From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sun May 26 2002 - 22:23:20 MDT
Smigrodzki, Rafal wrote:
> Harvey Newstrom [mailto:mail@HarveyNewstrom.com] wrote:
> ### Yes, you are right about the beneficial effects of
> education, bad quality of public schooling notwithstanding.
> Yet, the parents who avoid fully paying for their children's
> education by accepting public assistance are in their great
> majority *capable* of paying unassisted. They just don't
Data please. The great majority of parents of college age kids
are in debt up to their eyeballs and have almost no savings
except maybe 401K.
> want to, and prefer obtaining funds from others by the use
> of coercion, which allows them to direct more of their
This is an unsupported assertion. It is not in the least true
in my experience. Check out the 40 million Americans who don't
even have medical insurance before you assume that the majority
are just being freeloaders.
> private funds for other ventures (a new car, nicer
> clothing). Basically, tax-funded education without
> means-testing is mostly the transfer of money from
> non-breeders to breeders for the breeders' discretionary
> spending, with a lot being siphoned off by the educational
> establishment.
>
This discussion of "breeders" is in extremely poor taste!
Children are our future at least until we can fully upload and
live indefinitely long lives. Not investing in your and your
species' future is not what I would call very rational. That
education establishment isn't exactly rolling in dough. Check
out what a teacher at the different levels actual makes on average.
> You can prevent the deleterious effects of undereducation
> without having much of a tax-based school system, e.g. by
> giving loans to children and parents in the form of vouchers
> for schooling, with a mandatory requirement that each child
> has to have a verifiable educational experience, with
> performance testing for all children in private, voucher and
> home schooling.
That I don't have a problem with except that blaming
undereducation on teachers or on tax support is grossly unfair.
- samantha
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