[MD] Imaginings

[John Carl]

On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 7:25 AM, Arlo Bensinger <ajb102 at psu.edu> wrote:

> [John]
> Arlos sez no vouchers.  John agrees with Platt.  John sends his kids to
> private schools.  Arlo doesn't.  Simple self interest must be in play.
>
> [Arlo]
> I wanted to get back to this, mainly because it ignores an important fact.
> The Finnish and Japanese PUBLIC schools rank among the best schools in the
> world, besting many "private" schools along the way.
>
> If "public" is the problem, how do you account for this? The answer?
> "Public" is not the problem. The problem is in valuation. The success of
> these public schools is rooted in community investiture and involvement, it
> is rooted in the simple fact that these communities VALUE education enough
> to make it an integrated and real part of community life.
>
>
Japan and Finland are very diverse societys, right?  With lots of different
cultural groups?


Ha.  I actually mean, NOT!!!


And that makes all the difference.  You can probably come up with a pretty
good education system if you're designing one for everybody and everybody is
all the same.  Not gonna be real difficult to demonstrate "real community
life" in such a society either.  It's all built in.


The reason for vouchers in America is not to improve the populace as a
whole, but to allow the expression and training in the diversity we have.
 Maybe on average the whole would degrade at first under the voucher plan,
but if a minority comes out much better, it will be observed and emulated
over time.  It's that dynamic element that is powerful to save, and it's the
projection of a mono-culture upon a diverse but helpless populace that is
immoral.  And metaphysically mediocre.  (which I guess is actually the same
thing)




> I am ALL for educational reform. ALL for correcting the problems where they
> come up. But if we ever hope to really reform education, we must be aware of
> the root issues. "Public" is NOT the problem.
>
>
Right.  Public is not the problem.  Dynamic choice is.




> By the way, Arlo sends his kid to public schools. Arlo is intimately
> involved with the school and her educational process. Arlo's kid is
> excelling wildly.
>
>
John's kids are attending private school, and growing more skeptical all the
time, challenging their teachers and the dogmatic parrots.  They are smart,
but they can't be persuaded to care enough to excel at jumping through
authoritarian hoops.  Except for my youngest girl who still wants to go to
Oxford.  Sigh.  I keep hoping she'll be a woodcutter, but she seems intent
on getting straight A's and striving.  You can't win 'em all. The rest are
probably headed for economic failure and social obscurity.

your kids have your values.  Mine have mine.  Everybody's happy.






>
>
> Moq_Discuss mailing list
> Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
> http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
> Archives:
> http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
> http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
>