Re: Interesting Unicef report

Lee wrote:...
malcolmkirkpatrick said:

(malcolm): "In a school voucher environment, parents provide oversight
through their choice of school."
(Lee): "So the education system would be molded by the same people who
are responsible for our TV lineup? There's a reason why we elect a
relatively few people whose judgment we, as voters, trust more than
that of our neighbors.

Your neighbors vote, too. Political control of school harms most the
children of the least politically adept parents.

(Lee): "Besides, taxpayer supported education shouldn't be thought of
as the education system for your kids or my kids. It's the way we
ensure that all those other kids are taught the things that we, as
voters, want them to know and understand before we turn them loose to
make decisions about our society. In most cases it's convenient to
use this system for our own kids, too, but that's just a bonus."

The State (government, generally)-operated school system in the US
originated in anti-Catholic bigotry and survives on dedicated lobbying
by current recipients of the taxpayers' $500+billion/year subsidy.

(Lee): "If you want to to send your kids to a different kind of
school, go ahead. But if they're not following the curriculum and
under the supervision of the taxpayers' elected representatives, then
it doesn't make sense for them to receive the taxpayers' money. That
would be like asking for an FHA home loan but insisting on doing the
home inspection yourself, because you think you
know better."

In aggregate, parents do know better than State bureaucrats.

Gerard Lassibile and Lucia Navarro Gomez, ["Organization and
Efficiency of Educational Systems: some empirical findings", pg. 16,
__Comparative Education__, Vol. 36 #1, 2000, Feb.]
"Furthermore, the regression results indicate that countries where
private education is more widespread perform significantly better than
countries where it is more limited. The result showing the private
sector to be more efficient is similar to those found in other
contexts with individual data (see, for example, Psucharopoulos, 1987;
Jiminez, et. al, 1991). This finding should convince countries to
reconsider policies that reduce the role of the private sector in the
field of education".

I reason axiomatically, here. 1). Most parents love their children and
want their children to outlive them. 2) If you live among people there
are basically three ways to make a living: i) you can beg, ii) you can
steal, iii) you can trade goods and services for other peoples' goods
and services. 3) Most parents accept #2 and prefer 2.iii for their
children. 4) Therefore, most parents want what taxpayers want from any
education system: that children be educated to be contributing members
of society.

The education industry is not a natural monopoly, and beyond a very
low level there are no economies of scale at the delivery end of the
educaton industry as it currently operates. "Natural monopoly" and
"economies of scale" are two usual welfare-economic arguments for
State operation of an industry. Even where an industry qualifies as a
natural monoploy or exhibits significant economies of scale, the
argument for State operation is not decisive. In any case, the
education industry is not a natural monopoly and, beyond a very low
level, does not exhibit significant economies of scale as it currently
operates. Education only marginally qualifies as a "public good" as
economists use the term, and the "public goods" argument implies
subsidy and regulation, at most, not State operation of an industry.

Across countries and across industries, monopolies deliver wretched
goods and services at high cost, relative to competitive markets.
Subsidized goods are over-consumed. A State-subsidized monopoly is a
recipe for over-consumption of shoddy goods. It does not take twelve
years to teach a normal child to read and compute. The tax-subsidized
US K-12 school system originated in anti-Catholic bigotry and survives
on determined lobbying by the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel, through direct
political action and through front groups like Americans United for
the Separation of Church and State and People for the American Way,
and through paid shills who participate in various forums.

"Public education" has become a make-work program for dues-paying
members of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel, a source of padded contracts for
politically-connected insiders, a source of campaign support for
compliant politicians, and a venue for State-worshiphul
indoctrination. If this is not so, why cannot any student take, at any
age, an exit exam (the GED will do) and apply the taxpayers' K-12
education subsidy toward post-secondary tuition at any VA-approved
post-secondary institution or toward a wage subsidy at a qualified
(say, has filed W-2 forms on at least three employees for at least the
previous four years) private-sector employer?

"The public" is not in school. Students in independent and parochial
schools are as much "the public" as are students in the NEA/AFT/AFSCME
cartel's schools (the "public schools"). We are all public citizens
and private individuals. Unions, even "public sector" unions, are
private 501-c(5) corporations. Their assets are the property of their
members and their legal obligations are to dues-paying members and
agency fee payers. Sometimes unions, like other organizations, get
captured by insiders who bend the nstitution to their purposes. In no
case do "public sector" unions have any more obligation to "the
public" than do any other corporations.

Current policy sustains a State-monopoly system, which restricts all
parents options for the use of the taxpayers' K-12 education subsidy
to schools operated by dues-paying members of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME
cartel. Abundant evidence indicates that taxpayers would get more of
what we want (reading vocabulary, reading comprehension, mathematical
and scientific literacy and vocational preparation) and less of what
we don't want (drug abuse, vandalism, violence) from policies which
give to individual parents the power to determine which institution
(if any) shall receive the taxpayers' K-12 education subsidy.
Legislators fail their obligation to citizens when they vote to
sustain the current system.

Eduardo Zambrano
Formal Models of Authority: Introduction and Political Economy
Applications
Rationality and Society, May 1999; 11: 115 - 138.

"Aside from the important issue of how it is that a ruler may
economize on communication, contracting and coercion costs, this leads
to an interpretation of the state that cannot be contractarian in
nature: citizens would not empower a ruler to solve collective action
problems in any of the models discussed, for the ruler would always be
redundant and costly. The results support a view of the state that is
eminently predatory, (the ? MK.) case in which whether the collective
actions problems are solved by the state or not depends on upon
whether this is consistent with the objectives and opportunities of
those with the (natural) monopoly of violence in society. This
conclusion is also reached in a model of a predatory state by Moselle
and Polak (1997). How the theory of economic policy changes in light
of this interpretation is an important question left for further work.
[Eduardo Zambrano, "Formal Models of Authority", Rationality and
Society, V.11, #2. May, 1999].

"One has only to to think of the sinister possibilities of the radio,
State-controlled education, and so forth, to realize that 'the truth
is great and will prevail' is a prayer rather than an axiom." --George
Orwell [Review of __Power; A New Social Analysis__ by Bertrand
Russell].

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can
stand by itself." Thomas Jefferson.

"Give into the power of the teacher the fewest possible coercive
measures, so that the only source of the pupil's respect for the
teacher is the human and intellectual qualities of the latter." --
Albert Einstein--, __Ideas And Opinions__, p. 61, (Three Rivers
Press).

From: Hyman and Penroe, __Journal of School Psychology__.
"Several studies of maltreatment by teachers suggest that school
children report traumatic symptoms that are similar whether the
traumatic event was physical or verbal abuse (Hyman, et.al.,1988;
Krugman & Krugman, 1984; Lambert, 1990). Extrapolation from these
studies suggests that psychological maltreatment of school children,
especially those who are poor, is fairly widespread in the United
States...."
"While 1% to 2% might not seem to be a large percentage of a
school-aged population, in a system like New York City, this would be
about 10,000 children so traumatized by educators that they may suffer
serious, and sometimes lifelong emotional problems (Hyman, 1990;
Hyman, Zelikoff & Clarke, 1988). A good percentage of these students
develop angry and aggressive responses as a result. Yet, emotional
abuse and its relation to misbehavior in schools receives little
pedagogical, psychological, or legal attention and is rarely mentioned
in textbooks on school discipline (Pokalo & Hyman, 1993, Sarno,
1992)."
"As with corporal punishment, the frequency of emotional
maltreatment in schools is too often a function of the socioeconomic
status (SES) of the student population (Hyman, 1990)."

"Furthermore, according to a report for UNESCO, cited in Esteve
(2000), the increasing level of pupil-teacher and pupil-pupil violence
in classrooms is directly connected with compulsory schooling. The
report argues that institutional violence against pupils who are
obliged to attend daily at an educational centre until 16 or 18 years
of age increases the frustration of these students to a level where
they externalise it." --Clive Harber, "Schooling as Violence",p. 9,
__Educatioinal Review__V. 54, #1.

"...It is almost certainly more damaging for children to be in school
than to out of it. Children whose days are spent herding animals
rather than sitting in a clasroom at least develop skills of problem
solving and independence while the supposedly luckier ones in school
are stunted in their mental, physical, and emotional development by
being rendered pasive, and by having to spend hours each day in a
crowded classroom under the control of an adult who punishes them for
any normal level of activity such as moving or speaking. (DfID, 2000,
pp 12, 13)" Quoted in Clive Harber, "Schooling as Violence",p. 10,
__Educatioinal Review__V. 54, #1.

Please read this one page Marvin Minsky comment on school.
http://www.rru.com/~meo/hs.minski.html

This article on artificially extended adolescence by Ted Kolderie.
http://www.educationevolving.org/pdf/Adolescence.pdf

Also by Ted Kolderie
http://www.educationevolving.org/clevel.asp?alevel=a2&blevel=b1

E.G. West, "Education Vouchers in Principle and Practice: A Survey",
The World Bank Research Observer. http://www.worldbank.org/research/journals/wbro/obsfeb97/educate.htm

.

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