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[Tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>]

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.

>