U.S. education under attack?

[maarsen]

Since the time of Socrates education has been under attack. Education is the only way for any society to improve and create better conditions for all. Money put into education in not  wasted and there is no optimal amount after which there are diminishing returns. People do not get stupider by attending school longer. 

[Larry of the Lawn]

42 minutes ago, maarsen said:

Since the time of Socrates education has been under attack. Education is the only way for any society to improve and create better conditions for all. Money put into education in not  wasted and there is no optimal amount after which there are diminishing returns. People do not get stupider by attending school longer. 

Yeah but the Devos camp likely imagines education as a gas tank, replete with an empty/full guage that roughly mirrors the public 'burden' therein.  

[DunderMifflin]

Also school has evolved and changed a lot since the time of Socrates. Any and all changes don't neccesarily mean an attack in the name of "I hate education for poor people! I'm taking it down!"  If the education seems to be underperforming or not as good as it should be then perhaps some sort of effort to change is in order, or "an attack" if you must. Not claiming these cuts are all solely in the name of improvement. education is important but not above changes or criticisms/attacks.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

5 hours ago, DunderMifflin said:

Also school has evolved and changed a lot since the time of Socrates. Any and all changes don't neccesarily mean an attack in the name of "I hate education for poor people! I'm taking it down!"  If the education seems to be underperforming or not as good as it should be then perhaps some sort of effort to change is in order, or "an attack" if you must. Not claiming these cuts are all solely in the name of improvement. education is important but not above changes or criticisms/attacks.

Look, you can't say these changes aren't about class/race. Devos is on record saying states should decide when it comes to issues of discrimination in this new world of federal vouchers she envisions. Education, as I linked in my first post, is NOT under performing for most people, it is only under performing for the poor. And Devos and Trump seem to want to further isolate that class. Look at everything she's said this week that is not in support of ANYONE who isn't white. Just Google it. 

[DunderMifflin]

16 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

Look, you can't say these changes aren't about class/race. Devos is on record saying states should decide when it comes to issues of discrimination in this new world of federal vouchers she envisions. Education, as I linked in my first post, is NOT under performing for most people, it is only under performing for the poor. And Devos and Trump seem to want to further isolate that class. Look at everything she's said this week that is not in support of ANYONE who isn't white. Just Google it. 

So keep it the exactly the same, change nothing? Or else schools are a Klan meeting? 

The vague accusations of racism are wearing thin to the point of crying wolf. Just calling things racist doesn't cut it anymore.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

2 minutes ago, DunderMifflin said:

So keep it the exactly the same, change nothing? Or else schools are a Klan meeting? 

The vague accusations of racism are wearing thin to the point of crying wolf. Just calling things racist doesn't cut it anymore.

And when people say the system is disadvantaged for the poor or low-income, here comes the "you're just calling us Klan/Hitler folk." 

[DunderMifflin]

1 minute ago, Simon Steele said:

And when people say the system is disadvantaged for the poor or low-income, here comes the "you're just calling us Klan/Hitler folk." 

Ok I misunderstood, you clearly were not trying to call racism by saying "not in support of ANYONE who isnt white". 

It's weird that I would even think that.

So yeh, I'm back to the education system not being perfect, and possibly not even working at all in some areas. Therefore it shouldn't have immunity to changes.

[Toth]

44 minutes ago, DunderMifflin said:

So yeh, I'm back to the education system not being perfect, and possibly not even working at all in some areas. Therefore it shouldn't have immunity to changes.

But you do have noticed that these are 'cuts', not 'changes', have you? I'd understand this kind of reasoning if this money would get redistributed into, for example, hiring more teachers or fund better equipment in schools that don't get the funding from the state side. Instead they just choke these after-school programs to save money in the GOP's grand scheme of 'make the rich more rich by screwing over the poor' which really could be the title of everything they propose.

[Jo498]

There are a myriad of issues with education. For me from the outside the US system seems messed up royally. So it is probably true that more money would not necessarily help because the problems run far deeper. (It is probably nevertheless true that less money will only make things worse.) But some problems are general. It is generally misguided to use evaluation criteria that might make sense for a car factory for education. Because obviously? (for me, maybe not for professionally deformed technocrats) there are no similar gains in "productivity" (if such a term could even be applied to education) to be made by technological advances. So education (and the same holds for health care to a large extent) will become more expensive in relation to other sectors of the economy because the people employed there cannot be paid far less than the ones working in the sectors profitting from technological productivity gains but they will "produce" as many graduates per teacher as before, not twice as many cars per worker like the car factory.

Often it seems that the opposite is true: technological advances and the growing tensions of capitalist society lead to huge economic disparities, unstable families, to more unruly and more easily distracted students etc. So education (especially for underage kids) becomes much harder, needs more resources than say 50 years ago. Still, it seems that some sectors, including education have become disproportionally more costly, even when one factors in overall inflation, increase in wages etc. (I do not remember where I read this (probably Slate Star Codex)). I don't claim to know why but I have two hypotheses. One is a disproportional blowing up of administration, evaluation etc. in education The other are the hidden costs of postmodern crumbling capitalism already mentioned (roughly: extremely unruly, unfocussed or even traumatized kids that are very hard to educate at all). As someone with a (for today's mainstream) socialist bend, I think it would be perfectly fair to tax the ones profitting from the current situation to remedy at least some of the consequences of that system for the ones suffering from them. That does not have to be taken as a moral fault of the profiteers (because while sometimes true this often not obvious) but nevertheless they profit from something they did not make by themselves and others suffer from something they did not make for themselves and it seems only just to ameliorate such a situation.

[DunderMifflin]

5 hours ago, Toth said:

But you do have noticed that these are 'cuts', not 'changes', have you? I'd understand this kind of reasoning if this money would get redistributed into, for example, hiring more teachers or fund better equipment in schools that don't get the funding from the state side. Instead they just choke these after-school programs to save money in the GOP's grand scheme of 'make the rich more rich by screwing over the poor' which really could be the title of everything they propose.

A cut is a change. According to the logic here. The poor are already getting screwed over by the education system. That's going on before these cuts. These cuts are not the thing that's going to all of a sudden screw the poor over when it comes to education. From what I gather most of these cuts are aimed at not spending as much on things that aren't working.

 

[Rippounet]

1 hour ago, DunderMifflin said:

The poor are already getting screwed over by the education system. That's going on before these cuts. These cuts are not the thing that's going to all of a sudden screw the poor over when it comes to education.

Just because things are bad doesn't mean they can't get worse.

3 hours ago, Jo498 said:

Because obviously? (for me, maybe not for professionally deformed technocrats) there are no similar gains in "productivity" (if such a term could even be applied to education) to be made by technological advances.

A bit off-topic, but that is not completely true. I've been working on the transformation of pedagogy through the use of IT for the last three years, and I believe it is possible to get something close to a "productivity gain" in education.

[DunderMifflin]

15 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Just because things are bad doesn't mean they can't get worse.

 

Doesn't mean that every change is aimed at or results in things becoming worse. Which is why a thorough examination of what is being cut is in order before proclaiming anyone hates poor people getting educated and are not happy enough now, they desire to make poor people even less educated.

The problem with that is *surprise* it's just another political issue that's argued through the lens of whichever political party the author/presenter leans towards.  In my research I've found no less than 5 completely different statistical claims about just ONE of the programs being cut. And *surprise* again, all the sources that are politically left leaning report stats of wild success and that the cuts are maniacal racism. All the right leaning sources have there own statistics about what failures these programs are. Everyone can't be right there.

[Week]

31 minutes ago, DunderMifflin said:

Doesn't mean that every change is aimed at or results in things becoming worse. Which is why a thorough examination of what is being cut is in order before proclaiming anyone hates poor people getting educated and are not happy enough now, they desire to make poor people even less educated.

Wouldn't that type of analysis be appropriate for a budget with plans to cut all these programs. However, no such justification or analysis exists -- which is why Simon and others are extremely concerned.

You seem to have alleviated any concern because in a perfect world they would be examined and justified -- that ain't happening here from the White House or GOP in Congress. Any other sources that you'd like to share with the class?

[DunderMifflin]

16 minutes ago, Week said:

Wouldn't that type of analysis be appropriate for a budget with plans to cut all these programs. However, no such justification or analysis exists -- which is why Simon and others are extremely concerned.

You seem to have alleviated any concern because in a perfect world they would be examined and justified -- that ain't happening here from the White House or GOP in Congress. Any other sources that you'd like to share with the class?

Nah, I'm just not on board with immediately ascribing cartoonish villiany. "The poor are already poor and screwed in pretty much any area of life that we can come up with, that's cool and all but not good enough! we have to find ways to make sure that they are even less educated muahahaha. If there's one thing in the world I hate more than a poor person, it's a poor person that goes to school"

So class, I would encourage examination to the best of our ability of the details and logistics of what's going on here rather than the much easier option of labeling it an obvious case of irrational attacks on poor people.

[Rippounet]

8 minutes ago, DunderMifflin said:

Nah, I'm just not on board with ascribing cartoonish villiany.

If you only make cuts (without any form of compensation) in education (or other sectors vital for the poorest members of society, like healthcare and welfare) you are a cartoonish villain.

It's a well-known fact that America hates its poor, even more so than most developed nations. Its ideology, largely based on a twisted form of individual responsibility, puts the blame for poverty on the poor themselves while ignoring the structural socio-economic factors behind poverty. Inequality in America is worse now than it was at the beginning of the 20th century. Basically the rich have been screwing over the poor real bad for the last 30 years.

Cartoonish villainy is the world you live in. Though I have to say, I find it endearing that you can't find it in you to understand the cruelty of your own leaders.

[DunderMifflin]

19 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

If you only make cuts (without any form of compensation) in education (or other sectors vital for the poorest members of society, like healthcare and welfare) you are a cartoonish villain.

If what's being cut isn't vital then this point is rendered moot.

Quote

It's a well-known fact that America hates its poor, even more so than most developed nations. Its ideology, largely based on a twisted form of individual responsibility, puts the blame for poverty on the poor themselves while ignoring the structural socio-economic factors behind poverty. Inequality in America is worse now than it was at the beginning of the 20th century. Basically the rich have been screwing over the poor real bad for the last 30 years.

Cartoonish villainy is the world you live in. Though I have to say, I find it endearing that you can't find it in you to understand the cruelty of your own leaders.

When you say "America hates the poor". Who or what exactly are you referring to? Literally everyone? Or just those that live above the poverty line? Or just people that are active in professional politics? 

These programs were originally passed by politicians to help the poor. Or did they also hate the poor?

Just making a decision in your head that "Yeh I want all the poor people to be better educated is easy, doesn't get any easier than that", but once you've made that decision you've done like less than one percent of the work. It's not enough to just hand that thought off to politicians who may or may not make very poor or flawed choices on behalf of the very righteous thought of "Yeh, I want poor people to he better educated"

[Week]

18 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

If you only make cuts (without any form of compensation) in education (or other sectors vital for the poorest members of society, like healthcare and welfare) you are a cartoonish villain.

It's a well-known fact that America hates its poor, even more so than most developed nations. Its ideology, largely based on a twisted form of individual responsibility, puts the blame for poverty on the poor themselves while ignoring the structural socio-economic factors behind poverty. Inequality in America is worse now than it was at the beginning of the 20th century. Basically the rich have been screwing over the poor real bad for the last 30 years.

Cartoonish villainy is the world you live in. Though I have to say, I find it endearing that you can't find it in you to understand the cruelty of your own leaders.

 

1 minute ago, DunderMifflin said:

When you say "America hates the poor". Who or what exactly are you referring to? Literally everyone? Or just those that live above the poverty line? Or just people that are active in professional politics? 

There is no evidence of any cruelty toward the poor -- other than the WH Budget, the AHCA, the DeVos approach to education, etc. etc. etc...

[Rippounet]

48 minutes ago, DunderMifflin said:

Just making a decision in your head that "Yeh I want all the poor people to be better educated is easy, doesn't get any easier than that", but once you've made that decision you've done like less than one percent of the work.

Which is obviously more than the amount of work done by the current government.

[DunderMifflin]

1 hour ago, Week said:

 

There is no evidence of any cruelty toward the poor -- other than the WH Budget, the AHCA, the DeVos approach to education, etc. etc. etc...

This is just saying stuff. You may have researched the ins and outs of what's going on in detail but you are not including any sort of detail or real logic here of how and exactly why they are engaging some sort of coordinated effort aimed at nothing more than being more cruel to poor people. What's the motive here? Just glee? Some sort of sexual thrill in witnessing poor people being tortured? 

 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

4 minutes ago, DunderMifflin said:

This is just saying stuff. You may have researched the ins and outs of what's going on in detail but you are not including any sort of detail or real logic here of how and exactly why they are engaging some sort of coordinated effort aimed at nothing more than being more cruel to poor people. What's the motive here? Just glee? Some sort of sexual thrill in witnessing poor people being tortured? 

Have you looked at Trumpy's proposed budget? Chock full of welfare cuts and the like. 

The motive is the same as it's always been. Small government. Government handouts lead to fraudulent Welfare Queens and the like.We can spend trillions on defense, but God forbid we should feed or house a poor.