The God of the Machine - Tranche 47

Posted by mshupe 1 year, 7 months ago to Government
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Chapter XXI, Excerpt 2 of 2
Our Japanized Educational System

There can be no greater stretch of arbitrary power than to seize children from their parents, teach them whatever the authorities decree they shall be taught, and expropriate from parents the funds to pay for the procedure. The intrinsic nature of the power was so little realized that this was called “free education,” the most absolute contradiction of facts by which language is capable. A tax supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.

The famous Scopes “monkey trial” in Tennessee was discussed with equal heat and ignorance on both sides. They were not concerned with freedom of thought, speech, or person . . . no conception of personal rights. In short, they did not question political control of education; they only wanted to use it for themselves. Education in civilization . . . is possible only to a frame of mind in which knowledge is pursued voluntarily. The useful knowledge the average person possesses is acquired out of school.

The desire to learn and to impart knowledge are so universal that they can be restrained only by legal penalties. The most vindictive resentment may be expected from the pedagogic profession . . . should they be dislodged from their dictatorial position. The Germans are notably literate, and their technology enabled them to build a war machine which must destroy them. A prominent geologist was struck by the fact that only Americans find oil. “Where oil really is, in the final analysis, is in our own heads.”

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  • Posted by mshupe 1 year, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I don't think it would never be 100% voluntary on the children's part, but a gradual release of independence based on their conceptual development and emotional maturity.
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  • Posted by mshupe 1 year, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Yes, for essential government services, education and training will hopefully be an effective combination of private contractors and internally managed departments.
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  • Posted by LibertyBelle 1 year, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I do not say that it would solve all ills in itself, but public education is a violation of the fundamental rights of man.
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  • Posted by LibertyBelle 1 year, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I don't think that State control over education is all right, as long as it's not Federal control. That kind of notion could have been used to justify plantation slavery. Also, someone's not having any children might be an interesting point to raise in a campaign in a school board election, but it would not be right to use the law to discriminate in that way against unmarried or childless people.
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  • Posted by LibertyBelle 1 year, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    However, even in a private educational system in a laissez-faire nation, the parents would sometimes decide that their children would have to go to school, and so this would not always be 100% voluntary on the children's part.
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  • Posted by LibertyBelle 1 year, 7 months ago
    I have long been an advocate for the abolition of public (government-financed/government operated )
    education. The only exceptions being technical training in the military, and possibly police academies.
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  • Posted by Lucky 1 year, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Around the time the original Objectivists left, close or pretend, there was a takeover (financial?) by a CIA controlled intermediary.
    Wikipedia then became what we now have, wide ranging, expert and reliable but on any topic wokists have opinions on- utterly biased.
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    Posted by $ blarman 1 year, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    What is the State? It's a group of people and the overarching rules which govern them. I'm not quite so naive as to be an anarchist, believing that no government at all works. It doesn't. (And for a detailed rationale analysis of why, I'd invite you to read my book.) The problem is that government contains few inherent checks on the greedy/immoral.

    "Maybe as a parent if you cant find ways to educate your children so they can take care of themselves, maybe you shouldn't have them in the first place."

    When you have some children, you can talk to those of us who do. Your ignorance and accusation are unworthy anyone - let alone a member of the Gulch. I'm currently home-schooling five children and it's no picnic.

    "Education doesn't have to be in rocket science."

    Have you ever heard of the concept of specialization? I'd suggest you look into it...

    "Now we even have chatGTP for quick answers to all sorts of questions I might have."

    Yes, so we can grow the population of useful idiots. Wonderful. I can tell you all kinds of problems with ChatGPT and other AI - indoctrination being one of the most egregious.
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  • Posted by term2 1 year, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    So partial statism is OK? I think statism is either 100% bad or 100% good. Stealing money from some to give to others is just NOT a good thing, IMHO. Once we start down that road, the current mess is what we get.

    Maybe as a parent if you cant find ways to educate your children so they can take care of themselves, maybe you shouldn't have them in the first place. Education doesn't have to be in rocket science. Knowing how to trade services with other people is a skill that doesn't take a 4 year college degree. It takes street smarts mostly that can be demonstrated by how a parent acts.
    I dint learn much at all in grade school really. I heated going to the schools as it seemed like a waste of time. I learned more being t home and watching what other people did in the neighborhood. In school I had to do useless homework and listen to boring "teachers" in order to progress through the grades and be done with having to go to school.
    Now, we have the internet and youtube. I would be glued to it if I were a kid today and learning all sorts of things. I am substantially glued to it as an adult actually. Now we even have chatGTP for quick answers to all sorts of questions I might have.
    Lids are intensely interested in learning what they want to know and when they want to know it. We have distributed learning available 24 hours a day for essentially nothing. No need for enforced schooling anmore.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 1 year, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Some claim - and there is significant support if one looks at pre-Civil War history on the matter - that everyone benefits by having a populace with a base knowledge level. Thus the justification for general taxation to support it. Education certainly is key to finding jobs to keep one from relying on a criminal nature to survive. That is not to say that I accept the current levels of taxation and the profligate waste inherent in the existing system. Only to say that a purely private system will certainly benefit the elites but it has great potential to create a classed system just as in the days of feudalism. I am not quite so fast to jump on the bandwagon of all-private schooling as if that solves all ills.
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  • Posted by term2 1 year, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Ots complicated, but I think the free market has the best chance to make things work. That means no taxation supported mandatory education, totally privately owned schools, and the decisions as to which school a child goes to are made by the parents. I have no children so I don't have a dog in this hunt, but of course I pay taxes to support the current very broken system, which I don't like. Stop taxing me, and I wont really have any interest in this subject.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 1 year, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I would say that the topic merits a healthy debate on the matter. You have not only the funding and how that works, but the policies (like attendance, etc.) and the operations to deal with. And all of that is irrelevant compared to the biggest issue as identified by researchers: parental involvement. To me, that's the biggest thing that a successful system includes bar none.
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  • Posted by term2 1 year, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    If taxes are required to fund the schools, government has total control over them in the end. Cant have public taxation and required attendance and have a good school system. Just not going to happen.
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  • Posted by mshupe 1 year, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Sure, and ideology is very good when the ideology is founded on reality and reason. In other words, the primacy of existence, the tools of logic, the ethics of individualism, and the socioeconomic structure of capitalism. Ideology is not good or bad, in fact it is essential, but must be in the context of human life on planet Earth.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 1 year, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Excellent course, I agree. Hillsdale puts out quality content and most is free to the public.

    Their K-12 curriculum is pretty awesome as well. They offer it for a reduced rate to home schoolers like me.
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  • Posted by $ jdg 1 year, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Wikipedia was founded by a group, and has been thoroughly taken over by the woke movement. Any topic on Wikipedia that touches on politics is now not only quite biased, but is watched and protected against corrective editing. Wikipedia cannot be recommended as a worthwhile source of information on any topic that wokies might want to distort.

    There have been several attempts to "fix" Wikipedia by forking the project since it is open-source, but the ones I've seen are not current. There's too much biased material there for the fixers to keep up with.
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  • Posted by $ jdg 1 year, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Education, even when it was directed by parents, necessarily includes some ideology; but then, the postulates of math and science are ideology, too. They have been tested and make sense.

    I recommend this course, which delves into the distortions that the progressive movement has introduced into education in the US.
    https://online.hillsdale.edu/courses/...
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  • Posted by mshupe 1 year, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Yes, eliminate the department of education. Eliminate all federal jurisdiction over schools. Decentralized government is best for anything not having to do with rights. However, compulsory education at any level is government force, and then taxation of the general public for the benefit of the parents of children is a violation of property rights. However, that would be a much better problem to have.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 1 year, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I'm not against public schools per se. I am against federal control of any kind over public schools. I am also in favor of requiring that School Board members actually have kids enrolled at the schools to put some skin in the game.
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  • Posted by term2 1 year, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It refuses to comment on politics, and at least on the free version I have, it keeps saying its knowledge base is limited to before nov 2021. I use it for practical things, not ideological stuff
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  • Posted by term2 1 year, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I agree about the schools not encouraging students to learn. They are too concerned with "teaching", meaning cramming what they want to teach down the throats of unwilling students. I would vote for ceasing all public education, returning all the property tax money to the parents, and letting THEM find a school that they think will help their children.
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  • Posted by mshupe 1 year, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Hmmm, thanks for the background. Had not heard that, but there's a lot of pretenders out there.
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