly. I asked why it should be one. Your preferences leads to a virtual monopoly, close enough so for the poor it is a monopoly, and others here take an even harder line.

Your point about tax expenditures is very weak. For one thing, why would this be a tax expenditure any more than current education spending is?

"Simply arguing that it would be the choice of parents is wholly unacceptable when public funds are involved." Agreed, but if you want to talk straw men ...
But of course simply arguing that it would be the choice of parents is wholly unacceptable even when no public funds are involved. I would object to abusive or wretched schooling even if it was all private, although there might be side issues of responsible management and fiduciary care applicable regardless of the quality of the schooling.

[Moonfish]

I stand by what I said before: a really smart person does not need a state-certified paper in order to really be a smart person. I absolutely deny the state, any state, any right to interfere with, and have a say about, the education of any child, other than providing the parents, ionly if need be, with the means for educating their kid(s) as they see fit.

Some parents are not capable of educating their children due to the need to work to make ends meet and other are do not have neither the education nor the resources to do so.  You have a conservative and elitist point of view. Your perspective would promote inequality by differential learning to socioeconomic groups that do not have the privilege of money, time and/or education. I thought you stood for equality?

[Todd]

Second what I want is public money diverted to students or to those in loco parentis for their education.

As hollow an argument for vouchers as I have ever seen.  The intention is absolutely to get public money into private hands, and that would be the outcome, and the primary beneficiaries would be the upper middle class, who don't need any help.  Students can already move among public schools freely or for low cost (and it should always be free, so there's a concrete reform to implement right now), to go to a better institution.  Diverting public resources into private hands would also have the intended side effect of reducing resources available for public institutions.  The intent is unambiguous, and the harm unavoidable.

Yes I support using public money in ways that enrich private interests. I support buying graval and cement for public roads on the open market, not just from publicly run quarries. I support buying good textbooks, enriching private publishers and private authors.

That's good, I suppose, but I'm not sure how they are quite the same as education, which is a decades long service with decades of spill-over benefits.  I suppose I would like to see some empirical evidence showing that private schools offer a superior return on the investment dollar, with the studies excluding the most exclusive institutions (eg, boarding schools).

I asked why it should be one. Your preferences leads to a virtual monopoly, close enough so for the poor it is a monopoly, and others here take an even harder line.

Except it is not a monopoly. 

Your point about tax expenditures is very weak. For one thing, why would this be a tax expenditure any more than current education spending is?

It is definitional.  Subsidies, credits, and so on, are defined as tax expenditures, whereas direct outlays are not.  You are now arguing against standard terminology.  (This does assume using the tax code to actually implement so-called vouchers; sending actual physical checks to parents would be one of the worst ideas in history.)

"Simply arguing that it would be the choice of parents is wholly unacceptable when public funds are involved." Agreed, but if you want to talk straw men ...

So, what mechanism, other than student or parent choice, would you use for enforcement?

[Ken B]

As hollow an argument for vouchers as I have ever seen.  The intention is absolutely to get public money into private hands, and that would be the outcome, and the primary beneficiaries would be the upper middle class, who don't need any help.  Students can already move among public schools freely or for low cost (and it should always be free, so there's a concrete reform to implement right now), to go to a better institution.  Diverting public resources into private hands would also have the intended side effect of reducing resources available for public institutions.  The intent is unambiguous, and the harm unavoidable.




That's good, I suppose, but I'm not sure how they are quite the same as education, which is a decades long service with decades of spill-over benefits.  I suppose I would like to see some empirical evidence showing that private schools offer a superior return on the investment dollar, with the studies excluding the most exclusive institutions (eg, boarding schools).




Except it is not a monopoly. 



It is definitional.  Subsidies, credits, and so on, are defined as tax expenditures, whereas direct outlays are not.  You are now arguing against standard terminology.  (This does assume using the tax code to actually implement so-called vouchers; sending actual physical checks to parents would be one of the worst ideas in history.)




So, what mechanism, other than student or parent choice, would you use for enforcement?

Todd, if you are going to pretend that a stated preference is proffered as an argument you are not worth debating. If you toss in impugning motives then you are really not worth debating.

[Ken B]

parents are not capable  children due to the need to work to make ends meet and other are do not have neither the education nor the resources to do so.  You have a conservative and elitist point of view. Your perspective would promote inequality by differential learning to socioeconomic groups that do not have the privilege of money, time and/or education. I thought you stood for equality?

Peter, first I wonder where you got that idea about equality.
More to the point you aren't really getting Flory's point. He WANTS the state to pay, at least for the poor. What he does NOT want is for the state to control what is taught or by whom or how. Now I think Flory overstates, I think we do make demands on parents and should.
The elitist point of view I suggest is yours, feeling no qualms in saying that an elect group can and should control education for all children, even to the point of foreclosing choices even for parents who have shown no failure of care. Flory wants more spread out and decentralized authority.

[North Star]

But is it "government funded" the same as "government controlled"?

Yes. Education is very much controlled by the government, although universities have their say on what programs they have and how many are enrolled each year. 10-15 years ago the politicians shut down Uni of Oulu's dept. of building engineering, leaving my father unemployed for a while. Now the department has returned there.

I see.  As far as I know, the Finnish educational system is the best in the world. But you see, Finns are Finns, and Romanians are Romanians; let Finns rule for just one year the Romanian educational system, and Romanians do viceversa --- and then let's see the statistics... 

Hey, I think that kind of thing might actually be very beneficial in the long run..

Tell me about it... Here in Romania it is exactly, and mainly,  the Socialists who fall in this category! 

The Centre Party (agrarian centrist, somewhat liberal) has been in quite a lot of trouble lately - first their pm (the first woman pm in Finland) got some faxes from the President's office - secret documents about the Iraq war which she actually should have seen officially. Then, after she left, under the new pm's 2nd cabinet, all hell broke lose with the campaign funding scandal that concerned mostly the Centre Party. The party's various town councils have also been very good to the S-group retailing coop, which was in the early 2000s the second largest, and is now the largest one. It's funny how they always seem to get the best land where the Centre Party is in power..

Of course! But I make a strict difference between patriotism and nationalism. A patriot revels in the huge diversity of nations and languages and customs and it is exactly this diversity that makes his patria (ie, fatherland) different. A nationalist would like to see the whole world submit to his own peculiar kind of nationship, language and customs --- and therefore he is the exact opposite of a patriot.

This kind of patriotism is a very good thing indeed. Soccer fans vs. hooligans.

That's exactly why I am not a big fan of modern republics.

Democracy sure isn't perfected yet. Perhaps some kind of mix of Athenian & modern democracy..

Ain't it?

At least if they do the job well, which may or may not be the case.

[North Star]

Please provide proof that I said that. 

Well you didn't say quite that, but if I didn't misunderstand your post, I responded with a man of equal straw content.

[North Star]

Oh yes, my friend, it really looks like we are the only ones! Alas! 

(Disclosure: I was born in, and I have lived my first 18 years in, a. (nominally) socialist country (The Socialist Republic of Romania); besides that, for 25 years now I've been living in an endless "transition",  during which the former communists turned mainly into EU Socialists. Therefore I might be biased, but whenever I hear the words "common", "public", "national", "EU" etc I am very diffident, to say the least... )

Now, about education.

Just what has the state got to do with it?

Every child should have the right to a similar education. Of course in practice this can only happen on a national level (ideally). If the state doesn't care who is allowed to teach, and how they are allowed to teach, poor children's schooling would suffer pretty quickly. See how in the U.S. everyone wants their kid in a private school. Then see what they pay to the teachers, and think what kind of professionals that salary attracts.

"The state" is only an abstraction; "the state" is not a person, and it has no reason, will and feeling of its own. What we mean by "the state" (someones like me mean it with the utmost disdain and diffidence, someothers unlike me mean it with the utmost awe and confidence) is only a bunch of people born, raised and educated exactly in the same society and manner that I was, yet who pretend to know much better than me what I and my family need and, especially, what my kid needs to learn, and how, and when; and if my kid does not fulfil their arbitarily-established standards, he will not be awarded am arbitrarily-established diploma of their own making, and thus he will not qualify for performing tasks they arbitrarily assigned for people arbitrarily earning their arbitrarily-established diploma. 

I stand by what I said before: a really smart person does not need a state-certified paper in order to really be a smart person. I absolutely deny the state, any state, any right to interfere with, and have a say about, the education of any child, other than providing the parents, ionly if need be, with the means for educating their kid(s) as they see fit.

To make home schooling a significant thing would be catastrophic   a) because many parents would be poor teachers b) one of the main purposes of schooling is to socialize (nothing to do with politics ) the student, and that would be rather difficult with no contact to the outside world.

Flory wants more spread out and decentralized authority.

That... sounds... like... democracy  0:)


Whoever it was that claimed something to the effect that teaching (and we are not talking about teaching something to an educated adult) is just about the student & something they need to learn, is very wrong.

[North Star]

That is total BS. It can be brainwashing regardless if the state runs the school or not. Many private schools have succeeded well in that enterprise (brain washing). States can do well in that enterprise as well. However, I think it is a higher probability that many heads together can create a school that works rather than a small board in a private school. Besides, learning has all to do with the individual (and access to resources) and not the school.

Schools that teach creatonism come to mind.

[Moonfish]

Peter, first I wonder where you got that idea about equality.

Yeah, I wonder where you got yours...? 

More to the point you aren't really getting Flory's point.

He is not getting mine either...

He WANTS the state to pay, at least for the poor.

So placing rich people in private schools and the rest in what the state pays for? Educational segregation?

What he does NOT want is for the state to control what is taught or by whom or how.

Somebody has to decide what is taught in the schools. Are you stating that each family will define what should be taught in
"their" school. The local community? What makes you think that the local community is qualified to establish a curriculum?
Currently Wyoming is blocking the US national core standards in science and want to remove climate change as a topic from the curriculum. That is the insane result of local authority in terms of defining "their" flavor of science standards.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/19/us/science-standards-divide-a-state-built-on-coal-and-oil.html?_r=0

The elitist point of view I suggest is yours, feeling no qualms in saying that an elect group can and should control education for all children, even to the point of foreclosing choices even for parents who have shown no failure of care.

Private schools are not elitist? Are you claiming that a democratically elected government is elitist?

Flory wants more spread out and decentralized authority.

Yes, I understand that.  I do not think it is advantageous for education. It would promote anarchy as well as a lack of education. You would get localized flavors reaching from extreme creationism to extreme atheism, from complete scientific illiteracy to science geeks.  Come on, in the US about 40% of surveyed adults (NSF 2001) don't know how long it takes the Earth to orbit the sun and 50% think that humans coexisted with dinosaurs. About 45% of surveyed adults do not think that humans evolved from previously existing animals in complete disregard to established evidence proving the opposite. Of course, the two latter facts have religious implications with its own can of worms. Do you really subscribe to the idea that local communities will improve these statistics (see link below) in terms of establishing their own curriculum?

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind04/c7/fig07-06.htm

[Moonfish]

Whoever it was that claimed something to the effect that teaching (and we are not talking about teaching something to an educated adult) is just about the student & something they need to learn, is very wrong.

So you are making your point with a diagram originating from the enormous pile of educational research. Such research (even though increasing exponentially) has not made much difference in US education statistics.  Btw, if I recall correctly nobody has figured out why the Finnish scores were so high. I would not be surprised if the scores will be dropping in ten years and nobody can explain that either. The "perfect" system seems so elusive. Is the goal to achieve internationally high scores on the comparative tests?
The discussion always seems to focus on students, curriculum and educators (especially the latter two), but the topic of culture is rarely brought forward. Why is that?
I am just curious. Have you taught in a classroom, North Star? Actually, is anybody in this thread an educator or are we just rehashing political rhetoric?

[North Star]

So you are making your point with a diagram originating from the enormous pile of educational research.  Btw, if I recall correctly nobody has figured out why the Finnish scores were so high.

It's the food, silly

I would not be surprised if the scores will be dropping in ten years and nobody can explain that either. The "perfect" systems seems so elusive.

Well yeah, the scores have already dropped. And the students' skills, activity & motivation have decreased enormously during the past 20 years, lately particularly boys'. Gaming consoles, Internet, mobilephones and now smartphones, and probably other things, like the 90s' depression, and this new one, have had a huge effect, and education needs to change. Taking the Internet connection, smartphones & Play Stations away from the kids isn't a solution, so education will have to adjust to these changes and embrace technology, and at the same time we need to make them read long texts (books, articles, etc) because the ability to read more than a Twitter post has decreased dramatically in all demographies during this century.

The discussion always focus on students, curriculum and educators (especially the latter two), but the topic of culture is rarely brought forward. Why is that?
I am just curious. Have you taught in a classroom, North Star? Actually, is anybody in this thread an educator or are we just rehashing political rhetoric?

I have taught half of a chemistry course in jr. high school, and also followed sat in classes following all sorts of lessons in jr. & sr. high.
I agree with you, culture is a huge factor, and I don't think most educators have any idea of the magnitude of the changes the new technology has caused in our brains.

[Ken B]

Yeah, I wonder where you got yours...? 

He is not getting mine either...

So placing rich people in private schools and the rest in what the state pays for? Educational segregation?


Somebody has to decide what is taught in the schools. Are you stating that each family will define what should be taught in
"their" school. The local community? What makes you think that the local community is qualified to establish a curriculum?
Currently Wyoming is blocking the US national core standards in science and what to remove evolution from the curriculum. That is the insane result of local authority in terms of defining "their" flavor of science standards.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/19/us/science-standards-divide-a-state-built-on-coal-and-oil.html?_r=0

Private schools are not elitist? Are you claiming that a democratically elected government is elitist?

Yes, I understand that.  I do not think it is advantageous for education. It would promote anarchy as well as a lack of education. You would get localized flavors reaching from extreme creationism to extreme atheism, from complete scientific illiteracy to science geeks.  Come on, in the US about 40% of surveyed adults (NSF 2001) don't know how long it takes the Earth to orbit the sun and 50% think that humans coexisted with dinosaurs. About 45% of surveyed adults do not think that humans evolved from previously existing animals in complete disregard to established evidence proving the opposite. Of course, the two latter facts have religious implications with its own can of worms. Do you really subscribe to the idea that local communities will improve these statistics (see link below) in terms of establishing their own curriculum?

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind04/c7/fig07-06.htm

This is a farrago of nonsense Moonfish. For one thing, I said nothing about local communities setting curriculum. I said nothing about curriculum at all. Curriculum and choice are orthogonal questions.

The whole idea of vouchers etc is to make private schools available to the poor. The rich already have them.

Another is to inject accountability and responsiveness into the delivery of schooling. Right now you cannot fire bad teachers. With a competitive market you could. Firing bad teachers makes a huge improvement. Just one example of how curriculum and choice are orthogonal questions.

Flory's point is that he denies even professors of marine biology the right to dictate to far away parents, even plowman or plumbers, how they educate their kids. Right or wrong that is anti elitist. I think he states too strong a case as I said before, but that isn't relevant.

Further Flory said he values other things MORE than he does equality, so your misreading of him there was what I asked about. It's like saying, Ken B I thought Ravel was one of your favorites  ravel is fine, nice, not a priority.

Did I mention the difference between curriculum and choice? That they are orthogonal questions? Remind me to do that next time.