Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!caip!think!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh
From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.sci,net.politics
Subject: Re: privatization of education
Message-ID: <1121@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 2-Aug-86 06:33:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.1121
Posted: Sat Aug  2 06:33:35 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 3-Aug-86 02:53:40 EDT
References: <2413@brl-smoke.ARPA> <2777@sdcc6.ucsd.EDU> <963@kontron.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 62
Xref: watmath net.sci:1442 net.politics:17973

In article <963@kontron.UUCP> cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
> Gee, where is this "right to an education" defined?

The right to an education is not clearly defined.  Would you object if we
surgically removed what little you have?  :-)

I think children ought to have the best opportunities they can for an
education.  Anything else is a foolish waste of potential resources for
our society, as well as unjust (by my lights.)

> It didn't seem be to
> case when I was trying to get an education in the 1970s.  (Of course, I
> was poverty class white -- and all good liberals know that such things
> don't exist.)

Maybe your idea of a "good liberal" is an ignorant (or dead?) liberal.
But liberals have been working for poverty-class whites too since long before
you were born, and continue today (in Appalachia, for example.)

> You assume that only the government, in its beneficience, would educate
> a person coming from such a background.  This is hardly the case.  There
> have ALWAYS been organizations offering scholarships based on need --
> but most of them wanted evidence of educational potential (hence the
> term, "scholarship").

I saw those "scholarship" criteria: generally they included academic
standards like who your parents worked for or what community you lived in.

Educational potential is not well correllated by grades from schools or
standardized tests.  And the correllation is worse when language barriers,
unequal funding, physical handicaps, and bad environments in the home or
school are present.

> A valid argument -- but since the government has largely failed, in
> fact, created a generation less educated, but with more years of 
> schooling, than the previous generation, it is worth considering if
> there is a better way to educate the population adequately for
> the responsibilities of citizenship.

While it's always worth considering other options, it's not appropriate to
pin the blame on "government".  First, because it is a vast number of
separate bodies that manage American schooling, and second because
demographic and sociological changes invalidate comparisons between
generations.

> The University of California (through taxes) sucked my parents dry of 
> money to subsidize the education of people from middle-class and above
> families, so they were unable to provide any help to me.

Oh?  What fraction of your parent's total tax burden went to UC?

> I don't care if the University of California exists next year or not.
> 
> Clayton E. Cramer ("You are damn right I'm upset.")
--

"The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good
ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder's lack of
rational conviction."  Bertrand Russell in "Skeptical Essays".
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh