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120 comments on Paying for Post-Peak Oil Mitigation

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Spaceman on January 16, 2008 - 11:07pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Bravo.
Those who truly care about the life they bring into this world certainly don't trust their education to the public sector.

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tommyvee on January 16, 2008 - 11:53pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I'm sure that more than 99% of the posters here have received education from the public sector. Bizarre to read the knee-jerk anti-government sentiments! Personally, I was educated in public sector up to my B.S. and M.S. in engineering, and I am certain that education was a good investment for me, and I believe it was a good investment for society.
My kids have had great educational experiences in public schools, benefiting from the many concerned and involved parents.
Where is the example of a functioning civilization without strong public education?
My experience has been that home-schooled kids are frequently socially mal-adjusted, as they do not benefit from a diversity of opinions, but instead are force-fed their parent's (often un-balanced) beliefs.

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Spaceman on January 17, 2008 - 1:38am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Where is the example of a functioning civilization without strong public education?

Uhhh. Detroit.
Without the private schools here kids would get no education.
The democratic process in the form of elected officials grinds away at the system.
Not a week goes by without scandal breaking concerning some sort of criminal activity by the school board, teachers union or other group.
Maybe you're from an area of the country that has not yet experienced the entropic backlash from the vibrancy a city like Detroit once had.
Wherever you have gained your "B.S." from, know that your community will soon be joining ours, it's just a matter of time.

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Arclite on January 17, 2008 - 5:05am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

RE: Detroit, TommyVee said "functioning civilization."

Okay, just kidding, but there are always going to be exceptions that prove the rule. I'm not sure many would hold Detroit up as a shining example, or even an average example of gov't working for the benefit of the people.

Food for thought, from the NYTimes in 2006:

A large-scale government-financed study has concluded that when it comes to math, students in regular public schools do as well as or significantly better than comparable students in private schools.

Full article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/28/education/28tests.html

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WNC Observer on January 17, 2008 - 9:54am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I'm sure that more than 99% of the posters here have received education from the public sector. Bizarre to read the knee-jerk anti-government sentiments! Personally, I was educated in public sector up to my B.S. and M.S. in engineering, and I am certain that education was a good investment for me, and I believe it was a good investment for society.
My kids have had great educational experiences in public schools, benefiting from the many concerned and involved parents.

I went through public schools as well. As far as K-8 goes, I was more of an inmate than a student. I did learn, but that was a combo of parents supplementing with what was in effect home schooling (though it didn't have that name at the time), plus my own curiosity satisfied through frequent visits to the public library just a couple of blocks away; the public schools get no credit for that, they actually got in the way of my learning rather than being a help.

My experience has been that home-schooled kids are frequently socially mal-adjusted, as they do not benefit from a diversity of opinions, but instead are force-fed their parent's (often un-balanced) beliefs.

And my experience has been that public-schooled kids are frequently socially conformist, totally controlled by the opinions of their peers, and are force-fed their teacher's (often un-real) beliefs.

I don't think the answer is to scrap public schools altogether, but to reverse course and go back to the last point where they did work well. That last point was when public schools were much smaller and neighborhood based.

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Mrs. Ydnurg on January 17, 2008 - 12:04pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Judging from, for the most part , narrow responses above, the US educational system has been underfunded. Of course when a nation originates with it's aim as being that of the pursit for personal happiness, what can one expect. Citizenship becomes one where it produces an "every man for himself and devil take the hindmost" attitude. One might consider the USA as an fine example of the 'Tragedy of the Commons':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

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WNC Observer on January 17, 2008 - 4:07pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Judging from, for the most part , narrow responses above, the US educational system has been underfunded

You might think so, but when international comparisons are made on a per pupil expenditure basis, the US ranks very high. The problem is that we just don't get good results for the money.

The reason why is complex and does not lend itself to a simple answer. It is mostly a number of small things that tend to add up.

For example, sports is a bigger deal in US school systems than overseas, and a major drain on school system budgets. School childen in other countries may be equally engaged in sports like soccer(association football), but the activities tend more often to be organized outside of the umbrella of the school system.

Another example: In many other countries, there is a willingness to "track" children when they are still quite young, on the basis of academic performance and especially test scores. Those in the lower tier are shunted early into a vocational track, which sometimes ends up as an apprenticeship program at an employer (and thus possibly not as a school system expenditure at all). In contrast, in the US we are reluctant to track children, and want to keep them all together in the same classes and learning the same things for as long as possible. This is based more on ideology than on any real pedagogical rationale. We try to provide a lot of vocational training within a lot of general purpose secondary schools, rather than concentrating it in separate specialized facilities to which vocational students are sent. This is a very expensive and mostly ineffective way to do vocational training, but it keeps all the students together in the same school. Thus, our students go all the way through twelve grades and are still not prepared for skilled employment; they usually have to go on for an additional year or two at a community college in order to get sufficient training to be employed for anything more skilled than flipping hamburgers.

These are just two examples. By themselves, they are no way close to being a full explanation. But they are only examples, there are many other things like this, and taken together, they do add up.

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120 comments on Paying for Post-Peak Oil Mitigation

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