Antievolution Legislation

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Not unless somebody provides all children with access to the internet (computers, modems, etc), which is expensive - and even then - there is a heck of a lot of garbage on the internet to screen out, plus how are you planning to get employers to accept a self-evaluation? If it isn't a self-evaluation, then it doesn't matter whether they get their education on the internet, the curriculae and levels of achievement will still go through an "official" system. Aside from which, internet will never replace (though it can enhance) elementary school, especially at the primary level - the human interaction teacher-to-student and student-to-student cannot be replaced by a machine and is very necessary at those ages. Special needs students (physical, mental, and emotional problems) also need human interaction at least in the beginning - though interactive computer/internet learning will probably be a great boon with autistics - and the physically handicapped will need specialized (and even more expensive) equipment.

[Dardedar]

Luckily, I suspect that the internet will make centralized schools obsolete, just as email is making monopoly State postal services obsolete.

DAR
What monopoly State postal services? You can send a letter by UPS or FEDX if you like. The USPS receives no tax money, to quote their site:

"We receive no tax dollars from the federal government for our operations. We are a self-supporting agency, using the revenue from the sales of postage and postage-related products to pay expenses."

http://www.usps.com/communications/orga ... lfacts.htm

I would have expected the rise of email to have radically slashed snail mail but it really hasn't changed it all that much. Consider:

"Strasser said that, "For the first time in history, Standard Mail volumes will exceed First-Class Mail volumes. Total mail volume should grow by 1.4 billion pieces, a 0.7 percent growth rate."

Volume forecasts point to a 2.1 billion piece decline in First-Class Mail volume in the coming fiscal year, which starts October 1, while Standard Mail is expected to grow by nearly 3.8 billion pieces."

--September '04 link

D.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Unfortunately, that "standard" mail means junk mail - but take heart - the internet spam is gaining, so maybe it will evenutally make snail junk mail obsolete. Meanwhile, the privatization of the Postal Service is why we have less service for more money (2 deliveries a day in large cities for five cents an ounce first class the year I started school).

[Hogeye]

How are you planning to get employers to accept a self-evaluation? If it isn't a self-evaluation, then it doesn't matter whether they get their education on the internet, the curriculae and levels of achievement will still go through an "official" system.

I don't understand your point here. I expect private testing and private accreditation to replace their monopoly government counterparts. You seem to assume government solipotence in these services.

The human interaction teacher-to-student and student-to-student cannot be replaced by a machine and is very necessary at those ages.

Right. But that does not imply that there must be monopoly or govt privilege to accomplish that, nor that a centralized location is needed. E.g. Northwest Arkansas homeschoolers have bands, clubs, yearbooks, teams, etc.


Darrel, there is still a law against competing with the USPS for standard "first-class" letters. (... dating from when the USPS couldn't compete with the Pony Express, so had to outlaw their competition.) But not "express mail."

Postmaster General William Henderson conceded that the USPS is likely to lose its monopoly status within the next decade. “Deregulation of the postal monopoly is likely to occur, and the competitive environment will become more dynamic.” - USPS, Competitors Square Off at Conference

Here's a pretty good history of the USPS.

[Tamara]

There is no reason to have ID taught in science class, in a religion class sure, but why teach something that has no scientific merit in a science class? We have to draw the line at what makes sense. It makes as much sense to teach esp, feng shui, or numerology as science. Or why not take the kids on a field trip to find unicorns or angels? The reason we do not is because these things cannot be proven through science, hence have no scientific merit.

[Tamara]

So there I was reading page one, not realizing that there were four pages to this post and that the subject had moved on....Let me tell you though my post made some good sense way back then, as opposed to now

[Betsy]

this doesn't add anything to the discussion, but i just wanted to point out that this forum is getting 65-plus comments to a topic, whereas NWAPolitics.com is now getting zero-to-about-ten(tops) comments per topic with no one there to refute their nonsense.

HA!

[Dardedar]

Ash has really killed NWA politics.

I noticed we have had 803 posts in just the first month. Cool.

[Savonarola]

I noticed we have had 803 posts in just the first month. Cool.

In all fairness, we've been going for almost two months now. Of course, a couple of weeks or so were just three of us... Either way, though: FFForums > NWAP.

[Doug]

I noticed we have had 803 posts in just the first month. Cool.

In all fairness, we've been going for almost two months now. Of course, a couple of weeks or so were just three of us... Either way, though: FFForums > NWAP.

DOUG
It looks like the NWAP forum is dead. But maybe it will come back in three days...

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Not dead, but the Ash posts are draining it of most of its energy. You now have to search for anything worth responding to.

[Hogeye]

I decided to vote after all. Since government ("public"[sic]) schools should be disbanded, and education conducted in a voluntary manner without aggression, I voted that None of these ideas should be taught in government schools. They should be taught in voluntarily organized ways.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Since only about 50% of science teachers are teaching science now, while it's the law, "voluntarily organized" schools would probably make that about 10%. And ruling monied educated elitism scores again!

[Hogeye]

Predicting a future market is notoriously difficult, Barbara. Your speculation about demand for science education in a free society is quite pessiminstic IMO. I would predict better overall science education for most people without the massive waste endemic to government.

Note that I say "education," not "schools." Whether schools will be a competitive form of education is debatable - but certainly it is not the only form. I predict that schooless education combining the internet with local part-time tutors will win out.

[Savonarola]

Oklahoma's HB2107 "Academic Freedom Act" 'Dies' in committee

Rep. Sally Kern’s ‘Academic Freedom Act’ (HB 2107) was assigned by the Senate leadership to the Education Sub-Committee of the Senate Appropriations Committee apparently so that it would not be heard. Today (6 April 2006) was the deadline for bills from one house to be reported out of committee by the opposite house. HB 2107, along with several other bills, were not considered by the Sub- Committee. Indeed, as far as we can determine that group did not even meet. Thus, HB 2107 is dead – at least for now. It could come up again, however, as an attempted amendment on another bill from the floor. Such amendments are usually frowned upon by most legislators, since they feel that bills have already been through the legislative process and it is inappropriate to reconsider them as an amendment.

Linky

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Hogeye keeps ignoring the history of public schooling. What we have now is no way, shape, or form perfect. It is still in transition, and as long as human beings change, the educating of them will change. However, what we have now is in response to what we used to have - private, charitable, and religious hit-and-miss education of targeted groups. White males of monied families got good educations all the way back to colonial days. Change any of those 3 components (white, male, money) and the likelihood of decent education declined sharply. Female education (in the North) was finally pushed through in the 1840s on monetary grounds (cheaper to have 2 educated female primary school teachers than 1 educated male) - which says something about their attitude about equal pay for equal work. The attitude towards educating slaves and the "peon" class of "browns" was something on the order of "teach that nigger to read and there'll be no keeping him" (that's a quote from F. Douglass on what his white master said when the lady of the house was teaching him to read the bible). Or as a Texas school superintendent put it in 1928 - it's the duty of the white race to "keep the mexicans on their knees in the onion fields" and education has no part of that. Native Americans had it even worse - every treaty made with them included money for education ("civilizing funds") that were either never paid or fraudulently spent on things that more benefitted the white BLM managers. And of course, if your family didn't have money, no matter what your race or gender, your only hope for education was whatever the state was offering with tax dollars - private schools, including religious ones, charged tuition.

There have been successive waves of public school movements, prior to the mid-20th century they usual started in New England and then moved South and West (and diluted as they went). The earliest movements were in colonial times and very religious in nature - have to teach those boys how to read their bible or the moral fiber of the community would go under. This later was expanded to "cyphering" so the less affluent farmers wouldn't get so ripped off in financial transactions that they go out of business. In the 1830s the movement was to get females educated. By the 1890s it was conceded that blacks and browns (including maybe sometimes a few Indian Reservations) should have some sort of education - by very separate and not hardly equal, although they pretended it was (along the 1 horse = 1 rabbit logic, both animals, aren't they?). In 1955 it was determined that separate wasn't anywhere near equal and we've been fighting out how to resolve that issue ever since - that's what the current educational funding special session of the lege is about. The Americans with Disabilities Act added in a whole new contingent of people we'd been trying to pretend didn't exist, and had previously been educated even more hit-and-miss based on family income - we're still dealing with that issue, too.

What it comes down to is - we started with no public school, it didn't work for the majority of people (all females + all black/brown males + poor white males + poor "disabled" white males = over 90% of the population), so public schools were - slowly - introduced by those very educated elites who could see the need for universal education. Returning to a failed system because the current system isn't perfect is not logical.

[Hogeye]

The main flaw in Barbara's history of public education is an equivocation between public schooling and education in general. Barbara points out that, over time, more and more people got access to education - women, blacks, etc. She assumes that the cause of this is government schooling, but I find this rather fallacious (post hoc ergo propter hoc.) It's more likely that govt schools retarded the spread of education and made it lower quality than otherwise would have been the case. I would say the increase in access to education is more likely the result of an increase in standard of living, wealth, freedom (for former slaves), changes in attitudes about women, and so on.

The public schooling (tax supported schooling) movement began in the US in the 1830's led by Horace Mann. It's main purpose from the getgo was to take control of education away from parents and students in order to indoctrinate "model citizens." According to George O'Brien, "Basically, the demand for government schools came from elites in response to two perceived threats to their notion of society: 1) the rise of the 'common people' who were becoming politically active, and 2) the influx of immigrants." In the 19th century, much of the damage of government ("public") schools was mitigated by local control - virtually every school had an autonomous school board that could hire and fire, choose curricula, etc. In the 20th century, the school "unification" (centralization under govt control) movement eventually disabled local control, particularly after the 1950s.

For a good book on government schooling, I recommend "Dumbing Us Down" by John Taylor Gatto (a New York State teacher of the year.)

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Hogeye, you've got it the wrong way around - the increase in education is what led to the increase in standard of living and changes of attitudes about women, etc. Abolitionist attitudes came from the educated groups. Increased education also caused the increase in political activity in the middle classes - and yes, elites such as Thomas Jefferson forsaw that. In fact, Jefferson basically said an educated middle class was NECESSARY to freedom, and much of the public education movement stems from his writings, even though it was a later generation that implemented his ideas.

As to the response to immigration, public education was and still is the most efficient way to mainstream them into our society (i.e., move them from lowest paid peons into the middle class). Without public education most immigrants never get passed "shopping" English, nor manage to get their citizenship.

[Hogeye]

It's notoriously hard to prove cause and effect - especially in historical areas where one cannot experiment. Sometimes one can discern a time lag between phenomena, which gives some indication. E.g. The time lag between increased global temperature and CO2 levels rising indicates that global warming is probably a cause, not an effect, of CO2 increases. Perhaps we can find some side by side similar provinces ("states") in which one centralized education faster than the other, and look at standard of living in each.

[Dardedar]

The time lag between increased global temperature and CO2 levels rising indicates that global warming is probably a cause, not an effect, of CO2 increases.

DAR
An important footnote to a comment like that should go something like this:

Note: 99%+ of climatologists disagree with this assertion and for very good, well understood, (but rather complex to the novice) reasons.

A clarification of this popular misconception put forward by warming skeptics can be read HERE.

This is useful too:

How much of the recent CO2 increase is due to human activities?

The answer is given in the first sentence: "This question keeps coming back, although we know the answer very well: all of the recent CO2 increase in the atmosphere is due to human activities,..."

D.