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Old 07-01-2010, 06:36 PM
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Adam Adam is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Indianapolis, IN, USA
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Default Re: Fucking education! How does it work?

I think there ought to be an implied "by appropriate experts" somewhere in my first post. Obviously, the Texas Board of Education is in the thrall of ignorant reactionaries right now, but I don't think that counts as an argument against having educational standards any more than the fact that many homeschoolers are ignorant fundamentalists counts as an argument against homeschooling.

To me, it's mostly a basic issue of equality. For every Shea out there, there's an ignorant and incurious parent who, absent a mandated standard, would not see to it that there children were properly educated, or a wildeyed nutjob who goes to great lengths to see to it that their kids learn all about the importance of the gold standard and the insidious way the War of Northern Aggression forced the peace loving South into tax-slavery to their northern cousins. I think their childrens' interests are served by mandating some minimum standard of education that must be provided. If that means that someone else's kid, who is getting a good education anyway, also has to learn about subjects that they don't care about, or their parents don't think are necessary, well, I'm not going to shed too many tears. It's not as though anyone is restricting the freedom of parents to seek out education above and beyond the baseline for their children.

I also think part of where I'm not on the same page as some others is that I don't view education as being solely for the benefit of the individual being educated. I think there's social value in the levelling of the basic ciriculum across classes. I think there's social value to having a population that's consisently familiar with the same set of basic concepts and ideas. I think that, in certain subjects, especially civics, science, and economics, it's beneficial to everyone that each individual have a background in them. It's to your benefit that the people around you understand the basics of how our economy and our government work, and how the natural world works, even if they do not have any particular interest in those topics.

For the record, I was not required to take either Calculus or French Literature in school, although I had the option to take, and did take, and hated, the former. I was required to take certain basic math and language arts classes, certain basic science classes, basic health and fitness classes, basic classes in civics, history, and economics, and probaby some other things I'm forgetting about, as well as to take X number of electives of my own choice.

Finally, I am apparently a proponenet of the nanny state, because I think there are circumstances in which it is entirely appropriate for a judge or other government official to override the wishes of a parent for their children, or the children for themselves. I'm not going to insult everyone's intelligence by bringing up extreme examples.
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