Education

Philosophos: How should government relate to the field of education?

Nomodiphas: Well education is obviously a good thing. It is especially important in a democracy like ours where the people are required to make important decisions. It seems to be a necessity for a society. . . .

Philosophos: Let me interrupt you to ask you this: does anyone have a right to education?

Nomodiphas: Well, no.

Philosophos: Then why do we assume that the government has an obligation to provide it? Why do we assume that education is a function of the government?

Nomodiphas: Well what about kids who can’t afford education? Isn’t it unfair to put them at a disadvantage because of the shortcomings of their parents?

Philosophos: First off if kids are in poverty it is probably because of some mistake (like laziness or a debaucherous lifestyle) of their parents. The mistakes of their parents are likely going to affect them more than their lack of education. Second, education isn’t a fix all for poverty. You know what pulls people out of poverty? Hard work, frugal living, and marriage.

And speaking of unfair, how fair is it for people without kids to provide for the education of others? What do they owe others? Education is a privilege, not a right. When we treat it as a right, people abuse it.

Think of the behavioral problems that teachers must endure because kids have a right to education and schools can’t kick them out. These kids sabotage learning for others. How fair is it to you or me to pay for some brat to go to school and screw off, disrespect his teachers, and keep other kids from learning? And why do we force kids to go to school that don’t want to? Education is a privilege, but making it into a right has had terrible results. Look at drop out rates and illiteracy rates among graduates. We see these results most in low income areas, the very areas that free education is supposed to help! Education is not in any way leveling the playing field or helping disadvantaged kids succeed. Our education system throws a bunch of kids who don’t want to be in school and learn in with a few kids that do—the result is bad for everyone. If education was treated as the privilege that it is people would take it more seriously, sacrifice for it, and not let their children go to school and screw off.

Nomodiphas: So you would just have poor kids go completely without an education. I really don’t see how that will solve any problems.

Philosophos: You are wrong to assume that if the government doesn’t educate kids, then they won’t get educated. Before the government ran education people got educated! And they got better educations than they do now. What are the results of government run education? It has more or less destroyed acts of charity in this field. No longer do people teach for free or support students with a will to learn that lack the means—rather the government takes care of everyone.

We force kids to ride on buses for hours in order to achieve acceptable levels of diversity at our schools. The race neutral standard that Brown v. Board of Education imposed quickly turned into an obsession with race. Diversity became the focus of education; and this destroyed the community basis of schools. Cities were forced to bus kids from different areas to reach a quota. In Kansas City in the 1990’s for example, a judge said the city schools must lure more white kids into the school system to achieve proper integration. He doubled the property taxes in order to add computers, a UN room, a jury room, and pools to the school at an incredible cost of an additional $36,000 per student. The result? White enrollment continued to decrease, while attendance and drop out rates continued to increase. Money does not solve all problems!

Why is there such a push for diversity. The main reason diversity is valued within in schools is to raise the self esteem of children. But there is no connection between self esteem and performance. Of all industrial countries Korean students did the best in math, while our students did the worst. 23% of Korean students said they were good at math while over 2/3 of our students thought they were good at math. We have a high level of self esteem, but we lack knowledge. It is not the function of schools to make sure kids have high self esteem; rather their job is to impart knowledge.

Walk through a government run school and take a look at things—you’ll find many distractions, but little imparting of knowledge. In many schools are security guards and metal detectors. Despite this there still is a large amount of violence. Why do we tolerate kids that bring gang rivalries to school? In addition to this our schools have a carnival like atmosphere of constant distraction. Clubs, sports, regular dances—ask the average student what they are most concerned about and I guarantee nothing that has anything to do with education will make their top ten list. The football game or the prom are their primary concerns. As is fashion. There is a need to be trendy, to fit in—the hallways are like miniature runways. Everybody is concerned about who is hooking up with who and most invest the majority of their time and effort into getting action or having mini marriages.

Drugs and drinking are rampant. From fear of violence, to sports and romance—there are many things to keep kids from learning at these government sponsored institutions. And this is probably a good thing for whenever schools try to teach kids something they never impart wisdom. Schools are brainwashing and indoctrinating our kids with gross falsehoods. They never mention God or true religion, but instead preach to them the false religions of this world. Our schools indoctrinate our children daily with the tenants of humanism. They tell them they must tolerate and accept all the choices of their peers. They preach to them the philosophy of Darwin: we are all nothing more than molecules and swirling atoms. We should therefore live to cultivate pleasure—nothing is right wrong so long as you do not hurt another person. We have the government, through their schools, teaching our children about sex! Why on earth would we want the federal government determining how and what our kids learn about sex! This is the state of the public education system. Many proponents of public education admit the faults of our system, but their solution is always the same: more money. If only we had more money for this or that we could solve these problems. That is how bureaucracies work. They are stifled, unable to be creative, and they constantly require more and more money but fail to produce results.

Nomodiphas: Ok, I think your little rant about public schools is justified. It seems you are probably right that forcing kids to go to school that don’t want to corrupts learning for all and that if education was not free people would take it more seriously. But what about college? The state gives its universities some money and students pay the rest. People go there by choice. Are colleges any different?

Philosophos: You tell me, you’ve been there more recently than I have; though I doubt that my experience was unique. Learning while at college, in my experience, was more the exception than the rule. During my first week of college a guy on my hall gave me a good piece of advice, he said: don’t ever let this university get in the way of your learning. I think the distractions at college are worse than those in high school. There is more partying, drug use, drinking, a greater devotion to the athletic teams, more groups and clubs to be involved with, and an even greater focus on hooking up. For most students college is like Pinocchio’s play land. Everything is acceptable. College is viewed as a time when you are to ‘have fun’ and ‘experiment.’ Kids are finally out of the eyes of their parents and they indulge themselves in the party scene.

Why should tax payers subsidize this lifestyle? If students had to pay their own way I would bet less people would go to college and those that did would take their learning more seriously. Yes we need doctors, scientists, and lawyers, but with the current system these professions are being watered down. When a good portion of students go to college for four (or more commonly now, five or six years) of getting drunk and hooking up the top of the class is not required to work as hard to be at the top of the class. I think we put too much importance on institutionalized education. The majority of what I learned I learned outside of the classroom.
We tell kids they have to go to college to get a good job, so many go not because they want to, but because they feel they have to. This is no accident; higher education is a multi billion dollar business. Think of all the graft and extra positions we have that have nothing to do with education. LGBT counselors, advisors for out of class groups, and million dollar football coaches to name a few. Those running the education system tell us how important it is to get an education and because it is so important, they tell us how they deserve to make more money. If kids don’t want to go to higher education we should not compel them. Why is that we can’t impart the necessary basic knowledge in twelve years? Why do we need sixteen? Can’t we make better use of the time when kids are younger so they need not go to school years into adulthood? Most people graduate with a degree in one thing and end up being retrained and working in a wholly unrelated field. What is the profit in this? We should make our earlier education better and allow younger people to specialize. We should put more focus on apprenticeship type training as well. Higher education should be reserved for professional types of degrees. Those who are able and have a desire should get these degrees and they should pay their own way so they take their studies serous.

Nomodiphas: I understand your position on higher education, but what about lower education? If the current system is inefficient and unjust, what is the solution?

Philosophos: Our schools should be family/community based. Instead of taking from some and giving to others we should make families responsible for the education and wellbeing of their children. Within this context education could take a number of forms. It could be done solely by the parents, by groups of people, or communities could hire teachers and establish centers of learning. They would be responsible for funding these centers, would control the curriculum, and be responsible for discipline.

Nomodiphas: What about cases in which the parents don’t take education seriously and don’t invest in their children? Or what if the community lacks the resources to hire quality teachers for their learning centers?

Philosophos: What are you advocating? That the government should take children from their parents and raise them because parents might do a bad job? Shouldn’t the government just decide who may breed and who may not to prohibit potentially bad parents from mating? How will this solve any problems? When the government takes on a function that is not its own it creates even more problems then it solves and undermines its own function.

Raising children (which our education system attempts to do to a large degree) not only indoctrinates children with a number of falsehoods and presents them with a plethora of distractions to keep them from learning, but it undermines the family structure and the liberty of parents to raise their children. Protecting our liberty is one of the primary things the government is entrusted to do, when the government takes on things outside of its sphere it ends up corrupting its primary functions and undermining the functions of other spheres.