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  • From: Tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Education
  • Date: Mon, 06 Sep 2004 13:57:31 -0700

clanSkeen wrote:

He was
certainly aided by the fact that teachers were relatively much higher
paid than today---attracting the best as in any other business other
than education.


So you've said before: Education is like any other business, if you spend
more money you get a better "product." This leaves is with an enigma: the
schools systems that do the best academically aren't the ones where the most
money is spent. Speculation aside, it has been demonstrated many times
over that more spending and higher teacher salaraies do NOT mean better
education. It makes no difference how ligocal it sounds or how much the
principle *ought* to apply, it *doesn't*.


tvoivozhd---as I have said many times before and I repeat---in any business, including the education business relatiely high wages give an employer a better pool to choose from.---and better home conditions plzce better raw materials in school---if you have stupid employers (school administrators) and lousy raw materials poor ghetto children (or children of indifferent parents, rich or poor), the end result will be bad.

You keep reiterating the low wage is good enough mantra---it is entirely unconvincing. Low wages accompanied by poor employers and poor student raw material creates an insoluble problem---any one of these factors is sufficient for educational failure. Of course improving one of the essential factors is insufficient.

(snip)


If we assume that your principle MUST hold true, then what schools produce
is not education. (If that were true, the schools with the highest teacher
salaries would have the best education). Rather they must be doing
something else, like indoctrination.


tvoivozhd---James you are being ridiculous---I know you too be more intelligent than that, why do you persist in occupying a blind spot? Schooling anywhere and any place has always involved a combination of indoctrination and treaching students to think. Indoctrination is a great timesaver when it comes to multiplication tables, known chemical equations, writing and spelling, the learning of any foreign language. By itself it of course is insufficient, but it occurs by itself in training Imams and preachers, not in public school.

As we both know and are certainly not reluctant to publicize, indoctrinated ideology is a terrible abuse of the human mind and spirit, and we share the opinion that the ability to think is paramount. All of my teachers did their damndest to make me think, with one exception---a world-renowned economics teacher who stole his knowledge (or lack of it) from the grad students who did all his research and to whom he gave no credit in his books that he read in front of a three hundred member class. After a couple of sessions I skipped class and relied entirely on my own reading to ace it (the grad assistants did all the work of grading too). Now the Economics Professor certainly gives credence to your assertion that high salaries are bad, low salaries are good, but that was one professor out of a hundred, poor math to use him as proof.


*washingtonpost.com* <http://www.washingtonpost.com/>
*Good Homes, Good Students*
By William Raspberry


What the author fails to address, and all of his ilk fail to address, is
that if schools and the government weren't usurping an inordinate proportion
of our children's time and their parent's money (and therefore, their time),
then perhaps they could be more involved with their children as he
advocates.


James


You keep ignoring that public schools used to work well, at least in the Germanic and Scandinavian heritage North, where a demonstrably high standard of education was demanded by parents and the business community---and "usurping" childrren's time and their parents' money is simply a pejorative to describe what has to happen in a public school system---or for that matter in a private school or home schooling. as well.









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